Art update- Cartilage earrings, chainmaille, and bracers

And here's the last part of creative catch-up posts for the week. Jewelry time!

Cartilage Chain Earrings


The first two were custom orders for pairs- I really love the dragons and colors in the first pair, but the fact that the second pair got so many posts made my ear-piercing-obsessed self happy. ;)

The third is probably my favorite of the batch, though. I made that for a custom order, as well, but love the color combination and key. I think I'll have to start using key charms more often for earrings; they're just the right size.

The fourth is one for my shops and was inspired by Lord of the Rings- in this case, Lothlorien. The woods of Lothlorien always appear golden because of the leaves of the mallorn trees, so I used yellows in this earring along with the green, silver, and brown. You can find this one in my shops here on Etsy and here on Artfire.

Chainmaille
I've been working on a LOT of chainmaille for craft shows this month. You can see a peek of some of them in this post, but here's another peek:

Stretchy chainmaille bracelets! These are fun to make because I can do them in lots of colors (got more stretchy rings this week- now I have even more colors to work with!) and they're so comfy! I have one that I wear every day. :)

Here's the first I listed in my shops:
Stretchy Red and Black Chainmaille Bracelet

That's here on Etsy and here on Artfire. The black rings are rubber, so this can stretch to fit many different size wrists.

And I've also been doing a bunch of handflowers/slave bracelets. Here's the first of those that I got listed:

This is a very simple one with no embellishments, but I liked this one plain so didn't add charms or anything. It has a a silver-plated chain that loops around the middle finger and clasps with a lobster clasp. I really don't like lobster clasps on bracelets, but otherwise it would be hard to get these the correct size for people without them being able to try it on first, you know?

This is here and here.

Random Jewelry

I made these bracelets for my fiancé's mom for her birthday last month. I learned that I'm terrible at working with regular beading wire and crimp beads, but after one disaster (the beads went flying), I think I figured out how to use it. LOL! I love when simple art things baffle me.

These are all beads I took apart from thrift store and handmedown jewelry- I wanted to use new beads, but all of mine are gaudy and looked silly on a regular bracelet (I buy beads for earrings and chainmaille drops, really), so these were the best options. The one bracelet has a lobster clasp and the other has a toggle clasp.

Random other stuff
I also made these crocheted dark green and brown bracers recently. They're arm accessories, so they count in a jewelry post, right? ;)

These can be found here and here. (And this reminds me- I still have a brown pair to finish.)

And I think I'm finally caught up now (or at least close to it). Remind me not to go so long without doing an art update! These three posts this week span back about a month and a half. Eep!

(And don't forget my 15% off Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale running this weekend! For more info, see this post.)

Black Friday - Cyber Monday Sale!

Sale time! From today (the 24th) until the end of the day on the 29th, I'll be running a 15% off sale in all three of my shops:
Elfling Creations on Artfire
Elfling Creations on Etsy
Elfling Creations on Zibbet

This excludes custom dolls, though, but everything else is on sale. Prices are already adjusted so just check out normally. :)

Note: I have a craft show early on Saturday, so items will be taken down from my shops for a few hours that day. If you have your eye on something, make sure to buy it before the weekend so you can snag it before someone at the show does. ;)



I wasn't sure if I was going to jump on the Black Friday/Cyber Monday thing, but since the Createability team on Etsy is running one, I figured I'd join in. You can find a list of the participating team shops here. There are great deals from talented artists!

Gotta love when my writing muse takes over

Had to split my creative posts into three this week, so I apologize that the subjects are all over the place. The jewelry update will come next, if you're curious. This one is mostly so I can keep track of what I've been working on.

Writing time!
Yup, as you can tell from all the dice in my art update yesterday (er... early this morning, I suppose), I've been on a geeky kick lately.

This has fed into my writing, too. Here's what I've worked on lately:
-My D&D game. Or: Meri tries to come up with fun (and possibly mischievous) things to do to the Player Characters
I've finally figured out what to do with the characters after they get past the area they're in. The dwarves, kobold, and human probably won't be too happy. The gnome will feel much better, though.

-Random ideas for later D&D things. Or: Mwahahaha!
Yup, more picking on the characters. In this case, the short ones (which is all but two. How the heck did I end up with a D&D game where most of the PCs are under 5 feet tall?). You'll either be very lucky or very unlucky. I haven't decided which yet. ;)

-My next short story... possibly
Been writing down ideas about my reluctant elven wizard. I have plans to turn this into my next short story, but I have to figure out where in her backstory I want to start (getting a centaur as a sibling? Giant fire? Chaotic magic? So many ideas!).

