r/pics Aug 13 '21

I carved a tiny maple owl

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53k Upvotes

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234

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21

Lovely! Do you take commissions? Please, if you want to, take my money and send me tiny wood owl(s) to keep in my pocket. I usually have a chestnut there as a tactile therapeutic fiddle-thing but I'd prefer one of these and I know other weirdos who'd appreciate it too. <3 PM if interested

38

u/Knoppixx Aug 13 '21

I searched his profile for a link to an etsy page or shopify site but didn't find one. I did however find on another larger carving he stated he doesn't sell them. Here is the link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/ircdyc/_/g51wpli?context=1000

51

u/foozledaa Aug 13 '21

I'm a freelancing writer/artist and people turn their nose up even at minimum wage rates. Unless you can work really, really, inhumanly fast, like sweatshop fast, it's generally not economical to sell this kind of work. People would probably not pay more than £5/$5 for one of these but carving just one of them might take the artist the better part of an hour.

20

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21

I'd pay up to 300 in my local currency/35 USD because I acknowledge the effort of preparations to get the material + time + skill that something like this requires (which I am happy to share to encourage all of the talented artists on Reddit). I have the ability to recreate something similar but then it'd only be for myself because the design is beautiful and all OP's... so ignore the joke in my previous post about stealing the idea, please. Credit should go to the right person so I won't be setting up my own tiny owl shop ;)

20

u/MissSonnenschein Aug 13 '21

That is not a fair reflection of the amount of time/effort/material that went into this. I’d expect to pay $75-100 USD for this at minimum

8

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21

Thanks for good feedback! This underlines the message of my post even more but I realize that I wasn't very clear there at all.

I'm in Sweden, so I calculate as follows:

A walk to the closest wooded area to collect free material: 5 USD for effort

  • Median wage per hour for a carpenter/wood worker: 23,15 USD

  • Some extra for the design

= circa 35 USD for the product itself

  • Freight (not included here) circa 15 USD
  • Customs cost, 20% of the cost
  • VAT, 25% of the total circa 15 USD

= a total end consumer cost of 75 USD while rounding off upwards

2

u/Priff Aug 13 '21

You seem to be ignoring taxes in your calculation.

I would never charge less than 400 sek +vat for an hour's work. And you probably won't find any self employed swede that will.

At 400 I'm paying about half in taxes if I take it all as salary. But part of the cost usually goes to maintenance of tool and other long term costs.

1

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21

Most freelance hobby artists - including myself - do not make enough in their side gig to have to declare it here though in my experience. Good for you that you do! Do you want to share a link?

Ofc you ask whatever price you want to but I only produce and sell stuff that I would have really liked to make anyway, personally, so yeah... I am willing to pay what I'd ask myself for things that I just happened to create and that'd make others happy as a bonus

2

u/Priff Aug 13 '21

The upper limit for legal hobbyverksamhet is quite low though. 20k sek in a year. Even at 200 an hour which is pretty meh you'd only be allowed 100 hours in a full year. 2 hours a week is definitely at a hobby level, but I don't think I have any serious hobby I spend that little time on.

2

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21

True. Above 2h per week I think that it is more than just a hobby, it is a small business endeavor. Glad that you are so passionate about yours! :)

I draw/paint/sculpt/sew/croquet for my own sake (primarily) though and have a demanding full time+ job so I estimate that I spend 1 - 2 hours per week on my artistic side thingies. There's no real interest to make money so I basically only ask compensation for the materials used

1

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21

CONT.: ... and yes, in a place where you can not just go out and collect the materials it'd land somewhere in the 100 USD range, I reason :)

2

u/foozledaa Aug 13 '21

Yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable. I could collect fallen branches on my daily dog walks, but you've also got to boil it, then dry it, etc. and you should also probably treat it with wood preserver once it's carved too - and maybe a sealant if it's going to be kept outdoors.

2

u/schiddy Aug 13 '21

Unless it's on your own property, technically it would be stealing it. Obviously this is ridiculous when talking about a single fallen branch. But selling at volume for profit it would be stealing wood from private or public property.

1

u/foozledaa Aug 13 '21

Good point. Factor in the risks associated with being caught and fined by the forestry commission: £500.

1

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21

In most places I guess that that is true but we have this wonderful thing called Allemansrätten or the Right of Public Access (word by word translation: Every Man's Right).

It allows anyone to collect any amount of fresh fallen twigs or branches, but not old ones, as old branches are home to many bugs, fungi er cetera. The main rule is "Do not disturb, do not destroy" so only if I'd take anything off of living trees it is considered destruction of public property.

Link to a short description in English: https://www.naturvardsverket.se/Om-Naturvardsverket/Publikationer/ISBN/8500/978-91-620-8522-3/ - anyone who's interested can press 'Ladda ner' for an easy-to-read six page brochure

13

u/Scoot_AG Aug 13 '21

Honestly, this is not even a a fair reflection either. I'd expect to pay $150-200 USD for this at minimum

14

u/shadoor Aug 13 '21

I think the difference is people expect the price of something like this to be similar in range to something that is similar but mass produced for cheap labor and expected to sell in thousands.

Theres a ton of intricate stuff even made out of wood that can be bought for really cheap only because the expensive part was setting up a machine to do it, and it could be offset by selling a boat load of it.

2

u/AaachO_O Aug 13 '21

I’ve been seeing this as I try and build up my inventory of sellable art.

On the one hand I can sell for less by going the digital “put-your-image-on-anything” route or take the “I only sell one-off originals” path but each camp kinda scoffs at the other.

The choice of going with an on-demand manufacturer, or doing it myself, is a major factor in the (overall) type of business I want to run.

15

u/foozledaa Aug 13 '21

lmfao... you guys... honestly if you just pay the artist's asking price, that's all most of us would want. If you want to commission someone who works faster and can charge less, or you want to buy commercially-produced sculptures, that's an option too.

7

u/AgentAlinaPark Aug 13 '21

I think that is highway robbery. I would expect anywhere between $500-$750 USD and that is the absolute minimum.

8

u/HowToSuckAtReddit Aug 13 '21

$3,000 at least

9

u/dkelly54 Aug 13 '21

$3000? There's no way OP could reasonably sell this for less than $10,000 USD

2

u/AgentAlinaPark Aug 13 '21

We gonna make OP rich!

2

u/babybarracudess2 Aug 13 '21

Wait, wha? This is for the above owl??

10

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21 edited Aug 13 '21

Thank you so much for the link, despite the bad news. I appreciate the digging effort! :)

Note2self:

  1. Go to forest and harvest tree parts.
  2. Carve mini owls.
  3. ????
  4. PROFIT!

EDIT: JK, I'll not be stealing OP's gorgeous design

3

u/Kambhela Aug 13 '21

Their profile has a straight website and what I presume is a social media tag. At least on mobile for me.

Tag being symanwoodcarving and website being symanwoodcarving.com

1

u/unusedusername42 Aug 13 '21

😍 Thank you!

2

u/Mr_Abberation Aug 13 '21

You are a super cool human being.