We've moved

Well folks it's official the blog is moved to www.ComfortableShoesStudio.com all new content will go there and I won't update here anymore, change your bookmarks.

Wheeeee!

typepad questions

So as I’ve written in here previously I’ve been toying with the possibility of switching to a typepad account and hosting my blog on my own domain as www.ComfortableShoesStudio.com, which is a domain that I already own. So I’ve already put that into process. I’ve purchased the typepad account, and set things up at my domain host and currently your able to see a basic version of my blog at ComfortableShoesStudio.com It won’t be stable for 14 days or so while I evaluate how much I like typepad or dislike it. So far I like it just fine.

However I realized right after I went through all that trouble that I managed to miss that Blogger offers the same damn service, for free. So I’m debating the need for the typepad account. I have a 14 day trial period to determine if I like the service or not, after that I’m paying.

So the major discussion in my head is whether or not I like the service typepad offers. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, I’ve been pretty happy with blogger, so I’m not sure a switch is a good idea or not. So for now I’m posting posts to both accounts.

BEST

The Bookbinding Etsy Street Team (BEST) captured a tresury and it's viewable here:
Treasury, and yes I'm on it!

A little Planning Goes a Long Way

So I wanted to write about my DayJob a bit here and how it’s affected my ability to spend time on internet and art things.

Obviously the DayJob is important to me, I’ve learned a lot of useful skills from them, some of which I’ve applied here online and some that are universal- like when to shut my mouth. I worked 50 hours this week. Yup, 10 hours of sweet overtime. But it’s left me with less energy when I finally arrive home. Keep in mind that now I’m in the new location I drive about 1 to 2 hours per day for travel completely dependent on traffic. So my days are sometimes 12 hours long. Obviously that’s a lot of time, and I’m left exhausted on some days.

So I’ve had to carefully plan out my days when I come home from the DayJob- cook dinner and lunch for the next day, eat and pack it up. Then I clean up. I relax for about a half hour reading my email then I head to the studio for about an hour. Because I only have an hour I have to pick and chose what I do carefully. This week it took me 3 days to cut and fold paper for hedgehogs, something that normally I’d have done in 2. In addition to that I worked on the 2 portraits for my boss while I relaxed in front of the TV. Normally the portraits would have been done in 2 days or so.

Because I’ve prepared for the unknown things happening I’ve been able to plan ahead for certain things- like the covers for the hedgehogs have already been cut, so all I need to do is sew them and glue them up. But when unexpected emergencies arise- such as the recent instance with eBay taking down all but one of my listings it throws me for a loop. Thanks to eBay I’m out a possible $50. While not a big deal it is a burden for me, I simply didn’t have the time to relist those auctions, it would have required me to shift my other responsibilities.

I try to prioritize the studio, website and personal items. Obviously blog entries go to the wayside in weeks like these, custom orders that I would normally weave into my time get shifted to top of the pile and get done first and eBay listings are saved for weekends when I have more time. I keep a to do list in the front of my Jotter notebook that lists the items I need to accomplish during that week, I cross them off as I go. In terms of personal items, I’m keeping a shopping list on a post it in my jotter. The rest of the personal stuff is sort of a routine: dinner is made easier by having a lot of pre-packed veggies in the freezer and chicken ready to go, so for nights where I come home ready to sleep- I can throw a chicken breast in the frying pan, a package of green beans and maybe some rice in the rice cooker.

Essentially we plan for this sort of thing with my job- there are often times when an emergency arises- wireless dies, registers stop working or card readers stop working. In those instances I have to stay until it’s fixed. Sometimes I know I’m going to be there for extended periods of time- such as this past week and probably the next couple of weeks- though after this week things should calm down a lot.

I’ve also had to plan for things within my job too. I’ve had to dedicate a page in my planner to planning out important instances with my day. Appointments, interviews I’ve set up, interviews I’m conducting, call back etc. For the first time I’ve had to look at my duties and prioritize them and see what I can accomplish in half my day while shifting my temporary duties (human resources) to the forefront of my day. I spend my AM doing my normal duties while every 2 hours looking at a specific program for my temp responsibilities for a half hour; back and forth until noon. I then shift gears in the afternoon and work solely on the temp responsibilities.

Towards the end of this past week I started to feel more comfortable with the temp responsibilities which has lessened my stress level as well as the time I spent at work. My goal is always to get everything done that I can do in 40 hours. I like my job but my website and art are my real focus in life.

In short a little planning and focus have made my home and internet life run a little more smoothly though I’ve been wishing there were more hours in the day.

