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Can someone give me her email? I seem to have misplaced it and I got my dragon and he is broke in 2 places. I’m with Spark using paper to pack is a bad idea. I had to comb through all the paper to find the foot and tail pieces which had broken off. I’m hoping she can recommend what glue to use to fix them. Thanks!
While hiding somewhere in my head I'm on the lookout for white oriental dragons! Please let me know if you know of any available. Thank you!
I’d like a few of her things too, but I’m not going to shell out that kind of money for items that will get broken. When she gets her packing figured out, I’ll get something then.
I got her response, and it basically said that the dragon was well packed when she sent it, she’s sorry, use superglue, bye.
I guess in her place I wouldn’t want to be taking things back for repairs or giving everybody refunds, but I’m not exactly happy with the “couldn’t be helped, here’s some glue” thing. This was IMPORTANT to me, and I believed the assurances that it would arrive intact. 🙁
SPark wrote:I got her response, and it basically said that the dragon was well packed when she sent it, she’s sorry, use superglue, bye.
I guess in her place I wouldn’t want to be taking things back for repairs or giving everybody refunds, but I’m not exactly happy with the “couldn’t be helped, here’s some glue” thing. This was IMPORTANT to me, and I believed the assurances that it would arrive intact. 🙁
😯 Wow! I’m surprised…that blows! 🙁 Last I heard her policy was at least to repair it for free… though that does mean shipping it back to her.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
-J R R TolkienKeplilly wrote:Can someone give me her email? I seem to have misplaced it and I got my dragon and he is broke in 2 places. I’m with Spark using paper to pack is a bad idea. I had to comb through all the paper to find the foot and tail pieces which had broken off. I’m hoping she can recommend what glue to use to fix them. Thanks!
Her contact info is on her website, here:
http://www.creaturesfromel.ca/contact.html
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
-J R R TolkienI’m talking to El right now and she told me that, as I thought, Spark’s dragon was one of the last ones to be packed with paper back before she start to get consistent feedback that paper wasn’t handling it for long distance postal stuff anymore. She’s switched over to bubble-wrap and peanuts, as well she mentioned investigating hiring a courier service that would guarantee unbroken items sent using their services. Having art arrive broken is just as unthrilling to her as well.
It takes weeks for some people’s dragons to get where they need to go so we are seeing a delay in feedback that makes it seem like El isn’t changing her packing methods when she actually is, just that there’s something like a two week delay to start seeing the difference.
Spark, without seeing exactly what she said to you and exactly how the dragon is broken, I can only say that El generally has a good reason for not offering to take something back and fix it. Not being her, I don’t know what that reason would be. I think her policy of trying to fix and resend as many creatures as she can is incredibly generous but she can only do so much.
El is very experienced in packing her sculptures as they are bought from conventions and in person, she’s had years of experience in that regard. But now she (and myself as well, indirectly!) are trying to relearn and adapt methods that have worked perfectly in the past.
And Spark, El’s inability to fix it wasn’t meant to suggest that she didn’t think your patronage and purchase wasn’t important, but that maybe there just wasn’t anything in that instance she could do. She’s really good at fixing her own work but even she has limits. And she IS a quiet and laid back person, so perhaps what you percieved as indifference was just her replying calmly. She doesn’t get upset easily, really. I’ve always liked that about her ^_^
Keplilly wrote:Can someone give me her email? I seem to have misplaced it and I got my dragon and he is broke in 2 places. I’m with Spark using paper to pack is a bad idea. I had to comb through all the paper to find the foot and tail pieces which had broken off. I’m hoping she can recommend what glue to use to fix them. Thanks!
I think she generally recommends superglue, but it would be best to confirm with her of course 🙂
hmmm… I’ve had that breakage story too. I found 3 ways to partially solve it:
1: no shipping delicate stuff during high season (ex Christmas)
2: fasten/strap the sculpture to a board (right side down) and stick that board in your first box. That way the sculpture does not kill its frail parts by its own weight when.. oh you know, they play football with it
3: replace all frail parts with sculpey superflex bend clay, plan the details of the figures if I know I ship them far (ex finding a solid nonfrail, sculpture weight holding point where I could do nr 2, as a sample most of my creatures have that point between their shoulders, unless winged)
4: last but not least, make a blood offering to the heathen deities… preferably with a postman caught in the act of kicking a packageher works are really awesome 🙂
Spikes are awesome but mean for transport and shipping. Eventually I personally kept them down because… you cant trust spikes in a box in the hands of a lumbering stranger called postman… 🙁When I made more important shippings Id clip an image of the piece on the package with a speechbubble saying: please make my trip to my new home across the atlantic a safe one, thank you.
Cant say if it helped or if those were just lucky ones.I’m sure she didn’t mean to be dismissive. Her email was very polite, and she did offer to send me touch up paint. (And also to make a new piece to replace the one I can’t find, which… er… how is a piece made up from scratch going to FIT when it gets here? This puzzles me a lot.) But it just wasn’t terribly helpful, particularly given that if it’s something she can’t fix herself, what use is telling me to just glue it back up? That’s silly. How am I supposed to fix something that’s too hard for her to fix?
