You've probably already printed one of Karen's ducks. Nate ran a plate of 25 Uncle Sam ducks off the printer for the 4th — every one of them came off a model Karen Chau designed. So when she sat down with me in The Padded Room, I wanted to get past the ducks and into how she actually thinks.

Turns out the ducks are the easy part. Karen came up through 2D design — she's been on Zazzle since 2013, does mascot commissions and small-business sites, and carries a real UX brain into the modeling app. It shows in how deliberately she works: she sketches every model in GoodNotes before she ever opens the software, and she keeps her prints support-free on purpose. We get into the captain duck she just finished, a goose bike-horn built around a printable "Squeaker," her favorite functional print (a maker-chip holder), and a no-glue negative slot she's genuinely proud of for mounting event pins.

The honest stretch of the conversation is the business side — the part she'll tell you she wishes she were better at. How do you take free models on Printables and MakerWorld and turn them into something sustainable? Her answer is a commercial license that lets other makers sell prints of her work, which is how her ducks end up on tables that aren't hers. We also get into the "duck pond" overlay she's vibe-coding for her own Twitch stream — usernames spawn colored ducks, raids parachute in — and the community sculpting game night she's putting together.

This is the show where we sit down with the makers and creators we already enjoy watching and actually get to know them. Grab a seat.

Find Karen Chau:

• Website: karenchaudesigns.com
• Twitch (where she goes live): twitch.tv/karenchaudesigns
• Socials: @karenchaudesigns (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Threads)
• Models: MakerWorld @KCD3D · Printables
• Support: Patreon + Ko-fi, linked from her site

Watch more / join the community:

• Asylum Life: AsylumLife.com
• Discord: discord.gg/asylumlifemakes