back at it

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. Things have gottne really busy here. I went back to work at the place that originally laid me off, so that has kept me really busy.
I worked the woodworking show last week in Schaumburg at the Craft Supplies USA booth teaching people how to make pens. Made a lot of pens there and got a lot of supplies for my penmaking
I really needed that . It got my interest back into pen making.
I'll be posting here a bit more regularly now as I make more pens

catching up.

It's been awhile since I've posted anything. I've done a couple of shows that were pretty decent, but, other than that I've not been doing much pen work. That's because I've started a new business that is taking off fairly well. I sell Fresh Roasted Coffee. This is coffee that I've roasted myself and have been selling pretty much by word of mouth.
I'm up to about 14 different varieties of coffee including Single origins and a couple of blends.
This has been doing pretty well actually. Well enough that I'm increasing my roasting capacity from 1/4 pound at a time to 10 pounds at a time.
If you are interested in the freshest coffee that you've ever tasted, drop me a line.

A Purse pen

This pen is different in the that it has no pocket clip.

the "cap" end has no clip or finial and has a nice rounded off end.

A couple of recent pens

A Red Camoflauge pen

A Red/Black dyed plywood pen

Bullets!!

Here are a couple of bullet pens made from 30/06 bullets and shell casings.

Desert Ironwood

Here is a pen I made out of a piece of Desert Ironwood, I really love this kit. It's fairly elegant and very well balanced.

Comissioned Pen and PEncil set

This pen and pencil set was comissioned for a graduation gift by my mail carrier. 

I custom mixed the pink pearlescent resin and now it needs to go get the name laser engraved on the side

A quick update

This is just a quick update to show some of the newest things I've been working on.

Here are some pics of some perfume pens that I made for a comission.

This one is one I made just for stock

I'll make another post a little later just for the new pens that I made.

results when the previous cast has been turned into a pen

Here are the results of the previous cast that I made and posted on 5/5

5/5 update

More casting today.
I cast more coffee bean blanks and "played" with some metalflakes and pigments and came up with these

The Aquas blanks

Update catch up

I'm going to try and update daily what I get done in the shop, so here is the update for 4/4

Casting, lots of casting.
I cast a lot of blanks yesterday, coffee beans, and swirls.
Here are some pics.

Patriot Blanks


Dreamsicle Blanks


Mint Swirl Blanks

Still need to get caught up

I'm still lagging very far behind and of course the list of things I have to do never gets any shorte.
Now that the kitchen is basically finished, I need to do the following

• Remake my website - it's out of date and I need to just beat it into something usuable.
• make stock - I am fairly low on stock so I nee to get that made up
• make molds - I want to have a stock of mold to take with me to the casting demo next saturday
• start casting blanks. I have a bunch of wood for Fusion blanks and I need to really stock up on coffee bean blanks and make some of the pasta blanks and split pea blanks.
• Try dyeing wood. I have some really nice spalted birch that would look good dyed various colors that I really want to try.

More also need to get done but that's enough of an update for now

I need to get caught up

I am doing a casting demo at the Midwest Penturner's Gathering on April 25th.
I still need to submit a bio and make a crapload of molds to sell there.
I also need to finish a pen for a guy in Canada and ship that out.

I also needs to update my website with new pens and prices. I'm lowering prices on a bunch of the pens like the Computer pen will now be priced at $65 instead of $100
and I have quite a few finised and ready to ship right now.

It's alive, I tell you, ALIVE!!

The stars have aligned and everything.
www.pensbykris.com is now a viable up and running website.
I'll be adding some new pens to it by the end of the week.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I finally settled on a host and now I'm waiting for the stars to align and the DNS servers to update and www.pensbykris.com will be alive again.

Hosting issues

arrrgh, I finally have all of my dns issues resolved and now my domain points to - nowhere!

I can't seem to get a hold of ABP to set things up on the server side. i also need to setup email addresses too, I would love to have the ability to setup and administer my own email addresses/accounts/lists, etc...

I wonder about these people http://www.3ix.org/index.php
is it a too good to be true? what's the catch?

EDIT: I just found out through a fellow penmaker who is also a Hosting co. that Hostmonster and 3ix keep control of your domain if you try to move away from them.

New pens

Here is a pic of a nice Mahogany Slimline



















I just shipped out a custom order for a friend out east.
A Desert Ironwood European style pen. He said he wanted something dark and sexy so...

Semi productive today

Today I did alot of casting. I cast blanks for the Coffee bean pens today, made about a dozen. I'll probably continue tomorrow depending on the weather. If it rains I can't cast, the humidity causes the resin to foam.
I've decided to start selling the cast blanks on my site, so hopefully that will bring in some extra income.

I also made a coffee bean pen to fill and order I received Saturday at the craft fair. I'm also making a desert ironwood euro pen for a customer out east. Maybe I'll get to turning that piece I was making at the craft show (a Paudauk wood with an aluminum Celtic knot.)

Still not much progress on the website domain transfer. I'm trying to figure out why it's taking so long to transfer. Also given the availability of ABP in the UP I may give up on Zarquon and just keep the hosting at the site I'm transferring out the domain to.

Website update

Major progress. www.pensbykris.com is up and running (currently on my old host) I'm waiting for the domain get transferred and then set up the new host. hopefully it'll be complete by the end of the week.

Mini show review - Palatine HS Spring Craft faire
in short - I made enough to cover the cost of the table but including the donation for the raffle I'm down. The traffic through the show was dismal, and after I setup I found out that there were two other penmakers there.

Website progress?

I think I may have founf a way to get my website back up and running again without having to pay my "friend's" account balance off.
Courtesy of UserFriendly.org I'll know over the next day or two whether it worked or not. Then I just need to get a hold of a certain ABPeed up north to get the site setup on Z

Gallery is now working

I finally got a gallery/slideshow that is functional, updatable, and portable (I don't have to change anything when I move my site to it's new permanent home

its currently here ---> Gallery



.

Upcoming Show

The next place I'll be selling my Pens and other items will be at the Palatine H.S. Spring Craft Fair.
at
Palatine High School
1111 North Rohlwing Rd.
Palatine, IL 60074

Saturday March 14th
from 9am to 4pm

Website issues

For those who are wondering why my website has gone M.I.A., here's the story.
A friend of mine (at the time co-worker) and I started to work on forming our own robotics company. We found a decent host and started setting things up. Since we got extra domains I set-up a domain for my pen business. Fast forward to Monday 3/9/09, I check email and get an error message for the email accounts I have at that host. Find out that the account is locked due to non-payment and I cannot get ahold of my "friend" to starighten things out. Including my pens website. This is not good, real not good. I have a show coming up this weekend and have my cards printed and everything. I'm calling the host in the morning to see if the will unlock my domain long enough for me to put it over on zarquon (finger's crossed)

So, until then, here is the temporary site/home for Pens by Kris website
Pens by Kris Website

I'll post here when I have the permanent home set up.
P.S. I know that the gallery is broken at the moment, I'm working on that too.

Today's accomplishments

I made 2 pens today.
one is a printed circuit board pen and the other one is a custom cast White/purple swirled resin that I cast last week.
I'll get pictures put up tomorrow.

Blame the Otter

I'm setting this blog up to write more about my pen-making stuff.
My doing this is all Otter's fault, blame them.

Once I get some free time I'll post more stuff here.