Mini Craft Fair

Friday was the craft fair at work - just during lunch hour in the lobby, so a good one to try out. Here's what my setup looked like. Does it make you want to adopt animalicules? It went really well, I ended up selling most of the critters you see here. Which is why my etsy shop is almost empty now. I'm not sure I could do a real craft fair because I'd have to make so much stuff to get ready. The really interesting thing was that all but 3 of the people that bought stuff were people I already knew, mainly from my department. So it sort of seems like it wouldn't be a very sustainable business because once everyone I know has all the softies they need, that'll be it. Or maybe it means people only want to buy critters once they are already familiar with them. If it's all about brand awareness, that means I'll need a marketing department. Hmm...

Measuring Ducks

These ceramic duck measuring cups are incredibly cute, aren't they? You too can find them, at Anthropologie. I've seen them and yearned for them the past million times I've been in. But, I feel that I would need a spot worthy of displaying them and in my small kitchen, there is no proper spot. They would be so sad to be hidden away in a drawer, so in the store they must stay.

But why are they so cute? Why do they call out to me in their silent cuteness? It's partially the Property of Multiples, yes. Four ducks in a set, each one smaller than the last. But it's not only that - it's also the fact that they NEST into each other. This is called Nesting Theory - when things fit together snugly, their cuteness factor is automatically upped. It's hard to resist the nesters, but resist we must.

Christmas Camouflage

These trees are just hanging around for the holidays. They camouflage pretty well with Christmas trees and other pine varieties, although their button eyes and bright lights do kind of give them away. They love watching the holiday festivities from their perch high up on the Christmas tree. And, they're in the shop now!

Blog Features

If you hang around in the forums on Etsy, you can meet lots of other sellers and learn a lot from them. Two of them recently were nice enough to feature me and the animalicules on their blogs!

	Check me out here, on Dragonfly Fine Designs, where you can get washcloths that look like lollipops. (Cute!)
	And here, on wEtsy Behind the Ears (Cute name!), where you can get cool buttons and become a buttonaire!

I can tell you the animalicules are loving the attention.

Nutcrackers

Tomorrow's December so it's okay to really enjoy Christmastime now:


These nutcrackers are cute partly because of the Property of Cute Multiples. This property states that cute things are exponentially cuter when there are more than one of them. This explains the attraction of twins, triplets, and litters of puppies. Plus the nutcrackers' teeth are also really cute the way they're rounded and bared like that.

Christmas Tree Family

I know I posted these last year, but this is actually a new generation - new and improved! They are now stuffed and closed up at the bottom, and available in the shop, ready to be adopted.


So what makes these little guys cute? It's mainly due to the faces. It's a well documented fact that adding faces to things that don't normally have faces immediately ups the level of cuteness. The exact percentage of cuteness added varies, but it is usually a significant difference.

This leaves us with the question of why the addition of a face makes things cute. Perhaps as humans we can identify with other beings that have personalities and facial expressions. Or maybe it's because we can imagine them watching us and talking to us. Regardless, who wouldn't want a set of these brightening up their home for the holidays, right?!

Official Opening

Now that I've got my Animalicules etsy shop, I've decided it's time to move over to the Animalicules blog as well. So this is the Official Grand Opening of my new blog! I'll still be posting mostly the same stuff I was posting at Ye-Xiao but hopefully more often, and with more variety. The theme of this blog is of course, cuteness! The main questions I want to explore are:

• What makes things cute?
  
• Why are we attracted to cuteness (some of us more than others)?
  
• Where is all the cute stuff hiding?

Join me on my journey to discover the essence of cute and spread cuteness to all ends of the earth!