TL;DR: new sluggy soap dishes in the shop

Ten or twelve years ago (or maybe more) our apartment in San Francisco needed a soap dish. I wanted to make something decorative, and thought about what would look good covered in soap slime.

Banana slugs, of course.

Thus my first Sluggy Soap Dishes were born. I made a few extra and these surprisingly became a regular sales item. The earlier ones were made from a rolled slab, hand-cut into an oval with impressed designs, like these:

A lot of folks like these (and I still have a few for sale), but I wanted something that drained better than the impressed designs. This meant, of course, creating a custom extruder plate so that I could extrude deeply grooved soap plates with feet:

The result is really nice. Still all the charm of my original sluggy soap dishes, but better at holding the runoff from your soap.

The slugs are hand-sculpted, of course. After more than a decade of putting slugs on everything, I've become quite good at making them. I tried making molds for the slugs, but it's really faster for me to freehand them. And that way the slugs have more individual personality, too.

These would be a fun gift for anyone you know who likes slugs. They're useful for the bathroom, kitchen, or best of all the gardening sink. Order one now to have it in time for Hanukkah!

If you've followed my artwork, you know I have a thing for banana slugs. They're such an icon of the Pacific Northwest, and they are easy and fun to sculpt and add to vessels. So I make sluggy soap dishes and sluggy spoonrests and even slug mugs.

I blame this on my sweetie's family, who took me hunting for big banana slugs in the Olympics. And boy howdy, did we find some.

Given that, what could be more natural than adding a slug or two to a planter? Have a fake slug to look out for any real slugs and keep them away. And, once I put the slug on there, he looked lonely, so I added a few beetles too. Nothing threatening, just some brown or black beetles to crawl around the pot. Some folks may think they look creepy, but they remind me of the rain forest, full of growing things.

And thus the Sluggy Buggy Plant Pots became a thing. I currently have four of them in the store, for your indoor planting needs.

(before you ask: no, I didn't go to UC Santa Cruz)

And no, I didn't go to UC Santa Cruz. Although I'm happy to make stuff for alumni.