Monthly Recap: January 2026

Highlights of the Month

This month was filled with 2025 holiday wrap-up, 2026 new year goal setting, process experiments, educational and promotional content creation, and 3D model design and printing.

• Biggest wins: I love how my duck decor set turned out (along with the YT short I made). I'm also excited to have kicked off the year strong with releasing a tutorial on YT -- my goal is to reach 18 new long-form videos (of various types) this year!

• Something I’m proud of: With having spent so much of this month on DaVinci Resolve Studio to edit videos (and photos), I've been taking the time to learn how to use more features within the application to streamline my editing process. 

• A small but meaningful moment: In efforts to tackle my ever-growing collection of print prototypes and projects that are taking over every surface in my work area, I've started organizing them into empty filament boxes AND LABELING THEM -- this is key! While this is just the beginning, it's a small step to making my creative space easier and more enjoyable to use.

After wrapping up those holiday designs and commenter requests, I decided I needed Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) ducks, so I started with one holding red envelopes (lai see) -- there's a variation holding a larger red envelope, and another holding two smaller ones. I was hoping to get a few other CNY designs, but I got wrapped up with other priorities. 

My final models of the month are both fun and functional -- it's a duck decor set! I transplanted a succulent into the duck planter, and I love how the pond-shaped tray turned out -- the ripples! 💙

Lessons Learned

A few things I learned or was reminded of this month

• "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail" - Benjamin Franklin 

  • This quote is a good explanation to why it took me so much longer than I expected to put together the tutorial I released this month. While I'm proud of how the video turned out, planning it out more concretely before diving into recording would have saved so much time and effort.

• A funny mistake I made when trying out PET-G refill rolls (shop with my aff link) was putting the sticker on upside-down on a Bambu Lab spool. The guide on the sticker indicating how much filament is left was then in reverse direction, which would mean that as filament is removed from the spool, an increasing amount of filament would be remaining! Did I just find a secret filament hack?! 🤣 Infinite filament!

• 3D printing a multi-color design in a single color can really elevate it and change the vibes!

More Options to Buy My Work

Merch: Last month, I designed print-on-demand products with my snowducks that you can purchase on Zazzle.

Shop the snowduck collection on Zazzle

Physical prints: This month, I made a few of my designs available for purchase via the Thangs print-on-demand manufacturing powered by Shapeways. 

Shop for 3D prints on Thangs 

Looking Ahead to February

Next month I’m planning to focus on:

• More themed ducks for upcoming holidays: I already have one out for Chinese New Year, but I've been asked for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day ones as well.

• Strengthening my new habits and processes: I've been experimenting with a new mix of journaling, planning and tracking techniques to figure out what works best for me.

• Rest and slowing down to get more clarity on what I want to focus on for the upcoming months.

Thank You

Thank you for supporting my work — whether you made a purchase, left a comment, or just followed along. It really means a lot!

If you’d like updates as things release, you can:

• Join my Discord server to receive notifications of announcements (and chat!)

• Subscribe on YouTube for videos and shorts

• Follow on MakerWorld, Printables, Thangs, and Cults3D for 3D model releases (and occasionally on Ko-fi)

• Check back on the home page in the New & Featured section on the website
  
  

Stay tuned for more blog posts!

Thanks for reading and for all your support,

Karen