Sunday, July 26, 2020

Creative New Mouse Ears: Christmas in July 2020

One thing I pride myself on is my creativity.  I'm always dreaming up new products, new designs, and ways to personalize the decor in our house.  My brain is always brainstorming creative new ideas whether I want it to or not.

I'm very proud of Happily Ever Hatter and how far it's come since I first opened my Etsy shop in January of 2014.  In 2015, Eliot and I started making 3D printed mouse ears.  (As far as we know, Eliot and I were the first to create 3D printed mouse ears; we were definitely the first to start selling them on Etsy.)  In 2017, 3D printed mouse ears became an entire genre of ears... which is something we never even imagined.


Since then, Eliot and I have tried to keep pushing the boundaries with our 3D printed mouse ear designs.  Unfortunately, having many fellow 3D printed ear shops means that we have to keep coming up with new creative ideas to make our ears stand out from the rest of the pack.  We really haven't made many changes to our original ear design, but we have tried to come up with lots of new designs.  (To date, we have over 400 listings in our shop and Eliot's probably created at least 500-600 individual ear designs... probably a lot more than that but we stopped counting.)

Because we're always coming up with new designs, I thought that I'd start sharing a few of them over here every once in a while.  I've started this new segment called "Creative New Mouse Ears" to showcase some of those ear designs.

This past week, Eliot and I worked really hard to print, paint, glue, glitter, finish, and photograph seven new mouse ear designs for our Happily Ever Hatter social media accounts as part of my Christmas in July week.  We got a good response on Facebook and Instagram so I thought this would be the perfect way to kick off this new segment!

Glitter Santa Candy Apples

The first new pair of ears that we posted were mouse ears that I almost finished back before our Disney cruises and WDW trip back in December.  I ran out of time before finishing the Santa hats, so I finished them to start our week with some sparkle!


Mickey Cocoa Mug

I was so excited about this new design; it turned out so cute!  Eliot and I have been working on these since before Christmas of last year.  With all of our traveling last holiday season, we weren't able to make the edits and finish them in time.  Eliot just made the edits and we got them printed and finished.  I love how the Mickey sprinkles look on top of the whipped cream!  The details really make the cocoa design pop!


Mickey Dreidel

Of course, we had to include a Hanukkah design even if it's "Christmas" in July.  (Eliot is Jewish so the two holidays are usually grouped together in our minds.)  I had him make the Mickey dreidel design as it was the one I was most excited about.  We've also got other Hanukkah designs in mind.  There aren't many shops that sell Hanukkah mouse ears; we wanted to make sure Jewish Disney fans had a few options as well!


Candy Cane Hearts

I loved the Disney Christmas Treats collection from the parks last holiday season.  Eliot and I both have matching Spirit Jerseys.  I also got the Loungefly backpack, t-shirt and leggings.  We decided that the candy cane heart design from those would be a fun pair of mouse ears so we created this fun design that matches the park merchandise!


Christmas Toy Story Aliens

Eliot and I both love the Toy Story Alien popcorn buckets available at the parks the past few years.  (Ooh... the holidays!)  Eliot had the idea to make these ears last year and like the Candy Apples, we never had a chance to get them finished with all of our traveling.  We finally finished them this past week and I love how they came out!  We even glittered the ear edges on our sample to add a little extra sparkle!


Christmas Flower Crown

I love making flower crowns and I've been trying to finish this one for a while now.  I've had the red mouse ears and a few of the greenery pieces set aside in a ziplock bag for a while but every time I tried to finish them, I wasn't feeling the creative flow.  Friday afternoon, I cranked up the Hamilton soundtrack and started playing around with the placement.  After gluing the greenery bases, it needed more and I added the smaller pieces with the pinecones.  I love how they turned out!  They really sparkle too!


Glitter Disney Cruise Line

We finished our week of holiday ears with our Glitter Disney Cruise Line ears.  This design wasn't the original one we planned on using, but it worked in a pinch.  (The original design was wanted to finish with is very complex, has a lot of parts and we didn't want to rush finishing it.  It's my favorite Christmas design that we've made thus far and I want to do it justice!)  I love these glitter ears though.  We took these on our Disney Christmas Cruises and they were my favorite ears that I made for the trip!  


It was so much fun to make all of these new mouse ears for Christmas in July!  I'm excited to add them to our Christmas and Hanukkah ear collections.  We've got so many more holiday designs on our to do list!  Hopefully we'll be able to work on some more of those between now and Christmas!  I hope you enjoyed getting some behind-the-scenes insider info of some of our new 3D printed mouse ear designs!  °o°

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