Here are links to all of the stone donut necklaces I have for sale in my Etsy shop. Lately I’ve been focusing on making pendants and necklaces out of gemstone donuts and having way too much fun in the process. Since I plan to make more of these as time allows, I figured I’d put them all up on a single post and update it as I add more to the store. I’ll be doing the same with this Stone Donut Necklace Squidoo lens. Happy shopping!

Valentine’s Day is coming. As a lonely misanthrope, I wish to do my part to curbstomp some of the sweetness out of the pile of fluff and glitter that is February 14th.

Okay, not really. I just like making weird stuff. So have a creepy Valentine’s Day card, courtesy of my Etsy store:

Plz make moar heavyweight paper kthnx.

Red River Paper makes third party inkjet papers. Really nice third party inkjet papers. I hadn’t shopped there in a while and I was pleased to see that somewhere along the line they had introduced some super heavy paper (96lb. Polar Matte Magna Card Stock). Previously the heaviest inkjet paper I’d ever come across was their 75lb Denali paper, which was pleasingly sturdy and gave good results when I used it to print my black and white pencil drawings. However, it made my color pencil drawings look like crap (loss of detail, awful color blending, etc). So my questions about the Magna paper were:

1. Will I have the same color problems with this stuff?

and

2. Will it even make it through my printer without jamming?

I gave it a shot, and I’m very happy to say that my worries were unfounded.

As you can see from the first two photos, the Magna’s handling of color pencil reproduction is pretty good – my questionable photography skills notwithstanding. The details are much more crisp and the color blending is way better. I haven’t tried printing any of my graphite drawings with it yet, but I’ll give it a try eventually. It handles vectors very well too, as illustrated by the third photo. The paper thickness was no problem; my Canon handles it just fine, though I always feed it one sheet at a time as instructed.

Bottom line, I really like this paper and I’m seriously hoping that Red River offers more heavy weight paper options in the future. A good start would be a double-sided version of the Magna paper. Some similarly heavy gloss and satin paper would be nice too.

A few weeks ago the curator at the online t-shirt vendor StupidHurts.us contacted me and asked if I could submit some of my designs to their site. One of those designs went live today, and it’s on the front page.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen one of my actual physical shirts on a live model. Very cool.

After several years I finally decided to reopen my shop on Etsy.com. For those who don’t know, Etsy is a marketplace where crafters, designers and artisans can sell their own handmade products. It’s a pretty awesome place and I shop there regularly (I get my soap and some of my jewelry supplies from the sellers there).

Here’s what I have so far. Not much, but I’m hoping to have it more fully stocked within the next couple of weeks.