Monday Madness

So, it's 7 AM and I've spent the last 2 hours (my precious child-free morning card-making time) fighting with my printer over borderless printing. While trying to crank out my weekend orders, I come to the horrible realization that, although my terribly old and slow Gateway laptop has been producing borderless notecards by way of my beloved fancy HP printer without any issues for the last year, apparently my brand new ultrafast Dell laptop cannot. WHAT THE?!? Although I tried every semi-techie trick in my arsenal to make Vista talk nicely to my pretty pretty printer, it simply IS NOT POSSIBLE.

Ummmmmmmmm.... yeah. Just a minor problem. It's only my best-sellers that rely on borderless printing... Hehehe... I'm sure it will be fine....

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

And sooooooooo, since I can't, uh, make any cards this morning in support of my card-making business, I decided instead to make.....



stickers! When life hands you lemons, right? In an attempt to lighten the mood and give the day a little positive-energy kickstart, I stuck my happy little logo girl all over everything in sight, including the one outgoing order I was able to complete. Ah, well. I'd been meaning to pretty-up my packaging anyway...

Me? A Drama Queen?! How Dare You!

I've spent the morning thus far (2 hours or so) sourcing free vector shapes for some holiday design projects I'm working on. Yes, it's that time of year already...

Sourcing is always a drama. Licensing varies greatly from one site/artist to the next. Let's start with the premise that, unless I'm working on a corporate project, I don't even bother with pay sites - too 'spensive and I'm not interested in just plopping somebody else's elaborate digital artwork onto a card and reselling it. So I'm going to a site that advertises "free" or "royalty-free" vectors. What I'm generally looking for are simple shapes that I can stretch, skew, recolor, chop up, and render completely unrecognizable. But because the licensing issue is so complicated, when I come across something I need, I have to go through this whole big process of determining whether my intended use is acceptable. Can I use it commercially? Yes, great. Ok, can I alter it so as to make it unrecognizable? Yes? Fabulous! Can I use it on a greeting card for resale? No?! But it's just a little swirly thing that won't even look the same! Ok, so how much would it cost for me to be able to use it in my design? 100 dollars?!? What the?!

I know it's a touchy topic. I know everybody deserves to get paid for their work, and I'm definitely not attempting to make the point that all design elements should be free. But I also know that there are lots and lots and LOTS of designers out there that simply ignore the rules without consequence - the buyer certainly doesn't know the difference. You see threads about it all the time in the Etsy forums. We all pretty much use the same sources for our images, so when someone recognizes a design element in another seller's work, the assumption is usually made that an infringement has occurred. But in fact, there's no way to whether someone has paid an extended license fee or not. It's a mess.

I'm very very very careful about the imagery I use in my designs. My vintage graphics are all, to the very best of my knowledge, copyright-free and come from either public domain sites or "share" sites. I use fonts and vector "dingbats" that I've purchased legally, and then read and re-read the contracts to make sure they're ok for resale. And there most certainly ARE benevolent graphic artists out there that will allow you to use their shapes, callouts, dingbats, whatever in any way you like. And when I find them? Woohoo!! So what's my point? That it takes an incredible amount of searching and fine-print-reading to find even the simplest little design elements. And, really, who has that kind of time?

Alrighty, I'm done. PMS? Why do you ask?

The Lame List

1. Morning tantrums = lame
2. Starbucks lines = lame
3. Screwed up drink order = LAME (and that like never happens at the 'bucks, right?)
4. 170 ribbon-closure invitations to finish = lame lame lame (but oooooh sooooo pretty - take a peak...)



5. Non-functional wifi = super lame
6. Post office lines = lame
7. Mystery fatique-causing illness cropping up in the middle of extremely busy week = really really really lame

And now, the LOVELY list...

1. Forgetting the diet and getting a (corrected) rare and yummy iced mocha = lovely
2. Getting that large custom order I'm so proud of out the door = definitely lovely
3. Finishing the 170 ribbon-tie invitations and getting them ready to ship = lovely!
4. Two hours of virtually free childcare at my gym = soooooo lovely
5. Finally getting my Project Wonderful ad finished = lovely lovely lovely
6. Getting my AWESOME new laptop bag earlier than expected all the way from the land down under (thanks, glorydaze!) = beyond lovely



7. Having all my chores done, my daughter asleep, and finally having a chance to get to work on those new invitation designs.... love it, love it, love it, lovely.

The Agony and the Ecstasy -- First Craft Show Set-up

This weekend marked an important milestone for Macaroni and Glue - my first attempt to showcase my product for a live, in-person audience. It wasn't any major thing - just a little bazaar-type sale with my local women's group. But I used it as an opportunity to evaluate my product line, create new designs/retire old ones, and to work on my overall branding in an effort to create a cohesive mini-shop that would be as closely aligned with my online shop as possible.

Despite the fact that the weather turned bad and sales were DISMAL (and, no, I don't want to talk about it...), I got great feedback on my product and on my "booth." And I was very proud of both! What do you think?

But for the DISMAL sales (oh, did I mention that already?), I'm really glad that I was able to muster the courage to put a display together. It gave me focus in the weeks leading up to the sale and provided a great incentive to spend time designing new items to help round out my Etsy shop.

The new designs, by the way, will be popping up in the shop over the course of the next week or so. Look for more variety in my greeting card offerings and a couple of great new boxed sets. In fact, I've updated my shop sections to accommodate some more diverse pieces. Here are a few of my faves from the new batch: