Outsider Art Doll #2

This is the second art doll in the series. She's a little wacky, as evidenced by the split mouth and the spring pigtails. She's also pregnant, which may account for the cookie cutter belly. She has white porcelain knob breasts, and textile spindle legs. Her arms are made from 1/2 of a salad serving tong. The main body is an old shoe stretcher.

I'm having the distinct feeling that I'm going to have these things hanging around a long time, as they are gathering very little attention so far. Just what I need, more art.

Outsider Art Doll #1

So, I did these 11 art dolls. Personally, I love to make stuff, draw stuff, create stuff. I can do it all day and night, and frequently do. I did these dolls, and decided to list them for sale on eBay, one per night for 11 nights. It seemed like fun. This is Doll #1.

The main body of the doll is an old cedar shoe stretcher. I collaged the face from pictures in some old Ladies Home Journals I got off of eBay. The eyebrow is made from some headless nails, and the hair is from copper tacks that have been wrapped in blue coated wire. There are a pair of tiny screw breasts and a porcelain knob "bun in the oven." The legs are made from spindles discarded from an area textile mill.

I enjoyed making these dolls, as I have no social life whatsoever, so doing art kind of compensates for that, but not really. In any event, you can check back here for Doll #2 tomorrow, and you can bid on Doll #1 on eBay right now. Go ahead. Really. Why wait?

Illustration Friday: Pattern

“Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.” - Alfred North Whitehead

I haven't done an Illustration Friday piece in a long time, but today's theme seemed appropriate to my latest project. Art Dolls.

My father passed back in January. The last several months have found my mother and I sorting through a mountain of my father's stuff. One of the things my father was bog on was shoes. He had over 300 pairs of shoes, which we have ebayed and consigned and given away. In the process, we pulled out dozens and dozens of these shoe stretcher things. I was packing them up when I was seized by an art idea, which usually assures that my own children will have as much stuff to sort through when I die as my mother and I have since my father's death.

I brought home several boxes of these shoe stretchers. A trip to the local Habitat Re-Store and Goodwill added lots of other odds and ends, and Michael's and Lowe's rounded out the project needs. So far, I am having a lot of fun cobbling together [no pun intended] these funky dolls.

They are built on wooden shoe stretchers with spindles from a textile plant for the legs. The eyes and mouth are collaged from Ladies Home Journal magazines from the 50's and 60's. There are also curtain rod finials, a wrought iron drawer pull, handmade nails, leather scraps, plastic and metal serving spoons, a cabinet hardware backplate, string, screws, matte varnish and tacks. I plan to eBay them starting next week. I hope you'll stay tuned.

So what is the pattern? For me, I am almost always drawing people, usually portraits. These dolls are kind of like portraits for me, albeit in an obvious departure from my usual work. So I suppose people are my pattern, the thing to which I continuously return, the thing that makes me feel connected.

Allure Flooring Stinks

I don't usually write product reviews here, but I want to do an informational post on the Allure Trafficmaster Flooring from Home Depot because I suspect it is important.

Recently, I bought a new house. OK, not really new, as it was built in 1986, but it is a place to live. Anyway, it is a HUGE renovation project, and I don't exactly have tons of money. I needed to put down a floor in my bedroom after ripping out the old carpet that was there. I wanted a non-carpeted surface. While wandering through the Home Depot, I came across this vinyl floating floor from Halstead Industries called Allure Trafficmaster. It comes in boxes of plank strips that stick to one another, not your subfloor, and it looked really good. Better yet, it was reasonably priced, so I decided to go with it.

I bought 12 boxes. Eleven boxes were batch #10-10-2009, and one was #10-03-2009. I took it home and let it acclimate in its boxes for a couple of days, as one usually does with flooring. Then, in the space of only a few hours, my husband and I laid the entire 12 boxes. It looked fantastic. We moved in our furniture, closed the skylights and turned on the air conditioning, and prepared to spend our first night in the new bedroom.

As I was laying in bed, I noticed the bad odor. I opened a skylight part way, but left on the air. By morning, the smell was really bad. I turned off the air and turned on the ceiling fans, opening windows all over the house. Surely it was like a new car smell, and would dissipate quickly. It didn't.

I grew concerned, so I called the Customer Service line at Halstead. The woman registered my name and concerns, and told me that if I would wash it down a couple of times with some vinegar, it should take care of the problem. An odd idea, but I tried it. For 3 days I mopped the floor with vinegar. Now, it smelled more like a pickle factory, but that was somehow better than the strange chemical odor alternative. However, as soon as the vinegar smell dissipated, the chemical smell was back.

I Googled Allure Flooring to see if anyone else had this problem. There were a few angry complaints on various forums, but many people said the smell went away very quickly, and they loved their new floor. The only people with serious complaints seemed to be the ones who had installed it over concrete below grade who were having issues with it coming apart, and with mold trapped underneath. I had installed mine on a second floor over very dry plywood, so that wasn't it.

I had asked for an MSDS sheet on the flooring when I called, and the woman very kindly sent it to me via email. There are a lot of interesting items there. First, the MSDS sheet says it is for Metroflor Vinly Sheet Flooring and Metroflor Resilient Tile Flooring. Then, over to the side, it has a box that says Allure Vinyl Sheet Flooring and Resilient Tile Flooring. So which is it? It's hard to say. Metroflor is an upgraded product that is also manufactured by Halstead, but it is not the same product. That seemed odd. The MSDS seemed to indicate that the product was pretty innocuous though, which I tried hard to find relieving. There was a second "MSDS" sheet on the adhesive that is used to lock the floor pieces together. This didn't really look like a MSDS, rather it was a report from the Fu Hong Chemical Company, Ltd. of Taiwan. It showed a spectacular list of chemicals that sounded scary but were not detected in the sample of the adhesive. So I knew what it wasn't, but that didn't tell me exactly what it was.Hmmm....

The room got worse. It was always strangely humid in the room. My bed sheets felt cold and clammy. I was already keeping the air handler for the house going around the clock, along with a ceiling fan. I kept the adjoining bathroom window open. I added an Ionic Pro and a de-humidifier. Nothing helped. I woke up each morning with a sore throat, and sometimes my eyes would run in the night. After about a month, my daughter said, "this room is unhealthy." She's 13. Maybe she'll be a scientist.

I emailed my brother, who is a noted polymer scientist, and forwarded him the MSDS sheets Halstead had sent me. He told me that they had sent an SGS [contract testing organization] report, and he couldn't tell me what was wrong because all the report showed was a list of chemicals that were NOT found in the adhesive.

