Friday, June 05, 2009

Craft show prep

Well, I'm busily working away on my setup for Sunday's Ann Arbor Artisan Market. It is officially "MICE @ the Market" day with a number of local Etsy sellers (see the lovely logo below for more details). I've had the table set up in our living room all week and am getting down to the final details. I lucked out with a visit to the Ritz Camera in town that unfortunately went out of business. I picked up some stands that work perfectly for cards and prints. I have put off on making a banner and price signs, but am determined to have it all finished tonight so I can spend the day tomorrow with friends who just got a new sailboat. That seems like a much healthier way to spend the day than frantically running around trying to add more to my setup. I figure, there will always be more I CAN do, but not that I HAVE to. I'm sticking with the — don't let perfect get in the way of good— line of reasoning. Yippee! Wish me luck on Sunday and drop by for a visit if you are in the area.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Balcony garden update

Our little apartment garden experiment is coming along nicely. The radishes are within days of being ready. Little carrot tops are peaking up all over — the seeds are so small that I ended up sowing them quite thickly. I don't know about you, but there is something about thinning little seedlings that makes me feel so mean. These little guys did their best and everybody came bursting out of the soil — as directed — and then, in one fell swoop, plucked out to be discarded. With the radishes, I tried to replant them, but the carrots are so thin and wispy… am I crazy? anyone else?

Our Ikea basil (I bought one of those little seed kits that includes the soil at Ikea last fall)is blue ribbon worthy — I can't wait for Ikea pesto!

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good…

You know when you've been meaning to do something for a VERY long time and it just kind of lingers in the back of your mind ALL the time. Well, it's been that way for me with business cards. I think I always wanted them to be an absolute perfect representation of me and just couldn't figure out how to do that (imagine that?!?). Anyway, with the upcoming Artisan Market (this Sunday, June 7), I knew that I simply HAD to have a business card. So, at the eleventh hour, as always, I uploaded my design to Overnight Prints. This was last Thursday at 3 p.m. By 9 a.m. the next morning, I had received a confirmation email that my cards had shipped — they don't call themselves Overnight Prints for nothing. It was that easy. The box was waiting for me when I arrived home last night and… drumroll, please… here they are:

I've got 1,000 of these babies and I'm pretty darn pleased. I am now also in love with Overnight Prints. The title of this post is a quote from a post by Martha Retallick over at the Freelance Switch blog that hit home for me and I think you might enjoy it, too, called Just Get Going: The Single Most Effective Marketing Trick.

Monday, June 01, 2009

From the sketchbook…

Hope you all had a great weekend. It's a rainy morning here in Ann Abor after a gorgeously sunny weekend. I mentioned last week that I had been feeling like my computer was playing too central a role in my art. So I've been playing around with some things — including breaking out the pen and ink. I haven't used it in a long time and am having some fun…