Eye Candy: Cezanne

I was 22 the first time I saw this Cezanne still life - La table de cuisine - and it was the first time I ever really understood cubism. Not that this painting is cubism - it's not - but cubism was first explained to me as the painter trying to show every side of the object at once. Which ....ok, I guess? But here I could see a first step towards cubism - color in blocks and a slightly flattened perspective with that gourd and basket that look like they're both falling off the table and falling forward over all the pears and apples.

I'm still not sure I instinctively enjoy cubism, but I do appreciate it a lot more.

Mmmm.... Lollipops

We took the opportunity at our last photoshoot to fill in some holes in our product shots - in this case, we wanted to get lollipop pile photos where we focus in on all the flavors. We'd done it for some of the flavors during the holiday season, but I wanted to get all of them. These are my favorite ones - I couldn't very well post all of them - though I thought about it! You can see all of them on our Facebook page or our Flickr account.

photo by Kevin Keeker

photo by Kevin Keeker

photo by Kevin Keeker

Deathmatch!

Once we’ve decided which flavors will graduate from the vigorous taste testing rounds to become part of our flavor collections, we still keep working to make them taste even better. Enter: THE DEATHMATCH.

In deathmatches, we usually keep a flavor’s ingredients the same, but change up the proportions to see if we can push the combination to its yummiest potential. Our taste testers love deathmatch season, where two versions of a lollipop enter the competition but only one will survive.

I recently took a pair of lollipops with competing recipes to an EtsyRAIN meetup (EtsyRAIN is the kick-butt Etsy street team for Seattle). The evening’s votes were very close: version A had a slight edge over B, and both versions were judged to be very good.

photo by EtsyRAIN’s fearless leader, Marlo M. Check out her blog about small object photography!

I personally preferred A and I also found A and B to be more similar than I had expected. I’ll probably make at least one more version where I really try to push one of the flavors to become significantly more prominent. We’ll see how that one fares soon!

Samples!

When you order lollipops from us, we always include a sample of another flavor. This is what they look like!

photo by Kevin Keeker

We've had people comment that they think they're earrings before realizing that they're candy and they can eat them. So consider this a public service announcement: they're delicious!

photo by Kevin Keeker

Eye Candy: Slinky

pic from
 Curious George's Notes from the Hut

I was casting about for an appropriate topic for today's eye candy post - which means I was scanning the page of ideas as well as a couple of other websites I use for inspiration - when my eye landed on the Slinky that lives on my desk.

It might be the post-lunch food coma, I'm in, but the Slinky is kind of an amazing toy. It's fun to play with. Almost everyone likes them. They help teach high school & college kids physics. They come in all sorts of colors (though I have to admit that I prefer the classic metal ones). And I find that shuffling its weight from one hand to the other* is oddly relaxing. I just wish I lived in a house with stairs so I could use it more often.

* Or whatever it's called when you hold one end in each hand and move your hands so it shifts its weight back and forth. Shuffling seemed like a close enough word. Is there a better term?

Fun with Charm School Dropouts

Sometimes we get a little goofy whilst doing photoshoots. Which leads to situations where we pretend the lollipops are listening to music.

photo by Kevin Keeker

Or we give them bunny ears.

photo by Kevin Keeker
Marika Brussel's hand

In extreme situations, they'll even get little hats.

photo by Kevin Keeker
hats by Marika Brussel

You should always have fun with your food!