The Return of the Absent One

Dang! Where does the time go?! I was perfectly aware that I had not posted anything for quite awhile, but TWO AND A HALF MONTHS! Gee whiz.

So now I've returned with an obnoxious vengeance - posting yesterday and working on 2 posts today, without any explanation of my whereabouts the past 10 weeks. But since you are a faithful blog reader, I'm sure you are used to such blogging behavior and perhaps you have even behaved this way yourself. Anyway, on with the post...

I have many things to tell you about but right now, I need to keep it short since I'm procrastinating cleaning the house. I still need to get the house done in about an hour, but I like living on the edge, so I'll cram this post in as quickly as I can (for the added adrenaline rush).

The past couple of nights I've been working on posting new items in my Etsy shop. I painted these wooden necklaces quite awhile ago, but just got around to posting them:

I hadn't planned on selling any jewelry, but these tiny pieces of wood were so fun to paint, I couldn't help but make them into something. If I do some more, I might think of some other purpose for them, like a tiny wall hanging or something.

Last night I worked on these:

I've been a little down/grumpy lately, so working on these have been very calming. I love to make tags and carve rubber stamps. I think I'll have to keep doing this - it's much cheaper than therapy!

I currently have 54 items for sale in my shop. I'm hopping to get up to 100 items in the next few weeks. I've read that more items helps increase shop traffic and I would love to have more traffic.

Ok, well, better go clean so my kids won't be embarrassed when their friends come over! :)

Just a Few Bullet Points to Get Caught Up

• It's hotter than Hades here in Columbia, Missouri. It's expected to stay this way until at least Friday. I hate being hot, it makes me sweaty, smelly and grumpy!

• Velma (the hen) has been escaping into the backyard of our neighbors - again. They are very nice people and have not complained. They let me toss my kids over the fence to chase the chickens back into our yard. (The hen has to fly, the chicks just run through the fence). Then I hoist my kids back over to our side of the fence.

• Today, I clipped Velma's wings. I read about how to do it, last night in my farm book (by Joel Salatin). After I did it, I cried because I was afraid Velma wouldn't be able to protect her chicks any more with those short, stubby little wings. That, and the fact that she looked kind of stupid. But after spending time on Youtube, seeing many other people clipping the wings of their run away chickens, (and describing it as being the same as a haircut for you and me), I felt much better.

• I listed three new items in my Etsy shop and I'm very proud of them:

These were made with rubber stamps that I had designed and carved myself. The owl, tree branch and leaves are 3 separate stamps and the tree on the little tree tags is stamped with 2 stamps. I really love carving rubber stamps, especially when I have designs I like.

• Finally, LC's Cottage used my little tree tags in her Etsy Treasury. I think this is a beautiful treasury and am really excited to have been included.

Here's the treasury link if you'd like to see a bigger photo

Etsy Treasury

I love to open my email to find a surprise message from someone. Whether it's someone I haven't heard from in awhile or someone who is purchasing from my Etsy shop. I love it. Today I got a message from Devi of Hippie Kingdom letting me know she had included some of my tags in her treasury. I'm really excited about this because I've only been in a couple of other treasuries and I've never actually gotten to see my stuff in a treasury. So thanks for letting me "toot my own horn" here by posting the treasury. I hope you'll take some time to check out Hippie Kingdom and the others who are included in this treasury.

Photo Breakthrough

There are some days when I feel pretty hopeless - which I'm sure I've mentioned here before. I don't like to keep bringing it up because I don't want to be known as a whiney blogger. However, it's just a fact about me...I often let things overwhelm me, beat me down and I fall into the pit of "woe is me".

But today, I crawled out of the pit for a little while, saw the sun, got some things accomplished and thought I'd better blog about it! A few weeks ago, I told you about a workshop being taught at Artlandish Gallery on product photography (by the lovely and talented Nichelle Lawrence). I didn't really participate in the workshop because I was helping build light boxes for it, but I got to hear some of the helpful tips.

Since then, I've built my own light box, (which is quite cool, if I say so myself), and have been on the hunt for daylight light bulbs. Let me just mention that if you are looking for daylight bulbs and you don't really know what you are doing, don't be distracted by the GE reveal reader bulbs. The pictures on the packaging made me think I was buying the right bulb, or at least a bulb that would work, but I was sadly mistaken. The photos I took with reveal were more of a pinkish color than the normal yellow I've taken in the past.

So today, I walked into Westlake Hardware and decided to actually ask someone for the daylight bulb instead of trying to find it myself. Even after the guy pointed to them and said "they are the ones with the blue on the label", I still almost picked the one with the green label (sometimes I really wonder about myself and my goofy little brain). I happened to have a $5 gift card (I'm on the Ace Rewards Plan), so the bulb only cost under $3. Which is nice, since I've spent about $10 or so pursuing bulbs that were of no help at all.

I came home, screwed in the light bulb (how many artists does it take to screw in a light bulb? It turns out, only one!) and took some photos. I am very pleased with how the photos turned out. No yellow, no pink or any other funky colors. Just fairly clear, normal light. Because I liked my pictures, and because I've made a couple of sales this week, I was motivated to list three new tag sets today. Woo hoo! Maybe next time Nichelle teaches a workshop (hopefully sometime in May), I can listen in on the parts I missed and come up with some cool lighting techniques. Until then, I'm pretty pleased with what I have.

So the two photos above are ones that I hate and ones that I normally take. And these are the ones I'm feeling very proud of today:

I realize I still am no professional, but I feel much better about these product photos. Hopefully, I will stay motivated enough to continue to work on them and not be so easily discouraged. It's fun to have lots of things up in my Etsy shop, but it's not so much fun to work hard and not have good results.

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope wherever you are, Spring is warm and beautiful. It sure is here in Mid Missouri!

Law & Order & Tags

I've been making tags, though I'm not sure why. They're fun and easy and I can do them while I watch t.v. I had over 100 episodes of Law and Order recorded on DVR. If I watched all of those shows and didn't do anything else, well...nothing would be done. It turns out that after several days of watching 1-3 episodes of L&O per day, I couldn't take it any more. No matter how attractive I think Sam Waterson and some of those detectives might be, there was just too much killing going on. So, I deleted all the episodes (except for one) that I had recorded and canceled all future recordings.

I didn't really mean to go into my t.v. viewing habits in this post, but sometimes stuff just happens. Anyway, here are some new tags that are made from rubber stamps I carved. I hope you like them.