Addicted To Zazzle

One thing you've probably noticed about me is I have plenty of passion! I'm all in or all out...then all in again. So in the last blog I believe I said I was through with Templates, well now templates are back on haha! I have done a bit of problem solving and this mad scientist has a new formula so to speak. I'm now onto making just large square images. I have been able to make them so they fit everything as long as everything is precisely centered and made them into templates so I can keep ploughing on. I have realized I will still need to go back and change the descriptions for each one and a couple of the tags so that Google knows what products I'm talking about, hopefully that will make it easier for people to find my stuff, and again, I will also still need to add more when I pin on pinterest but it's easier just to make what I need in bulk and go back in and change it. There are still some older ones which I need to go back and adjust, I was pretty lazy with m...

Yesterday while chatting with my husband about something entirely different I had this feeling, like it was time to create! It's like an urge or a craving, and no, it wasn't because I was finding the conversation (or my husband) boring or irritating haha! It doesn't come around often, I usually have to search for it and then force it out of hiding, like a raccoon which is in the roof but which is reluctant to come out, but maybe for food. When it does show up I find I'm more intuitive when it comes to shadowing and adding things which sets the rest of my art perfectly with every other aspect, and the works I create come easily and are of the the kind of quality which stands out from the rest of my work. I have also been pinning a lot, mostly other peoples work but some of my own, hopefully by doing both I can get two income streams coming in, but it's early days yet. It would be really nice if they both pan out, I'd still be happy if even one became wildly s...

So today after expressing my feelings about being particularly bogged I managed to find the planks, shoved them under my wheels and free myself from the sand. I ended up focusing on one category in my Beautiful Frames store, which were my Butterfly Ribbon Frame designs. It took me all bloody day to fix the horrors which awaited me, and I think that overwhelmed feeling was my subconscious warning me of things to come by bombarding me with a million other things which could serve as an awesome avoidance tool! And it worked... for 3 whole days. So I have come to yet another conclusion. Quick Create is not for me. I thought it was really the most awesome thing I had EVER come across because I could see my store building and building at a faster rate than I had ever been built before! I had goals to build an empire, but I am now realizing that it is not faster, I still have to go back and fix all the descriptions and that takes just as much time as doing them all one by one. I was toying wi...

The last few days I have been finding it very difficult to do one thing at once and this has been very counter productive. Since Zazzle has announced they are changing the way our products appear in the search I haven't been able to create, I have been going into my stores changing my titles, descriptions and tags and then "ooh look, somethings happening on Pinterest!" I jump on, look at my feed, see who's following me, follow them, see something beautiful and pin it, this seems simple enough but then I realize I have to add my source code and, since a lot of people don't add much else, I realize if it's going to get noticed, ever, I need to add a detailed description in a way in which the potential customer can imagine themselves having this product for themselves and that takes time. Then I worry that I'm not creating, then I think about how I need to make the products I already have in my shop more specific. So I have too much going on in my mind! I am ...

After long lulls in my sales this year, and upon investigating why, the last couple of days have given me a realization about my product rankings and it was clear to me as I was searching for my photo mugs and realizing they had really sunk in the search that what I am doing isn't working as well as I had hoped. So I get my Problem Solving Ninja on and look over the specs. My titles, tags and descriptions are tight as a drum, they all match, my power tags have the right mix of general and descriptive words and phrases, and the Google search tags fill the gaps nicely. I have made products which serve a purpose rather than products which just sit there and look pretty - you can find pretty mugs and house wares in K-mart, Target, Woolworths, The Reject Shop and Red Dot for up to $5 - so what could I be doing wrong? Could it be that my store and the products in it are fairly new so not many people have had a chance to find them and bring them to the top of the search yet? Could they ev...

I have been away for a few days! It has been a busy time as my Mum had lost a dear friend to Mesothelioma and then my step dad went into hospital for extremely high blood pressure that night. It's times like these that you realize you need to spend more time with your family and let them know you love them so much! So I only managed to get one design out, but it is one of my best! I worked on it late into the night for hours, obsessed, I HAD to finish it, then wait for it to upload so I could see what it would look like on a product. The reason why it took so long was because I spent a lot of time trying to find just the right foliage swirls and get them just the right color, the colors had to be coordinated and fit well with the rest of the details, some needed to be more prominent, some were supposed to be there but not be as noticeable, like a nice surprise, something new to be discovered each time you look! The 3D aspects also needed to be just right, but it was worth it as i...

Today I thought I would write about an issue which I am very passionate about, that being mental illness. I have grown up around it as many of my close family members suffer from bipolar disorder and depression, I too have experienced both depression and post-natal depression and let me tell you, it is a battle you can't afford to lose, you must fight to free yourself, and it is an uphill battle, but also one you can most definitely win. I was lucky that, like for most people, medication worked but I must be on my guard, I must keep my diet clean and healthy and I must exercise and get plenty of vitamin D as a precautionary measure. Once you're already depressed these can help but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, at least in my case. So let me show you this piece of art I created back in 2012 to represent the ongoing battle which I have experienced, watched growing up and still see today among friends and family. Good Versus Evil Fairy Wrapped Canvas Can...