113

April

Here are my ring a day rings for April

Total rings made in April 152. Including my 100 Rings. I sold 55 rings in April, 12 of which I sold to a small shop in Chicago called Binth.

Here you can see the view count for my shop in April, and then on the 22nd when one of my rings was on the front page for an hour you can see just how may views I got.

Here is another screen shot of my etys stats, you can see the number or orders I've gotten for each month so far this year, I hope it continues to slope up.

112

M.I.A.

So I've guessed noticed by now that I haven't blogged in awhile. Well it's mostly due to the fact that I've been super busy keeping up with my etsy shop these past few weeks. Almost a month ago one of my rings was on the front page of etsy for an hour, that one hour brought me a lot of custom orders in. Last month was an incredible month for my esty shop, this month is going really well too. Between all the work i was doing filling orders and the work i'm doing for John right now I only had so much time in a day to do things and blogging was just something i did not have time for. I'm trying to make time now because I want to keep thins going and hope to blog on a more consistent pace. I still might not get back up to one a day but I'm still going to try and blog a few times a week. So check back more often now because I will be posting new stuff.

111

Studio Transition

I recently dusted off my Canon AE-1 and took a few pictures around the studio. For the past few years I've periodically taken pictures of the space and then put the pictures up in the studio. It's great to see the transition of the space from one project to the next. Here are some of the pictures I just took followed by past ones.

110

Clock

I could use a new clock. I also want most of the things from Schoolhouse Electric.

1960s IBM Clock from Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co on Vimeo.
Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co. partnered with IBM to exclusively produce their iconic 1960s standard issue wall clock. The clock is a faithful reproduction of the classic IBM clocks found in offices, warehouses and schools during the mid-20th century. Hand assembled in Schoolhouse Electric’s Portland, Oregon Factory, it is constructed with a USA made spun steel case, domed glass lens, and the original graphic hands and faceplate design. Operated by a Quartz movement with a red, continuous sweep second hand.

109

 Front Page

 I've been pretty busy the past few days keeping up with both Etsy and work and life in general. This past Sunday one of my rings made it to the front page of Etsy in this treasury. I was working all day down at the studio and when I got home my inbox was filled with messages from etsy. I sold 5 rings and had messages 6 from people wanting to place custom orders.

It was a pretty good day and I've been having steady increased traffic since. I also received a message from someone that is interested in buying my rings in bulk and selling them in their shop. We're still trying to hash out some sort of deal and I'll share about that if it works out. It would be nice to sell my rings in bulk to someone and have them go through the trouble of selling them, that would be ideal. Not that I don't like etsy, it just takes up a lot of my time to take pictures, then post the listing. It would be nice to just make something, and send it off to someone to put all the work into selling it. If I could just make things that would be great. That's one of my goals, just being able to create and not have to worry about the selling.

It's amazing how much traffic I received from that one treasury. It was on the front page from some time between 8-9pm and in that time the ring received 592 views. I've never really thought of my rings to be all that photogenic like most of the ones you see that make the front page. I generally try to make my photos more utilitarian and try to show what the ring looks like. Even this ring isn't one that I would consider to be all that special, it's just a good simple ring. It's good to see that even the most basic of my rings gets a lot of attention when presented to a lot of people.

 It's nice having increased traffic to my shop out of the blue. This month was starting to have a little bit of a slump and it was looking like I wasn't going to beat last months performance. After today though I have already beat last months sales and with almost another week to go it's looking like it will be a good month.

So far my ring a day project has beat my expectations. The work I put into my Etsy shop every day has been increasingly paying off every month. Every month has been much better then the last. I'm starting to see that if I was to put 100% of my effort into my shop that I could easily and comfortably live off of my own work. This is all done with my own two hands, that's the most satisfying part.

108

Tanner Goods

I could use a new belt.

An Exploration in Craft - Featuring: Tanner Goods from Ryan Bush on Vimeo.
*If you have the means, enjoy this video with headphones*

Tanner Goods is a small leather goods manufacturer located in Portland, Oregon. They work hard to manage multiple storefronts and offer a wide range of hand crafted leather accessories. They thrive on their attention to detail and appreciation for top quality products. In the future they plan to expand their product line to include non-leather goods such as eyewear and time pieces, while maintaining their strong roots in simplicity and utilitarian product design. You can purchase their products online at:

www.tannergoods.com

Or find them in person here:

1308 W. Burnside
Portland, Ore. 97209
__________________________________________

This video serves as a documentation of craft that I have long been interested in as a Graphic Designer, and someone who appreciates hand made goods. It is wonderful to see a company that thrives in the "small batch" business model, and I hope they continue to make good things for a long time coming. The process of making something as simple as a belt can remind us of the roots of what this country was founded on: Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Craftsmanship. Hope you enjoy it!

Special Thanks to:

Tanner Goods - (Thanks for the interview Sam)
Alex Toyoshima - (The guy making the belt) - Without you, this wouldn't have happened, so thanks for being so patient and letting me poke around with my camera. || www.alextoyoshima.com
Alex R. Taylor - (Audio) || www.alexrtaylor.com
Aaron Rayburn - www.cargocollective.com/rayburn

www.fortport.com

/////////////////////////////////////
(shameless plug)
www.ryanjbush.com


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Music By: Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon

107

More Wawona

Here are a few more pictures of the Wawona sculpture progress.

The inside of the sculpture will be covered with tons of little craters. It first starts off as a flat plane then we drill through the flutes on the front side. The craters are carved up inside of those flutes. These holes will let light in and let people look through the sculpture, and maybe poke a finger, or whatever, through. This piece here has been carved on one side and just the holes so far have been drilled on the other. All the little bits of tape are covering up where there use to be metal in the wood. Eventually we will replace all the metal, but for now they sit empty.

After we pick out the raw blank planks and send them to the UW to be milled into shape we get them back in a very rough carved state. All that the UW is doing is giving us a true edge so the piece will fit together perfectly. The rest of what they do, if they have time, is to give us a rough sense of the shape of the board needs to be between the perfect edges they have milled. Most of the time we have to still carve large chunks of wood away when we get it back. You can see in this picture that they quickly and roughly carved this piece. This section is actually the spine of the sculpture and is made from three planks that were joined together.

Here is more of the spine that we have carved down into shape and have started placing flutes on.

Here is sort of a before and after look at the flutes.

We are almost done carving all the sections for the first layer, here you can see a bunch of them leaning up against the wall.