Pro Blogger

So I found a new blog that anyone interested in blogging; whether for art or not but as a way to promote their business should read and regularly check out: ProBlogger.net

It’s really great- good articles, informative articles that translate well to art- or anything really because the subject is blogging not just business. But I thought that their were some great suggestions and IDEAS for people interested in the subject. So head over to problogger.net for a good read and learn something.

Also in this vein of thought I’ve decided that I need to separate my art marketing interests from the art part of my blog, so from now on updates on my ‘zine on art marketing and blog strategies will be made here. Of course I’ll post links to let people know I’ve updated here but all real posts will be made to that blog.

oh ebay you fickle thing you

Well, after yesterday I had hoped that my listings were safe but fully expected them to come down. So this morning when I got up I wasn’t sure what to expect. So to check my email and find that 2 of the 3 remaining listings were gone didn’t surprise me, but the randomness of the removal is what gets me. The final listing also had the same string of keywords and was also listed at the same time. So I don’t get it.

I understand that I’m in violation of the rules, but I’ve literally been listing with those same titles for years, with not one peep of rules violation or warning or indication that they were in violation of the rules.

I also removed the word “like” from my listing, replacing it with “better than.” Both of those listings were removed. However, the words “better than” were not on the list.

I sent a note to eBay regarding the matter and apparently you can’t compare your items at all to another in the listing title. So I can’t even include the word moleskine or cahier at all. Even though cahier is French for notebook. So I’m screwed.

I hate ebay even more today than I did yesterday. But I’m between a rock and a hard place. Etsy is great and I’d love to do all my sales through it but I’ve always done the bulk of my sales through eBay. I’ve stuck with it through thick and thin but this may be where I draw the line. I’m carefully weighing my options, and I’ll come out with a plan soon. I wish this could have happened on a different week, I’m working crazy hours at my DayJob and I’m literally coming home to fall exhausted into bed, if I had more time I’d be able to deal with this in a more effective manner and get the listings back up on eBay the next day.

So those of you who are bidding, I’m sorry eBay stinks these days but expect that one last listing to come down tomorrow. I’ve contacted someone at eBay regarding my attempts to edit the title and being unable to do so, and I’m hoping that having made those attempts will get me some slack but I expect not.

(On a side note- I took a look at some of the other listings, and I’ve noticed that they do seem to be cracking down on this across the board. Knockoff bags, shoes etc are all getting taken down too, so I don’t feel so bad, but I’m expecting that for me to come into the radar that some one reported me.)

Blog Marketing art

When I talk about “marketing” my art I sometimes get funny looks. So I think I should clarify what I’m talking about when I discuss marketing. Marketing to me is anything and everything I do to promote my art and my website. Think about it, you probably got a website to promote your art but what are you doing to make that happen? If your response is doing nothing then I think having a website is a waste of time. If you aren’t investing a little time each week to promote yourself the effort, time and money of having a website or blog about your art is wasted. If all you do is allow Google or other search engines bring traffic to your site you’re not effectively getting the word out about your work. How can I say that? Because I spent the first year of having my website letting it sit there relying upon Google, search engines and eBay sales to bring people into looking at it. I qualified my website and blog’s dismal failure by telling people that it’s only there to show interested customers and collectors what I do.

Well, where the hell were those interested customer’s coming from? There weren’t many! Someone would email me to ask me about my work, usually from a referral from a friend of theirs who had seen my work so I’d send them to my website. That’s how it worked for quite some time. Until I decided to take it into my own hands and figure out how to get more people coming to my website, to my eBay sales and to me for custom work. Thus my blog was born. I was keeping a personal blog that drove a lot of people to my work- I saw the power in my personal blog (sadly Diary-X is dead now) for marketing and getting people to check out my work. So I started the blog about my art.

Here’s rule #1 about the art blog- it’s all about art and the trials and tribulations of being an artist. You will find very little griping about my personal life here, you will find NO complaining about my customers here, nor will you see much complaining about my DayJob unless it pertains directly to my art. I’ve heard a lot of argument about artist’s blogs and what they should or should not contain. Each blog is personal and you should make it yours however you want. But these are my rules and I’m going with it. So I keep my blog art focused. (This comes from my personal preferences in blogs- I like to read about art, how the art was made and the like; I don’t like to read about some one’s dog puking on the carpet, cooking dinner or what grades the kids got. I read other blogs for that sort of personal info.)

Rule #2 about the blog is: promote it. Trade links whenever possible, get featured on websites whenever possible. Provide links in the bottom of your every email address. The signature file of emails is a secret and powerful weapon for artists. At the bottom of every email people get form me- I provide a link to my blog. I have the address to my website on my business cards. Now if someone asks me about my art I tell him or her to check out my blog- they can learn far more about my art and me through it than they ever could have before.