It was time to call Halstead again. The nice Customer Service woman listened to my story very patiently. She asked if I would like an "abatement kit." I asked her what that was, and she said it was a neutralizer I could apply, and then a sealer. [Alarm bells are beginning to go off in my head.] She went on to say that the product was made from recycled vinyl from China [Red flag! Red flag!] and that most batches had no odor at all, but some batches did seem to have a bad smell and she didn't know why.

OK, when you start saying that something was manufactured in China, that's when I start to get worried. It's not like the Chinese have such a great track record these days when it comes to the safety of their products. Who knows what could be hidden in this stuff? I was about to enter full panic attack mode when I heard her say "... or would you just like me to issue you a credit?" Excuse me?

The Customer Service representative asked me how many boxes I had bought. I told her I had bought 12 boxes in mid June. She said to just take my receipt to Home Depot, have them call the Halstead Customer Service line and reference my name, and they would take care of the credit. I was stunned, but I decided not to waste any time on this, so I jumped in my car and headed for the Home Depot.

At the Home Depot, the woman in returns had me speak with the Assistant Manager, who called Halstead and confirmed that I was due a $550.00 refund. They promptly credited it back to my Discover card and apologized for the inconvenience.

"Don't they want the flooring back?" I asked. Apparently not. No company rep would visit or call, no return the defective product hassle, just take the money and be on your way. It all seemed so suspiciously easy. I asked my brother the scientist about it. His take was that they knew they had an issue of some sort, and that it would be easier to pay me off rather than risk a lawsuit. Interesting.

I went home and ripped out the flooring and hauled it out of my house as quickly as I could. It took about 3 hours to rip it all up and haul it out. I opened the windows and ventilated everything. I also stripped all the sheets and bedclothes from the bed and washed them thoroughly. That was Thursday. It is now Saturday. The smell is gone, and the humidity levels have evened out considerably. I slept much more easily, and haven't had any sore throats or runny eyes since.

So exactly what is the issue with Allure Flooring? It's hard to say, as I cannot afford to test the stuff to see what it actually contained. I am extremely grateful to have it out of my home, though. And while I wasn't compensated for the time I spent laying or removing it, I really don't care. What is a few hours compared with the exposure to something terribly toxic, which is what I believe was happening with the Allure I bought.

Now, in fairness, the Assistant Manager at Home Depot said that they sell this stuff every day, and mine was the first complaint they'd ever had. So maybe not all batches are smelly. But if you think you want this flooring, be really cautious. You might get more than you bargained for.

Cafepress' New Prices Spell Trouble for Shopkeepers

Awhile back, Cafepress decided to make some changes to their marketplace; they decided to price everything in the marketplace exactly the same. I suppose this makes some sense, but the way they've gone about it hasn't exactly been great. We should look at how things are panning out.

Cafepress has always let the shopkeepers set their own prices. They have also always strongly suggested using the "Premium" price tier. That's Ok by me, so all my shops have been set up that way. Recently, though, when they decided that for the marketplace all products should be priced exactly the same, they went against their previous notion of premium pricing, and priced everything rock bottom.

I am looking at my August sales here. I have sold 11 items between 5 shops on Cafepress. That's not exactly enough to make anyone dance a jig. But it's when I compare pricing that things get really ugly.

So far in August, I have made $14.30 from these 11 items, all sold from the Marketplace. With a cost of $25 per month for my 5 Cafepress shops, I am in deep doo-doo. [a highly technical term for a losing venture] Had these same items sold a few months ago when they were priced at the Premium tier, they would have brought me $37.53. Not a lot of money, but I would at least not be losing money. [the aforementioned "deep doo-doo"] So that really sucks.

Then the question is, would those items still have sold had they been priced a few bucks higher? Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to know what the tipping point is these days. Perhaps people are not spending quite so freely anymore. Still, it is a significantly smaller amount. Is Cafepress just looking for an increase in volume, which helps them, but at these prices, it doesn't help the shopkeepers. Which brings me back to the inevitable comparison with Zazzle.

Shops are free on Zazzle, which means it costs me absolutely nothing for the 14,000+ products I have listed there in 12 different, thematically focused shops. Those shops are Birds of Paradise, Biblical T-Shirts, Celtic Dreams, God Bless the USA, ottoblotto, Live Simply, Sun and Shadows, Turtle Hero, Zodiac Attack, Halloween Time, A Total Flake, and Obsessions. Whenever I get another idea for a design group, I can just open another shop. I sure couldn't afford to do that on Cafepress, which is making me re-think that relationship just a bit.

In the same time frame, I have made $24.95 in sales through Zazzle. Cost to me, $0. It's a big difference, and since Google Trends shows Zazzle still leading in searches over Cafepress, I wonder...

Zazzle vs Cafepress - a Whole New Ballgame

I've written a lot about Cafepress and Zazzle in the past. Up to this point, Cafepress has certainly been the more profitable choice in Print-on-Demand, but that may be changing.

About a year ago, I began branching out from Cafepress into Zazzle and Printfection. [Print-who? Exactly.] Not long ago, I closed my Printfection shops, as they were doing nothing; not one sale. But Zazzle, on the other hand, is really rising in the ranks of POD companies.

Let's look at Google Trends. Here, the blue line represents Cafepress, and the red line represents Zazzle, and the span of this graphic is the last 12 months. Gradually, Zazzle is being searched more than Cafepress. Interesting.

Cafepress recently went through some major changes that left a number of its shop owners with their panties in a wad. They decided to make all prices throughout their Marketplace uniform, although the prices people had set in their shops would remain the same. There was much talk on discussion boards around the internet that people were going to close their shops on Cafepress and run over to Zazzle.

Why?

POD is passive income, which means that you set it up, but it doesn't require any further affort on your part to make it make money, so if you were making money on Cafepress, why would you want to mess that up? In this economy, I'll take what I can get.

Zazzle, however, is beginning to make sales for me, which is great. Not a lot of sales, but I hope it, like the rest of the economy, will begin to improve. And Zazzle has one really big advantage over Cafepress: the shops are FREE. That's huge, since I am counting every dime these days.

I've started re-vamping my existing Zazzle shops to make them easier to navigate, since I didn't really grasp that too well the first time around; the whole sections and subsections thing is a little confusing. Plus, I've added some new, tightly focused shops, which I couldn't afford to do on Cafepress because it would cost too much while waiting for the designs to get better ranked.

I opened Zodiac Attack on Zazzle. It carries only Zodiac themed designs, but there are beginning to be a fair number to choose from.

I opened Sun and Shadows on Zazzle. It currently has only sun themed designs in it, but I'll branch out from that eventually.

Last night I opened A Total Flake on Zazzle, which has winter themed designs. It isn't likely to be real popular here in June, but I hope to have it fully stocked by the time fall arrives.

