i forgot to tell you that i'm one of five finalists in the paper goods category over at the lovelies award site. the award itself would be nice and all, but mostly i'd really love to win one of the gorgeous prizes (all donated by artists and makers i adore). voting ends with february so you've only got another couple of days to go log your vote for up up creative.
thanks!
sometimes i don't post here because i don't have a picture to share. i like my posts to have images with them. i've been wanting to write about my week but i haven't been able to come up with the right image.
i did finally come up with the right word. disheartening.
you know, i want to be able to be all detached about the things that happened this week. i know i'm not supposed to take it all so personally. but you know what? this business of mine, it's personal. from the reasons i started up up creative to the ways in which i try to grow and nurture it. because i'm still a small indie business, every single detail is mine. like my business card says, i'm the designer, the owner, the accountant, and the mailroom operator. when there's a shipping problem, that comes back to me (and the U.S. postal service, of course). when someone is displeased with her purchase, well, i'm the one who designed the product, the one who printed it, the one who cut and packaged and prepared it.
i had my first unhappy customer this week. someone who didn't like what she got in the mail. from me.
i know i've had probably a thousand customers by now. i know that this shouldn't upset me as much as it does. but there it is anyway: i'm bothered. apparently in addition to being chief operator i am also head of the complaints department and the feeling bad department. i'm the brains and brawn of the business, but apparently i'm also the heart.
and this heart is feeling a little discouraged.
but in my defense, it's not just one unhappy customer. i think the unhappy customer stung all the more because of what happened the day before i got that displeased and displeasing email.
someone ripped me off.
she copied my feelgood list™ exactly (by the way, that feelgood list is trademarked. it seems annoying and pretentious to put the little ™ after it all the time, but i guess that's what i'm going to have to start doing).
and then she bragged about it on her blog and in her flickr photostream. she went on and on about how nice it must be for me to charge $16 for a list she could copy all by herself. an artist and etsy seller herself, she showed absolutely no respect for what i do, saying that her art, because it's not done on a computer, is inherently worth more than something that is done on a computer. and therefore she can just copy my work and slap it up on her blog and act all superior.
i told someone that the copying, that was a paper cut, but the bragging and the condescension, they were like pickle juice poured right over that tiny little cut. they were what really hurt.
fortunately, a few redeeming things did come out of this experience:
(1) someone who reads this woman's blog contacted me to let me know what she had done. there are people out there in the world who don't even know me who are looking out for me. that's nice to know. because the woman didn't name me or my shop, i probably wouldn't ever have found this otherwise.
(2) enough people left comments on the woman's original post and flickr picture that she took them both down without my having to contact her.
(3) all of my friends and peers on twitter rallied such support for me as i boiled and seethed and floundered. i didn't share the links because i didn't want to start a war with the offending woman, but it was nice to know that if i needed them to go leave comments in my defense, i had plenty of people right there all ready and willing to go to bat for me.
still, though. it's going to take a little while for me to put this whole week behind me. it was a rough week. i'm afraid my heart's still stinging.
tara gentile (also of scoutiegirl fame) featured my up up redesign on her personal blog today among several other minimalist blog designs. i was pleased as punch. i was telling her that i wish i could revamp my home as easily as i revamped the blog: change a few hexadecimals here, hit delete a few times over here, slide this gadget over above this other one.
i love a home that looks lived in and i believe in having the things we use everyday close at hand, but man would i love to just click a few keys and be able to downsize and declutter and cleanify everything around me. much as i hate to clean and organize and all, i crave a peaceful and orderly environment. not stark, just a little bit sparser.
the only place in this house i've really been able to achieve that is in emily's room. i've been meaning to post (okay, also meaning to take) these photos for a long time. well, today's finally the day. behold: the nursery.