Honestly, at this point I don’t want the sculpture at all. It was something deeply personal and symbolic to me, and it’s broken now. Even fixed, it will never be the same, which ruins the symbolism. I don’t want to be symbolically broken! I have enough trouble in my life without that.
I’m asking for a refund. I’ll ship it back to her at my expense, and she can repair it and sell it to somebody else.
Awwww… 🙁 I’m sorry Spark. And I absolutely know how you feel…That was such a beautiful dragon! I’m really sorry it turned out this way.
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
-J R R TolkienSPark wrote:I’m sure she didn’t mean to be dismissive. Her email was very polite, and she did offer to send me touch up paint. (And also to make a new piece to replace the one I can’t find, which… er… how is a piece made up from scratch going to FIT when it gets here? This puzzles me a lot.) But it just wasn’t terribly helpful, particularly given that if it’s something she can’t fix herself, what use is telling me to just glue it back up? That’s silly. How am I supposed to fix something that’s too hard for her to fix?
Honestly, at this point I don’t want the sculpture at all. It was something deeply personal and symbolic to me, and it’s broken now. Even fixed, it will never be the same, which ruins the symbolism. I don’t want to be symbolically broken! I have enough trouble in my life without that.
I’m asking for a refund. I’ll ship it back to her at my expense, and she can repair it and sell it to somebody else.
Like I said, I was just guessing that was why she didn’t offer but it was just a guess, and since you have now provided more information (that she did offer help you fix it by providing a replacement part for the one you can’t find) I can only revise my guess with another guess, which is probably pointless unless I saw the whole of what she said to you exactly and I wouldn’t ask anyone to share private correspondence like that.
And I’m a little confused that you suggested she gave you the impression she wouldn’t help you fix it if the issue is really more about the fact that you don’t want to fix it in the first place. Obviously the bigger problem is that it arrived broken and that was a mistake on her part, but your original post seemed focused on the fact that you felt she didn’t want to help you fix it when now you are saying that she DID offer to help you with that, but that really you don’t want it now that it’s broken.
That’s a completely understandable reaction, but I think your paraphrasing of her response to you was misleading, maybe because you are so upset about this. She can’t unbreak the creature, at this point all she (or anyone else) can do is help you fix it and her methods almost always result in the break disappearing visually. But only you can change how you see the sculpture and whether you want to focus on the fact that it was broken, rather than making an effort to fix it and perhaps gain something symbolically from that.
But again, it’s up to you what you want to do.
Edit:
Nevermind. I don’t think I should discuss this here. I AM very upset, and I’ll only get you mad at me.
I’ll just say that offering a PIECE and some paint, and telling me to get out the glue is not what I expected when I was assured that she would fix it if it broke. I am the one being asked to do the fixing here, she’s not fixing anything.
She is obviously a nice and kind person, but all the same, that’s not what I expected.
But I will deal with her directly, and not through you, that’s not a very good way to go about things. So I’m done here.
SPark wrote:Edit:
Nevermind. I don’t think I should discuss this here. I AM very upset, and I’ll only get you mad at me.
I’ll just say that offering a PIECE and some paint, and telling me to get out the glue is not what I expected when I was assured that she would fix it if it broke. I am the one being asked to do the fixing here, she’s not fixing anything.
She is obviously a nice and kind person, but all the same, that’s not what I expected.
But I will deal with her directly, and not through you, that’s not a very good way to go about things. So I’m done here.
From what she mentioned to me, she didn’t tell you to just go at it by yourself, she offered to guide you through it and said to let her know if you needed anything else, in addition to the replacement part, the paint, etc. And I believe she also asked for pictures of the break to properly assess the damage and how easy it would be to fix, did you send something to her?
It’s good to keep in mind that some kinds of breaks are actually easy to fix and don’t take more than ten minutes, which is why she prefers in some cases to suggest a self-fix rather than have you spend money to send it back to her and wait a few weeks for the post office to send it back (especially right now, as holiday mail is on the rise). Apparently some people have been sending back “broken” creatures that actually just had a single feather broken off. I’m not saying that is the same for you, not from what you’ve described, but just something to keep in mind. I’m not responding here as an attempt to circumvent your discussion with her, definitely the solution will be worked out between you two. I am just offering my perspective as someone who knows the artist ^_^
A few pages ago I was asked what I was getting from her:
I am getting the following COMMISSIONED pieces (see captions for better description of what I asked for):
This is actually going to be a tiger for me with gold shading at the base of the wings and blue or amber/brownish eyes.
And this is going to look similar hopefully but with more purple on the wings and the flight feathers will have more color on them.
I can’t WAIT!! But in light of the parcel issues I may ask her to hold them until after Christmas just to be a little safer.
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