Candy Corn Studios

Just added 6 items to the store, and more are on their way! The shirts are extremely limited right now, but I’ll be listing quite a bit of jewelry in the upcoming days.

My new supply order finally came in the mail! Check out these cute new earrings I made:

I love these lampwork pandas! They are SO CUTE! I wanted to hang them from a lucky bamboo plant, but I didn’t happen to have one around.

And of course, I finally got some hanging mannequins to display the shirts. This will help quite a bit at Animazement! The girl is a little nipply, though…Makes me wonder if I should buy her a bra for the shows.

(Pssst…these thumbnails both link to the items in the store. There’s only one of each, so it’s first-come first-served.)

We finally released the 3rd episode of our 3-part series, Clay to Wax. Sorry for those who were waiting that it took so long! There are a few more episodes in the works, so more content should be flowing reasonably soon. Keep pestering us about new episodes! It really does help.

Artist Alley # 36 – Clay to Wax Pt. 3

Candy Corn Studios is confirmed as a dealer at Animazement in Raleigh, NC! I’m going to be at table #415 (It’s towards the back and on an end of a row), so come by and visit!

I’m doing my best to have tons of shirts and jewelry available. I won’t be taking custom orders at the con. It just gets way too hectic, and inevitably I or one of my helpers forgets to get some piece of crucial info, or the dog eats the order form (and I don’t even own a dog!), or something else. I’ll take custom orders through the website as always, but at the con what you see is what you get.

I have a limited quantity of styles and sizes for the shirts; each one is made individually, and there are various different types of shirts. I do not bulk-order standard T-shirts for these because it would get too boring for me to work with the same kind of shirt over and over. Many of these sizes and styles (especially XXXL or other rarer types) will be extremely limited. I recommend contacting me ahead of time or coming by the booth very early if you are a non-standard (not S, M, or L) size.

Children beware! If you sneeze too hard, you might break your plastic bubble, and then the world will come to an end!

Thank goodness I don’t make products targeted toward children. Our congress has consistently failed to see the consequences of their shenanigans, and the CPSIA is no exception. They passed a huge, broad law with no thought as to how it would affect small businesses and libraries. The most incredible irony of this law is that while well-intentioned, it completely FAILS!

Children have access to dozens of small items that were never intended for children. This is because their parents are incompetent, neglectful, or make occasional mistakes. If a charm falls off of a mother’s bracelet and her child finds and eats it, that is her fault. It also will not be prevented by all of these new regulations. Sure, they look on the surface like we are really concerned with our children’s safety, but how effective are they going to be, really? Children have a way of getting into trouble that is seemingly unstoppable. Intelligent parents take appropriate steps to prevent undue harm, and they also let their children make mistakes! One of the biggest teachers in life is the mistake. You make it, you deal with the consequences, and it teaches you why you don’t do that. I’m not saying we should feed our children lead; I’m simply advocating a lowering of the padded walls and placing more responsibility on parents, teachers, and caretakers to have common sense. Letting a child chew on possibly radioactive jewelry = not okay. Letting a child go down a slide and possibly end up with a skinned knee = okay. Perhaps the problem is that people are too stupid these days to know what presents a substantial possible hazard to children? This isn’t a problem we can fix with a law that takes away opportunities for learning.

The one thing this act will succeed in is trashing our economy and our ability to educate our kids even more. Small businesses, second-hand stores, and craftspeople are faced with a difficult choice. Well, it’s not so difficult for some who would never be able to afford it. They can either stop selling any products that would ever be considered as intended for children, or they can have every item they make or all of their materials tested for phthalates and lead. This means astronomical cost increases for these businesses. Thrift stores can’t afford that kind of per-item cost increase, so they are throwing away all of their children’s items. THROWING AWAY. The new law makes it illegal to sell or even GIVE AWAY these items.

