What a wonderful week it's been!

  This week has been fabulous as far as my shop is concerned.  One of my goals for this year was to focus on my shop, so I have made a concerted effort to list items in my shop every day, and low and behold I've had at least one sale each day after listing new items!!! =D  While it's not always the new item, it just goes to prove that keeping fresh items in the shop will bring in the sales! 
   So I am even more motivated to keep up with this 'resolution'!  I've had 5 sales in 4 days, and that doesn't include several commissions I've accepted as well as a couple of trades I'm working on.  So far 2013 is off to a great start!

 Here are a few of the things I've been working on this week! 

 I've started a group over on Flickr as a bit of a challenge to help myself (and others) with taking more non-product related photographs.  It's called Monster High Weekly Photographs  This weeks challenge is New Year's Resolutions.  I chose Abbey as my subject...her NYR is to; "Focus on Modeling career, spend more time in front of camera" *bonus points if you read that in Abbey's thick adorable accent! ;-) *

So I dressed her in some of her fashions and took her outside to enjoy the chilly air.  It would seem that our gutter downspout is frozen solid, so we've got lots of unique icicles along the fence/shrub-thingy that separates our yard from the neighbors.

This is part of a trade I am doing with a friend...I'm getting a Monster High doll and some fashions and in return, I am making her 2 lunches, and 2 breakfasts for her Barbie dioramas.  For lunch I am making plates with grilled cheese sandwiches, with chips and bowls of tomato soup, plus drinks.

I ended up giving the melted cheese a bit of a gloss after I took this shot and I think it makes all the difference.  My friend decided that I'm going to glue down the chips and one half of the sandwich, and allow the other one to be free to be held and such.

The last time I worked with resin I mixed in some multi-hued sands and made these Monster-garitas, with eye ball garnishments.  I sold 4 of these the day after I listed them!!! =D

If I make more of these I will need to remember to allow the resin to set up a bit more before adding the sands as with this batch they settled a tad. 

But I rather like the look for the Monster High style drinks.  The eyeballs were made by me...I actually made a cane of the iris and then added it to the white spheres to make full eyes.

This was another shot from Abbey's photoshoot earlier this week.  I think this one might actually be my favorite.  I love the clarity of the icicles, and the lovely shimmer of glitter on Abbey's skin, and well it just has such a lovely coloration too it!

I wish I could figure out how to give her fangs a bit more of a 3 dimensional look.  Right now they have a layer of fabric paint on them which does give them a bit of thickness, but I'd love them to be a little more so.  But for now I'm not worried about it.

One of the big things I'm doing these days in my shop is repainting and customizing MH shoes.  I've tried several times to create shoes for them from scratch with limited success.  Sadly the amount of time those take make them way too expensive for me to be comfortable to carry in my shop.

So I have been collecting MH shoes of every design, whenever I can find them at a good price.  Using model grade paints I am able to customize them as well as adding bows, ribbons and trim to them too!  I have already sold 5 pairs and was commissioned for 2 more!!! 

You know I wouldn't have thought that recreating bowls of tomato soup would cause me trouble, but it took almost 5 color adjustments before I achieved a color and opaque-ness that I was happy with. 

These go with the grilled cheese sammies and chip from up above.

Tomorrow, I will start on platters of pancakes and bacon! =D

This is my most recent pair of finished customized shoes...although I suppose they are actually booties! ;-)  These started out life and Ghoul's Rule Draculaura's booties.  Due to some problems with them I ended up carving them up a bit, repainting them and then adding the cute ribbon bows!

I just adore them now!!!