Printed With Love, Layer by Layer: Our Year

Merry Christmas. If you're reading this today, I hope it's because you're hiding somewhere quiet with a cup of something, and not because something has gone wrong.

I wanted to write one post that isn't about settings.

How this actually started

It started with one print for my kids.

That's not a marketing story, it's just what happened. I made one thing, someone asked where I got it, I said I'd made it, and they asked if I could make one for them. Then someone else did. And at some point I realized I'd been printing other people's orders in the evenings for weeks and had somehow acquired a small business without ever deciding to.

The printer is in the house. It runs next to the laundry pile. The dishes are usually stacked in the sink while it goes, and I have made peace with the fact that this is the trade.

What this year looked like

A lot of failed prints. Genuinely — for every design that made it to the shop there are several that didn't, and a bin of versions that were nearly right.

The wristlets took the longest. Getting something to come off the plate already assembled, moving properly, with no glue and no clips, is much harder than it looks, and it took a stupid number of attempts to get the clearances right. But that's also the one people responded to most, which felt like a fair reward for the stubbornness.

There were the stars for Aug's room, which I made because I wanted them and then everyone else wanted them too. There was a whole autumn of pumpkins. There was the week I decided the chicken coop needed 3D printed solutions and discovered there are approximately four hundred and seventy-two things you can make for a coop, none of which anyone asked for.

And there was a lot of standing in the kitchen at 11pm waiting for a print to finish, which I would not describe as glamorous but which I did enjoy more than I expected.

The thing I didn't anticipate

The messages.

People send photos of things they've printed from my files. People tell me their kid picked the color. Someone told me the wristlet meant they got a photo they'd otherwise have missed.

I did not expect that part at all, and it's the reason this has stopped feeling like a side project. I read every message. That's not a line — it's a small shop and there's one of me.

What's coming

More files, because that's what's been asked for most. More things for the farm, because I've committed to that now and there's no going back. And I'm going to keep writing these posts, because it turns out I have a lot to say about slicer settings and my husband has heard enough of it.

Thank you

Genuinely. If you've bought something, printed something, left a comment, or just watched a video of a printer making a small plastic pumpkin at one in the morning — thank you.

This is a small family shop, run from a house with too much laundry in it, and every order is a real person deciding to support that. I don't take it lightly.

Merry Christmas from all of us. Go and enjoy your day. The settings posts will still be here next week.

Printed with love, layer by layer. 🩷