Stuff I Love - Monday Morning Edition

Monday morning has always been an excuse for a little retail therapy, but an upcoming wedding weekend offers a legitimate reason to head off into the Etsy-verse looking for a few fashion-forward (i.e. slightly less "mom" than my usual) pieces. Here are some of the highlights from my shopping expedition:


Clio Love Rio dress by Wildewear.


Love 50s repro floral dress by MaisyBrownReproRetro.



Simple and brilliantly-designed Da Da Bubble Dress by wearit.

Sigh... I adore shopping. So much desire to be fabulous, so little clothing money in the budget... Time is running out to decide what in the world I'm wearing for this big event, so stay tuned to see if I actually pull the trigger on any of these fantastic finds.

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?

More Great Product Pics - Scraps Of Time

The quest for the perfect product pics continues and my constant perusal of other Etsy shops is starting to get out of control. Take a look at these great pics from fellow paper crafter, ScrapsOfTime. Very simple, eye-catching, using props creatively but not distractingly. Love it.




How adorable are those tags, by the way? ScrapsOfTime is an Etsy veteran with a gorgeous store and lots of unique and fabulously vintage paper offerings. If you're a scrapper or a paper addict with a penchant for days gone by, you'll LOVE her shop. Check out more of my ScrapsOfTime faves here and here.

Fun In The (Slight Lack Of) Sun

This is how I know I've acclimated to the Texas weather. My husband and I determined that since it was such a "nice day" on Monday (95 degrees), we should take advantage of his very rare vacation day and have some family fun at a local farm that has a petting zoo-type area and lots of room to roam around and act all countryfied. If I haven't mentioned it before, we relocated from Seattle about a year ago to a suburb of Dallas that is quickly becoming fairly cosmopolitan, but that still has a working ranch here and there scattered among the office parks, Central Markets, nightmare quantities of chain restaurants... you get the picture.

Anyway, although I grew up in a rural area and am very used to the whole "cow" scene, a farm was a bit of a novelty for my daughter, who spends most of her summers indoors or in the pool (they all do here - too hot for anything else).




We paid our $5 each and did the whole touristy thing, including feeding the chickens, goats and sheep, marveling at the longhorns, petting the horses, and a quick hay ride around the pond, all the while talking about how "pleasant" it was with the "breeze," which pretty much felt like a blow dryer.

Family fun accomplished! We avoided, however, discussing the adjacent sausage plant. Although I'm sure the significance would have been lost on my daughter, somehow it just didn't seem right...

I'm a Sucker for Great Product Pics...

Ok, so I've been a bit obsessed of late with my product pics. I don't like them. There's no other way to say it. And I'm not sure exactly how to improve them... Light box? Better staging? Creative props? Really, there's only so much you can do. Ultimately, I'm going to have to get a rectangle-shaped object to look good within a square frame, all without losing any detail. Further, I'm just going to have to accept that the pics that work well within a teeny tiny product list on Etsy simply may not work in my Trunkt portfolio, where the pics are NOT square and display much larger than the pics in my shop.

Anywho, while I continue to stew about this most important topic, I spend a fair amount of time perusing other shops looking for the most clickable and creative product pics. Some of the best I've come across belong to dorijenn, jewelry designer from Israel. Her pics show her products in subtle, artsy, vintage-y settings, creating an entire virtual atmosphere for her shop. While her banner's cool too, it's really the product pics that make you feel like you've walked into a really hip antique store when you visit. You can almost smell every element of each pic. Really, it's almost impossible not to click. See for yourself.




If not for an influx of custom orders, I'd surely be locked in a room with my camera by now, trying anything and everything to get my pics to even approach this level of fabulousness. But alas, time constraints are limiting my ability to pursue my obsession for the moment. Rest assured that if I figure it out, I'll let you know.

Etsy Finds in Action - My Photography Obsession Pays Off

If you're keeping track, yes, it's the 9th of July and my 9th post in July. I've resolved to update daily this month, and by golly, I'm going to do it!

You may recall a recent feature with Hilary Hitchcock wherein I confessed that I'd make a couple of (ahem) purchases in her shop. As actual purchases (as opposed to trades or SNS secrets) are a bit of a rare occurrence for me, it was a pretty big deal. Well, I'm thrilled to announce that I finally managed to acquire some frames and have prominently placed my fabulous Etsy finds on the poor lonely white wall in my dining room. Pretty much the first things you see when you walk in the door. Take a look.


At the far right of this arrangement is one of my all-time faves from LJ Design & Photo, "Which Way Today" from her Route 66 series. Across the room, I'm proud to show off another LJ original, "Ladybug and Bee," which my daughter is positively obsessed with.


My apologies to Hilary and Lorissa for not doing their work justice with my horrible lighting and atrocious fake tree (please don't judge me too harshly - absolutely NOTHING will grow in that corner). I suggest you check out their work for yourself! The Hilary Hitchcock prints can be found here, here, here, and here.

Ah, Yes. Front Page. That's Good Stuff.

Yesterday afternoon I returned to my computer to find a series of convos and this fabulous image:


Sweet sweet sweet! Fourth time, actually. But why do I always miss it?!? It's not as though I don't spend enough time on Etsy. Sheesh. Thanks so much to funkychicboutique for the screenshot.