New Work - First Friday - October 5th

Hey all!

Another month. . . I am hoping to get back to regular weekly posts but this month I cannot promise any more than this new work post AND two more of my ghost story series! It's my birthday month and we are headed into the holiday rush already! I cannot believe it!!

I'll also reposting several baking posts in the next few months to show off some of the traditional baking we do for the season. :) Some of it is family inspired and some is old world traditional treats for. the many celebrated days of the season. So keep an eye out for those too! :)

I hope you are enjoying the first few weeks of Autumn. It's my season so I am loving it!

Here are some new creations from the past month. Thank you for dropping by!

 XO
nicolas

Let's start with the season! In honor f All Hallow's Eve I have been making a few graveyard themed scenes!
This one features a ghostly turn of the century lad there in the back. 

And larger tombstones for those who like a little graveyard decor! 

A new Adobe Fairy House

This is the second face of Hathor that I have made and I love them!

Thoth as a baboon. He is also known as Djehuty and represented as an Ibis. 

Bes is a multi-faceted protector and I thought a bell, shaped as the face of Bes, might be a great dispelling tool for an altar/ 

A Wenut / Hare statue

A "Wee Skosh" Fairy House

And a Fairy Tower on a Stump!

Making of a Maker - The Art of Packaging (Part 1) - Third Friday Post - January 19th

Hey everyone! Hoping this finds you all well and enjoying the winter days wherever you are!


This week I wanted to begin a two part post of my third Friday, Making of a Maker blog. For these next two third Fridays (February 16th will be part 2 btw) I wanted to talk about the importance of how your art/creation/craft/product is received when you send it out into the world.

Let's just say it here and now. . . I LOVE packaging.

I have had a few dozen ideas in my life that were just for packaging of a product. Ideas that had no product to go in them mind you. Just a name/look/design that I thought would be cool  or interesting. Jewelry, figurines, music CD's etc. They just come to me as any other creative idea might.

When I got into making art for sale, I knew that I would put a fair amount of time into how that art looks when it is received.

I have three different shops on Etsy, My Fairy houses/figurines/oddities, my Ancient Egyptian statues and amulets and my digital art prints. Each has it's own thank you cards and notes that I use with the items when they are shipped. I designed the cards and print them myself but there are a dozen good printing services out there too that you can use. I print my own more so I can tinker and play with the design over time and not have to have a large run of cards printed at any one time.

Today I want to focus on the packaging for pieces from Shadow of the Sphinx.

So below is the packaging and accompanying cards for a small statue, a figure of Bes, who is a multipurpose protective deity that is found in one form or another in many ancient cultures from that region. He's a rather jovial fella to my eyes but others find him a bit scary and I do suppose that was the purpose in antiquity.

With the exception of my largest statues, all of the amulets and pieces from this shop get packaged in very much the same way.

With each order, I make the gift box for it by hand so that it fits the piece and it's warping, perfectly. With each statue being completely handmade, no two are ever quite alike.

I use a black, smooth-textured, almost velvety paper called Plike. I order it in 12x18 sheets which covers most all that I do.  TO date I have made roughly 1200 boxes now so while I know it seems a daunting task to figure out how to make them, and it was at first, I have it down to a science now.

The box for the Bes took me 3 minutes to measure, cut (on my favorite packing room tool, a Fiskars slide cutter), score and fold.

Then I punch holes in the top flap for a gold organza ribbon for statues or black and copper raffia for amulets, and I attach a handmade name tag on the front. That tag is a two step process. First, on brown paper, I print the name of the deity in a hieroglyph surrounded blank space. So in this case it reads, "Bes Altar Statue". Then I cut that out and glue it to a frosted gold card stock paper and cut the final tag from that so that the gold is a border and then I adhere it to the front of the black box with a few super strong glue dots.

With each piece I include the stamped card envelope and handwritten thank you card, a business card with the Etsy address, a card that features a bit of general information that I've collected about the deity purchased and a slip of paper that describes the process of making the piece and my policies for future returns if repairs are needed or just to reapply the shiny patina if desired as they do dull/age further over time. If it's an amulet, I also include an "amulet care" paper for that since they are made of clay and fragile to wear on a day to day basis.

Now these all I print in small quantities ahead of time and have cut out and ready. I have over 60 different deity description cards and the box tags for amulets AND statues for most of them. The sometimes-amusing thing is how often I am out of the card/tag for the very one I've just sold.

