Saturday, October 31, 2009

What I've been wasting my time on.

It seemed interesting to experiment with on demand printing of my mv logo. I really like how it came out. I've also created a new beadaholic graphic with some color wheel rules and a lot of bold colors.

The first site I've tried was Printfection.com. I am quite pleased with how it came out! Check it out and tell me what you think :) -- http://www.printfection.com/mv. The prices are exorbitant, I'm not sure who buys from those print-on-demand places. I've even lowered some items to something like 20 cents commission to compensate for the huge markup added by printfection.

It was really fun designing the shop, choosing the items I thought would be appealing to my friends, designing new graphics, picking colors for shirts, and so on. This is not however what I've been wasting my time on. My printfection shop didn't take that long to set up, fill up, and make it pretty. It was short and sweet.

--rant alert--

My time was wasted by another site I tried: cafepress.com. I'm not even going to provide a link, that's how bad it looks. It was frustrating to say the least. Granted, I got the Free Basic account (same as printfection), but they sure know how to make you feel you've got the Free account.

Were I not the stubborn little self who likes a challenge, I would have dumped cafepress as soon as I saw the web interface and the lack of choices. But here I am, two days later, with a shop I can't even show you. It's really sad, because they have this really nice wall clock that would look awesome with a nice bold graphic.

--end rant alert--

On a much brighter note however, Andrea from AndreaDesigns has added my mv.ArtFire.com shop to her Featured ArtFire Shop Blog. Bless her heart!

Having opened my shop only about two weeks ago, I can't tell you how anxious I'm feeling right about now. In both senses of the word :) Being featured on Andrea's blog is a huge honor. I've been following her threads, and there are always great items in those shops.

Time to finish prettying up my studio!

Over and Out!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

First article!

I have been very busy writing an article on how to make elegant dangle earrings from buttons and it just got published today! I am so ecstatic about this I simply MUST blog... I wish someone had written something like this when I first started working with buttons, but even now most how tos are about how to glue buttons onto stuff to make earrings. I don't want no glue!

Here is the article: How To make dangle earrings from buttons. Tell me what you think!

I still remember when I first looked at buttons with the eyes of a beader. My stash of buttons may not have been as humongous as my bead and yarn stashes, but it was certainly larger than your average button pile. Nowadays it is much larger than your average button pile. What can I say, I'm a packrat, and if I must packrat better be small items!

I remember trying various things to make those buttons work as jewelry. Buttons can be so pretty! A Google search really didn't bring much up, people were using glue to stick those buttons to earrings and necklaces. I like fluid jewelry, so I'm not much of a glue person.

Buttons are meant to be free! Free the buttons! Hence the article about cute little buttons hanging from dainty chains. Cute as a button!

How do you like those cute earrings?

Over and Out.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Here I am...

... jumping on the blogging bandwagon. Not sure what to write about yet, but for now I'll just cheer for finally setting up my mv (em-vee) online beaded jewelry shop. I still have a lot of pieces to go through and take pictures of, write descriptions, think of tags, upload... whew! All that!

What am I working on right now you ask? Ok, nobody asked, but I'll tell you anyway :) A gorgeous silver and green necklace that makes me think of spring. It takes the bite out of the cold days we've had lately.

Over and Out for now...