{ we kept the walls as they were when we moved in: a sort of very pale soy latte sort of color. i also chose to reuse some of the blue things we had from evan's nursery. blue happens to be my favorite color even though i'm a girl and i just like that it keeps emily's mostly-pink room from seeming overly pink. }
{ most everything about the room was inspired by the quilt here behind evan's head which was intended as a wall hanging but which has taken up residence here on the chair instead, which is just fine by me. i just fell in love with the fabric (red letter day by lizzie house) and how it was childish and fun and pink and orange and brown without being all girly. the leftover fabric also features prominently in the embroidery-hoop wall art throughout the room. i also used coordinating solids for the mobile. }
{ can't resist including this great shot of evan. he "helped" me take all these pictures. }
{ i removed the animals and reused the parts from evan's mobile (a jungle-themed mobile from babies r us) to make this one for emily (you can find a link to the fabric pom pom tutorial here). she loves it so much. smiles whenever we place her beneath it on the changing table. because i was able to reuse and repurpose some stuff, the only new things i had to buy for emily's room were sheets for the crib (plus the fabric and the embroidery hoops already mentioned). }
{ more fabric art. such an easy and pretty way to decorate nursery walls. }
{ hand-embroidered by yours truly. a lowercase e for my little emily. (i've taken to referring to evan as uppercase and em as lowercase. i know, i know.) my spiffy new camera shows off the remains of the chalk lines i drew before embroidering. thankfully you really can't see them in real life. }
because we decided not to reuse evan's safari-themed nursery decor and because the room was empty when we started, and perhaps especially because i didn't want to spend more than about $100 on new things for the room, i had a completely blank canvas and the opportunity to put in just enough and no more. her nursery is pretty tiny, and she doesn't have toys strewn about yet, so hers is the room in the house now that is the most peaceful, most orderly, and most pulled together.
i'd love it if i could do the same for my own bedroom. just wipe it clean and start fresh. the first thing i'd banish would be laundry, both clean and dirty.
it's a pipe dream, i know. it would result in laundry strewn about other parts of the house, which would be no better. but still. a girl can dream, right?
***
p.s. who knows why there aren't any books in emily's gramps-made book rack. god knows there are books everywhere else in the house. there's a stack of kids' books nine inches high by my feet as i type!
i guess technically i am sending this postcard late, but since it's the february postcard and it's going to arrive while it's still february, i don't feel all that bad about it.
february's postcard for the benevolent postcard society project is the sixth. while none of them really "matches" any of the others in terms of style, colors, design, or layout, they have all been intended to be little notes that the recipient can keep handy and use as a daily reminder to be something: happy, grateful, proud, silly...
i really love the colors in this one, and of course i've got evan to thank for the inspirational phrase.
i've got some new design ideas brewing. check out all this yummy inspiration. there's just something so powerful about well-designed poster art, isn't there?
1. TheSpaceRace-poster, 2. Franz Ferdinand poster, 3. POSTER: Hidden Pictures, 4. POSTER 'STOP HUNTING', 5. Egg Hunt/Picnic Poster, 6. 1960s Advertising - Poster - Swiss National Tourist Office (Switzerland), 7. Better than nothing - Poster, 8. Poster//1, 9. Fuse Poster, 10. Don't Panic Poster, 11. vintage reading-family-poster, 12. AJ&TCW - Concert Poster, 13. Manufactur Poster, 14. The Well of the Saints A1 poster, 15. DS-poster, 16. Art Attack 2006 Poster, 17. AFRIBIKE Poster Design, 18. POSTER: Hidden Pictures, 19. The Surrender Poster, 20. POSTER: Borderland
i got a new camera today. i am so freaking in love with it already. i took 104 pictures in about an hour, including this one of the orchids i mentioned yesterday.
how am i ever going to get any work done with this fun new camera to play with? oh dear.
we don't really make a very big deal out of valentine's day here. the anniversary of our first date is february 5th and we tend to celebrate that each year, but valentine's day is celebrated with about as much verve as st. patrick's day. it's existence as a holiday is acknowledged and a small effort is made to celebrate it in some way, but it's not a holiday that gets much planning or attention.
this year we had pizza for dinner with my in-laws and then came home and worked (i know, i know) and then shared a slice of take-out chocolate cake from the cheesecake factory while we watched the olympics in bed. seems like a good valentine's day to me.
but lest you think our lackluster celebration indicates a lackluster love or some other such nonsense, check this out:
{ from paperwheel's etsy shop }
this is the card i gave my husband last night. i think it says an awful lot because i really love my iphone.
the card he gave me (accompanied by the most gorgeous orchid plant - now that we no longer have cats i can have orchids!!) said this:
"if our love were a garden..." and then inside ..."i'd wanna be your hoe." aw. he had me at garden.
