Dipping my toe into the 3D printed merchandise market

 

In case you haven't noticed, last week I started using my Ko-fi store, in preparation for my upcoming web store, and to start getting some money coming in to help fund things like the Bambu I just got, pay off the Neptune 3 Max, and keep myself in filament.

I'm still working on learning to make my own 3D files, so I'm leaning heavily on items I'm "authorized" to sell, either because of how they're licensed on sites like Printables or Thingiverse, or because I'm on the "merchant" level of a designer's Patreon. Some of those Patreons include:

• Hex3D
• MatMire Makes
• Big Fred's Customs
• mysterymakers
• Fate's End

In addition to those, UnimatrixRed on Printables has most of his prop replicas from Star Trek and Star Wars up for commercial licenses, and some of the other files I've purchased over the past few years are licensed, as well.

As I'm getting started, there are going to be a lot of articulated critters, as well as dice boxes and towers. In late fall/early winter, I'm planning on moving all of this over to Wordpress, with a shop as part of the blog. At that time, I'll be able to talk to people about printing things like helmets or full suits of armor.

In the meantime, if you would like to check out my Ko-fi Shop and maybe throw some coin my way, it would be greatly appreciated.

Now to stop my rambling, load up some filament, and switch from articulated dragons to articulated adorable reptiles.

Take good care of yourselves, and each other!
Tony

Oh yeah, I made another blog.

 Hey, y'all.

I'm going to be 100% honest with you. I completely forgot this existed, until I was starting to look for a place to park Troxell Builds and Troxell's Trading Post. When I rediscovered it, I figured this would be a good place to talk about what I'm doing, post albums of projects that will get me flagged on Instagram, rant about policies that Instagram says exist but I can't find, and tell people about where to find me and items I'm selling.

So, for right now, what's going on?

Well, I'm starting to get prepared for VoltCon, which is the weekend of October 14th and 15th here in Indianapolis, Indiana. As of this writing, that's about 31 working days left to get stock and displays ready for Troxell's Trading Post's first convention table. If you know me, you know I've been working around ideas for a few years now, trying to pivot my not-inexpensive hobbies into a small source of income that will hopefully help cover the not-inexpensive hobbies. Well, after getting my child out here, we've decided on Troxell's Trading Post. Established in 2023, this is a father and son venture, selling a variety of 3D printed items, leatherwork, and Perler bead art. Our focus is on fandom-related items, and I will be doing some cosplay commissions in the future, though honestly, those take a lot out of me. Anyway, I'm hoping to have some leather wallets, keychains, and coaster sets with Voltron, Robotech, and other giant robot show imagery on them, along with a variety of geeky 3D-printed toys and replicas and my son's Perler art.

After VoltCon, I'm going to take inventory of what's left over and prepping for an online store, but I'm also prepping for a family vacation from the 21st to the 29th. Then, once we get back, I'm hitting the ground running to prep for a "Making Props for Cosplay" presentation at the Anderson Public Library on November 11th. This talk means I need to brush up on my mold-making knowledge, I need to find my real-world bases for Star Wars props, and I need to make sure the batteries work on my HasLab Proton Pack and Matty Collector PKE Meter.

In the meantime, I'm working, printing, posting over on BlueSky, selling items over on my Ko-fi page, and prepping for a couple larger projects that I'm hoping to work on over the winter.

So, in the future, keep an eye open here for, well, I'm not sure what, yet. I figure most weeks I'll try to have something up here, be it project info, promotion for things I'm doing, or just talking about things I like. 

Until then, take good care of yourselves, and each other. And enjoy this pic of a couple of puptatoes baking in the sun.

Tony
September 12th, 2023