Selling crafty stuff online

So ArtFire just announced that they're offering Pro accounts at $5.95/month for up to 20,000 people who want them. They're now officially out of beta; actually I didn't even realize they were in beta!

I've never had much luck selling stuff online. It's partially me trying to do too much -- jewelry, scrapbooking, fine art, collage, sewing weird little creatures -- to ever have the time to focus on one product. To have a successful store, one needs a good product; a niche, almost; and a lot of it.

But based on the cost of some of the other craft sites, ArtFire's is a good deal. If you've got the goods.

As for me, I just need to clone myself or hire an intern. Maybe when my children are older I can conscript them... ha!

Robots and Robeez and design contests, oh my

It's been quite a week around here. First the Silhouette designer stuff happened, them I found out my robots design has been chosen as one of six semi-finalists for the Robeez baby shoe design contest (see Stride-Rite's Facebook page for details.)

The winner gets a bunch of cool stuff and I'm hoping it's me... not so much for the cool stuff, but for the possibility that they might like my design well enough to commission me to create more little creatures and silly designs for their shoes. I just love doing stuff like that.

And if that all weren't enough, one of my paintings was chosen as a semi-finalist in a calendar contest (details to come!). So I'm sitting here thinking, with all this good stuff, now what bad thing is going to happen??

Changes and other good stuff!

I'm so excited to announce that I've been accepted as a designer for Silhouette and am going to be selling things in the Silhouette store!!!

The Silhouette is a really cool machine that cuts shapes out of paper, vinyl or heat transfer so you can use it for about ten thousand things... scrapbooking, wall art, t-shirts, bags, plaques, Christmas presents of all shapes and sizes...

As someone who used to spend hours with my old X-Acto cutting out intricate (and annoying) little shapes, I can say from personal experience that the Silhouette is pretty cool.

Plus you can get pens that will sketch designs instead of cut them out -- I foresee production of a line of cards with my artwork, drawn by my Silhouette and handpainted with watercolors!

Hearts for Haiti

Here's my ATC for Hearts for Haiti. The elements might look a little familiar, since they're from my kits Love Letters and Be My Valentine Embellishment Pack.

I reused stuff from my kits since I just didn't have the motivation to create something new... or something non-digital.

I don't know what's wrong with me/us lately, but we've all been overly tired and cranky these days. Maybe it's just cabin fever. Yeah, spring can come any time. Really.

Somehow it's 2010

I don't know how this keeps happening. It's summer, and the next time I look out the window it's the middle of winter. Suddenly it's January and I'm way behind in getting my new kits finished and posted to my store.

So I'm trying, really trying to get caught up. I just listed two new ones... take a look!

My favorite season

Halloween is just around the corner! Check out my latest kit, Trick or Treat, now available at Scraphead.

This one has dozens of cute characters and word art, like my candy corn couple and wacky purple bat. Plus a bonus alpha! It coordinates perfectly with my kits, Fright Night and Haunted House, also available here in my store.

Congrats to my little brother!

The more I use Photoshop, the more cool things I discover it can do.

Last weekend my brother got married, and I've been playing around with his wedding photos, adding texture, filters, borders, color, etc. I'm encouraged by the results and think I may do more with photography.

But first I need a really good digital SLR ("need," ha ha...)

I have an old 35mm Leica which is, by far, the best camera I've ever used, but it's a film camera... Besides the cost and hassle of film, living way out here in the outer 'burbs as we do, there isn't a good pro camera shop to do the film developing and processing.

At the wedding, I used my brother's Canon (?), which I totally covet now. My Casio Exilim point and shoot is good, and does a decent job, but wow, what a difference between the quality of the photos my camera takes versus his camera!

Since we got back home after the wedding, I've been working on -- of course -- a wedding themed kit, called "Josephine". It's very nearly done, so I'll be posting it to my store in the coming days... stay tuned!

Here's a page done with the kit: