I scored one of the REAL 'treasuries.'

It was just luck, I suppose. When I need a break from editing stories, I go see what's happening at etsy. Today I noticed someone alerted everyone that an opportunity to make one of these things called a 'treasury' was about to open up.

Members of etsy, the online company I sell my artwork through, can compose collections of other etsy member's artwork. The collections are called "treasuries" and are basically a 3 item x 4 item poster style collection of thumbnail images of listings on etsy.

The etsy website's front page displays a treasury and they are rotated throughout the day so fresh ones are always available for viewing pleasure. The best ones are themselves a work of art.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the one I got to make is a work of art or anything, but it is pretty, and I did it on the fly while trying to do about 6 other things at the same time. All of the pieces are available for purchase - including that scarf in the middle on the bottom row!

Earth Day - Photos

It must have been wishful thinking to plan a blog post for every day this week. As soon as I get home from one job, I've got to turn into business woman - answering emails about custom orders, arranging large orders, wholesale orders, packaging up orders, printing out labels, re-ordering mailing envelopes for mailing out orders and packaging wholesale orders. It's a lot of damn work. And that's not to mention photographing a new product I'm launching - tree free paper.

I spent about an hour of Earth Day actually outside. I planted some seeds, but mostly I was out taking pics and providing entertainment for my furry four-legged helper.

She made 'friends' with a squirrel who must have a nest in our plum tree. They chattered at each other for a while, and when the squirrel ran off after barking excitedly at Katy, she squealed in excited-frustration-disappointment... arrrrroooorahhhhhooooh she yelped.


Then she flopped down at my feet and waited patiently for me to finish, getting up every so often to sniff my face and give kisses. She was so well-behaved, and cute, that I couldn't help but take some snapshots of her newfyness.

I photographed a set of "Herb Garden in a Card" using mint and rosemary plants growing in a pot. It was a very fragrant photo shoot.

It even attracted the attention of the canine authority. I accidentally broke a piece of mint off, so I held it out to her. She sniffed it skeptically then turned her nose up at it. So I ate it. Yum!! Fresh breath. I should have gone inside to give it to Bad Breath Max, but offered a second piece to Katy who promptly gobbled it up. Hopefully she won't decide to help herself to it any time she feels like it now!

It was pretty cute how it all went down. Blech! I'm not eating that. Not not not. Gross. Oh..... so you're eating it? Well.... where's mine?

Stinker.


So, that's what I did for Earth Day - work work work and more work. A little yard time, hanging out with the newf, eating mint.

... pssst ... The herb cards are available in my etsy store now. They can be used to grow basil, oregano, mint, rosemary, lavender and chives.

11 day blog vacation over!

In case you couldn't guess, I disappeared into blog oblivion because of the incredible free advertising my little store received. I have just now begun to come out the other side of it, which means two things:
* sales have tapered back to slightly above normal
* I have enough time to blog again

While I'd love to write something thought-provoking here tonight, I'm just going to give you an 'advance' of posts I have planned for the upcoming week:
* Earth Day
* hamadryas baboons and the FLDS scene
* making a fake entrails dog toy - good, clean, fun evisceration
* shooting at the gun range

That should be a pretty good week!

Boing! Boing!

My plantable handmade lavender cards got featured on an insanely popular blog sometime early this morning. I woke to a nearly cleaned out store. ALL of my plantable cards had sold out. I found out I got featured on the blog when I logged on to the etsy forums to ask whether people had seen them anywhere. It didn't take long at all for someone to provide a link to the website that gave me a TON of absolutely FREE advertising at boingboing.net, a "directory of wonderful things."


Wonderful, indeed.

The exposure got me several wholesale inquiries plus a really, really exciting one from a company based just over the mountains. The want me to create 1,000 cards for them to distribute at a trade show. I even get to keep my biz info on the reverse of the cards. I cannot imagine having 1,000 of these cards out there in the world. You can't buy that kind of advertising! Next thing you know, Al Gore will be knocking on my door.

It wasn't all rosey over at boingboing. Being a blog that allows comments t be posted means people from all over can comment on my cards. Well, some of them thought I am an environmental EVIL-doer. I even got lumped into the same crowd as Big Tobacco at one point because evidently American Spirits cigarettes distributed something like this. And no - their paper didn't have tobacco seeds in it!

This is by far the best negative comment:


But this one had my coworkers (at my other job) wonder what I was laughing about:
"Lighten up FNARF. Sheesh. OK so we have to avoid invasive species, but you combined evil Big Tobacco, ecological catastrophe, cheap gimmickry and empty-headed liberal tree-hugging do-gooderism into the simple act of sending a card and planting a seed. It's not like we're sending cards with atomic zombie boll weevil eggs.

Although now that I think about it, that would make Mother Earth so very happy...."

I particularly enjoyed the empty headed liberalism bit and the atomic zombie boll weevils.

Oh, and someone else chimed in and said "I hate to be a party pooper because I adore this type of stuff, but I have never gotten paper-seeds to germinate. And I'm a farmer, so I kind of know what I'm doing."

.... emphasis on KIND OF.

I suppose the 30 plus seedlings coming out of paper I made are just my imagination.

You can read all of the boingboing comments if you click the photo and scroll down.