UPDATE 6/20/2025:

This project is still in the concept and funding stage. My initial plan for it was with the goal to make an edition of at least 100 copies at an estimated cost of $250-$350 each. I was planning to keep the cost low by using a mixture of printed plastic parts that joined with wooden parts so that I could keep the wood elements simple to fabricate.

About 50 folks put down $200 deposits in 2024 but that was only half of what I estimated that I'd need in order to have the financial side of it be viable for me to go ahead and execute the design, prototype, and production work. I put in a couple rounds of marketing effort to drum up more interest in the project but it seemed like sales in general were slowing down across the board.

I tried coming up with other ways to generate income from puzzles but nothing seemed to work so I put puzzlemaking on hold for the winter and got a job working at a machine shop making aerospace parts in order to get financially back on my feet a little bit. Once the weather got nice again, I quit that day-job and went back to working for myself to get back to delayed puzzle projects like this one.

Along the way, some folks have queried me for status updates on this project but my responses were slow in delivery and coming from a place of depression about feeling like a failure at making a living as an artist, so there wasn't much good news to share. A few folks have recently asked for their $200 deposit payments back so I've decided to stop kicking the can about this and make a decision about how to proceed forward.

I've come up with a few new plans and I'm going to send out emails to the 50 folks with reservations for this puzzle so that y'all can tell me how you want to proceed and then once there is a clear consensus coming back to me from the group then I'll proceed forward with what the group seems to want.

As described above, I wanted 100 orders for the edition but only got 50. I was hoping to get more interest by having such a low price but it didn't seem to work out that way. As I mentioned in my initial sales pitch:

I need to get at least 100 total pre-orders on this project (which would be 50% of the number of Get in the Spirit puzzles that I've sold) in order to have this project make financial sense to pursue. If I cannot get that many pre-orders then I will cancel this project and refund the deposit money.

At the point the logical conclusion of Plan A is to cancel the project and refund the money.

Many folks have expressed a desire for me to find a way to make it work somehow so I've come up with other plans (see below)

The idea here is to just run Plan A at only half size edition which would raise the price because I'd need to pro-rate the cost design, prototype, and production setup work across fewer puzzles.

• edition size:  smaller (only 50 puzzles)
• wood / plastic ratio:  same as Plan A (keep cost down)
• price:  increases (est. $400-600 range)

This is a variation on Plan B where the fabrication quality goes up in addition to the price.

• edition size:  smaller (less than 50 puzzles)
• wood / plastic ratio:  increases (more woodworking details, fewer plastic pieces overall)
• price:  increases (est. $500-1000 range)

The reason that I'm suggesting such a wide range for the price is because it would all depend on how big the edition size ends up being after I send out refunds to the folks that want them.

This is kind of the opposite of Plan C insofar that the woodworking gets less fancy and the inner workings of it are all 3D printed parts.

• edition size:  ???
• wood / plastic ratio:  decreases (all wooden elements simplified to just basic shapes)
• price:  same ($250-350 range + shipping)

Instead of wooden joinery it would be plastic pieces holding simple wooden slats like panels, so it wouldn't look like these concept renderings because there would be both wood and plastic visible from the outside. For example the feet of the chest of drawers would be plastic instead of wood.

In addition to coming up with these new plans, I've also put some time into making a mock-up 3D model of something that better illustrates my concept than that simple pen drawing. Some of the dimensions are still liable to change but overall this gives a pretty good representation of how the puzzle will look with the GITS sitting on top. The shape and size of the feet may still change a bit, plus I may still add some kind of trim work along the verticals and around the top rim like seen in the inspiration example image. The fancier looking it gets the closer it becomes Plan C territory.

As it currently stands, the shaker stand itself measures 11.6" tall on its own and has a 7" square footprint. With GITS on top it is 17" tall.