I think there is a little gremlin who eats them because I swear I print mulitples and then they just seem to disappear!

This, I am a little embarrassed to say, is the EASIER/Less involved of the two shops to package items for. lol :)

Next month, on the Third Friday, I will focus on the packaging for a fairy inspired piece from Bewilder and Pine and share a few of my thoughts about why I think that packaging has been so vital to the shop's, and my own, success.  Also, because I am asked this more often than almost anything about my packaging, I will share with you why I NEVER put images of the packaging IN with the photos of my listings.

As for Shadow of the Sphinx, I receive quite a bit of feedback in the reviews people leave and in private emails about how the packaging made the customer's day when they opened the box or how they were so happy to give it as a gift.

The theme is simple, the execution not so much. Smooth black paper boxes and gold flourishes with a whole lot of personal touch. People really respond to it and it's become the branding for the shop. The few retail shops I sell thru are thrilled to have the packaging to go with the items. I've been told that the packaging  has even "swayed" customers to purchase my work, which is usually a bit more expensive in those shops, over something that is mass produced.

Well, that is all for today!

Wishing you all a magical weekend and thank you, as always, for dropping by!

Nicolas

(Typing pet peeve of the day: Auto-correct/spelling keeps changing the name Bes, even when capitalized, to Bestsellers! REALLY? Not "best" or "Bess" or even besties?)

New Work and Updates - December 1st

Tis the Season, life gets crazy
Fa lalalala lala la la!
Weeks go by and days are hazy
Fa lalalala lala la la!

Hey folks!

OK so updates first:

To all of my blogger friends I regularly visit, I WILL be by again soon, I promise! November was a whirlwind. Busy as usual but also refusing to set aside my outside projects for 2017, I just found myself, most days, going full tilt from 6am til I dropped each day and still never able to check everything off the to do list.

I continue to write every day. allowing myself one day a week for research instead of word count. It's been a joy and I'd say that my goal for completion of my short stories in 2017 is a very realistic one.

The bonus has been that a good portion of the exploration of stories has lead to other avenues too. A quick for instance is that I dabbled with modern fairy tales, looking at old fairy legends and thinking how they could be transferred to the hear and now.

The result of that thinking and tinkering is that I want to also try to create a podcast next year as well. We've been enamored with a few fairy tale podcasts the last year or so, namely "Singing Bones" and "The Myths and Legends Podcast", and I am also a huge believer in the idea that everything we do in our life, or that we experience, can and does serve a purpose going forward. For me, that includes the 20 odd years spent as a musician,  composer, sound and recording engineer. I left much of that  behind when the Etsy shoppes and my little imaginary worlds took front and center in my life again. However, the idea that I could do the entire Podcast with little to no outside assistance at first is very enticing to me. I still have the necessary digital recording/editing equipment, the high end microphones and the ability to sound proof a closet for recording in a snap! :)

I am thinking that the recounting of old fairy tales and myths is being done well enough (see above podcasts) but that there is a space for a modern Fairy tale exploration, an "F-Files"? "Fairycast"? "The Little People We Know"? etc etc. So less narration as opposed to a more "research/exploration" that revolves around a central character discovering the possibility that these old legends carry thru to the world around us and are very much alive today. Asking what does a Bogle or Kobold look like today and how do they "blend in"? What are Wood fae and Will-o-the-Wisps? Who is Jenny Greenteeth? Or Jimmy Squarefoot? What about Urban Mermaids?

I'll let you know more as that gets going but it's a distant third right now behind the writing of the short story book, and the alignment of the shoppes to the stories I am creating. I'd want to have  6 episodes ready to go before I move forward and I plan to write them after completing the first draft of the short story book, so hopefully in February or March for the writng part.

Over Thanksgiving weekend we also experimented with doll making and the results have been very enticing too. But really, the to do list is quite long enough right now. lol

In December I will be posting a few policy and FAQ posts to redirect from my shoppe as well as.  Nothing exciting for my readers, I know, but a necessity for the year to come.

I also intend, beginning in March, to start posting small excerpts from the stories/book. Just snippets and little teasers here and there.

And most of this year in Bewilder and Pine will be spent on making the world of the Pine fit from book to shoppe. House styles, elven figures, towers and creatures etc etc.  So less exploration and more working towards having everything tie together between the two.