My other Zazzle shops include the new Birds of Paradise, along with Biblical T Shirts, ottoblotto, and Live Simply, which is going through a major overhaul right now. Will they come out making more money then Cafepress? It will be interesting to see.

Does Google Hate Squidoo?

Does Google hate Squidoo? I sometimes wonder.

I've been pouring every possible second I could find for the last several months into Squidoo, partially because everything I own is locked up in a truck somewhere due to my lack of an actual home, thus preventing me from straying into an art binge. I'm long overdue. But I'd read all over the web how people were making lots of money with Squidoo, and it did seem like a good way to cross promote my stuff on Zazzle and Cafepress, so I let myself be sucked into the vortex of lens-making.

Somewhere along the line, I fantasized that I was doing really well. My 70 or so lenses, packed with all kinds of meaningful original content, were up to an average of 700 hits per week until...well, I'm not exactly sure what happened. Suddenly, my lenses were no longer to be found anywhere on the web. Not on Google, not on Yahoo. Some of them were first page on both. My hits have spiraled down, down, down, and I am down to 250 hits for the last week and dropping like a stone in still waters.

What happened that I should have somehow pissed off the major search engines so badly they would drop me, no, even throw me away like that. Yes, it's possible I'm taking it all a little too personally. But seriously, how does that happen? Is it something I said?

Confused, I poked around the web to see if anyone else had this sort of issue. Several people at various times over the last few years on various forums wrote of similar occurrances. The responses were all about the same; Google has had some algorithmic change, and your stuff will reappear in a few weeks, so not to worry. An algorithmic change? Can't they use some sort of electronic disco beat that never changes? What's with that?

Well, Google has not as yet seen how vastly empty the world of cyberspace can be without all that meaningful content I've been pouring out, and really, I don't think it matters all that much. I wasn't making any money at all, so I needed to take a break from it anyway. I've wandered back over to Cafepress, a story for a different post.

Cat Obsessions, Email Marketing, and Making Money on Squidoo

Buy at AllPosters.com Well, so I did this Squidoo lens on chihuahua obsessions called OCD - Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder. So I got to thinking about that, and started looking at all the other possible "C's" I could substitute. Of course, "CAT" came to mind.

Now, if we look at Google Trends, we can see that many more people are obsessing over cats than chihuahuas. The blue line shows the interest in the search term, "cats," and the red line shows the interest in the search term, "chihuahuas." So I made a Squidoo lens called Obsessive Cat Disorder. I hope it's going to be as popular as the Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder.

Popularity is big on Squidoo, especially among the various lensmasters, and I'm no exception. I do feel weirdly validated when people go read my lenses. But it is a little bit like email marketing, though.

With email marketing, I find the only people on the opt-in list are other people who are also trying to market similar crap to you as you are trying to market to them. In other words, they are busy deleting your emails, just as you are busy deleting their emails, so your information is never reaching anyone really.

With Squidoo, there are a lot of people checking out your lenses and leaving comments so you will feel obligated to check out their lenses, but in terms of people coming from outside Squidoo, say through Google searches, the number is often significantly less.

Of course, the real idea for making money with Squidoo is to cleverly weave in advertisements to various products for which you are an affiliate. So far, I have sold 1 poster for AllPosters, which netted me $2.25, which is still too low to pay out, and direct from Amazon I have netted $5.36. From these figures we can conclude one of three things: 1. My writing sucks. 2. No one has the money to buy anything anymore. 3. I am writing about the wrong stuff.

All these people who are making gobs of money at this stuff, I wonder who they are and if they are being honest. I keep telling myself things will improve as I get more lenses and as they continue to rise through the ranks. Right now, I'm a little skeptical.

Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder

I wrote this squidoo lens on Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder. Like my lenses on Dating Space Aliens or Retrosexual Women, it is meant to be funny. I can never decide if people "get it," although they seem to be. Anyway, I think it is a pretty amusing read if you want to stop by.

I am still trying to crack the code of what lenses actually sell something. My sales have now skyrocketed to a whole $2.34, plus I made $3.38 for just having some well ranked lenses. OK, well, sort of well ranked lenses. I can see the blank looks on the faces of my loved ones as they ask, "For this you missed The Office?"

So I have no life. Got it.

Anyway, like the meager amount I'm making currently at Cafepress and Zazzle, I am not really doing well. I suppose if I were selling some product that would remove the hair from the palms of teenaged boys, I'd be in.

Say, do you know of an affiliate program for that?

Giant Squids and Squidoo

I was made a Giant Squid today on Squidoo. In order to be a Giant Squid [imagine there's a bit of reverb whenever I say Giant Squid] you have to build 50 or more absolutely fabulous lenses [web pages] and submit them and the heads of the Giant Squid forum decide if you qualify to be part of the Giant Squid club.

I feel like Sally Fields - They LIKE me, they really really LIKE me.

OK, it's not an Oscar, but it is something. I announced my Giant Squididdity to my family, who met me with mostly blank stares. My brother finally ventured to ask if this was a good thing. I assured him it was. Their lack of enthusiasm notwithstanding, I went on back to work.

Squidoo has been great for me since I lack anything with which to do art besides a #2 pencil. Everything I own is packed away on a truck somewhere. I don't know when I'll actually find a house, and tucked away in a spare bedroom at my mother's home is my only choice. So it keeps me busy. Of course, I'm still not selling anything, but that is a story for another blog post later.

You can visit my Squidoo lenses here at my profile. See the nifty purple shield? Is that cool or what?

The Squidoo City Guide

This lens is a member of the Squidoo City Guide
I've been writing some Squidoo lenses on various NYC landmarks. I've published 3 of these, with more on the way. I was very excited today to have my Empire State Building featured on the Squidoo City Guide's blog. How cool is that?

The City Guide features lots of Squidoo lenses on various cities across the US and worldwide. You may find wonderful information on places to visit, or even on your own hometown.

If there's not anything written on your hometown, and you are yourself the local history buff, you might consider joining Squidoo and writing your own page about your hometown. You could also write about cool places you've visited. Joining is free, making a page is easy and free, and you can attract people to the wonderful sites you know.

And did I mention that it's free?

Sign up at Squidoo today.

Making Money With Squidoo

Back in January before my father's passing, I somehow got involved with Squidoo. Seems a friend of mine had been doing Squidoo for months, and it sounded like she was doing pretty well. And since the POD stuff wasn't exactly padding my bank accounts, I thought I'd give it a try.

Let's start with a bit of what Squidoo is. Squidoo is a place where you can make web pages, and hopefully, a bit of money. Here's how it works; you sign up, which is FREE, you build a page, which is also FREE using their easy to work with modules, and you publish the page, which is also FREE. You don't have to host or pay for anything.