-Plot bunnies, ahoy!
One of my writing characters gave me a 714 word entry for his journal today, but this may never see the light of day; it really depends on if the DM triggers a certain thing happening (can my cleric please get his friggin' mail?). And if I'm mean enough to have said character post something that would be terribly embarrassing for him if the other game characters were to find out. Why yes, I think I am that mean. I'm getting tired of this character being so withdrawn, pretentious and aloof when that's not even his actual personality.

-Long story for the Fantasy Big Bang challenge: completed!
I blogged about that a week or so ago, but since I'll be adding chapters over on my writing blog every few days, I figured I should mention that I've posted the 1st chapter today (here's the link to the prologue). It's comedic fantasy, so it's amusing. :)

And since the artist I was paired with gave me a convenient banner to use, why don't I use that, too? ;)
And, yes, I'm STILL drooling over the art for that banner. Hey, character art is like my favorite thing ever.
(Hint hint to my fiancé. Add that to the hint hint that my character wants his beloved mail added into the game, please. The downside of handing over control of one of my characters and my plotline to someone else...)

Art update- my muses seem to not be getting along again...

It seems as though my writing muse has kicked my art muse out of my head. Perhaps he thought she needed a vacation? I've been doing a lot of writing lately but not so much art. Well, not so much creative art. I'm working on a doll, so that's sort of creative, but otherwise... nope, just duplicating things that have sold and making custom orders for people in their preferences.

This is nice, I suppose, but Dragon-Girl? Come back, please. Stop partying with my friend's muse and get back to work! My writing muse promises he'll be good and let you inspire me, too. Don't you, Cyn? *glares at him* (See, this is what my creative process is like on a regular basis: trying to get my muses to work together when one is bossy and the other is flighty and neither like me telling them what to do. *grumble grumble*)

While I try to get these imps under control (oh, stop laughing at me, muses!), I'll share some of what I've been working on for... geez, the last month and a half? How'd I fall so far behind with these posts? Makes it look like my art muse has been working and not slacking off...

I'll start with the more geeky-type art and save the jewelry and writing updates for later this week.

Horns
These were a custom order:

The clay and powders just did not want to work with me on these; I couldn't get the horns to be the right colors, so these were my second or third try. Who knew clay could be so rebellious and not want to play nice with powders?

And these are in my shops:

-Silver and Black Dragon Horns: Artfire and Etsy
(These were inspired by one of the dragons in the D&D game I play, of course!)
-Orange and Black Dragon Horns: Artfire and Etsy
(These are a bit different because I didn't use the powders or glitter.)

I actually have a few more pairs of horns made up but not photographed, so I'll share those in a later post.

Geeky cell phone charms and keychains
I haven't shared these here yet, right? (I only posted the wizard and paladin ones, I think? Geez, these huge gaps between art updates has me all sorts of discombobulated.) Anyway, I've been on a geeky kick lately- not that I'm not usually on one of those- and have been making a bunch of cell phone charms and keychains for my fellow geeks.

First, two word ones- Rogue and Bard:

The dark colors of this cell phone charm represent the shadows and the shiny beads are for the gems rogues and thieves loot. See? Roguish. ;) This "Rogue in the Shadows" die cell phone charm is now hiding in my shops here and here.


This "Bard Blues" cell phone charm can be found here and here. I chose to use "Bard" to go with this particular die because of all the classes, Bards would most admire pretty colors and this die is very pretty (it's a mottled green/blue/tan). Half the fun of making these is that I get to pick out pretty dice! :D

And here are two that are just dice and no words.
Fire Dragon Dice Keychain:

I really like how this one came out and love that the die matches some beads that I already had. I added the dragon charm because the reds and blacks reminds me of lava, and hence a fire-breathing dragon. This is in my shops here and here.

And the last geeky charm (for now!) is this Water Elemental cell phone charm:

This one can be found here and here.

If you guys are wondering, I can switch out the cell phone charms with the keychains and vice versa, or even add a lobster clasp should someone want it as a zipper pull. These are multi-use. Heck, my best friend hangs one from her wallet chain at her belt.

And I have them titled as "dice" instead of "die" because I have a feeling it's more relevant for searches, even if it is incorrect since there's only one die on each of them. I hate using incorrect grammar.

