Now is the time to place your orders. Well you have maybe 1 weeks before it won't make it in time for Christmas. This is a busy time of year and packages can have a hick-up because of weather, etc., so please order soon to make sure there is no delay in receiving your items.
A few Rings I just finished
I've always have loved to make things with my hands. All growing up I found things to make from woven string bracelets to leather work. I preferred staying home to make things rather than go out to a party or have fun in other ways. Now that I'm all grown up and still growing up, I still prefer to stay at home when ever I can to make something rather than go out and tour the city. The only difference now is that I don't have much time to do the crafts that I enjoy. Work gets in the way of my hobbies as it does with most of us and when we have time we are tired and have less energy than we once did especially if you have kids like I do.
I feel I have even less time now with a job and a family and my side art that I make and sell. My crafts are more of a hobby because I can never find the time to work on them and selling them may cost too much for most people. The time that goes into making some things I don't feel I could ever get paid what it's really worth. Either way I don't want to not offer it for sale either. I will start to add crafts to my crafts section as I finish projects. There will be very few and the price may or may not reflect all the time put into the project. I'll have to decide that when I list it.
My crafts will consist of a variety of things. Leather work, coil pots, gourds, or any other mixture of materials used to make them "my way". They are made with love since they are done in my "spare" time and I do my best to use natural materials. I hope you'll enjoy viewing them if you are not purchasing them. Fun Fun Fun. :)
This is a new design from old parts. I took a few old parts and combined them into something new. Wings are always cool. This one has 4 wings or 2 sets of wings with decorative patterns in between them. The is just a simple CAD render and not exactly how the finished product will be, but should give a good idea.
The design process is very interesting with any design. They all start in different ways. This one started off as a simple drawing. That didn't work out. I scratched everything except for the long lines that go along the edges. Then I just jumped into CAD and started with a band. I inset the middle surface and started to try and get ideas for the rest of the design. I pulled out the wings and just loved how it went with the long stripes. I then made some new patterns to go in between them. That is the quick version of how one thing led to another. :)
I don't really like the idea of Halloween, but taking all the meaning out of it it was always fun to dress up and get candy growing up. The same is true with my kids.
My younger kids love to dress up and Batgirl wins again. I hope you all stay safe out there this year and have fun.
Batgirl with a smile
So things are still moving along with Dana Arts. I'm working away at the site and as always figuring things out and keeping myself busy. It's that time of year where it's starting to get darker sooner and cool off a little here in Arizona. Still in the 90's, but not bad at night.
My wife planted sunflower seeds in our back yard. we already have 10 of them starting to grow. I can't wait till they all bloom at the same time. It will look so cool. I'll take some pictures once they grow up a little. So if you are in my area, it's time to start planting your winter crops. :)
So I've managed to start the process. I thought, "what the heck!". So for now I have a few libraries and a few more coming. The shanks have over 30 in it. I have parts and also some nice halos. These really save so much time if you work with t-splines and CAD to make jewelry. Most rings may need pieces from each library. Mix and match is the game. Have fun. They are listed in the new CAD section
I'll add some related videos on how to use parts to build a ring in more depth or more specific soon.
For any Martrix 8 users out there, I've been thinking about selling some T- spline library folders. They would be priced according to each folder and may have 10-15 pieces in each library folder. | just need to prepare them properly. Stay tuned it still might take me a month or so to prep everything, but the idea is there.
So I was working on my site of course and I ran into a snag. I could not get the shopping cart to work with variant options the way I needed. I found a workaround that has to do. So when selecting a gold ring to buy you will have to just add it to the cart and then a popup will allow you to add the metal color. Just that simple. It's one of those hidden simple things that hopefully doesn't confuse anyone.
So I'm still working on it. It will be a while, but the latest is a lot of rearranging and planning. I'm just throwing up the basics and then I'll slowly refine it. Nothing is permanent yet. I am starting to add some jewelry products that I already have listed on Etsy. It will take a while to add all of them, but I'm excited to finally start selling from my site for the first time. Sorry if there are any bugs. Still working things out.
I love this ring. Just woks.
You know none of us have enough time for everything. We have to pick and choose what's a bigger priority and go with that. Everything else just waits and gets pushed back till we are able to get inspired enough to feel it's a bigger priority than something else.
Well, time or no time, I have been wanting to redo my website for years now. I built the first few sites from scratch. I never wanted to use a template because they were all too constricting and didn't allow for my freedom of artistic view to be expressed. Well, technology has gotten better and I don't have time to keep rebuilding my site. It took over a year to get to the point of starting on it again. I also knew in the back of my mind that I would never finish for years to come. A little here and a little there. Just no time. So I'm bending my rule and am jumping into the template realm. This way I can actually get it done and spend more time on what I more enjoy doing and that's jewelry and photography.
So bear with me as I slowly build my site. Even with a template site it will take me some time. I hope you'll enjoy it as you see it develop. Give me 6 months and hopefully all the bugs will be worked out too. Time is an interesting thing. Wish I had more of it. :)