There are modules that allow you to add pictures. There are modules that connect directly with Cafepress, Zazzle, and Amazon so that when someone buys something from those places by using a link on your site, you get a commission. There are modules that connect directly with Wikipedia, flickr, and YouTube. All in all, it's pretty easy to get the hang of it. You can move the order of modules around easily, add keywords, provide affiliate links of your own, and pretty much promote anything you like. There are people making gobs of money from this thing!

OK, I am not one of those people.

Again, it is a lot like the POD companies in that quantity helps a lot. Now, perhaps if you are selling Forex trading robots or the newest online dating service, you might make the aforementioned gobs of money, but if you are merely writing about everyday stuff, well, it's a tough market out there right now.

Here is a link to my profile. If you go there, you will see that I have done over 50 of these web pages, on such diverse topics as Dating Space Aliens, Cooking with Squash Blossoms, and The Brooklyn Bridge. Let's see how I'm doing.

I've made: On Chile Pepper Seeds and Growing - $.80 selling seeds and plants On Music and Dance Lessons for the Viennese Waltz - $.16 selling MP3 downloads On Music and Dance Lessons for the Mambo - $.72 selling Mambo music CDs That should add up to $1.68, although Squidoo has it adding up to $1.67, not that it really matters. It's not exactly stellar.

Squidoo also pays you a sort of general commission based on the lensrank of each of your pages, two months prior. That earned me $.80 this month, although I can expect that will go up over time as I add more lenses [their fancy word for the web page you build.]

Now, all in all, I really like Squidoo. It's super easy to use, and it's a great way to cross promote things you have elsewhere, like stuff on Cafepress or Zazzle. Nevertheless, it's definitely not a get-rich-quick idea, so if that's what you're looking for, then this isn't it. It takes a lot of time to build a page with good content and a reasonable informational flow with pictures and ads and all that stuff. But as a way to promote your other ventures, it's very good.

You can Join Squidoo here for free. It's easy to do, and someday, if the economy ever recovers, you'll be set. Or so I'm told.

A Passing

It is with deep sorrow that I announce the passing of my father. I did manage to get to North Carolina a few hours before he died, which was a blessing. I may be on and off with my posting for a bit; I appreciate eveyone's prayers.

No Bailout for Bank of America

I, like so many other Americans, have seen the value of my home plummet. I am fortunate in that I have never missed a mortgage payment in my entire life. However, I need to sell my home, and that's a problem, especially here in Phoenix, AZ.

My father's health is failing fast. I would like to get back to North Carolina where I can be in a position to help my parents. And, to be honest, we all hate it here in Phoenix. We've had our home on the market for 106 days. We have, over the course of those 106 days, dropped our asking price $150,000, which is actually now $220,000 less than what we paid for our house, and just under the amount we owe on it. So basically, if we actually sold it tomorrow at the price we're asking today, we would have a shortfall of about $27,000. After consulting with our realtor about our options, we decided to ask our bank, Bank of America, for a personal loan of $30,000.

When the loan officer quit laughing...

OK, she didn't actually laugh, but it was close. Here's how it went.

1. She didn't look at our credit rating.
2. She didn't look at our bank accounts to see what we had made over the last year.
3. She didn't look at other things I could offer as collateral besides my vastly de-valued house.
4. She didn't take into account the money I currently have in CD's with Bank of America.
5. She had no sympathy for the fact that I had a serious family issue.
She just said that they didn't make any kind of personal loans anymore.

Hello? Isn't that what banks are supposed to do? Here I am, willing to take out a personal loan in order to keep my credit intact, which would allow me to get a home loan in North Carolina, and they won't even consider helping me.

Let me rephrase that. She did suggest that I take a cash advance on all my credit cards [which I pay off monthly, I might add] and I could have the money that way. At a rate of 19.25%.

I totally understand how people will just walk away from their houses. I am tempted to do the same, although I won't. So here's the thing. I encourage you to add your story on how your bank or mortgage company screwed you to your own blog, and post a link here in the comments section. Please reference this article, and send it to everyone you know.

Bailout for banks? I don't think so.

Retro Sexuals and Alien Dating Practices

I just got started with Squidoo. I can't imagine what took me so long; it's an amusing task. I don't really know if anyone actually reads them, so I'll subject you to the links.

In Search of the Retro Sexual Woman is a piece of fluff to showcase some designs I did on Cafepress that feature some amusing women and men with a decidedly retro feel.

I also did a lens called Bridging the Cultural Divide between Aliens and Humans, a guide to dating aliens. [the outer space kind] It's full of good advice for people who want to hang out with aliens, and features some fun little designs I did with aliens for Cafepress. Just click one of the pictures to see them all. If you get a minute, please stop by and let me know what you think.

Adult to Adult Living Donor Liver Transplant

I wrote an article recently that ezinearticles picked up about being a living donor transplant.

See, my father has been very sick, and the possibility exists that he might need a liver transplant. I offered him half of mine.

I think he is a little afraid of having part of my liver. He seems worried that there is a risk that he'll start voting for Democrats, break out in fits of independent thought, and give up watching Bill O'Reilly in favor of Keith Olbermann. We can only hope.

You can view the article here.

Hunting the Elusive Wii

The kids decided this year that they would take all their Christmas money [which is what everyone sends since we don't live near any relatives] and my husband and I would pitch in and we'd all buy the absolutely perfect Nintendo Wii package with all the bells and whistles and controllers and nunchucks and balance boards and dance dance revolution pads and chargers and... oh I don't know.

We got back from a 5000 mile road trip on December 21st, and promptly the next morning went out to buy "the package." Sold out. Sold out everywhere, as a matter of fact. We finally decided to wait until after Christmas, because surely there would be some then.

My husband opened last Sunday's paper to look at the ads. Sure enough, WalMart had them on sale. He made a run out to get one before church. Sold out. As a matter of fact, they had come in at midnight and were sold out before 4 am. Go figure.

The kids informed me that we were going to be the last people on earth to get a Wii.

So today I was busy making plans. I'd take a nap, and pick up an early edition of the paper at the grocery store at 10 tonight. Then I'd look through the ads and make plans to hunt the elusive Wii before dawn.

My husband went off to the auto store to dispose of some oil and guess what he came back with - a Wii. My children and some neighbor kids are hooking the whole thing up as I write. It's rather anti-climactic really. There were two more on the shelf he said, just in case we weren't the last people on earth to get one.

I still think I'll take that nap.

Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 3

This is my third article comparing the relative success I am having with these three Print on Demand companies. If you would like to read the others first, they are:
Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle
Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 2

Today being January 1, I'd like to look back at my December sales with each store to see how they performed.

At Cafepress I have 4 premium stores: ottoblotto, Soup to Nuts, The Happy Nest Site, and Biblical T Shirts. My 13 year old daughter also has a store: Bird Geek.

