Etsy Shop Project: Woodland Musings

My New Hobby: Creating an Etsy Shop! At first I wanted to list art prints, but as I am most certainly not skilled enough yet for than endeavor yet still had the Etsy Itch... I decided to make napkin rings from clay! This grew from my own desire to make owl rings to match my dining room, and then developed into an entire design plan lol.

Fall Themed Napkin Rings:
- Autumn leaves: maple, oak, aspen,
- Fall: acorns, pumpkins, maple leaf, aspen leaf
- Pumpkins
- Maple leaves
- Halloween: witches hat, black cat, spider web, bat (painted glossy black with fine black glitter)

Winter/Christmas Napkin Rings:
- Snowflakes: white snow glitter! :P
- Christmas presents: red/gold, green/gold, white/gold color set options
- Holly
- Wisemen star

Wimsical:
- Birthday presents: pink glitter, blue glitter
- Antique keys
- Ribbon bows: multiple color options

These are just a few of the immediate ideas and plans I have set up, since there are too many in my book to actually write out lol.

I WILL be doing christmas ornaments as well, although that will be more on a whim.

These are the holly napkin rings I am in the process of working on. I am trying to mold and fire 3 sets all at once (12 rings), that way I have enough to validate using spray paint for the base coats lol. It saves a lot of money if I have a large set to paint all at once, as I am learning. After the base coat is applied, the next step is painting the faces (applying glitter hehe) and sealing the rings with a paint sealer.

These are the first protoptypes lol, the left is right before firing and of course the others are one set after applying the base coat, and painting just the leaves. I didn't have a primary red though to create the right berry color! Can you believe it? Crazy me, didn't get primary colors!

This is the face of the maple leaves I started on. I first mold the face I want, fire this, and then use that image to create a stamp of the negative. That way I have a stamp of the original face to try to keep the proportion of the napkin rings relatively the same.

 Spray painting on my patio hehe! I think my neighbors think Im odd... I tried using this type of drop cloth (cheap) but the plastic is just horrible. My solution ended up being to cut out the front face and half of the top of a wide cardboard box, and use this as a stage for spray painting. I tried that this weekend with my Halloween set, and it worked wonderfully!!!

The maple leaf napkin rings! I only painted these a simple brown, but I am going to try painting an autumn leaf set with fall colors (a bit more ambitious lol).

Current Inventory Stock:

- Halloween: 3 sets
- Fall- 3 sets
- Maple leaves- 3 sets
- Pumpkins- 3 sets
- Autumn leaves- 3 sets
- Holly- 3 sets

Its been a really fun project to work on at home! I have watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy with commentary hahaha.