Etsy Nibble!

The original point of this blog was to support my etsy store. Over the past few months, I've lost a little of the obsession of using my beautiful little Craft Robo, quite possibly my most fun and exciting craft purchase ever (and one whose cost I justified by pointing out the thousands I was going to make on etsy).

I've had a bit of a dry spell on etsy for a few months. You get sales by keeping your store up-to-date (newer postings come up first in the search results) and by actively promoting your store in ways that I haven't been taking advantage of lately (one is by blogging about your various activities), so it's something of a miracle that someone actually did stumble upon one of my listings, for my circus/carnival invitations and asked about them.

She's planning a "Three-Ring Circus" theme for her three kids. In the works: a music instructor to entertain the wee ones, a popcorn machine, a bouncy structure, clown performance and other fun activities.

Fun! I love people who plan in advance (it makes my own obsessive planning six months ahead of time seem a little less crazy).

Hopefully she'll respond positively to my message back to her.... we'll see!

Polka Dot Birthday Party Invitations: DONE!

Remember this invitation? The mom contacted me late spring for the party that would take place in October. A mom after my own heart!

(there were some years that I started planning the boys' birthday party in January, locking in the theme, planning the invitations, looking for cake decorating ideas, etc)

The party would have a polka dot theme. She contacted me because she liked the other invitation I'd done and invited me to design something new.

It took many months and a lot of different comps and color variations, but we finally arrived at something that both of us were happy with.

The invitations shipped out early this month and, despite the post taking longer than the post office guy told me it would (and causing both of us some heartburn -- I was convinced that I would have to spend an entire weekend recreating them only to get an email telling me that they'd been received, which I hadn't been looking forward to).

As per my rule of including "extras" with every order, I added in two additional invitations, five additional envelopes and a set of coordinating round 2" stickers (to decorate the envelopes with).

These kinds of extras don't take me much extra time to do or add in, but I know, if I were the consumer these kinds of bonuses would make me very happy.

So, happy ending!

Look for a generic version of the polka dot invitations on my etsy site soon!

Pirate Card Ahoy!

I don't know about other places, but pirates are big, really big, here in Portland, Oregon. We are the proud home of Captain Bogg and Salty, possibly the best pirate band ever.

We host the annual Portland Pirate Festival, which gave me complete sticker shock the first time we went and purchased tickets ($18 for each adult, at the time), but afterward, we decided that it was well worth it (so many items are free once you enter -- the kids can bounce through numerous inflatable kids bouncy slides, houses and obstacle courses at the Scupper Monkey Island (aka kid's corner), we got to see numerous shows (not least of whom, Captain Bogg and Salty, but also including a wonderful pirate parrot show, puppets shows and the like), we witnessed a sailing ship firing cannons upon pirates on the shore, watched numerous sword fights and played loads of fun kids games hosted by very authentically-dressed buccaneers.

Every time that we've attended, the boys were given some very cool pieces of eight (they seemed to be real metal, not pieces of cheap plastic) by a kindly old sea dog. They've also been given balloon animals, plastic pirate hats and other assorted booty, just for being there.

There seem to be numerous pirate-themed retails shops popping up here and there in the malls. You know when a trend hits the mall, it's definitely mainstream. One might argue that the trend has definitely jumped the shark at this point, but the pirates elsewhere are simply too darned cool for that.

Above are various pix of a pirate birthday party invitation that I have in process. I'm not nearly done yet, I'm just past the stage when I've made sure that all the moving parts work as expected.

The front of the card still needs a little....something, I don't know what (maybe some text announcing that there's a pirate party in the offing). And the back is just crying out for something more, like a sign for the text to hang on, or a pirate ship in the background or something.

But I'm happy with it so far.

I'm taking a few days off of work next week to post this and my generic polka dot party card that I've been working on for ages. Can't wait!

Oh, I got an inquiry this morning about the Circus Party invitations. The woman asked if they could be revised to a carnival theme, which of course is pretty simple. She asked for a quote. The invitations are $40 for the first 10 and $3 each for each additional one. She needs 25 all together. I hope that she doesn't find the total ($85) to be too shocking, but these invitations do require quite a bit of handiwork for each one....

Another Fishy Invitation Sale!

I sold another set of Fishy Invitations! I'm printing them up tonight. Terrific customer -- she got me the copy exactly as she wanted it and approved the comp for me right away without a lot of back and forth. I'll be able to get these out in record time!

Silhouette Thank You Notes: The Final Chapter

Okay, a short list of what went wrong: went to Kinkos when they were closed (I thought they were all open 24/7), Kinkos guy added too many cuts, other Kinkos guy cut cards so they weren't square, had the wrong envelopes, returned envelopes to paper store when they were closed, ran out of ink (several times) and several other minor disasters.

What made it totally worth it was getting this email from my customer, "I got the invitations yesterday!!!! They are awesome; you did a great job. Thanks for the extras and the fronts of the cards (from the mishap) - I will definitely put them all to use some way... we are all good!"

So very happy!

Silhouette Thank You Cards: Done!

So, after the tragedy of the thank you cards inadvertently turned into postcards, I returned home and reprinted the entire 125 set of cards. The next day, I returned to Kinkos hoping that they would "make things right."

