For the last 6 months to a year I’ve been less active with Making Things than I’d like. I’d just like to talk briefly about why that is, where I’m at, and where I’m trying to go.

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One component was that my day job was fairly busy. Which is good! I basically work as the second guy in a 1-man architecture practice. I do nearly all of the drawings and the 3D modeling. This year we finished up a vacation house on the shores of Lake Michigan, which was awesome, and we had a half dozen smaller projects bouncing around at any given time.

We had plenty of work, but sadly I was unable to really get myself into the office for consistent 8-hour days. Mostly the problem was my own poor life habits, fed by expectation creep, self-efficacy issues, stress, and probably some low-grade depression. Then there were occasional bursts of long days and nights working to meet a deadline, which threw more stress and inconsistent schedule problems into the mix.

I’m making some actual headway on improving my life schedule habits. I’m getting myself in to the office earlier and not staying late. I’m keeping myself to a more consistent but smaller amount of crafting in the evenings, and I’m going to sleep earlier.

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The other main component of my art inactivity was simply a matter of access to tools.

The place I used to go to use laser-cutters (and where I used to work 2011-2013) stopped offering lasers for hire sometime in May or so, then they dicked around for a few months bleeding more money before finally closing shop sometime around October. They liquidated their assets, but the owner was trying to squeeze a last buck out of the situation, and they were trying to sell their lasers for basically their sitcker prices, of between $20K and $50K. So I didn’t even have a chance to try to nab one of those.

For the next few months I was in a laser limbo. I managed to beg time on a cutter at a youth program’s maker space, which is largely run by a couple people I used to work with at the laser shop. But every time was basically calling in a personal favor, and scheduling was difficult, so that was Not Sustainable.

There’s an artist’s co-op space not too far away from me that has wood and metal shops, and theoretically a laser cutter. I signed up for a training on their machine in July. At the training they admitted that they’d been trying to upgrade their machine, but it wasn’t working yet. And that it had been out of commission in this state since January.

So that was a non-starter at the time.

Last year I put money down for the Glowforge, a crowdfunded desktop laser cutter. Around this time they pushed their delivery date back to December.

Come September, it turned out the dormitory I lived in during college had just gotten a small laser cutter. And luckily I’m still friends with a few undergrads, who somehow seem to think of me as cool and not creepy and weird for still hanging around from time to time. So for a few months that was what I had to work with. It was definitely not ideal, because it took coordinating with undergrads, and I don’t trust a machine in that sort of situation to be maintained very consistently. But it worked OK enough.

Around this time I was having some really unhappy crafting thoughts. I was without reliable access to the tool I’d built my leather product line around. I was wondering how long my goodwill would last for begging laser access off of friends. If I couldn’t get access to laser cutters, I’d have to stop making those things. And if the awkwardness of getting onto a laser cutter increased, there might come a point where it was just no longer worth it to keep going. And there’s no way I could magic up ten grand to buy myself a laser cutter that would work reliably.

Oh, and about this time, one of the little designs I’d posted a while back and had languished without much public fanfare (this leaf barrette concept) got featured on the front page of Etsy. And suddenly I had more orders all at once than I ever expected to deal with. So that was a crazy couple of weeks. I’d only made like 3 copies of those leaves before that happened, and hadn’t sold a single one I don’t think.

Oh and also between August and November, I moved apartments without a car, my last grandmother died, and I volunteered hard for Hillary for the week leading up to the election. So there was that.

After the main burst of those orders passed, it was Magic Meat Week, and I put together probably the most intense leather design I’ve made by hand. (Here’s the initial photos of it, I’ve finally got some more photos I’ll post after this.) And then I made those assless chaps for a LARP. I was actually really happy to be making some stuff that was totally different from the types of leather work I’d made before. And I was happy to be making some stuff just for myself, with no plans to sell them.

Way at the tail end of that burst of barrette orders, the artist’s co-op finally got their laser cutter up and running again. I got in to use it during December, and it worked.

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So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m not sure the co-op’s laser will continue to work reliably for the foreseeable future, but for now I’m going to act as though it will.

I think I’m currently in the mood for pushing larger projects again. I’m feeling like I’m at a point of change in terms of what I want to be selling, and I’d like to put energy into the higher end of the spectrum again. Put the smaller things more on the back burner again. Don’t work so much on individual one-off small things, but work on suites of designs, like the 6 leaf barrette types I’ve got put together now. I think I want to make another large steampunk piece like the shark head or the plague doctor. (The shark head sold this year, the plague doctor got a few inquiries but none of them followed through.) And I should finish up the design for that pup hood.

When I was in to laser stuff, the main thing I did was to cut parts for one of the lamps I designed in 2014. In the next few days I’ll be assembling that, getting some fresh photos, and posting it up for sale. It doesn’t match with the materials and tone of the rest of my products, but that’s OK. Maybe I’ll also make some more of the lamp designs I’d had to keep it company.

I still feel like I haven’t quite found the genre niche that I need. I consistently have this issue where I only really want to make designs that nobody else makes. The problem with that is that many of my designs fail to fit into people’s pre-defined conceptions of what they want to buy. I find myself making products that are lacking a market audience. Whereas my most successful product (the scalemail tails) has a very specific target audience (you guys here), that really wants to buy it.

So I think I need to explore the target-market question more. Maybe I should just make two dozen dragon tails and get a table at a furry convention. (After all, half the time spent making those is the time spent coordinating with the commissioners.) Maybe I should do more leaf designs and find the forest-fairy-ren-faire crowd. Maybe I should make more codpieces and hoods and strap harnesses and sell to the fetish market. Maybe I should just make More Rainbows and sell to The Gays My People. I don’t know! Please let me know your thoughts on this question!

All told, given the situation, between Life being Difficult and laser access being Frustrating, I think I actually did do a good amount of Making Things this last year. The second half of the year was discouraging for various reasons, but I think I’m pushing forward with some good energy!