We're Vanessa and Branson. We run The Scale Grail™ out of our home studio in North Carolina. It's just the two of us for now!
When you order something from our shop, we place it into production. Depending on what it is this process can take on many steps.
Here's how it works.
The model
Every piece starts as a 3D file like a digital sculpt of the animal, skull, or object at an exact scale. Some we design ourselves. Some come from sculptors we license from, artists who spend serious time getting anatomy and proportion right at miniature size.
Scale isn't decoration. A skull for a 1:12 dollhouse shelf has to be the right size, or it looks off. We work in 1:12, 1:24, 1:48, 1:87, and our MICROS line for things like resin jewelry and dice with each one sized to fit where it's supposed to go.
The print
We use resin printing. It's messier than filament printing and takes a lot more steps to get the final product, but it captures detail that filament can't, like fur and wood texture, at scales where those details are only a millimeter wide.
Every piece is cured, cleaned, and looked over before it goes in a box. Resin printing leaves may leave minor support marks on some pieces, which we mention in our listings so there are no surprises.
Made when you order it
We don't stock inventory. Your order goes into the queue when you place it, gets printed, gets packed, and ships with tracking. That's why fulfillment takes 7–10 business days, it's not sitting on a shelf waiting for you.
The upside is we can make almost anything in our catalog on demand, and we can do custom work that a pre-made inventory operation never could. It allows us to keep our available models large.
Why we built our own store
We've been on Etsy for years. With 7,200+ reviews, 4.9 stars we've built quite a home there. Etsy is fine, but it puts a wall between us and the people buying from us. This store lets us talk directly to our customers, offer custom orders properly, and build something that's actually ours.
If you want something you don't see in the shop, or have a question about a specific piece, go to our Custom Orders page or just reply to any email we've sent you. We answer everything.
— Vanessa & Branson