OK, I think that's it for the updates! And now, since it's been a very busy month, I have to choose what to show for New Work day! I hope you enjoy these and I look forward to getting back into the blog routine again as the month goes forward.

May the Yule or Holiday season be filled with love, wonder and magic in YOUR world each day and may the Year to come be the best and most amazing yet for you and yours. ;)

nicolas

Tiny Little Basket Elves! Under 2" tall!!

I love making these little Shadow Box scenes. . . the Fairy Girl is half an inch tall!

I was inspired to create a run of small, simple Houses for the holidays!

I've had some wonderful custom requests in Shadow of the Sphinx this month! 

This Sobek, at 7+ inches long, is the largest I have made.  He's off to Norway today!

Small Sekhmet, my stylized, full lioness version is finding it's place these days

These towers really started the whole book idea.
They're the inspiration for the Ledgerkeeper's towers with those crazy rooftops. 

I was suddenly reminded of a little shoppe I used to go into years ago with the same name. . . Toad Hall. . .
yes, it was magical too! 

Woodland Fairy Hermitage. . . the colors on this one really spoke to me. 

Signposts Along the Road - Anubis

The other day I sold my newest version of an Anubis/jackal statue in Shadow of the Sphinx. The woman who purchased it wrote to me and asked if I had any advice on how to connect or work with Anubis as He had been appearing to her quite a bit lately. 

I did.  

I was a boy of 7 or 8 when King Tut's treasures first toured the US. The country was, as I recall, caught up in the mania of the story of the boy king. My father, living in NY city at the time, sent me a program from the exhibit. A strange gesture because, as far as I know, he had little interest in such things and I, as a young boy, had never even heard of ancient Egypt. 

I was completely taken by the treasures and the story of the tomb's adventurous and painstaking discovery and unearthing. I was in love with the idea of discovering steps beneathe the sand that led to such a marvel. I am sure I must have dug a dozen or more holes in the woods or back yard hoping, the way any young boy with no idea of the scope of the world might, to unearth just such a discovery myself.

 Of all the wonderful things" the tomb yielded, I was taken most by the life-sized jackal headed guardians that stood on either side of the door to King Tutankhamen's burial chamber. Beautiful depictions of Anubis, the "God of the Underworld"  Osiris an, then, the guide through it.

Ancient Egypt became a doorway for me. I devoured every book on it I could find and it led to discovering and reading about other ancient cultures as well. The Greek and Roman empires, The Druids and Celts, Phoenicians, Mesopotamia, The Mongols, The Turks, the Japanese Shoguns,. History became a deep love for me that would, and will,  inspire ma and last through the rest of my life. 

Still, when it cam to Anubis, I was more reverent than smitten. Anubis seemed to hold such power even though I could barely understand the concept of a "psychopomp" or an "underworld". That feeling sort of sat within me for a few years until the day when Anubis was one of the deities that, at age 11 or 12, I drew both on the tops of my feet and on my closet walls for protection (and likely as part of some imaginary scenario I was lost in playing at that time). 

Then, as most childhood obsessions do, in my teen years He and ancient Egypt sort of faded.

But never completely. 

In high school I attended a scholars program that included art and we explored man ancient forms f art. There, in the class books, was an oversized book of Egyptian artifacts. And when we moved here to the coast after leaving the city to take this run at being full time "makers-of-things", I discovered that exact same book, which I had not seen in about 20 years, in an old used book storein the town I moved to!

In the years between I always seemed to have an Anubis statue around or have one given to me when I didn't. An Anubis pendant was mysteriously left for me backstage after a multi media performance I did about 15 years ago. 

I had a Siberian Husky mix for 10 years, who was named Isis (she had the name when I got her!) and who, as many people remarked, was so physically similar to Anubis (including the large ears) and lay in a pose so close to the classic Anubis that it was more than a little eerie. Also, it would be appropriate to say that she chose ME as her provider (a long story but the first night I "found" her, she gingerly stepped over to my side and then lay on my chest in the classic Anubis pose. I recognized that in her immediately. And while she died almost ten years ago, I can say that it was her being in my life that sort of kept me in place and helped lead to what would become the creative life I lead now. So many pieces fell into place that would not of had I felt the freedom to just move or reinvent my life over without any consideration to how it might affect her. She kept me in place until the crossroads had fully appeared. 