Rule #3 about the blog. Use it. Post regularly. Most blogs have the feature of saving entries (Wordpress and Blogger) so that you can publish them later, work on them more or what have you. This is a rule I break a lot. I’ll post 10 entries over a weekend instead of spreading them out across the week. So that’s a change you’ll see instituted on this blog asap.
Marketing shouldn’t be a dirty word for the artist and crafts person- we just need to change our thinking of it form a big corporate idea to think that it’s just thinking about how we’re going to get more people to look and buy our work.

marketing this

Holy moley it’s freaking HOT here in Mass. I’ve been printing lines on paper and the paper and printed are not liking the humidity.

The printer keeps jamming because the paper keeps curling. So instead of hitting print and walking away par usual, I have to listen for the printer not printing and then come back, fix the darn thing and then go back to what I’m doing.

It’s mildly frustrating. Especially as I have a lot of paper to print- I’ve got a l;arge order lined up and I need to print it now, I’d rather wait but I can’t.

I’ve also worked on my marketing plan over the last few weeks. I’ve got a good outline of what I need to do now I’m just in process of picking out actual actionable items to add to it. I need a good plan to follow otherwise I won’t do much of anything. Essentially the plan involved 4 to 8 hours a week of additional work- over an above work on the website, making books, ebay and etsy. The goal is to get more people reading my blog and interested in my books. The plan utilizes what I already do plus some use of google analytics.

Have I written about how much I’m in love with google analytics? It’s freaking awesome. If you’re an artist trying to learn more about the visitors to your website, blog or other site you can use analytics pretty easily. There are a lot of screens to look at and see: where your customers/readers are coming from, how long they stay, what they look at, where they are from, among a large number of other things. You can also set up specific pages and entries to track. It’s highly customizable and the reports are really useful.

I’ve analyzed (yes I’m a total geek and this is what I partially do for my job) some of the reports to see where I can improve my links, referrals, and length of time spent on my site.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with how much time I spent on the plan today so I congratulated myself with a bottle of Magic Hat Hocus Pocus. I rarely drink these days but occasionally a nice ice cold beer is very nice.

Featured Recycled Crafts

There's a website called Craft Gossip and one of the sections on the site is about Recycled Crafts! I'm featured so check it out!
A visit to the site will put it onto your frequent reading links.

tonight tonight

Tonight I'll be posting more items on eBay. I had hoped to last night but I was totally wiped out after work so i came home and crashed. Work has been like that lately- exhausting.

I have a long weekend coming up so I'll be able to post plenty of things!

Recycled JOtters and NOtebooks on eBay

It's HOT HOT HOT here in Mass, but I'm lucky I've got a cool ocean breeze. Mowing the lawn was a lesson in dehydration! Wow!

I've managed to list 3 sets of recycled journals on eBay. I've got 1 large recycled with lines, 2 small double sets of jotters, one with full recycled pages and one with plain wausau ivory paper. Each set of Jotters has 6 notebooks for only a dollar more than my usual buy it now price. Youcan find the eBay recycled sales here.

blurry

I recently noticed that my pictures are blurry… I couldn’t figure out why and then I took a look at the settings on my camera and realized it’s set to take pictures at the smallest setting, which means that after I crop my pics they are too small to fill the image space on etsy and even ebay, so they get blurry. Of course the light in all areas of the new house is nust not as nice as the light in the apartment. That place juts had the perfect light for photography. I’m afraid that I might have to purchase special lights to get good pics, of course if I would stay in one place and shoot jut there it would be helped greatly too.

I’m putting a leather journal up on eBay as well as a set of jotters an I might put another large recycled journal up there as well.

The couple of journals that I plan on putting up on eBay I've already taken pictures of them, but I can't find them anywhere. I've looked on my photo bucket account, all through my computer etc and they are no where to be found. I'm worried they were on the OTHER computer before I wiped it out. Sigh, I didn't want to re-shoot them as I wrote above about the blur situation...I guess we'll see what happens!

future planning

So next week I plan on reintroducing myself to eBay. I’ve got a few smaller journals and a few sets of jotters to auction off, as well as a few other items. Sunday I’ll post the listings and they’ll be active for a week, as per usual.

I spoke with my brother about making me new buttons, he sounds a lot happier now that he’s got a job and new friends who have similar interests. He’s got some plans for a web comic, and once he gets it set up I’ll post some links, even though its not the sort of things I’m interested in, he is my brother.

