Updated-Projects, custom orders, and Holiday Cheer :)

Another blog only deal:  Type in coupon code "christmasblog" during checkout to get your complimentary 15% off the purchase price during the month of December only.  This deal is only for those who have read my blog because it's not posted anywhere in the store :) 

Gosh I haven't blogged in awhile!  Too busy :(  The holidays are upon us, and this means not only do I have the house renovation and store to deal with, but also family and shopping :o  Sheesh!  Thanksgiving was madness as usual, with an extended family as large as mine.  I made eight dozen deviled egg halves!  Eight dozen!  Lord have mercy on me because Christmas dinner is right around the corner too.

Enough about that.  What have I been doing?  Custom orders for one.  I made this for one of my new customers, a custom snow white evil queen chest based on this chest the evil queen is holding here in this picture:

It was given to the huntsman to bring back proof in the form of a heart that snow white was indeed dead :o

Here's my version:

The bottles inside have apples, poison apple potion, a sculpted heart, beauty potion, malice (has a knife in it, hehe) and a bottle of wealth.

I have another custom order for her to do when the piece I ordered comes in.

This chest will be a snow white themed item, made to look like something of hers while she resides with the 7 dwarfs.  I'm planning something woodlandish, with sweet little details made to look like something of snow white's.  I think this piece looks exactly like it could have been in that wooden cottage of the seven dwarfs!
Another upcoming custom order, and it's a major big one!  The same lady wants me to make a Alice in wonderland scene, quite large compared to what I normally do, based on this:

I'm planning on making the structure of air dry clay and wire.  There will be only one Alice though.  Three just looks odd to me.  And the scenery inside should be quite different and more true to the movie.  This will be the cartoon version, not the Tim Burton version.

So I'll post updates as I build it.  It will take awhile, and I also have to have a working light unit inside it.

Otherwise, I just finished this up last night:

a witch's birthday party table and chair set :)  See the overflowing cauldron birthday cake?  This is so flippin' cute in person, the pictures don't do anything for it :(  In person, it rocks!  And it's available now in my store.  I no I won't make another one, lol.  If someone buys it, it's gone!

And one last thing in the spirit of the Christmas season, a short story:

When I was a little girl in second grade, we had a house fire right before Christmas.  Our entire house burnt to the ground.  If it hadn't been for my Mother, I wouldn't have made it out alive.  She ran down a burning hallway that was completely engulfed in flames to get me.  She had part of her hair burnt off and her eyebrows were burnt off (it all regrew, but now you get how dangerous it really was)  we lost everything we had.  I sat across the street and watched our refrigerator melt!  There were no longer any walls left by that time.  In the aftermath, we picked through the rubble looking for any sign that anything had survived the fire.  There was absolutely nothing left not burnt up or broken, save this:

I have all of the pieces, but they weren't out yet in this picture.  This single thing was left.  The entire nativity set was in one piece, and wasn't burnt up.  You can see the charred look on the paint of the people, which shows it went through a fire.  But nothing was broken.  Matter of fact, the burnt look added to the authentic look of the set.  It made it look more realistic if anything.  My Mother had LOTS of nick knacks and porcelain figures.  Everything was reduced to rubble.  Every single thing we had ever had at that point in our lives was destroyed.  Why then did this entire set come through the fire without a single chip?  It was on display, like all of her other things at the time.  Everything else was most likely knocked to the ground when the walls came down or the furniture they were sitting on burnt up.  Yet we found every piece of this nativity set unscathed.  Strange, huh?  And our town rallied around us and gave us back all the stuff we had lost and I ended up with more toys and clothes than I had before :)  The true meaning of Christmas revealed???  You decide :)

"Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!" Dr. Seuss