Australia 2!

After my post yesterday, I got another inquiry from the land down under, this time asking about shipping for three cards and some customizations.

Weird!

Maybe I have some friends in Australia that I don't know about....

Australia!

It can't quite decide if it's a continent or a nation. It's the land o' kangaroos, cane toads and Crocodile Dundee.

And now someone down in the land down under is going to be getting my Three Reasons Why He's Your Hero Card.

Yay!

I LOVE making international sales... it makes me feel so... global (but in a good, not evil, multi-national way)!

So far, I've sold to Australia, Italy (a couple of times), South Africa, Canada, Singapore and... ummm... New Jersey?

Well, let's just say that the international orders are still a fun and interesting experience for me!

Scrabble Tile Necklace Tutorial!

I have ALWAYS thought those nifty Scrabble tile necklaces were super cool! Now, finally, are very complete instructions on how you can make them yourself from the Makes and Takes site!

Very cool!

Where it all began (more or less)

When my twin boys turned two, I put my all into their birthday party. I selected a bug theme after seeing the cute ladybug invitations idea in (I think) a Family Fun Birthday Ideas booklet (since then, I've seen this idea ALL over the place).

I designed the invitation on the computer using Freehand, printed them out and cut them by hand. The brads are the GINORMOUS ones that you can buy from any store for kids' projects (I really love the newer mini-brads, much less imposing).

Anyway, I got a lot of great reaction to these invitations after I sent them out. Getting that kind of feedback was a bit addictive. I worked even harder on the following year's invitations, which were, basically, my spinning fish cards, which were among the first things I listed on etsy.

Last year, I designed the spinning circus invitations for the boys' ninth birthdays. People LOVE these -- I get a ton of feedback about these. The fun thing about these is that the text (which is all customizable) scrolls through the white banner while fun, circusey images appear in the doorway of the tent below. When the birthday child's name is mentioned, their face shows up. I get amazing google search engine positioning on this item.

In the spring, I made invitations for a home brew party that we threw. I was so pleased with the invitations I designed (which were a variant of my Beer Buddy Cards) that I sent out more than double the number I really should have (resulting in a huge, but fun, crush).

Since then, I found an outlet on etsy and have added a few other things to the line-up besides these, but these three items are still among my very favorites and are perennial best sellers.

Another Chair Makeover

Encouraged by my success with redoing an old, dilapidated chair I've had for decades in my appropriately title "I Heart Spray Paint" post, I decided to redo another chair that had been languishing in our basement, too gross to actually allow guests to rest their posteriors upon.

Plus, I could use some leftover spray paint and fabric, which really appeals to my inner scrooge.

Again, very pleased with the result! I put the pretty picture right at the top because it's the nicest one. The middle shot shows the chair with it's lovely rusted rip in its deteriorating vinyl top.

The bottom shot shows how it looked all pulled apart. I just carefully unscrewed anything I could unscrew and everything came apart quite nicely.

I sanded the frame down a bit and then applied my lovely apple green paint all over. I used the old chair cover as a rough pattern to cut out my fabric. The padding was all squished down, so I added extra from an old arm chair headed to the dump.

Getting the fabric nice and taut on the seat was a little tricky -- normally, you can just staple everything down, but not with this metal-framed chair. After trying a few things, I sacrificed some old elastic and zig-zagged it across the frame, using safety pins so I wouldn't have to do much sewing. This made it reasonably flat when I put everything back together.

I think it looks quite nice next to the other made over chair! Now I just need to find a junky old table to put between them...

French Scanned Artwork

French copyright laws are, as I understand it (and, mind you, I am not an expert) much more lax than American copyright laws, meaning that images fall into public domain much faster there than here.

This means that there are tons of wonderful images across the pond that you may use in your own work (or at least be inspired by them.

A wonderful site that features a wide variety of images is Agence Eureka.I love this site.

I imagine that a collage artist would find a lot here to use to layer in their work.

From old cinema glamor shots to scans of kitschy packaging to wonderful wildlife illustrations, you'll find it all....

For me, I am most interested in the ideas for fun paper toys that were published once, long ago. If that kind of thing appeals to you, then be sure to check out the category on the right for "cat. découpages." In this case, découpage has very little to do with mod podge and a whole lot to do with fun things for kids to cut out and assemble.

There are little jointed animals that move when you pull a lever, dioramas, little cars to glue together, games a whole ton more.

Of course, I'm in love with the mechanical toys, like those I assembled at the very bottom. As the instructions are in french, it is often a bit mysterious as to what these toys do until after it's all assembled but that's all part of the fun.

Enjoy!

Powell's Order: Complete and Delivered!

Done and delivered!

(Actually, I delivered my Powell's order last Wednesday, but life sometimes gets in the way of a timely blog posting...)

My order included:

• 6 Flying pig pop-up cards
• 6 Pig on red pop-up cards (this is a plain version of my National Pig Day card)
• 6 "First comes love..." cards (not yet available on etsy
• 6 Tree-themed Three Reasons cards (generic version of my Mother's Day card)
• 6 Groovy Girl Three Reasons cards (generic version of my Mother's Day card)
• 6 Sailboat Three Reasons cards
• 6 Floral Three Reasons cards (generic version of my Mother's Day card)
• 6 Cute bunny in boat Three Reasons cards
• 6 Happy Birthday to my beer buddy cards

That's it! Not an enormous order -- I'm not going to remodel the house with the money, but a nice little start and not too stressful to put together.

In addition to making them, I had to figure out a way to package them so that a casual shopper at Powell's would understand what they did. For the cards that actually pop up, I found clear plastic sleeves that would allow the person to open the cards and see the pop-up while protecting the outside of the card and keeping the card with the envelope. This leaves the actual pop-up (the most fragile part of the card) potentially open to abuse, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that people will treat it kindly.

I also created stickers to go on the front of the pop-up cards (the fronts are generally somewhat plain, which I think increases the fun and surprise when you open it and there's a lovely pop-up that appears). And I made little slips of paper that go in the backs of the cards that explain the interactive parts of some of the cards (like how the Three Reasons cards work) and also introduce me as a local Portland crafter (I always like to hear these kinds of things myself when I buy stuff).

My mole inside of Powell's has told me to not expect them to appear on the shelves til after Monday (signage has to be created, etc)(they're creating SIGNAGE for me!).

Once they're up, I will post a note, for sure!

I'm also seriously considering asking friends to go in, find my cards and loudly declaim to anyone nearby how incredibly BRILLIANT the cards are and how they want to buy a million of them.