Addicted To Zazzle

I have made some templates for wedding packs which includes wedding favors, invitations, menus, programs, table cards, RSVP postcards and more! The whole idea is that when ladies are looking for their theme they like things to match, well that is how I remember it from when I was getting married 7 years ago. Making these wedding products has filled me with nostalgia as I realized how much I had forgotten about how much goes into planning one. I did everything from scratch for our wedding as we had little money and it was to be held on my parents beautiful property north of Perth. The only thing we paid someone else to do was the photography (though most of the best, most meaningful pictures came from the guests cameras!) Lots of things had to be done on the day - I made my own bouquets from cheap flowers bought at our local food shop, styled all my bridesmaids hair and applied their make-up, placed the napkins and hired cutlery inside the hand made napkin rings, I made my own centerp...

So five days ago I quit smoking, cold turkey from my pack a day habit, and things are going really well! Every time I feel the urge to go outside and pollute the air I avoid thinking about it and block it from my mind. The house is spotless because I'm trying to keep busy, I'm not overly grouchy which is a freaking miracle! There's just one thing I'm having trouble with - my concentration is shot. I know what I want to design, I get started and then I lose my way. I don't even know how it happens, I just forget what the big picture is! Eventually I managed to pull an image together and I'm so glad I didn't give up and decide it was going to be too hard today because this image turned out to be very beautiful and I'm really happy with it! You can see the hearts image below. In the mean time I have been reading this HILARIOUS blog  page about quitting smoking, I just  can't get enough of it! It is all so insanely true and he holds nothing, and I mean n...

Usually, I make a little bit here and a little bit there on Zazzle, a magnet here, a mug there, just enough to keep me encouraged and enough to notice I am making a little more each month than I did the last as I add more designs to all the products. Well a couple of weeks ago while trying a new angle on titles, tags and descriptions I thought maybe I needed to cut down on the amount and type of products I post on because at this point I have been overwhelmed with needing to change them all to suit the product, the target audience and the occasion. I wasn't sure if all this extra work was going to pay off when I could be adding hundreds of new products. I'm so glad I didn't do a cull because when I looked at my earnings this morning I had made $28 commission on a couple of packs of personalized napkins I had made in the last week, and it was one of the products I was considering culling in the name of laziness! I had also sold a couple of mugs as the day went on. So the mos...

You may not know yet but I am super excited to let you all know that Zazzle is now selling FABRIC!!! I am super excited because about a year ago I was making pram liners, I often couldn't find what the customers requested in the local shops so I began thinking about designing my own fabric to make the liners with as well as selling them on eBay and Etsy, and being able to sell on the site would have been ideal as well. So off I went on a quest to find this magical place where I would be able to place my designs up for sale and buy as well as sell my fabric and make beautiful pram liners. I found Spoonflower, and it was the only place which did all these things which I needed. So I jumped on the band wagon made an account! I soon found it wasn't going to be easy to just place an image up for sale, there were a few hoops I had to jump through to get my designs up for sale. You can make a Spoonflower account - easy! You can upload an image and see it on the fabric - easy! You ca...

I haven't had time to post in the last few days as I've had a rent inspection clean to attend to, and between three boys and a husband who are like tornadoes inside the home and especially with my middle child who loves lego (all over the house), my youngest son discovering he loves to dig the dirt out of the garden beds and get himself black from head to toe then make a trail of black marks on the way to the shower, the big clean and trying to maintain the big clean, trying to design and add images to Zazzle and play with the titles tags and descriptions, things have been non stop around here and I have neglected my blog. So I'm happy to say the rent inspection is now over, and the result? Perfect! So working with the square templates has been blissful! Everything fits where it is supposed to fit and it's really just a matter of uploading my images onto quick create and then off I go! So here are a couple of designs I have worked on the last couple of days. P...

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...