Here are my results by store. In ottoblotto I sold items from the following designs:
Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder
Pool Boy
It's My Mother's Fault
Obsessive Catfish Disorder
Unsocialized Homeschoolers Bumper Sticker
I Love My Bouvier des Flandres
Token Straight Friend
My Heart is in Forks
I Love My Irish Wolfhound
Ask Me About My Pink Slip
I Love My Alpine Goats

In Soup to Nuts I sold items from the following designs: I Love My Nigerian Dwarf Goats
I Love My Brussels Griffon

In The Happy Nest Site I sold items from the following designs:
My Quaker Parrot Ate My Homework
My Chickens Ate My Homework
Obsessive Cockatiel Disorder
Toucans Rule
Macaws Rule

In Biblical T Shirts I sold items from the following designs:
1 John 14:6
Proverbs 27:17
Psalm 139:14
Groovy Christian Chick
John 3:16 Albanian
John 3:16 Maori
John 3:16 Portuguese

In Bird Geek my daughter sold items from the following designs:
I Smell Popcorn [I wish she'd sold more]

Several designs sold multiple items. I sold 9 items from the Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder design. It was certainly the best month I've ever had, but is it enough to call a living? Hardly. All that represents an income of $217.76 [at premium price level] less the monthly shop fees for 5 shops.

I have 3 shops with Zazzle: Live Simply, Biblical T Shirts, and ottoblotto. December saw my first sales at Zazzle. Here's how Zazzle shakes down.
In Live Simply I sold items from the following designs:
Obsessive Coonhound Disorder
Obsessive Cockatiel Disorder

In Biblical T Shirts I sold items from the following designs:
John 3:16 Swedish
John 3:16 Haitian Creole
John 3:16 Slovak

In ottoblotto I made no sales.

That gives me a combined earning from Zazzle of $13.13. Wow.

I have 3 shops with Printfection: ottoblotto, Biblical T Shirts, and Birds of Paradise.
I have yet to make a sale with Printfection.

One thing you might notice about all the designs that sold: they contain no art. They are just words. I have had a huge number of my Library People on Cafepress along with other art. It just doesn't sell. So if you are looking to make money, you might take these results into consideration.

You might also see that pets, be it birds or dogs or chickens or goats, are likely your biggest sellers.

Another thing I've found is that with my Biblical designs, it is mostly the non-English designs that sell. Also, Christmas being a Christian holiday, one might think there would be more sales of Christian designs, but apparently not.

I use a variety of ways to advertise my stores including my email signature, blogs, articles, and telling everyone I know. Still, not one single sale this month came from any of those efforts, despite numerous people telling me they would be shopping this Christmas in my shops. All my sales came directly from the marketplace. Another thing to take into account.

I hope these articles are helpful to you if you are currently working in POD, or thinking of getting started with a POD company. If you have experience here that can be helpful to us, please comment.

Forex Trading Robots

I wrote some stuff today about Forex Trading Robots, and Forex in general, over at another blog of mine, Consumer Humor. They are not particularly amusing posts, but you may enjoy reading some of the other posts there.

The Zazzle Product Panel

I finally removed my Zazzle Product Panel from this blog. Every time I looked at it, it would only show maybe one or two products. It was just big and not very effective, and the empty panels looked bad. It never appeared to work right. Has anyone else had this problem? Know how to fix it? Please post.

Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 2

OK, for those of you who are in POD, or are considering getting started in POD, this is another in a series of random observations regarding the online POD opportunities.

November is over. We find out today that we are in an official recession, and have been for a whole year now. Duh. I certainly didn't need a committee to tell me that. However, November's sales were somehow promising, if only temporarily. Here's how it racks up.

On Cafepress, I made sales of items in the following designs:
Psalm 139:14
Don't Make Me Break Out in Tourette's
John 3:16 Czech
Guitar Boy
Unsocialized Homeschool Children on Board
I Love My Norwegian Elkhound
I Love My Flock
We are Unsocialized
Obsessive Cockatiel Disorder
Obsessive Catfish Disorder
I Love My Toy Manchester Terrier
I Love My Nubian Goats
Tasmanian Devil in Tutu
John 3:16 Hungarian
I Love My Alpine Goats
Obsessive Chihuahua Disorder

OK, that's not great, but considerably better than any month in recent memory.

On Zazzle, I made sales of items in the following designs:
None. No sales.

And on Printfection?
Zero. Nada. Zip.

Interesting. I checked what was going on between the three websites over on Google Trends. Here is the result.

The blue line represents search volume for Cafepress, and the yellow line represents Zazzle. Printfection's numbers are so small, they don't even make it to the chart.

Of course, you could make the case that since I have more designs on Cafepress, that accounts for much of the discrepancy. However, I don't have that many more designs on Cafepress, and Zazzle and Printfection offer a number of items not available on Cafepress.

All of this suggests that, although galleries are free on Zazzle and Printfection, you may get exactly what you pay for. We'll see how December stacks up.

See Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle
See Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 3

Obsessive Catfish Disorder

I've been doing a series of designs based on OCD, also known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. So far I've done Catfish, Cockatiel, Conure, Cockatoo, Cat, Collie, Cairn Terrier, Clumber Spaniel, Coonhound, and probably some others I can't remember. Seems a lot of people suffer from Obsessive Catfish Disorder, as that one's doing pretty well. I've been told fishing was a serious disorder; that could very well be.

St Joseph Will Help Sell Your House

I am trying to sell my house so I can get out of Arizona. Could I have picked a worse time to do so? I doubt it.

My real estate agent is of the opinion that I have about as good a chance of being hit by lightning as selling my house. I can't decide if I appreciate his candor or not.

Some friends advised me that the thing I needed to do was to bury a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the front yard, and a sale would surely be forthcoming. Being as how I'm not Catholic, this was news to me, so I looked it up online, which is pretty much how I start anything these days.

St. Joseph refers to Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus. If you will remember, he had a lot of housing issues. There was no room in the inn, so they took up residence in a stable. Then, they fled to Egypt, then they returned, but this time to blend into the quiet of Nazareth. So if you think about it, he should be plenty sympathetic to people with housing issues.

I researched online, and found that most authorities on this subject say that you should bury your statue of Joseph upside down in the front yard, with him facing your house, and in close proximity to the For Sale sign. If he faces the street, then the house across the street may sell instead of yours. However, if you have neighbors you don't like, you might try burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down pointing toward their house, so that maybe St. Joseph will get them packing instead.

Needless to say, I now have his statue buried in my yard, accompanied by many prayers. Now what I need is a good thunderstorm.

The drawing is Library People #116. I am including some links so you can buy your own St. Joseph statue.

