New butterfly pins - hand-painted animal jewelry!

I've just put five new butterfly pin designs up in our new online gift shop. Here are two of them - aren't they gorgeous? Here's a link to the insect jewelry, which includes the butterflies. Have fun exploring!

As if in celebration, we got our first order today from the new site. As many orders as we get from our original site (still going strong), its exciting to see the new one working :) It's much faster to upload items on the new site, so all of our painted jewelry should be up in a short time, although there may literally be a few hundred more designs to scan and upload. And the site is good for items where we don't have many of a particular item (since it's less labor-intensive). We've started a couple of new sections for art and craft objects made in Colombia and other Latin American countries (to help with tapir conservation and because we love the art!), and our plan is to grow that area of the site in the next few months as well. Come on over and take a look!

Animal drinking cups for children

Animal drinking cups for kids continue to be very popular this summer. We have ocean animal and land animals. The tails or, in the case of the giraffe, the neck is cleverly turned into a handle. Come see the lot of them! They come in a variety of colors, too.

Carved wood animal pens now in our new gift shop

Here's another series I've put online in the new gift shop. Check out our variety of animal-shaped ballpoint pens - hand carved and hand-painted in China.

Baskets from Colombia on our new site!

Our new gift shop is evolving and taking shape. One of the new categories is Werregue baskets from the coastal area of Colombia. We imported a small number of these high-quality and much-sought baskets as a trial run. We expect to have more within the next few months. As of this moment, I've put one of them on our site and I have three more sitting on my desk to put online as soon as I've finished this blog. The baskets are tightly woven of palm fibers, and a lining between the outer and inner woven surfaces allows the baskets to hold water! Come take a look!

Beautiful carved wood tapir for auction

Hi all, this whimsical and totally unique carved wood tapir is available for auction this week on our TPF blog. Check it out!

Extinct plastic animal toys continue to be favorites

Click any image for a bigger view.

Megatherium (giant ground sloth), deinosuchus (extinct alligator) and dunkelosteus (extinct aquatic eating machine) remain some of our more popular rubber or plastic animals. All of the above are made by Safari and manifest extremely realistic shapes, details and painting. These are quality educational toys, and are also great collector's items for animal lovers or students of our earth's long-distant past. See our online animal toy store for sizes, prices, and more extinct toy animals!

New dog jewelry online - boxers and more

If you like dogs and you like unique items, jewelry for special occasions, or you simply appreciate artistic creations, come check out our new Painted Animal Pins web site! We have some new dog pins online as well as a large number of other new animals.

Plastic cobras

Cobra snakes have always been one of the top search words used by people who come to our online animal store! We have plastic cobras in a variety of styles and sizes. We have 2-inch plastic cobras for dioramas, party favors, collectibles, etc., and we even have a 3-foot-long plastic cobra that you can pose. Come on over to our online store and check them out!

High visibility for tapirs: A stuffed tapir is his new best friend!

Pamela wrote to us on August 5, 2008:

Thanks for offering and shipping the wonderful new stuffed tapir. My son used his birthday money (which arrived right at the time you began taking pre-orders) to buy it and he is entirely satisfied -- thrilled would be more accurate. Even though he is 15, he has been taking it around the house with him and letting it perch on his shoulder; he really likes the wired legs which make the tapir posable. Here he is "modeling" Yanisa, while wearing the tapir shirt he got LAST year for his birthday. August loves doing his part to make tapirs more visible!

Blue whale jewelry - it's so blue!

This lovely realistic blue whale pin or oversized tie tack is now online on our new animal jewelry web site. Take a look. There is so much to see with over 170 pins now online and more coming soon. In fact, I'm going to work on another five to ten as soon as I post this blog entry. A lot of the whale's friends are also newly online. Check 'em out, OK?

"Top 10 Animal Horrors" - or, who's afraid of . . .

This is kind of fun. The Discovery Network has a number of "Animal Countdowns." This week they're giving us the top 10 animals that humans are afraid of. You know, it's often about our perception from childhood (such as fairy tales) or from movies rather than the facts about the animal that have made us fear them. As Discovery said, "There's never been a documented case of a wild wolf killing a person — in fact, they tend to be more scared of us than we are of them." The wolf is the 10th most feared animal. We have a number of these "Animal Horrors" in our gift shop, so let's see which ones on the top 10 are available in our store!


10. We have beautiful wolf jewelry.

9. And we have mouse jewelry and plastic mice.

8. Piranha jewelry. We also have lifelike plastic piranhas, but please call us toll free (888) 325-3179, because they aren't back online yet. Our new ones just came in!

7. Our grizzly bears tend to be cute rather than fearsome.

6. We have lots of great white sharks - plastic, jewelry, drinking cups for kids. . . .

5. Our bat pin is quite realistic. Click on the "englarge" option.

4. SPIDERS? We have lots of them! We even have spider jewelry, but it's not online yet, so give us a call!

3. Bees! We have them!

2. Second most feared? Snakes, of course. We have lots of those, too. We have many nice (or creepy, depending on your point of view) toy snakes to choose from!

1. And the finalist is. . . . ? The number one most feared animal is something we don't actually have: the parsitic worm. I won't even go there, but we have some nice, friendly earthworms. And we have stuffed toy maggots - now they ARE creepy. Again, you'll have to call or send e-mail as of this post date, because they aren't online yet.

Enjoy!