And the Winner Is....

I would just like to thank the players of our regular contest, "Caption This!" It's always hard to decide, but after some valiant efforts it was really hard to top the first entry.

Introducing the next winner of the "Caption This!" card line from Revelry Press:



Caption written by the funny and talented, Barb Friedman.

Thanks for playing everyone! Next "Caption This" coming up on September 18th.

Caption This!

For those that don't know how to play, click here.

For those that do, have fun! Let the one-liners begin.



Click on the image to enlarge. Leave the captions in the comments.
Good luck!

Giving back to the universe

This past week has opened me to a whole new prospective on the site I use to sells my wares. As you know I have a shop on Etsy, which is kind of like eBay for the handmade marketplace. What I hadn't learned until just recently is that there are golden nuggets of opportunity to get your shop noticed and hob knob with all sorts of talented Etsy artisans.

I posted about Etsy not long before, when I mentioned the great advice I got from a local seller. That advice is still true. What also is true with Etsy, is that it seems like if you give to the universe, it gives back. Over the last couple of weeks I had been featured on a couple things and it's been so delightful to see the response. I'm getting excited over shop "hearts" know like I used to get excited over blog comments. (They like me! They really like me!)

So anyway, back to the adage of what comes around goes around, I wanted to start featuring my favorite finds from Etsy every week. Just to give back. And show a little love. There's a few blogs out there that do the same, so I wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

My newest favorite shop is from digital artist, John W. Golden. I love his artistic style, and while it was difficult to decide what to get from his shop because he had a lot of camera themed art (and you know how I am about cameras!) I purchased this:



Lowtops Black on red in 5x5 square

I own a pair of black and white lowtops and so figured it was totally appropriate.

And the rest of this week's favorite finds with no particular theme in mind are as follows:


Fun Print Headbands


Take this job and LOVE it


City of fun carnival



Snoopy and Dennis the Menace Books


Cashmere Slippers (these are adorable!)

For more of my favorites, you can click on the widget to the right.

Flower Power

As summer moves forward, here is a bit of a pit stop.

Click away if you hate re-cap posts

I sort of really hate re-cap blog posts, like the ones you read that say, "Another great weekend with the family, we went to blah, blah, and they were so cute, and then they said the cutest blah blah thing," and well, you know the rest. But I have a little blah blah to re-cap.

It occurred to me that last week I never posted anything about the "Yummy!" art show that I participated in. Here's some pics from the opening reception. It is going on through September 13th at:

The Matchbox Gallery
@ Junctionview Studios
889 Williams Ave.
Grandview Heights, OH 43212








So more blah blah is that Saturday was my 11th wedding anniversary. But most of the day was spent working on craft orders and getting ready for Artisan Sunday at North Market. But by nightfall, Dave and I were lounging on the back deck with a nice bottle of wine with our feet up, listening to great music, and shooing the bugs away under the canopy of lights that I strung in the market umbrella over our table. But is was nice. Calm, peaceful, and nice. A better celebration is planned for this Friday when my sister in law is taking the kids for an overnight getaway at a train-themed bed and breakfast. And no, I won't be re-capping anything about that. That blah blah is my blah blah.

Blog links and belly laughing

When I was eating dinner tonight, I all of a sudden began to feel a little weak. I was eating a delicious meal of barbeque chicken--thanks to my husband--along with a healthy glass of red wine. I had drank about 3 bottles of water throughout the day, so I couldn't have been dehydrated. I sat still for a second, let the moment sink in, and realized I was exhausted.

I have been running on adrenaline the last few days and by the end of today I had shipped all but 2 shipments of new orders that I received this week. But seriously, what a great feeling! I like the feeling of being tired from putting in a hard day's work. I love to feel like I've accomplished something. I recall the endless wasted hours in a corporate office where no one really accomplished anything, just passing the buck in emails from one person to another, waiting for someone to finally have the nerve to make a decision about something, which never came. But we were all paid well. I walked out of the office everyday having made a good paycheck. And yet I felt like I had accomplished nothing. And now, I'm making 1/10th of what I made (probably even less), and I've never been happier. And of course it needs to be about the money sometime, like at the end of the month when the bills need to get paid, but there's something in me right now that says, "I'll figure it out." I told my mother the other day not to ask me about the future because frankly I don't have an answer. This week was about luck tapping me on the shoulder and it's not going to last. The wave was high this week, but in all likeliness it will return to a steady calm again. What I tell myself is to keep moving forward and try to keep up the momentum.

Press has been great this month. My blog was featured in Columbus Monthly magazine. Then this Monday as you know, the chalkboards were featured in Etsy's blog The Storque. Then Lazybride.com picked up the Etsy story about the chalkboards and posted an article. Then Washingtonian.com picked up Lazy Bride's blog post and posted the link. I'm truly humbled by the chain of events, which I know are not huge considering the fame and acclaim of some other talented people out there, but for a new business owner like myself I'm like yipeee!! The business has been skipping here and skipping there throughout these past 4 months and I've had several moments before of feeling like I found the rhythm and direction of this business, but not insomuch as I did this week.

Oh, and a side and final note, I hear children belly laughing from the other room. No better soundtrack to life than that.

Makin' the chalkboards

It’s a bit of an assembly line around here. Of course, don’t mistake me for a GM plant, I’m only one person, but it’s amazing what a little free exposure on Etsy can do to your sales. As it so happens, yesterday when I posted my new kids version of the travel chalkboard and being all excited about selling the adult version thinking it was a fluke, an Etsy writer, Emily Bidwell, had simultaneously compiled a list of picks about vineyard styled weddings with autumnal hues. What I didn’t know at the time, is that my deep red floral-designed travel chalkboards happened to be one of the picks on her list to use as décor and favors. In a matter of hours my site visits went from say an average of 15-20 a day to nearly 1,300 yesterday.

So now I have several orders to fill, most of them being chalkboards, and I am, what you could say, a little giddy from it all. And hopeful. That’s really what it is. This is a feeling of hope. Hope that this business may actually turn a curve, get some direction, and keep up the pace with other riders. I know this little brief peak in exposure won’t last, but if anything it was a true validation that someone else out there other than me believes that what I created is good. And beyond the numbers, at the end of the day, to me it’s what it’s all about: creating some good art.