Illustration Friday: Pretend

I am back to drawing Library People. This is #112 in the series. It is a graphite drawing on the inside of a discarded library book. Since my husband is between jobs, like so many other Americans, it seemed like a good time to go back to these, as they usually sell. I'm not going to pretend this will get us through the current hard economical times, but we'll all do what we can.

We are trying to sell our house here in Phoenix so we can move back to North Carolina, buy a farm, and do more recycled art. Anyone looking for a nice home in Phoenix? Have I got a bargain for you.

Our family has decided to all paint rocks this year for Christmas presents, since we're trying to save for the aforementioned move. There are a lot of rocks in Arizona, so you can pick them up just about anywhere, and they're free, which is a big selling point, since even discarded library books cost money. It will certainly make for an interesting holiday.

Or not.

Making Megabucks with Google Adwords

Adwords. It is the Holy Grail of online advertizing, or so they would like you to believe. Let me tell you, the reality is a far piece from here. I have used Adwords campaigns to drive those elusive buyers to various sites and blogs for a couple of years now. While doing so, I have read every free article and book on the subject, which is to say everything in the library and the local Barnes and Noble, plus the "tidbits" available online. There are a lot of people out there that want you to know that you'll be making $90 GAZILLION DOLLARS in just a matter of weeks, and they have a book or a webinar or a whitepaper or something that will show you how.

Bull****.

First of all, if you are like me, you don't even pay attention to all those ads that pop up everywhere. They are so ever-present, that I have become completely desensitized to them. I sometimes imagine that the only people who click on these things are the people using the computers at the public library who can't even afford a computer, much less whatever it is you are selling today.

Secondly, people who are selling an actual product, not some overpriced webinar that promises to make you megabucks in 30 minutes or less may have a good deal of work ahead of them getting you to actually pull out a credit card to purchase something. And in our current economy, it's going to get even tougher.

Another annoying thing about advertizing with Google's Adwords is the number of clicks they charge you for. I use a free counter service, Add Free Stats, which I have used for years and really like. They tell you not only how many visitors you have had, but how they found you and what pages they looked at and for what length of time, and from which page they exited, including if it was through an ad and if so, which one. So with all this information, I can see who visited my website by clicking an adwords ad.

Interestingly, I am always charged for more clicks than appear on my web stats. Now, we're talking about 4-10 clicks perday, which is teeny-tiny bucks, but what if you are registering hundreds of clicks per day? I'm not saying here that anyone is cheating me, all I'm saying is that their numbers and my numbers don't add up the same way.

By the same token I, like virtually every other site in cyberspace, use Google Adsense to make money by running ads on all my blogs and websites. [Those would be the aforementioned ads that I personally avoid even looking at, which should be a clue to me.] Because, as all these advertizing gurus tell you, you are going to make MAJOR revenue by running Adsense ads which everyone and his brother will be clicking on every few seconds.

Again. Bull****.

Here again, since my counter service tells me when someone actually clicks on one of these ads, I know how many clicks I am getting per day, and for some reason I am not getting credit with Google for clicks my stat service says I'm getting. I'm not saying either service is lying, I'm just saying their figures don't exactly add up.

Out of my numerous blogs and websites, over the course of a few years, I have managed to make close to $26, all in 2 to 5 cent increments. They will pay me after I hit $100 if we don't see the second coming of Jesus first, in which case I'll get my mansion in heaven anyway, and won't have to worry about all the money I'm making or spending with Google.

Adventures in Facebook

A friend asked me to join Facebook. I'd been thinking about it anyway, so eventually I found the time and joined. I am still figuring it all out. I think it would be more fun if I had more "friends." Otherwise, it's just putting information out there, floating somewhere out in cyberspace. Kinda like this blog.

One of the more annoying things about Facebook are the ads they run down the side. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like the ones on my page are always geared toward dieting, weight loss, and liposuction. What is cyberspace trying to tell me? I'd like to see some ads for practical stuff, like putting in a greywater system or making a gazillion bucks online.

If you happen to be on Facebook, give me a holler. You are bound to have a more interesting life than I do, and I need to live vicariously through someone.

Return of the Library People

Library People return. It's been a long time since I did any of these. Not that they are all that difficult, but I got a little burned out on them. These are Library People #107-111, and they are, like all the others, drawn in graphite on the insides of discarded library books.

Ed Begley would be so proud.

Anyway, they are up for auction on eBay beginning tonight at 9:00 Pacific, so if you click on the picture you like, it will take you to that auction. I'm offering them in a block so you can save on postage if you buy more than one. They make unusual Christmas presents, perfect for the person who has everything.

Designing Skateboards for Zazzle

I started designing skateboards for Zazzle. I looked for a long time through the seven trillion designs they have there before I started. It's pretty incredible some of the designs they have. The long, thin design surface of a skateboard requires that you think creatively about your design composition, as some images just don't lend themselves readily to the skateboard layout. Realistically, I'm not a skateboarder. In fact, I've been bedridden for several weeks with a back injury, so jumping on my son's skateboard is pretty out of the question. But if I could, I'd probably want the one with the eyes. You can see my skateboards at my new Zazzle store, ottoblotto. Real original idea, huh?

Payloadz and the World of Instant Information

Internet marketing people are everywhere; you can't throw a rock on the web without hitting one. They've all written the definitive book, whitepaper, webinar, podcast, or whatever about how you, too, can make a bazillion dollars on the web, and for a mere $495.72, you can know their personal secrets. Yeah, whatever.
Some of them have written actually published books. I usually peruse them at my local Barnes and Noble for free, and if I find them interesting, I check them out of my local library, which is also free. You can learn a lot for less than $495.72.

One of the interesting things I learned about was a service called Payloadz. On Payloadz, you can upload your information product, be it how to compost with worms or how to make that aforementioned bazillion bucks, and make it instantly available to the entire world, day or night. You simply build a web page for your product, provide a link for them to pay through Paypal via Payloadz, and that's it. Payloadz handles the payment and download stuff. All you do is transfer the money from Paypal to your bank account and go merrily on your way.

It sounds too good to be true, and to some degree, it is. First you have to produce an information product, presumably on something about which you know a little bit. Secondly, you have to key into an audience that is actually interested in the information you've produced, be it worm composting or Internet marketing, which, when you think about it, are pretty much the same thing.

I wrote a study on Homophones for teachers and homeschoolers, which sells occasionally, although I think the actual number of people with a keen interest in English Homophones is likely pretty small.

If you have no real body of knowledge, and no inclination to produce an information product, it's not a problem. Lots of products on Payloadz have an affiliate option, so all you need to provide is enthusiasm and a web page with the appropriate links. Then just sit back and rake in the money. Or not.

