Bottles, Eye Pins… Gold!

I did it today. I took the plunge. I went to my work website, http://ebookcovers4u.wordpress.com, and I put myself on (mostly) unavailable status. Now before anyone goes and gets their panties in a wad because we’re at a stage where we’re begging for help (thank you, Uncle Sam) and have had to ignore the car and house payment for almost two months now, this isn’t as chancy as it sounds. For a while now, I’ve been doing ebook covers, formatting ebooks, AND I’ve been working on The Heavenly Bride while flatting for others in the comic industry. The flatting work has picked up. I had to step back from something.

I had been looking for someone to literally give my business to for about two years now, but most everyone I found proved to be people who just didn’t want to work or couldn’t take working at home seriously enough to realize it’s not a vacation in disguise…. or that yes, if you have a busy schedule doing a bunch of other stuff you’re gonna have to figure out how to work now and again.  Right now I have two people on my team that are doing ebook covers. I couldn’t find someone to take over formatting. I tried. I really tried. Fortunately the market has a lot of other ebook formatters out there, some with meaner skills than mine, so for the world it’s not a complete loss.

I just won’t be taking my name down from Smashwords just yet. And I’ll still baby my website, put things up, that sort of things. And I most definitely will take the odd job here and there because the truth is I really *like* working in ebooks. It’s just working in ebooks has been stopping me from writing my own books. And that’s bad.

big eyeA supply shipment came today. I was so excited! Until I opened the box. Then I was moderately excited. What I had ordered was miniature bottles with eye pins for the corks. Part of my intended stock involves these little buggers… but the eye pins are huge compared to the cork, and that just looks like the corks are trying to overcompensate for something. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the eye pins… but it was a damper on my supplier relationship that I had to go online to try to find the right size eye pins. I found some for not much, free shipping. I have no idea if they’re the right size at this time.

On an upwards note, though, my first upcycled resin piece is complete. I’m not completely happy with it, though… there are tutorials all over the web about getting the resin to dry clear – sans bubbles. If you’re not careful the resin will be filled with tiny bubbles and kind of looks like fizzy soda. Now on some pieces that will look great and I fully intend to do it on purpose. But I also want to create pieces without them. I followed them and researched and even came up with a twist of my own to get those pesky bubbles out.  And with this piece, I thought I had done just that.

Well, further research and a day later I find lots of people who feel my frustration. One person said, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I do. There are going to be tiny bubbles in there. So I’ve decided to just use them as a design element.”

Well, this new piece that I proudly put for sale up on etsy.com a few minutes ago looks good with the bubbles, so it’s not a total loss. And I can see using them as a design element… the truth is I think they kind of look neat while not wanting them there at the same time. I used to really like it when I came across a marble that had a bubble in it. It’s just… neat.

But I’m still going to fight the bubble monster because, well… it’s a challenge. One I’ll probably lose.

So here is my latest masterpiece. It’s going to be only one of a short series. It was created from a broken watch I bought at a yard sale last weekend. I was going to fix the watch, but I soon realized I was missing some parts so couldn’t. And upcycling is a wonderful art, I feel. You can do some amazing things with upcycling.

Why, yes, that is the Third Commandment. Neat, huh?

pendant closeup