I'm Chriss. I make things. Lots of what I make is for sale, so if you see something you like speak up.
AlterEgo Designs
I know you guys probably thought I died, but I didn’t. I’ve just been really horribly busy making tons of awesome new things. But I’ve spaced out my events a little more so that I actually have some free time again, so I’ll be back with lots more fun stuff soon.
Just a tiny part of what I’ve been doing for the last several months. A really, seriously tiny part. This is only maybe a tenth of what I’ve been doing since my last post.
I finished the back sides of the Sam and Dean shirts this morning and I meant to post a quick pic while they were drying, but then I got drunk and forgot. :/ So I’ll have the nicer, finished product pictures within the next day or so.
A couple shirts I’m making for some friends. I had to cut the Dean stencil three times because my freezer paper just decided it didn’t want to stick AT ALL (he’s just too pretty to cooperate I guess), but I think it was worth it. I’ll probably end up using all of my new silver paint before the end of the month, but it’s so pretty I just want to use it for everything!
custom marvel skirt i made for myself. i rushed to get this done in under a week so i could wear it on my birthday. everything but the top hem had to be hand sewn since my machine has been acting up.
I just spent the last $70 of my birthday money at Joann’s today. I would feel bad about it but…it was all on things I needed anyway and I managed to use all 5 coupons I had and save almost $40, so I actually feel pretty good. And this means good things for my blog, because I’m going to stop hoarding the pictures of everything I’ve made recently and just start posting several of them a day until I run out so I can start posting work-in-progress pictures of everything I’m making with all of my new materials instead.
It’s probably stupid, but the thing I’m actually the most excited about is the fabric label kit I got for less than $3 that came with a full a-z stencil so I can make proper iron-on fabric labels for everything I make from now on. I’m finally starting to feel like a real professional!
The buttons that look white are actually a pale blue that matches the outside color on the coral/flower thing inside the fish. I’ve started using buttons instead of beads to close all of my necklaces, so that’s what the middle picture on the right is.
I made a thing! I found fabric spray paint in the clearance bin at joann’s and I wanted to test it out, so I did a little negative space stenciling on a vest I’ve had in my materials bin for ages. It’s a little hard to see from these pictures, but I sprayed it unevenly from different heights and it came out with a really cool distressed/aged look. I’m thinking about maybe going over the bats with silver now that I have some really good silver paint.
lots and lots of pictures to come very soon, and hopefully another tutorial, although I haven’t completely decided which project I want to use for that yet. I have about half of my pictures from the last month touched up and ready to post, so as soon as the rest are finished I will queue them up so that I’ll be back to posting one or two new pictures every day. I got invited to vend at another event and I got a lot of new supplies I want to try out for my birthday, so I should be able to keep a steady stream of new projects going for a while starting sometime in the next week or two.
In regards to that last post:
I’m not the kind of person who likes to call out others on a public forum without at least hearing both sides of the story, but I think this person knows very well who they are, so please refer to this the next time you try to order a commission from me. You are officially blacklisted from my shop for trying to use lame payment cop-outs on multiple commissions. I will not accept any new orders from you unless you agree to pay the entire estimated cost in full up front. Badmouth me to your friends all you want, I do not need your kind of “business” anyway.
Please, please, PLEASE
Do NOT order a commission if you cannot pay the full price.
The down payment I ask for generally only covers supplies and half of labor. If I get to the final stages of your commission and you tell me you can’t afford to pay for it for any reason, that means that I have been working mostly for free for however long it took to get to that point. Yes, my supply costs may have been covered, but I’m not your wardrobe slave and I am not a fan of free labor. Each custom piece requires a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to complete, and I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong by expecting you to compensate me for my time.
If you’re having trouble understanding why this is a problem for me, imagine you go to your job and your boss gives you a big, detailed project and tells you you have a week to complete it. At the end of the week you’re feeling really good about the project. You’ve worked really hard and it’s just about finished, and you’re sure your boss will love it. Instead, he tells you he’s really, really sorry, but something has happened and he can only afford to pay you half of your weekly wages. The project gets scrapped, so your work was for nothing, and you’re not even getting paid for all of your efforts. How do you think you would feel in this situation?
It’s not a nice feeling, but it’s one that I’ve been subjected to far too often recently. It seems to me that the online market is comprised almost entirely of flaky losers who see nothing wrong with giving you the minimum down payment up front, then demanding change after change after change on the samples you present them, only to back out entirely at the last minute, with very few exceptions.
To those exceptions, I cannot tell you enough how much I appreciate your business. You are the only reason I haven’t given up on this whole endeavor.
I’ve worked my ass off this month trying to keep up with an unusually large wave of commissions, and so far only one person has paid in full. ONE. I had four fairly difficult commissions all at the same time and one that was less difficult but almost equally time-consuming, and of those five three have now backed out. This means that the two who didn’t flake had to see their projects delayed because of the workload, which makes me look bad, for nothing. One of those three that I’m not getting paid for was actually finished and in the envelope and everything, just waiting on the payment so I could ship it out. I held off on going to the post office today thinking it would be easier to wait one more day for the payment to come in so I could just do all of my shipping at once instead of making two trips, only to wake up and see in my email a message that I would not be receiving payment at all with no real explanation as to why. This means that since this person told me they just needed one more day so they could cash their paycheck, someone else now has to wait another day for the package that they already paid for.
When you flake out on payments you don’t just hurt me. You hurt everyone else whose time has been stolen by your selfishness. Please keep that in mind next time you consider ordering a commission you’re not sure you can pay for.