There is still the issue of finding the significant number of people out there who are desperate for information on homophones or worm composting or Internet marketing, which is discussion for a different day.

Making Shoes on Zazzle

What a hoot this is, all you POD folks out there. Last night I designed my first shoes for Zazzle. How cool is that? I love funky shoes. I happen to have a couple of pairs of Converse shoes myself, one with blocks of color, and the other with faux leopard print on the side. They were the coolest shoes I'd ever found until I stumbled on Zazzle. Zazzle provides you the templates for each of the parts of the shoe in .PNG form. You just open them in something like Photoshop, add the fill and pictures or whatever you like, remove the template layer, and then save it. Once you have all your parts done, just upload them to Zazzle and add the pieces one at a time to the shoe in the design screen. Really, anyone can do this. I had a series of collages I did that used Chinese book pages, ink, charcoal, and magazine parts. I used various parts from the scans of these collages to make the shoes. In the design screens, you can do a million variations on any shoe, whether you designed it, or it is designed by someone else. So you can do all kinds of re-designing to someone else's shoe to make it entirely yours. You can change the color of the outer sole, all the bindings individually, the grommets, the lining, even the stitching thread. Another interesting feature with Zazzle is that you can add text to just about any design. For example, I made this card using a drawing I did on a Los Angeles County map. Then I added the text, so I didn't have to go through Photoshop to do it. I also used the image to make t-shirts that you can put your own says on, and stamps that go with the cards so you can actually mail them. In a mailbox. Remember those? Anyway, I think this whole Zazzle thing is really fun. And if I actually sell something, it'll be even more fun. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Cafepress - Which Shop is Right for You?

I have 4 different shops on Cafepress. One shop is totally customized, two shops make use of the Cafepress templates, and one is a free, basic shop. Let's take a look.

My Basic Shop is Horriblescopes. It features a "My Life Sucks" design that goes along with the website it promotes, Horriblescopes.net. Horriblescopes is a free horoscope website I write that is of a decidedly spoof nature. The Basic Shop allows me to use any number of designs, but I can list each product only once. For example, if I list a Women's Plus Size Scoop Neck T-shirt with the "My Life Sucks" design on it, then I can't list another Women's Plus Size scoop Neck T-shirt in my Basic Shop. I can put a logo header at the top of the shop, but I can't use any kind of fun template to spruce up the shop any further. You can have as many free shops as you want. So, if you have 50 designs, you can have 50 different shops. It's a pain in the rear to keep up, though, and because your content won't be changing, it's not going to be the darling of any major search engine.

I have 2 Cafepress Premium Shops that use the Cafepress templates. The first shop is Biblical T Shirts. It features a series of t-shirts with scriptural quotes, many in multiple languages. For example, the scripture John 3:16 has designs in 16 different languages. Strangely, I have never sold an English version of this design, although I have sold it in other languages. Go figure. This shop uses a custom logo the same as the Horriblescopes shop, but because you can do so much more with the templates and customization, it looks much spiffier.

The second Premium Cafepress Shop I have is my ottoblotto shop. This was my first shop, and its focus has evolved over the years. It is about due for a facelift; I'll let you know when that happens. Anyway, it does not use a custom logo, and goes pretty straightforwardly off the template. You can see that it is possible to make a good shop using the template even if you have no HTML skills. But I think a more custom shop looks better.

My 4th Cafepress shop is the Happy Nest Site Shop. It is a shop that uses all custom stuff: custom background, colors, logo, etc. It is made to go along with another new site I am working on, The Happy Nest Site, which features bird articles, reviews, etc. It is just getting started, so there is a lot of building to do with it. Everything you read about making POD work for you says that having sites away from the POD site that offer other information and such will help drive sales your way. I guess I'll see.

So I hope this helps you if you are looking into POD sites as a way of making a few extra bucks. My advice still is that you not quit your day job just yet.

Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle

Print On Demand Companies. Is this a great idea or not?

I have had a Cafepress shop for a few years. In those few years, I have managed to sell enough to actually cover my shop fees a few times, and once, last Christmas, I actually earned enough to receive a $28 check. So as a way to make a living, it hasn't exactly happened.

The Cafepress site says that they have shop owners who make 6 figure incomes from this stuff. I have tried to figure it out. I believe it is a numbers game. If you have 2 million products out there, you're bound to sell something, right? Another aspect of making Cafepress, or any of these sites work, is to write A LOT of keyword rich copy so the pages get indexed by the major search engines. This is the most boring part of it. Having to come up with all this copy can really stress one's imagination. Quite frankly, I hope no one reads all this stuff.

If you compare the three sites on Google Trends you will see that Cafepress is getting the most traffic, followed by Zazzle, and then Printfection. However, Printfection and Zazzle are showing increases in search volume while Cafepress is decreasing somewhat.

It seems to me that Cafepress has so many designs on it that it is hard to get seen just in their Marketplace. It's pretty much the same on Printfection and Zazzle. I somehow doubt many people search beyond the first 5 or 6 pages of designs, so your only options are to write obnoxiously keyword saturated copy for your designs so they will appear in natural search, or heavily promote your shops via blogs and outside websites.

I have had my shops on Printfection for a couple of weeks now, and opened a shop on Zazzle a couple of days ago. From examining my stats, I can conclude one of two things; either:

A. No one is going to these sites
or
B. My designs suck.

Of course, hardly anyone has visited my Cafepress sites either, despite the use of Google Adwords [a topic for another day]. So it might be option B.

I have 2 shops that have Biblical designs; Biblical T Shirts on Cafepress and Biblical T Shirts on Printfection. Half of my sales on Cafepress in the last 3 months came from the Biblical T Shirts shop there, and the other half came from the ottoblotto shop. The Printfection shops have had no sales.

My ottoblotto shop has a number of the items I have shown here on my blog, including numerous Library drawings.

I also have 2 shops that feature bird designs, Happy Nest Site on Cafepress and Birds of Paradise on Printfection. I have made only one sale on Cafepress from the site there, and nothing from Printfection. I am working on the creative copy stuff.

The good thing about Printfection and Zazzle is that their shops don't cost anything to have. You can upload a bazillion things there, and if nothing sells, you aren't out anything but your time. It only costs like $6 per month per premium shop on Cafepress, but you can only have 500 sections per shop. Of course, it will take you awhile to fill that up. Apparently, there are no limits with Printfection and Zazzle.

All these companies offer similar items for you to customize to your heart's content, and each offers a few unique items as well. Cafepress offers Print on Demand books, Printfection has glass cutting boards, and on Zazzle you can get skateboards and tennis shoes. All of which is time consuming. So maybe it will work out eventually, but I'm not holding my breath.