In addition, we are in danger of losing all children’s books published before 1985. Can you imagine what will happen to libraries (Do your kids have a library at school? Do they like to take home piles of books to read during the week? Not anymore!) when they have to pull 60-70% of their children’s stock and trash it? I am fully in support of protecting our children from lead poisoning, but how many kids have been seriously harmed by book poisoning? Seriously now…as a blog I read said, If You’re Eating the Book, You’re Doing It Wrong. No more hand-me-down books with fantastic illustrations from great-grandma. Nope, into the trash it goes. Well, unless you want to break the law. You don’t want to be a criminal, do you? Little Jimmy might decide it works better as a meal than as a book, and we certainly can’t disabuse him of that notion!

The CPSIA is a bullshit law passed too hastily in an attempt to look like we were doing something. I fully support the sentiment behind the law. I agree that regulations on hazardous materials should be enforced. However, browbeating every reseller into testing end products is not the way to do this. Mass manufacturers should bear the responsibility for certifying that their materials are made without these hazardous materials. This should apply to all items, not just children’s end products. Anything containing a high level of these haz-mats should come with a warning label. If these chemicals pose a threat to children, what makes you think adults who don’t know better won’t give their children access to items that were never tested? “Warning! May contain lead levels that exceed 600 ppm. Not for use in children’s items! Oh, and by the way, don’t use this to paint dishes or make utensils from, either.” Crafters who use these materials should be able to point to the manufacturer and say, “Look, the materials I used were certified. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that I am covered under their certification.” Even if you don’t have to do the testing on your end product, you still have to get certified under this law.

I thought we were trying to help small businesses get back on their feet, not yank the rug out from under them. I thought they were the “heart of the American economy.” Yeah, help us get loans…and then tell us that you’re increasing our operating costs tenfold. Good plan, America. Look, if you want to control hazardous chemicals, I’m all for that. But could you please, please, try to do it in a way that has a chance of working?

Thank goodness I don’t make products targeted toward children.

There are 3 new Tentacle shirts for sale on the Tentacle Shirt page!

If you’re looking for Dice Jewelry, Kitty Hats, or Zodiac Art, you can find them all on my Etsy page (adding things gradually as I get them photographed and posted).

For Tentacle Shirts, visit here. I’m keeping them off of Etsy for political reasons.

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Whew, Otakon was a huge success this year! Thanks to everyone who made it happen, including my boyfriend, my friends Evan, Pete, and Rym, and all of you who bought things from me! I spent most of the con in the Artist Alley, which I maintain is the best part of the con BY FAR. The few times I ventured out, I was confronted by vast pressing crowds, inept security staff, and an unfindable dealer’s room entrance. Not that I don’t appreciate the efforts of the BCC security staff, but if someone asks you for directions and you don’t know the answer, then you should just say “I don’t know.”
If I can make it, I’ll definitely be coming back again next year!

Nuri is busy, busy, busy!

Since moving to Charlotte, a lot has been going on. I’m working on finding some local geeky stuff to do, taking martial arts for the first time since elementary school, and even keeping up with work.
NaNoWriMo is going…well. Well for me anyway; my goal was to make at least 500 words per day, with an optimal goal of 1667 a day. I’m somewhere in the middle.

Jewelry is on hold, considering that I’m not going to be vending at cons any time soon. Thinking about just sending jewelry out with distributors instead of doing it myself. Have several orders from ANIMAZEMENT that the customers haven’t contacted me back regarding details of the order, so I’m stuck there.

Art is going well; I’m working on a book cover for a friend’s project and it’s pretty interesting. I Haven’t drawn much in the way of Sci-Fi type stuff before, so it’s a good chance for me to break out. On an unrelated note, I’m also learning about drawing steampunk elements.

The Podcast seems to be on hiatus this month, as I don’t have time to edit. We’ll be back on schedule in Dec.

Seeing In Stereo is going pretty well; Mica sent me a bunch of scripts so I don’t have to horrify the readers with my poor comedic timing.

I also have some sewing/leatherworking projects, but they are on hold for NaNoWriMo. As is pretty much everything at this point, besides keeping up with the webcomic and my job. I will post updates as they come!

Jewelry Orders on HOLD until I finish the ones from Otakon!