{ robot clock, from jek in the box's photostream. available for download from the photographer under a creative commons license. don't you love it? }
holy. crap.
you know you're too busy when you've decided it's time to hire some help and you can't find the time to do so.
i've got to say, folks, my life is flat crazy these days. kids, work, house. business has totally exploded in the last month or so. back in november i was averaging maybe 2 sales a day. now i'm averaging 14. every day i get google alert after google alert notifying me of places my shop has been mentioned. i've got more than 50 blog posts to add to my press page. a #1 new york times bestselling author recently mentioned my feelgood lists on her blog.
it's amazing and exciting and crazy crazy crazy. goals i set long ago have now been achieved and surpassed. my customers are coming back and sending their friends.
i just wish i had a little more time to sit back and enjoy the success. or even just enough time to find a sitter and an intern.
that would be nice.
about a month after emily was born, after my first week home by myself with the two kids, brian gave me a gift:
no, not a letterpress, although wouldn't that be cool? he gave me a letterpress class. his good friend from high school co-owns dock2letterpress here in rochester.
the class taught me a few things:
(a) letterpress prints are as cool as i always thought they were
(b) letterpress printing, on the other hand, is far less mysterious and esoteric than i imagined, even on century-old presses.
(c) it's a lot lot harder setting wood and lead type than it is to play with, manipulate, and arrange type digitally. i'm so used to being able to adjust leading, kerning, justification, type size, etc. with the click of my mouse. figuring out how to align and arrange my type, and how to keep it from falling apart when i lifted it up to take it to the press, was far more difficult.
as a result i am not all that in love with my first-ever hand-typeset design, but i'm thrilled with the prints themselves.
the best thing is that now, since i've taken the class, i can rent time on the presses in the future for my own projects. you can bet you'll be seeing some letterpress items coming to my shop in the next year or so. if i'm not paralyzed by trying to decide what to make first, that is.
eileen of blue bird luxe was kind enough to nominate me for a lovelies award from lovely clusters. i'd love it if you'd vote for me (it's so easy to vote - just go to this post and leave a comment). i've got more than 500 subscribers to this here blog so if you all do your part i could run away with this thing!
you can also vote for your favorites in these cagtegories, as well:
Blog: Design Inspiration
Blog: Fashion
Blog: Handmade
Blog: Interior Design
Blog: Photography
Blog: Wedding
Shop: Art + Photography
Shop: Decor + Furniture
Shop: Fashion + Accessories
Shop: Jewelry
Shop: Vintage
if nothing else, go browse the nominees. you might just find a new favorite blog or shop.
thanks to a slow day in the shop yesterday, i gave myself permission to do something a little non-emergent today. it wasn't intended to be a full blog redesign, but here it is anyway. much simpler and more streamlined.
i'm planning on writing up a little post about my process with the redesign. look for it this week.
if you don't see the new look, hit refresh in your browser and it should magically appear.
{ the next morning }
the other night, owing to a cranky baby, a needy toddler, and a husband at night court (as the attorney, not the defendant), i didn't get to sit down to work until 9:40 at night. and of course it was one of those record-setting-sales kind of days and i had so many orders to get ready to go and so much stuff to do.
i was cranky from the day and annoyed that i had gotten so little done and i had the kind of headache that's best relieved by massaging your head.
but as i sat on the floor and brian passed filled envelopes to me for postage and i looked at the pile of orders ready to go in front of me and then at the clock it just struck me: these are the nights i'll look back at with fond reminiscence. when my business has grown and i'm more settled in and all, i'll sit and think back to that winter when emily was born and business started booming so suddenly and i did everything by hand and brian helped me and we worked into the wee hours.
i went to bed considerably cheered.
{ garland of hearts by yourockmyworldbaby, available under a creative commons license }
despite being so busy with orders and kids and the very occasional shower, i just sent out my second newsletter last night. with the shop and the blog and facebook and twitter, sometimes it feels like just connecting with people is a full-time job in itself. but seeing past customers return to the shop last night and this morning as a direct result of that newsletter? well, it made all the extra work i did to get that ready to go out worth it.
and no, it's not the sales themselves or the dollars they brought in. it's knowing that people were pleased with their initial purchases and that they were intrigued enough by my latest work to stop back on by the shop. that feels good.
if you'd like to see my most recent newsletter, you can find it here. to subscribe so that you can receive future newsletters, click here.