A different clerk took my stack and after hearing me repeat several times that these were cards that folded (and were not postcards) and seeing the comp that I have created as a visual reference, took them away. When he returned, somehow, he had cut them so that they were not square -- when you folded the card, the back was quite obviously much wider than the front of the card, which was not at all a pleasant effect.

It seems really peculiar to me that the cutting machine wouldn't automatically default so that it would cut items on the square, that is, either perpendicular or parallel to a given side. But I don't really know how things work there, so I can't really try to guess what went wrong.

Finally, he got things cut so that the front met the back the way I thought that they should.

Meanwhile, the manager came over and apologized for the problems the previous night and offered to pay for three of my toner cartridges and a ream of the card stock I had used, which seemed quite fair to me (I used probably about exactly half of both of those for this project, so I was partially compensated for my time).

I actually saw the young man (slacker looking teenager with huge glossy black bushy sideburns) who made the fatal cut. He came over and apologized again for his mistake. I let him know how much I appreciated that (I really did). Mistakes happen and when someone has the integrity to own up to it, it makes all the difference in the world to me.

Okay, so they made everything right and you would think that I'm out of the woods, right?

I was babysitting for the neighbors on Friday night (my neighbor, Tricia, and I have a reciprocal arrangement that really works out wonderfully for our two families) and I planned to do all my folding after I got Grace to bed.

As soon as I started to fold the cards, I realized that things were still wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. While the cards did, indeed, get cut so that all the sides were squared with each other, THEY WEREN'T SQUARE WITH THE ACTUAL CARD ITSELF.

See image.

At first I thought I could compensate by folding it so that the front was a little shorter than the back, but the problem was simply too severe and it didn't look right and I knew that the only right thing to do would be to reprint the entire set of cards one more time.

This time in order to make things almost foolproof, I added quite a bit of "bleed" all around the print. This is additional print area and it compensates for poor registration. When I cut items myself, I don't need much bleed as I can cut things exactly where I want the cut. In the case of something like this, it is possible/probable that there is some shift in how the image is positioned on the page because of the printer.

I also printed out a special guide sheet for the Kinkos guy so that it would be very apparent where I need the cut to go -- I made the lines very bright pink. If the machinery doesn't automatically create "square" cuts, then the lines should show him where the cuts go. Also, when you begin to cut pieces off, you'll naturally be cutting off your crop marks if you make the traditional type, without a guide like this. The Kinkos guy seemed to appreciate the guide sheet. I actually gave him two guide sheets and told him to split the stack into two, in case the number of sheets I was asking to print at one time was an issue.



I went to a different Kinkos this time and explained the situation to the guy. (I'm sure that if I went back to the original one, they would have made things right for me, but I just didn't want to have to tell them that things were messed up again -- they really were so nice about it the first time) He took a ruler and measured all around my piece to make sure that my piece was positioned square on the page (which would certainly have been a problem for the first two Kinkos employees if they were not). I told him that I'd added quite a bit of additonal bleed all around and, again, this seemed to be appreciated.

He was sympathetic about the issues I'd encountered already and I surrendered my stack of printouts to him with a little tiny prayer.

Anyway, long story short (too late, eh?), he cut them perfectly. Everything was square, the cards folded correctly and all looked great. He affirmed that I'd done everything correctly.

And, finally, on Saturday afternoon, after just about every mishap you can imagine, the cards finally got sent out. I used the half of the cards that had little printing on them as slip sheets (there's so much ink coverage on the piece that the black can rub off if pressed against something), so at least I put those cards to good use. I included the fronts of the cards in my package in case my customer could use them as postcards or whatnot.

Hopefully the cards will please my customer!

A Tragedy at Kinkos

I almost burst into tears at Kinkos today.

My customer and I finalized her turquoise wedding thank you notes, payment was all taken care of and I spent my entire evening printing out her cards, 125 of them, on both sides.

I used my new printer, all went quite well. No mishaps with upside-down printing. No jam ups, all went fine. We even watched a movie (Dan in Real Life, which I enjoyed more than I thought I would -- I really love Steve Carrell) while this was happening with me popping up occasionally to feed the thing extra cardstock.

When they were completed, I decided to make a dash to Kinkos on the spot to get them cut (at a dollar a cut, I'd rather let them use their machine than have me wear out my exacto knife (and right hand) on 125 x 4 cuts for all those invites).

The young man who helped me gave me an extra cut for free -- cutting my 125 lovely cards right in half!

Oh, it was tragic!

The manager came right over to try to smooth things out, but obviously, they could not really reimburse me for my time or my lost evening. He did offer to reprint the pieces at his cost on their own paper, but I wouldn't have been happy with the quality of the laser printer (with a slight gloss and faint lines streaking throughout), so decided to run back home and reprint them.

He has offered to reimburse for my paper and, partly, for some of my inkjet cartridges and asked that I bring in a receipt for that. Luckily, I have been saving these as business expenses.

Anyway, the young man who was helping and made the inadvertent error looked so very contrite and seemed since in his "I'm really sorry" that I assured him that "accidents happen" (but I was still so upset I couldn't quite look him in the eye).

So, the reprint is going on right now! I'm sure that I've had some extra practice in this already and it will likely go quite well.

Okay, I feel a lot better already for writing about this.

Phew!

I'll still get these cards out by the weekend. These 125 cards are my biggest order to date and I'm so very pleased with how they came out!

And, sometime very soon in the future, I'm sure I'll be able to look back and laugh at this silly little mishap!