Commissions Announcement

Commissions Announcement

Recent months have been very hectic for me. I’ve been more stressed than is good for me. My real-person job has had a lot of spikes in workload, and this has worn me out. I have not been able to work on crafting nearly as much as I would have liked to.

Because of these factors, I am going to temporarily close my commission queue. That is, I won’t be accepting new requests for custom commissions. I will work on projects already on my queue until I finish them all. If you have already contacted me (even if I haven’t been able to get back to you yet), I will consider you to already be on the queue.

I also need to take time to work on some of my own ideas for new designs. I need to design things regularly, or else I get sad.

My hope is that I can finish all the things on my queue within 2-4 months. After that, I will open up again for new commissions.

I did it. I just ordered a laser cutter.

There’s this company called Glowforge that’s made a new consumer-level laser cutter, and after a year or so of hearing whispers about it they have now released it for pre-order. 

The specs are totally reasonable. 40 Watt CO2 laser, 12x20 inch cutting bed. They’re doing a lot of fancy stuff with a cloud-based driver, like optically locating your material and registering your artwork onto it. A lot of that stuff is pretty darn cool, but I probably won’t use much of that functionality. In the end it probably won’t quite negate my need to go in and rent time on the big cutters at the laser store, but I’ll be able to produce lot of my designs quickly and easily without paying someone else. And it’ll make prototyping super easy.

The retail price they’ve set for the cutter is $4000, but for the rest of their pre-order period they’re offering it at HALF OFF. Which is freaking awesome. If you too want a laser cutter of your very own, go check them out before the end of the week!

But wait there’s more! If you use my referral link: http://glowforge.com/referred/?kid=6N3AV you’ll get an extra $100 off the discounted price, and I’ll also get $100 back! If you use my link to buy a cutter I’ll send you a pile of sweet laser-cuttable designs that I’ve made that you can cut for yourself!

I posted this other Bowser-spiked collar the other day, and someone asked for one in a different color scheme. This one also doesn’t have the soft lining layer, so it took considerably less time to stitch together. The commissioner also wanted a D ring in the middle, which was pretty straightforward, and a locking buckle, which I happened to have a couple of on hand.

I also decided to use vinegaroon instead of black dye for the base. It’s a super cool and hilariously old-school chemistry process where you rust some steel wool into some vinegar, and when you put it on the leather it reacts with the tannins in the the leather and turns the leather black. Since it’s chemically bonded to the leather, it can’t rub off, which is pretty cool. (Though to be fair I’ve been very happy with the dyes I have, I have never noticed dye any transfer problems with them.) And it soaks all the way through the thickness of the leather, which is pretty cool.

The collar is currently sitting soaking up a last coat of neatsfoot oil on the spikes, which should even out the discoloration seen here at the base of the spikes. (That’s from the oil in the black strap, which I oiled before assembly, soaking up into the spikes.) Then it’ll ship out tomorrow.

This dragon tail is available for immediate sale over here on my Etsy shop. This is an unusual occurrence, so if you’d like it, grab it while you can! I can ship it immediately, so it can get to you by Halloween.

Made in anodized aluminum with red mottled stripes over a black background. It’s 35 inches long and weighs in at just under 3 pounds.

(This tail was a second copy of a tail made for a commissioner. The post office lost the package in Ohio, so I made a replacement to send to the commissioner. Then the original package was recovered and returned to me. So now it’s here for you!)

[edit] Sold! Thanks for playing!

I was wondering if you have a pattern that I can follow to make one myself. I will really appreciate it.

I don’t really have a pattern to give that really fully explains how to make a tail. I suggest learning to make chainmail first, then attacking it once you’re comfortable with doing some moderately complex things. I think tackling a project without having plans laid out ahead of time really forces you to learn lots of things and improve your skills. I do have a couple links that might help though.

Here’s a progression of me building a tail. It’s not really a step-by-step tutorial, but if you’re comfortable with chainmail you ought to be able to work on it for a while and fill in most of the gaps.

Here’s a template for planning out a pattern of different colors of scales.

Working on an accessory to the dragon tails I make. It’s an extension of the tail up your back! (The commissioner had the idea.) It’ll be worn like a backpack. The straps snap on.

Here you see the underside of it, showing how the attachment works. I was happy to have figured out how to attach the leather pieces into the scales.

More photos of the whole thing once I finish up the tail that goes with this, and also make a fresh set of backpack straps. (These ones were cribbed from the tsundere shark costume I made for Halloween, which I still need to get nice photos of.)