So, I’m finally recovered from Otakon and Pennsic. Nevermind that Otakon was a month ago, and I got home from Pennsic two weeks ago. I finally washed the last dishes from Pennsic yesterday, and started catching up on my online stuff. The clothes are clean, school has started and I’m actually keeping up with my homework and reading for once. AND I got an awesome job as a TA, even though I’m an undergrad. By awesome I mean I love it, not that it pays well. I mean, it pays okay, but it’s not something I can make a living from by any means. I’m teaching Dendrology students to identify plants, and I get to quiz them too! Bwahahahaha!

So, things I have’t talked about yet.

Trinoc*con was great! It was really small, but that made it very personal. I got to have a few one-on-one critique sessions with some pro artists, and got a few artist interviews in while I was at it. The con report and an interview with the artist guest of honor, Patrick Meadows, will be up on the next episode of Artist Alley. I had hoped to get that done before Otakon, but…well…yeah. Pennsic prep took up too much time. I had 4 outfits to make for Evan and 3 to make for myself. Michelle helped out with that a lot, but we still didn’t manage to get the cast up and ready.

Anyway, while I was at Trinoc I hung out with Rich Sigfrit (my official ConBuddy(tm) for the weekend), who gave me the rounds. I met Christiana Ellis, the author of the incredibly fun book Nina Kimberly the Merciless. On Saturday night we ended up at Mur Lafferty’s birthday party, which rocked. We weren’t there for a terribly long time, but while we were everyone was enjoying themselves thoroughly. With all of us gathered and drinking, the temptation became too great and Mur broke out the podcasting rig, which resulted in hilarity (and an in-depth commentary of my con-pants.) Afterwards, we headed back to the con to hit up the Stellarcon party, where we picked up Davey Beauchamp. And of course, everyone being either slightly or deeply intoxicated, we gathered up a group to go to IHOP.
Rich and Davey ended up crashing at my place (I live 15 minutes away, and neither of them had a hotel room yet) and the next morning we headed back to the con to just hang out, get some interviews, and buy last minute stuff. Overall, a very fun con, and well worth the money I paid for my student admission.

Of course, I ran out of time afterwards and didn’t get to sending out my usual flood of emails to all the people I met. So I’m sorry if I missed sending you a thank-you, but eveyone I met was great!

Otakon was next, and since we were headed straight up to Pennsylvania for Pennsic after the con, we had to pack all of our Otakon stuff AND our Pennsic stuff into one ‘96 camry. That was quite a feat…we ended up driving to Baltimore with a wall of stuff packed up to the ceiling right behind the two front seats. No rear-view, no checking your right-side blind spot. Somehow we made it safely.

Now, the whole reason we ended up going to Otakon is that my good frind Rym (of GeekNights) offered to buy my admission. Since this pretty much made the con free (I have family in Baltimore to stay with), I couldn’t pass it up. He also got me free space in the Alley (sharing a table with his friend Yuko (a.k.a. Aido), who is awesome and cute!), so I spent most of my time there making and selling my polyhedral dice jewelry. At which I made quite a tidy profit…enough to enable me to buy several small things at the con, eat, and buy food and gas for Pennsic confortably. Michelle and I also picked up a few interviews for the podcast while we were there, so we’ve got a few featured artists lined up. ^^

Pennsic time! We were going to leave Baltimore on Monday, but we didn’t have anything to do once the con ended on Sunday so we just drove straight up and got there around midnight. Since we were there for two weeks, I won’t give a detailed summary. But I made some more money working for friends, picked up a bow and some decent arrows of my own (finally), and took quite a few awesome classes. I also picked up some leather to make myself a quiver, which has been fun and looks great.

Did I mention we were camping for the entire two weeks?

Anyway, I got home and found out that my financial aid award hadn’t come through yet (and it still hasn’t) so I’m working in a bit of a budget pinch. Borrowing money from Evan for textbooks…food…rent…it’s wonderful. -_-

Anyway, now that everything is settled in, I can order the dice for the custom orders I took at Otakon and get those babies cranked out. It’s taken a little longer than I expected to get started because of the money thing, but it shouldn’t take me long at all once I get the dice. (Now that Michelle has found my jewelry-making supplies. Bless her.) Also, stay tuned for a new episode of Artist Alley coming out soon; as soon as I have a spare moment in a quiet place I’ll record Patrick’s intro, and then it will be released!