But it was not until I began making statues and amulets 6 years ago (and Anubis was one of the first since I indeed had a statue to use as a 3-d model) that I rediscovered my love for reading about the deities of ancient Egypt and exploring their role in that society again. And, in those years that had passed, so much had been discovered and revealed about them. Things I never knew in those early years. 

Anubis, it seems, had a bigger, more expansive role than just the guide to the underworld. It's now known that Anubis could also be seen as a deity that would appear for guidance at any form of "crossroads" in the living world too. The term psychopomp originates from the Greek words Pompos (conductor or guide) and Psyche (life, breath, soul, or mind) and Anubis is just one of long list in mythology that includes Hermes, Persephone and the Valkyries. So to think of Anubis, after all these years as something the living could connect to, well, it made much more sense why Anubis has been a part of my world for so long. 

Crossroads. . . as a child, it's hard to look back and say how big of an influence that glossy King Tut exhibit program was. How big an impact those standing, anthropomorphic Anubis guardians were going to be. But it is absolutely true that, in my adult world, Anubis seemed to be a guide that came along, in one form or another, each time I needed him . . . if only to watch over me, keep me where i needed to be, or to inspire.

Today, I am always happy to make an Anubis statue or amulet and to send it out into the world for others to, hopefully, work with and find their way thru the crossroads of life.

Below is another version of that Anubis I spoke of at the beginning and a few new pieces from the Shadow of the Sphinx shop too. All of them are important to me in their own way. All have had their place in my life. But none more so than the guardian and navigator of crossroads, Anubis. . . 

Thank you for visiting!

xoxo

nicolas

My latest Shadow of the Sphinx version of Anubis

The "classic" pose.

I'm introducing a new series of busts for smaller altar spaces. This is the lioness, Sekhmet, with solar disc and cobra. 

And one of Wenut, the Hare or "The Swift One" 

A Tidy History with Sutekh the Egyptian God of Storms and Chaos

I had no way of knowing when I was a child that the "Osirian" character of Sutekh from the Dr. Who, 4th Doctor Serial, "The Pyramids of Mars" would one day be a major part of the world I create now.

I am certain this Dr Who episode was shown around the same time I was given a book about the tour of the treasures of King Tuts tomb which were in America for the first time and my world opened to the first ancient civilization that would shape my imagination in ways I could not grasp.

The character of Sutekh that was out to destroy Tom Baker's Doctor with his bulky mummies frightened the 7 yr old me while the protective, anthropomorphic and animal creatures I found in the books of Ancient Egypt were presented in ways that made them feel more like companions of my own.

It was only in the last few years I understood that the Dr Who Sutekh and this fellow below, more commonly known as Set or Seth, were one and the same in origin. And since I have been creating Him in statue form for my shop, they have become one of the most requested which inevitably is due to Set's association with Chaos and Storms. So much a part of all youth isn't it?

There is still much mystery as to what exactly Set is derived from. . .

And I tend to stylize the often boxy ears a bit but I find Him to be a regal form. :) 

So these days, when I make a statue of Set, I always think back to that wonderful time of discovery. As with so many of my creations, the past and present are inextricably linked. . .

If you have never seen The Pyramids of Mars, it is available as a streaming watch on Netflix under Classic Dr Who. I highly recommend it if you would like to know why Tom Baker is such an icon to fans of the show. He made every episode shine and in this one, he is at his very best. :)

So here's to Sutekh. . . Set. . . Seth. . . whatever you choose to call Him. a mystery and an inspiration for a lifetime. . . or several millennia. . . again, whichever you choose. :)
nicolas

Recent Commissions in Shadow of the Sphinx

A trio of statues from Shadow the Sphinx that were all custom requests. always a favorite of mine as I get to make pieces that are not normally in my shop but then, as it turns out, end up getting seen and requested again!

I hope you enjoy the peek at these custom pieces!!

XO
nicolas

The Set Animal,  also known as Sutekh and Seth.  . The God of the Desert, Storms and Chaos

Hecate - I DO venture outside of the Egyptian pantheon work quite often actually. This Hecate was one of my favorites to create this summer.

An Anubis Sphinx - no actual record of one ever having existed in Ancient Egyptian iconography but, in my mind, the two are perfect together. Guardians of mystery and time. When this was requested, I jumped at the opportunity to make it! Plus it is just SO darned cute!!!

Nefertem - "The One Who Never Closes" - A Solar Deity often associated with the blue lotus and with the creation of the sun in earlier dynasties.  The headdress represents a lotus blossom.