I have made an order from Cafepress. I can't say I was wowed by it. The printing was good, but the colors were not as vivid as they were on my monitor, specifically the aqua. I thought the printing on black was pretty good, though. I haven't tried Printfection or Zazzle yet. When I sell something and have some cash built up, I'll probably give them a try, too.

Maybe I'll be there next year...

See Cafepress vs Printfection vs Zazzle Part 2

Soul of the House - Clutter

I did some miniature art quilts some time back. This one was called "Soul of the House." It seems peaceful. Uncluttered. A fantasy. I think about houses having history, much like the history that I find appealing in my drawings on discarded library books. It is, on some level, the remaining remnants of the romantic in me that find some strange sense of connectedness through all this. My current house, while being a very nice house, is somehow not a home. I like it. It's very servicable, but it tends to attract clutter from out of nowhere. [At this point, my mother is pointing out to me in her mind that EVERY home I have attracts clutter.] This house, however, is somehow worse, being the lack of closet space or just the accumulation of stuff over time. Or perhaps the junk mail is breeding while we sleep. That's certainly possible. I am trying to get this house ready to put on the market, so I do, in a sense, create clutter even as I try to remove it. The endless sorting through one's stuff leads to such melancholy thoughts, I suppose. I'm sure it is folly to put a house on the market just now when NOTHING is moving in the Phoenix market, but the longing for green landscapes and a general inability to grasp the culture here has made us all ready to run back to the east coast without ever looking back. And run we will. Someday.

Agree to Disagree

"But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator [McCain] takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism." - Barack Obama, August 28, 2008

I cried when I listened to this part of Obama's speech. Why? Because the idea that we can agree to disagree is not in the vocabulary of most of the people I know. With the exception of my father, I would be afraid to have a political opinion - ANY opinion - here in the state of Arizona.

What is the deal with the black and white attitudes? Is it possible, as I have been told, that a person who is a Democrat can therefore NOT be a Christian? Since I'm a registered Independant, does that make me, oh.... an agnostic perhaps?

"So let us agree that patriotism has no party." - Barack Obama, August 28, 2008

Can we be patriotic, even as Independants? Geez, I would hope so. Recently, in a Christian coffee shop with a group of church friends [all Republicans, by the way] the televisions began playing Jordan Sparks singing the national anthem. The only person who stood was me. The registered Independant. They all looked at me like I was from Mars. Wonder if they'll look at me that way once we're on the other side of the Pearly Gates? Probably not. I'll be in one of those mansions down on the left.

A Man May Know

What I find most difficult with my life currently is that there are just 24 hours to a day, and I usually have enough work on hand to fill about 36. I get a lot done, but I still fall short of the goals I have set.

*

I did a few pieces recently, which I sold directly to the Canadians, and therefore didn't auction. This is one called "A Man May Know." Sounds important, doesn't it? [I love art that sounds important, don't you?] I actually glued a bunch of stuff over the rest of the quote without bothering to analyze exactly what it is that a man may know.

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Yes, apathy is a dreadful thing.

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I am not usually all that apathetic. I think some of it has to do with the forthcoming of menopause. Or is it mentalpause? I get confused. All I know is that it is hard to get really excited about anything when the temperature outside is hovering at about 108, and you are having a hot flash, which is a pretty fair assessment of my life just now. I should have packaged myself with my artwork and mailed myself to Canada.

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And as for men knowing, I imagine that it is just as well that the rest of the quote is covered. We all need a little mystery in our lives.

Illustration Friday: Hoards

I did a lot of these library book drawings; more than a hundred of them. They all sold, but I eventually burned out on doing them, and with the economy tanking, I took a second job and laid "art," such as it is, aside in favor of keeping on top of the bills. I have not done any art for a few months. Besides, who could afford to buy this stuff anyway?

But I got this call Wednesday evening from a man who had bought many pieces from me over the last year. He had opened a shop somewhere up in Canada where a lot of cruise ships come in, and he had some of those pieces in the shop.

His shop sells just recycled art stuff; nothing new. He was so excited to tell me how a man had come in and fallen in love with this piece and bought it for his mother who was a librarian at the Detroit Public Library for twenty-some years.

It reminded me that sometimes you do something that makes someone happy. How great is that? There have never actually been "hoards" of buyers for my work. It is just drawings of dead people on trash. But making someone happy is renewing.

He wants some more work, so I guess I'd better get on the go and do some stuff.

Enter to Win Faux Cow Finished Tools

I am running a contest over at horriblescopes.net. Now that all my family has clicked through this site to Psychic Edna's blog, and on over to horriblescopes, I guess it will only be a matter of time before they have me committed. Or cut out of the will. Or both. But I digress. The contest features this very cool set of 6 household tools in a faux cow finish, along with black and white polkadot boots, and a stylish set of 3 handbags in black and white vinyl with PVC trimming. I think it's pretty cool, albeit a bit out of the mainstream. So I hope you'll sign up and tell all your friends and post a link on every discussion board on the web. It would really help me out.

Ilustration Friday: Wide

I've been a little busy. I have been tutoring students after school in an underperforming school in the Phoenix area. It is occasionally rewarding, despite the volumes of paperwork required by No Child Left Behind. It's nice to get a little money back from the government, especially since my own kids have never made use of the public school system. I could make a long and wide blog post on this subject, but I won't bore you with that.

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I've also had some other projects going. You can take a look at Horriblescopes.net. It's horoscopes with a twist, and like the economy, the news is all bad.

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The drawing is titled Go Long, and is lithocoal and watercolor.

Pinewood Derby

Tomorrow is my son's Pinewood Derby race for Cub Scouts. It is a long, tedious affair that is well suited to the male mindset. Consisting of mostly guys hanging around, racing these little wooden cars down an inclined track with the help of only gravity, it is only mildly more exciting than watching paint dry.

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Towards the end of this day-long ordeal are the open class races in which anyone can race. My husband and daughter always enter these races while I sit quietly in a corner knitting or otherwise nodding off. The weigh-in for this event is tonight, which includes meticulously weighing and measuring each car and putting them in a vault somewhere so you can't alter them in the hours before the race. Whatever. This is way too serious for me.

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My husband, who works about 400 miles away all week, didn't get his car done, so it was just a big block of wood and four tires. He asked if I could help him out, so I transformed it into a sleek and stylish racer. OK, maybe not sleek. I emerged from the shop and called my children to come and look at my creation. They eyed it with great consternation. Right now they are calling the local mental health line for advice.

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They have suggested to me that I may be a little depressed. This is possible. In the meantime, I will look forward to tomorrow's Pinewood Derby with the anticipation I usually reserve only for things like root canals and visits from my inlaws. Please wake me when they announce the winner.