So I’ve firmed up about 50% of the “new” website and now I just need to wait on the buttons from my brother. Or course I also need to think about what I want for buttons and how I want to present the new set up. But all the old pages are down already and the new set up is starting to emerge from the ashes. I’m pretty excited.

I’ve also been making books again. A few hedgehogs, some jotters and getting paper ready for other endeavors. I also printed out my own copy of Walden, which I found at B&N for $8, minus my 10% discount…. Grgh. My copy will be an heirloom. I also found a copy of The Jungle for less than $10! (Given my recent reading of The Ominivore’s Dilemma it’s right in line with my reading interests right now.) However I’m going tolook online and see if I can get a copy used.

A few Hedgehogs

So over the weekend I’ve been working on a massive stack of hedgehogs. Of the 9 that I made 2 are spoken for and the rest will go to either eBay or etsy. It was good to be in the studio and making hedgehogs. I feel like I focus on one variety of book per weekend. I’d like to expand that and make a bunch of sewn books as well as hedgehogs. Alas I do have a life outside of the studio.

Each of the hedgehogs has a different paper inside, some have Strathmore laid texture with an ivory color, a few have white laid paper and one has Strathmore ice blue wove texture paper. Each one has 160 pages, a pocket, bookmark and an elastic closure. I’m very happy with how they turned out and how the press worked on them.

This is also the first batch of books that I used my new sewing cradle to punch the stations.


This one is up on ebay here.


This one is up on ebay here.

This one isn't listed anywhere yet.



This one is claimed.


This one will go up on etsy tomorrow.

Notebookism!!!!

THe notebook that I wrote about last night was featured on Notebookism.com!!!

Notebookism is one of my favorite websites. One of few that I check every morning before I go to work, it's set to open in Firefox with the rest of my email services!

Click the link above to ekc out notebookism entirely, and if your only interested in my book click here!

Book Presses

Figured that this deserved a post all it’s own. After I bought my bookbinding press on eBay a year ago, I knew that I‘d need something with a little more. . . Oomph. So I gave it to my Dad and asked him to reverse engineer the thing and add strength to several specific points:
#1 the cross brace
#2 the uprights
#3 the base

I also asked him to make the things perform a little more smoothly, get rid of the nuts and bolts on the handle so it was more comfortable to use, hide some of the mechanical aspects of the top brace and in general class it up a bit. He did this and then turned the project over to my brother. I’m pleased to announce that he’s now able to produce them on a small scale- 2 or 3 per month. He can also produce them in other colors and we‘re going to come out with a chart so people can choose the color they would like.

For now we’re focusing on eBay but I’m going to make him an Etsy shop and let him stock it. Hopefully he’ll be able to take this and go with it. Right now I’m dealing with all the money issues for him and dealing with the fees associated with eBay. Pretty soon everyone will be able to buy directly form him. Exciting news.

That being said I’ve been using one of his presses for about a month now and I’ve got nothing but rave reviews. It’s been taking all the pressure I could ever use on a hedgehog and the quality of the hedgehogs I’ve been making has only gone up since using this press. My covers are tight and perfectly smooth, not a hint of curl. I’ve also found that I have far less swell in my spine. When the damp spine is pressed down with this it really flattens it out. I’m going to mess around with some hard cover books soon I’ll make some hard covers for so Coptic books I’ve been thinking of for a few months.

Anyway you can find my Brother's press for sale on ebay here!

Here are a few pics to whet your appetite:

Binding Books

I started a Google Group called Binding Books. Feel free to head over there and sign up the page s here:


Book Binding

I'm hoping to make it an active community and have a lot of discussion about book binding.

So head over and sign up!

Binding Books

I started a Google Group called Binding Books. Feel free to head over there and sign up the page s here:


Book Binding

I'm hoping to make it an active community and have a lot of discussion about book binding.

Me @ Del.icio.us

Due to popular demand I've added a link to my Del.icio.us account.

Of course due to my missing links (pun intended)I'll have more links as time goes on. The link to the Del.icio.us account will always be on the right.

Original Press

This is the light duty press that I bought on eBay a year ago. I used it twice, it works well and is very serviceable. I'll be putting it back up on ebay sometime this week (probably Tuesday) I'm not sure how expensive shipping will be, but it won't be too much.

this could be a useful press for anyone who is making hedgehogs or other Moleskine style journals. I thinklso one could glue up some hard cover books. Also, one of the things that I've used it for is t press my moleskine after I've been painting the pages with watercolors. I think it helped keep the cockling down a bit.