Archive for February, 2008

That’s right - after thinking about it, and whining about it, and groaning about all the work I’d have to do to make it work, I have a new Etsy shop:

http://sixhours.etsy.com is the new home of my photography prints.
http://calobee.etsy.com will continue to function as a shop for doodles/custom illustration.

This change makes sense for a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s better branding for my shop name to match my Etsy username. I’ve known this all along, but didn’t want to admit it, because of the amount of work involved in moving everything to a new shop (not to mention the loss of feedback and listing fees and–if I can be so lame as to admit it–hearts).

Second, now each shop has a singular, cohesive look and feel. Cutesy drawings + dark photography sharing the same space didn’t sit well with me, as I feel my target audiences for each are somewhat different. This way one medium and style won’t get lost in the other.

I hope this won’t be too confusing to buyers (or to me!) but I think it’s a change for the better. I have to give some credit to eighty8words for making the point that brand recognition is a good thing, no matter how bad the carpal tunnel aftermath. Yeow!

The weekend was mahhhvelous, simply mahhhvelous.

I had the pleasure of meeting jewelry artist and fellow Etsian Susan, aka yellowplum of Yellowplum Beads, on Sunday. She makes beautiful, intricate beaded jewelry, and is incredibly friendly and so easy to talk to. I’m really glad she suggested we meet up (I am far too shy to make the first move in most social situations) because now I have a new friend! That’s two this month, which I’m sure is some kind of record for hermits.

I also spent some time working on a new custom banner for Brianna of The Crochet Side fame. I would point you directly to the artwork, but I believe she’s waiting with baited breath to unveil a super-secret project relating to said banner, so I will keep my mouth shut and let her do the talking.

I have a photo shoot coming up sometime this month, exact date and time yet to be determined. I have a stash of smaller vintage clocks to work with, and over the weekend I bought yet another vintage clock (found via JennSki’s blog) on impulse. This one is so fracking adorable that I will probably put it up in my office when it has outlived its usefulness as a photo prop.

In fact, I’d really like to make some kind of wall art with all these pretty old clocks I have laying about, but I’m not sure how to go about doing so. Most of them are thick and heavy and wouldn’t hang on a wall easily, and as I may have mentioned before, I am engineering-challenged. This may be a job for the resident super-genius-engineery-type-person, Mr. Tim.

I had such grand ambitions for this evening: to make a baked ziti for dinner, take some photos, maybe even work on a new Web site layout. Then I realized that I’d forgotten to run the dishwasher last night, hence no clean dishes with which to cook (and it should go without saying that I am too lazy to do them by hand). So then I figured I’d take photos while I was waiting for the dishes to finish, until I discovered I’d left my camera’s switch in the “On” position (for about two weeks, no less), hence no battery power. And quite frankly, I am just too tired to wrangle with HTML/CSS/PHP code right now.

So, all grand ambitions have been postponed in favor of sitting on my butt and writing this blog post. Aren’t you lucky?

I have the coolest parents in the world. They read and comment on my blog, they’re my fans on Facebook, they play World of Warcraft… they’re hip. They’re happenin’. They’re all-around good folks, and I love them dearly. So I suppose it’s only fitting that, when I went to draw the winners for my birthday contest (with help from random.org, the true random number generator–accept no substitutes!), guess whose comment number came up?

That’s right–congratulations B Moore, aka Mom! You most certainly deserve it, especially after all those hours of hard labor, the diapers, the cooking of separate meals for certain picky eaters (ahem), and (who could forget? Because I will certainly never live it down) the Great Blue Milk Incident of 1988! Who knew that you’d still be sticking my scribbles on your fridge long after I turned 7?

Let it never be said that good parenting doesn’t win you any prizes.

Then I thought… hmm, the good people of Blogland are an understanding bunch, but they might find it a tad convenient that the winner of the contest also happens to be directly related to me.

Well, that’s easy enough to fix. I decided to draw a second winner, and that lucky person is Pia Jane Bijkerk, a stylist who writes a beautiful blog with gorgeous photos. Congratulations, Pia! Your cupcake prints will be sent out tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who participated! I had a lot of fun watching the entries roll in, and found a lot of new blogs to read in the process, and I had such a great response that I will definitely do another contest soon–perhaps for my one-year Etsy anniversary, coming up in March. Stay tuned!