Thankful for You

On this Thanksgiving Eve, I want to tell you how thankful I am for all of you who continue to read and follow this blog. I know my recent posts have been few and far between. Most of you are aware my youngest child has special needs and he has been in the midst of a health crisis for the past couple months. Yesterday I took him to one of four appointments he has scheduled over the next three weeks. One will be a painful procedure he has to endure on his birthday because they had no other time open. Another will last all day so he can meet with a team of specialists. Our other children have well checks coming up in the next couple weeks, and our oldest will have surgery next month to correct a congenital defect. So, there will probably not be a huge number of big projects to post about until the new year. I will try as hard as I can to finish some of the many jobs I have underway; I do hope you'll check in now and then to see my new stuff. As a token of gratitude, please use the code GIVETHANKS for 20% off any order from my Etsy shop. My eBay store has buy one, get one 20% off in several categories right now and from Black Friday to Cyber Monday you can take an extra 10% off hundreds of items throughout the store. Knowing you all are there and waiting for a new post keeps me inspired and motivated to write, and you deserve a treat!

Custom matryoshka dolls

I do have some big news on the Etsy front: I have started offering custom sets of matryoshka, or nesting, dolls. I hand paint these to your specifications. So far I've done movie and comic book sets and I've also done a family portrait.

Each set is hand-painted.

The backs are detailed.

This doll features two characters.

The smallest doll is about 1 inch tall.

Each set of dolls is handmade from wood. I buy the blank sets in bulk from Russia. Each set has five dolls, but in one case I added an extra character by painting  one on each side. Besides people in the family portrait you could add pets as well. The portraits aren't photo real; they are a cute, "big eyes" version of each person, but still recognizable.

A family portrait

Each person has something they love on their portrait doll.

For a special order I did a "kawaii", which means "cute" in Japanese, version of comic book heroes as babies. This turned out to be just adorable and I hope the little boy who receives it will be thrilled with it.

I use non-toxic acrylic artist's paints and finish the sets with homemade all-natural wood polish so they're safe for kids. The small pieces present a choking hazard so I wouldn't give them to children under age four or so, but even if they put their hands in their mouth after playing with these it won't hurt them. Each one of these sets takes me a week or so to complete, so if you'd like to order one please go ahead and do so as soon as possible. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!