Happy Halloween!
Oct 31
It’s Halloween! One of our favorite holidays We went to Monroe’s Orchard & Farm Market to get pumpkins to carve and apples for Missy to make a pie. Missy, Dane, and I spent last night carving cool pumpkins. Take a look…
Missy and Dane intently carving their masterpieces
My Jack Skelington pumpkin
Missy's Alien from Toy Story pumpkin. The ears are awesome!
Dane's Batman Symbol pumpkin
All three pumpkins on display
Make Magazine
Oct 23
Make Magazine picked up the Changing Portrait project I did for Halloween this year. Check out the project write up I did for them here:
http://makezine.com/projects/disney-inspired-changing-portrait-using-a-raspberry-pi/
Disney Inspired Haunted Mansion Prop
Oct 07Okay folks,
Anybody who knows me knows I am a Disney nerd and a huge fan of the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disney World in Orlando Florida. So this Halloween I decided to put my Raspberry Pi ($40 computer) and an old Dell 19” monitor to good use and built a Master Gracey changing portrait to hang over my mantle.
My personal overall cost for this project was around $110 and about 3 evenings of work. Your costs and time involved may vary as I already had an old 19” LCD monitor, some plywood cutoffs, and drywall screws in my shop to make the monitor box. The PDF file at the end of this post is a basic list of what you would need to make this prop. It is not a How To per se because the hard part is building the box to house the monitor and building that is going to depend on the specific size and configuration of your LCD monitor .
Changing Portrait Frame Parts List – PDF
UPDATE – This project can now be seen on Make Magazine’s projects page — 
Anri Monk
Aug 05Here is a great example of an Anri Monk. This guy needed some repair work done on the lever and had a couple chips that needed repaired. He has great patina and everything was repaired to match perfectly so the integrity of the piece remained intact.
Anri Monk in need of repairs
Anri Monk All Fixed
Anri Monk close up
Nutcracker Museum July Newsletter
Jul 23Hi everyone, hope everybody is having a fantastic Summer! Just wanted to let everyone know The Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum’s July Newsletter features Nutcrackers carved in America and gives a short bio of each artist.
Low and behold, I’m one of the featured artists! That’s awesome!
Arlene did a great write up on me and I am absolutely thrilled to be featured in the newsletter. Here is what Arlene had to say:
“New on the scene and already a formidable competitor of the European carvers is Brandon Etto of Ohio. Brandon’s “Sea Horse” is the only non-European carving in a case of wildlife nutcrackers shown in the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum, and it receives a steady stream of compliments. Next week an artfully carved “Snail” will be added to the case. You can see much of his unique work at www.ardoria.com.”
“Brandon’s talent is doubly important to nutcracker collectors for his repair work on antique nutcrackers is highly regarded. He has completed work for many of the well known collectors in both the United States and Europe. We entrusted a 16th century boxwood nutcracker to Brandon who replaced the missing bird on his head, a sign of nobility. We sent drawings and pictures of similar specimens for guidelines and we are extremely pleased with the results. You can see photos of this nutcracker being repaired on the March 2011 page on “what’s New” on the museum website. “
Here is a link to the July Newsletter. It has pictures of the Snail and Seahorse Nutcrackers that have a permanent home at the museum. Thanks again Arlene for the great newsletter and your support!
http://www.nutcrackermuseum.com/Newsletter4.htm
—– Brandon