And that wraps it up for this post. The next two creative updates will be posted soon. :)

And another craft show

Just a quick post about the craft show I did this past weekend. The show was pretty much a bust... no, let me rephrase that: it was very much a bust. Not too many visitors and the ones who did weren't anything like my target market (mostly older people and mothers with young children showed up). I probably won't be doing this one again, since no one seemed to do well and there was a fee to get into the show (visitors, I mean. Obviously the crafters had to pay for their spots). This stinks, though, because it was held at my old college, so I liked the location. Ah, well.

I changed my tables around later in the day (moved the rack with the crocheted scarves and things to the other side of the jewelry table later, for one thing), but this is what they looked like early in the day:

Say hi to Josh. ;) The pretty jewelry on the left table is by my friend Mary.


And there's Josh again. We had some tablecloth issues (left mine in the car and didn't realize it) so I was borrowing Mary's. Luckily hers was also green. :)

And here's the jewelry table after I moved things a bit:




I'll give you guys a peek at what I've been making over the past two weeks- lots of chainmaille. The photos are crummy (I used my old camera I take geocaching- I'm lucky when I can get the lens to open and always end up with a few blank pictures, lol), but it'll give you an idea.

Necklace:

The orange and black I made ages ago and the top right one and the leafy one on the left I made for the show last month. The other ones are all new.

Handflowers:

Hey, look, an even blurrier photo. Whoops. With the exception of the green one on the hand, these are all new, too.

Once I get a sunny day, I'll get individual photos of these and start listing them in my shops. Look for that soon! I'm also do an art update post, huh? My art muse has been pretty scarce lately, but I have been working on a few things.

Writing time! (Or: huzzah for comedic fantasy)

(The banner art was drawn by Artmetica on livejournal- the artist I was paired with for the challenge. You can find the full version of the cover art here. There's also a mix/cd thing that goes along with the story- you can find that here.)

Remember that really long story I've been working on for months for a writing challenge? I'm finally done it and, since it's the 13th, that means I was allowed to start sharing it (had to wait until my posting date rolled around). It's so long, though, that I'm splitting the posts into bite-sized chapters and will be posting a bit more every few days over on my writing blog.

Part 1 (the info about the story and the prologue) is up now- check it out here.

I worked very hard on this story and I'm proud of it; I'm sure it's not perfect, but it made my beta readers laugh, so I must have done something right. (Yay, comedic fantasy!) So if you have a chance, please check it out. I seem to have hit an amusement factor, if nothing else. ;)

Time for another craft show!

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately- been really stressed out and trying to get orders done and things made for a whole bunch of craft shows I'm doing this month. Busy Meri is busy.

Speaking off, if you live near Delaware County, PA, stop by the craft show this Sunday at the Penn State Delco campus in Media. (I can't bring myself to call it "Penn State Brandywine". I just can't. That's my beloved alma mater and it feels too weird to call it something else.) There's going to be a lot of artists selling their wares, so it'll be fun! There's more info about the show here.

And I wanted to link to an awesome geeky blog that interviewed me yesterday. Girl geeks? What could be better! :D Thanks for featuring me!

A rant about the post office

I am completely and utterly disappointed with the customer service I received at the post office today. A package I mailed off to a customer over a week ago has gone missing and I am quite angry about this. The tracking information from the USPS site has it stuck somewhere in New Jersey with the last updated status being "Your item was processed through and left our JERSEY CITY, NJ 07097 facility on October 22, 2010." Hey, look, today is November 1st and want to know what the expected delivery date was? October 23rd. I'm from the Philly suburbs; it should have taken three days, tops, to get anywhere in New Jersey (generally it's more like two days, even sent First Class).

I figured that when I went to the post office today to see what was up, they would call the Jersey City branch because that's clearly where they dropped the ball and ask if they could locate the package there. But of course not. Silly me expecting help in this situation.

Instead, I have to wait 21 days from when the package was mailed to call an 800 number and then possibly try to figure out what's going on. And in the meantime, my poor customer doesn't have their order and I feel horrible about that because there's nothing I can do until that 21 days is up.

And honestly? I think by that time it'll be too late and the package will be hopelessly lost, so I'll be out the cost of the item and the item, and the customer won't have it, either.

So way to go, USPS. Now tell me- why do post office rates keep going up? It's quite obviously not for the service their customers receive. I know this is USPS protocol rather than just the employee being rude, but it's sucky protocol that should be rectified. All this could have been fixed (or at least helped along) by a simple phone call from one post office branch to another- two minutes at most. Even if they hadn't been able to locate it in that time, they would have at least tried, which would have been something.

So now I can only twiddle my thumbs and hope that the package comes out of the black hole it seems to have fallen into. Gee, thanks, USPS.