BROKEN AND LEARN

It's been awhile since I'm active on handxmade's social media. Actually, been almost a month. I got too caught up with work (the part time accounting and freelance video operator) for the next two weeks soon after the previous post, and took awhile to make the next few orders, take photos etc. BUT HERE I AM. 

Honestly, I really hate the part of me who always feel obligated to help out, even if it really doesn't concern me. I've been agreeing to go back to the accounting place to work one or two days per week (mostly two days, because if you say one or two days they'll obviously take the two days choice right) because they found two part-timers who promptly left even without even going to the first interview.

And they need help. Always need help. So I agreed, not unwillingly but feeling quite stupid since I told them I'm quitting ONE MONTH AGO. A few of them even jokingly said "when is your last day exactly" LOL. The freelance video operator suddenly got gigs too so...ugh.

Anyway, back to the point. This is regarding the custom made orders in this post. 

After mailing the animals to her, I received this a few days later:

I remember I was working (video operator) and the presentation was going on halfway. When I saw this I remember feeling really terrible but I still had to focus. I quickly replied her ASAP and told her I'm sorry and I'll remake everything for her. 

She took this photo for me so I can see what she mean. The neck!!! T.T Apparently they were pretty sticky too.

STICKINESS ISSUE

When I mailed the clay figurines they felt fine, but after discussing about it with ET, we conclude that the glaze did not dried properly due to Singapore's humid weather (thanks ah) and it just got..sticky. :/ There's also stories online about how the glaze reacts with the clay and it gets sticky blahblah but I'm using the Golden Polymer Varnish which has good reviews... So we thought it might be humidity. It's always humidity.  

Now one of the way to solve the stickiness issue, was to dry them in an air-conditioned room. Air condition is very expensive and it may take quite long for it to dry completely, so I don't think it was a good idea..

Then ET told me there's this thing call a dry cabinet, where photographers put their most treasured camera and tools inside, and it controls the humidity (analog or digital), so that the camera doesn't get condensation or something like that. If you're interested I guess you can read about it here. It's also useful to put things like guitar strings etc so that it doesn't rust as quickly. 

Luckily, ET wanted to get one anyway because there's a couple of things he wants to put inside, being a musician and having lots of other hobbies, so we went to grab one. (but I think it was mainly because of me.....I think he didn't really need to get it but mostly because I needed it....). It was...about $200++ for the 30 litres one. 

I used it and after they were dried, I could feel the difference compared to one of the testing clay pieces. The matte wasn't shiny, and it was smooth. And I was like "YES. THIS IS IT." 

BROKEN

Now the neck breaking thing was just absolutely horrible, because I actually test dropped them before (albeit unintentionally cause most of the time I dropped them because they slipped out of my fingers cuz too small lol and bounced around and hit the ground). I even dropped them a couple of times when I was showing them to ET. The postage handling was probably really bad and maybe they put really heavy boxes on top of my padded envelopes (which I think wasn't protective enough). 

I thought through it while working as video ops (there's a lot of waiting time) and I had ideas like putting it in the padded envelopes, then throw them into boxes with tons of fillers and mail it. But being really lazy and thinking about going to the post office which is a hassle, and then have to talk to people and all (lol) I kept trying to find alternatives. 

You know how they say good ideas always pop out of your mind when you're going to sleep? The solution literally happened like that. I wasn't even really thinking about it and then suddenly "EH I CAN PUT THEM INTO LITTLE PLASTIC BOXES AND THEN PUT THEM IN THE PADDED ENVELOPES RIGHT" haha. I started looking for it online, even went Daiso, Art Friend. And that's when I found the paper boxes in Art Friend. 

They weren't fragile, soft paper boxes but those really thick, hard, gift boxes that had different colours. It was pretty pricey though..so I went to look for alternatives and found paper mache boxes that was even smaller and also surprisingly tough! I bought quite a lot of them, went home and stepped on them to test their durability lol and it was still intact!! So unless they put like more than 50kg worth of stuff on top of my packaging, I'm confident that they will arrive safe and sound. ^^

The best thing about the boxes is that they can fit through the mailbox!! Yaye for the anti-social me. 

Anyway, since I remade them, here are the photos of the new ones!

I think this time the tabby cat was an improvement, the face is much more accurate to the photo than the previous one :) 

All in all, this was another experience for me, and I'm glad I managed to solve it without too much hassle, and now the items will definitely reach new owners safe and sound! (but without ET I probably would still have problem with the stickiness lol)