I’m loving it.
I’m on Instagram as kellyhicksscreenkiss, with contact info. Feel free to ask questions.
I may be a little slow and methodical, but I only charge $250 a sqare foot - calculated by time, about $10 an hour. This is about half or less of what professionals in the area with solid fan bases (like say, Danny Griego) charge. My standard size is 2.5 square feet.
For those who might be economically disadvantaged (like myself), I am more than willing to take payment in installments. I only require a non-refundable deposit to cover basic setup, and you can take as much time as you need with delivery upon final payment.
I’m living in Mexico. I think I can get by with a little less until I earn my fame.
Edit: I’m really wanting to do more portraits. If anybody knows someone who thinks my art would be a decent investment, please pass the word along. I need a refrigerator, and all the rest.
Thanks for the info. When I’m gainfully employed, you’ll be my first priority. (We can even do a hand-off and make CBP bit nervous. )
(@Snowlark suggested I add this here.) Last year I built a very lightweight teardrop trailer to tow behind my puny Honda Fit. Total empty weight is less than 200 lbs. A big part of the weight savings was achieved by using aluminum honeycomb composite panels for the sides. (Google “Plascore Honeycomb Panels” and you’ll find what I used) I was able to purchase the panels for about $400 plus $100 or so for shipping, then paid another $110 to have them cut to shape at a local waterjet shop per a drawing file that I sketched up. (I could have laid it out by hand and cut it all with a jigsaw, but waterjetting was much easier and cleaner). The base trailer came from Harbor Freight for $240, some assembly required. Aluminum sheet metal and trim from a metal supply place. There was a lot of miscellaneous hardware, along with the windows (from Amazon) but I think that with everything put together it came to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1k. Maybe slightly more. For those unfamiliar with teardrops, they typically sleep 2 and your legs go in the space under the “galley” counter area in the rear of the trailer. I get a lot of people asking me if there’s really room to sleep in there. Someone recently had thought it was meant for my dog.
The base frame was light enough for my kids to pull it around the driveway with their trike.
There is a frame to hold the ice chest of the front. This trailer has a pretty low drag coefficient. My car has an easier time pulling it on the freeway than it does with my stuff on a roof rack.
The area for your feet is filled in with a folded mattress in this photo, but you get the idea. I haven’t added any interior shelves yet, but I should.
I didn’t get too fancy with the galley. No running water or built-in stove. Lights are cheap battery-powered units from the dollar store. My butane camping stove works just fine for cooking, and I get water from a jug.
All the trim is attached with pop rivets. All the trim was bent into shape manually, with a lot of coaxing with a rubber mallet. That was probably the most technically challenging part of the project for me.
This year I added a solar powered vent fan for better air circulation.
Originally I built the shell to hinge on two forward supports, so that I could lift it up in order to fit larger items into the trailer for transport. This turned out to be a bad idea. The weather stripping I used wasn’t enough to fully weatherize the lower edge, so water leaked in an eventually ruined the wood floor, which had to be replaced. I’ve now permanently attached the shell and sealed it better. I also coated exposed portions of the wood with a rubberized truck bed liner product.
That looks awesome, but where do you put the kids?
Not sure if it’s on the menu, but that would make a slick clock face
So when I finished working on the Abafar QT-KT & BB for a friends bday, I was talking to her besty & she got a little choked up when talking about KT. Turns out she & her sister (now dearly departed cuz FUCK CANCER) first discovered KT when her sis got diagnosed. Her sis had a crush on KT & it was kinda like her little mascot for the fight.
Anyhoo, this xmas will be just after the one year anniversary of her sisters passing, so I put this one together which is more “stock” than the previous Jedi variant. I find working on “new” looking things to up the difficulty quite a bit because I have no dirt/grime or shading to cover up any imperfections. On this one I also added the periscope & radar attachments (so the droid can be searching if she would like) & made it so that top compartment can be open or closed - the third wheel can drop down too. I was going to do an ArToo for her, but after hearing her story… how could I not?
Made the R4-D5 (with a wee blown motivator) for her hubby.
It became part of a table I made, but that is a good idea and still doable…
Calling @japhroaig! It’s capybara time!
This is the mama. I gotta get started on some capybara babies next.
I’m a “maker” for my living, but this is what I’m working on for fun. I wanted to design and pour a fluke fishing bucktail I could machine the mold for myself with simple ball end mills, for pure perversity and vanity reasons. I know they’re only like $40. I used Sketchup to design the form, get the weights right and find the balance point for the eyeloop.


Yes! Because Doctor Who scarf season is coming, which sounds so much better than Winter is coming
OMFG that is a door a ball.
OK that is two people. It has two wasp nests on the outside. Let me try to clean it up and look it. Its a Japanese Brother, ie believe.
Do EET! You won’t regret the investment. Just be like me and be deathly afraid of losing a finger or three.
One piece of advice: Read up on how the model handles sawdust. That’s something I never thought might be an issue.
Yeah. It’s sad to think that a machine that’s going to produce lots of sawdust might not be able to handle said sawdust. Seems a major design flaw.
As much as I might want one, I’m not sure about space- a track saw would be easier to store by far… and I really want a welder. So there’s that.
If you really want to get into woodworking: table saw, router + router table, and a dozuki hand saw. Have those and you can build just about anything.
ETA: You’ll still need jigs and clamps and all that, of course. For fine miters, I recommend this Japanese saw guide matched with a non-spined, pull saw.
I have several Japanese pull saws- both fine cutting for joints as well as coarse toothed. Love them.
I’m unlikely to go full-on woodworking. I tend to work on such a diverse selection of projects that it can be hard to amass the spectrum of tools I’d need. Ah, well.
Still: a router is on the list.
I don’t knit well enough to copy that, but I really want to crochet something similar, because that is sofa king CUTE!
I’m sure it would be pretty easy to do in crochet, a la amigurumi-style patterns. Except the mama capybara is large (about 20" long!), whereas most amigurumi are smaller in scale.