For one it’s hot. I mean it’s hot. It’s about 33° celsius right now, and it’s been pretty much like that for the past two days. The infamous summer heat wave has arrived in Melbourne. And with it, another change: for the past couple of years, if it gets around 30, my feet swell. Don’t know why… well, it’s probably to do with being terribly unhealthy anyway… but it hurts. A lot.

So I’m doing my best to rest my feet, and as such I’m kind of behind. I had planned on doing the video and article on how to make a shadow puppet screen, but that requires standing. Right now, just sitting is quite bad. Anyway, I’m letting my feet cool down, and I’ll post that article on Monday.

I’ve just literally finished doing that order of puppet eyes, and I’m changing my process; it’s too slow. I’ve got a couple of changes in the works to make it go faster, luckily it’s more to do with me not being efficient enough in how I use my time. Most of the problems surface in waiting for things to dry - paint, glue - and I’ve worked out a better way to work back and forth between something dry and something wet.

Lastly, a smaller change. I’m trying to boost my marketing of the site, and in a discussion at Puppets and Stuff, it was suggested that instead of having the Home page, I should have the Shop page there. That is, that if you go to puppetsinmelbourne.com.au, the first thing you see is the Shop. Most people actually end up at my site via Google results/the Learn page, but it’s an interesting point: more people might buy stuff if the home page was the Shop. So over the weekend, I’m temporarily testing that theory out. I will remove the links to the Home page at the top menu, and change the way the site works so the Shop is the default home page; the Home page itself won’t be deleted, just ‘hidden’ from view. I personally prefer the way I have it now, but I’m willing to see what happens if I make the change. Also, I’d still like to have the ‘latest post’ section somewhere, and that’s not easy to move to the Shop page… 

….

I’m having a kind of creative explosion too. I’ve got about 8 finger puppet designs sitting in my head, along with the female body for the moppet pattern; two shadow puppet patterns sitting on my work desk ready to be made and photographed; some wool for a wig; a recycled toy for a bunraku puppet; the shadow puppet screen; a blacklight kit; the blacklight shadow puppet which I hope to make a couple of designs with so that I can offer varying colours; puppet rods to ‘blacken’; a glove puppet script I wrote ages ago, but haven’t finished; two more moppet patterns that I can make; a marionette kit to design; and about five to seven other things in my head…. I don’t know what it is lately, but I’ve got the creative juices flowing!

So yeah, if you’re waiting for members only articles, or just more tutorials in general, please be patient. In amongst all of this is job hunting, email answering, bills to pay, stats to check, web design issues to deal with, marketing to do, perhaps a new puppetry class for the new year… and feet to cool off. I promise, I’m going as fast as I can B)