Tag: Etsy

Internet · May 2015

Let’s Talk About the Weather (and Eurovision and some guy I read about on the news)

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Before I forget, because I might, there’s a giveaway running on my shop at the moment. Everyone who buys my Eurovision game is automatically entered to a draw to win one of my mirrors (your choice which one, of course). Yay!

Right, important stuff: is it really windy where you are at the moment? Because a lot of supplies that are being used to fix my house’s roof have fallen down outside the front door so I may well be trapped inside by timber, which wouldn’t be annoying if Donnie didn’t freak out every single time a leaf rustles.

But he does.

So I hope we can both leave someday.

Speaking of business ventures – sort of – this bloke has made me feel highly inadequate. I have very little understanding of what his company actually does, but the fact he just sold it for £40 million, having started it aged 16, tells me all I need to know…

… and that’s that I should have misbehaved at school a lot more.

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(All Hail) Creation · Art · COFFEE · May 2015 · Photogenius

Mirror, Mirror

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I fell asleep on the patio with my trousers rolled up yesterday, which means one thing… summer’s here. Or it’s visiting at any rate.

I love it. I love that I can swap hot coffee for frappes, jeans for short shorts and procrastinating on the Internet for sitting outside being, like, zen. It’s a bit strange that it’s May and for the first time in half a decade I’m not about to sit an exam, but it’s the sort of strangeness one associates with waking up on holiday.

Speaking of summer, this weekend I added two new things to my Etsy that I’m really, really excited about: pocket mirrors. I don’t know how many of you have a collection of mirrors that you take out to different places, but I have a little stash and I love them. Course, none of them are sarcastic, grumpy or outright rude, so I had to design my own.

It's Rude to Stare  It's Okay You Can Tell Me I Look Great

Cool huh. Get them here, for less than the average Starbucks beverage (in fact, I think everything I sell is less than the average Starbucks beverage… and I do my tax in the UK).

I’ve also managed to make myself a portfolio site that isn’t completely repulsive – the link is in the menu bar if you fancy my attempts to be incredibly professional. Speaking of, I have some emails to sort out. Happy Monday… unless you’re packing your bags to leave Tory England forever, anyway.

Is anyone actually doing that?

April 2015 · Internet · Tumblr · TV

GIF Watch

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Happy morning snowflakes.

That’s definitely a figure of speech today… but ‘sleepy morning snowflakes, why don’t I take the day off and make a folder of Poldark GIFs?’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

There is lots of new and seriously cool Etsy news soon and I think I might wait until I’ve got a lot before I dedicate an entire post to new products (and something else I’ve been working on for far too bloody long). Makes for better gloating…

I keep stopping this post to go through the BBC One Twitter and collect more GIFs. I’m running low on new ones and trawling Tumblr for that exact image is tiring so it’s important to build up a bank. That being said, there are some I hope never to use…. I just saw a post full of Vladimir Putin memes and having seen that Reggie Yates documentary about extremism in Russia I’m not totally sure if I want to plaster ‘Putin riding on things’ all over here.

Maybe that’s why I should do it.

Monday has just cheered up a little!

NB: I just realised that when I started this post it was still Monday morning. Will leave everything as a nod to how much I’ve been finding excuses to sit outside instead of work.

April 2015 · Art · COFFEE · Complaints · Internet

Calling Everyone Who Can Identify Hollywood Regency from a Line Up

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To see if it would boost sales, I just explored the style’ option in the Etsy listings. Here are some of the gems you can choose to help your product increase visibility:

  • Renaissance
  • Kawaii
  • Industrial
  • Art Nouveau
  • Beach
  • Victorian
  • Mid Century
  • Hippie
  • Hipster
  • Waldorf
  • Hollywood Regency
  • Neoclassical
  • Cottage Chic

I’m not sure what those words mean, let alone if my artwork fits into the categories. As an experiment I have made Ghost Stories Goth and Fantasy, these Retro and Kitsch and my Imitation Game poster both Traditional and Modern. Etsy also offers an ‘occasions’ list, which is handy around, say, Valentine’s Day, but feels quite constricting the rest of the year. That being said, I made the first Ghost Stories Halloween and the second Day of the Dead just to see. I’ve also done something I didn’t want to do for the tea/coffee posters and selected the optioning proclaiming them ‘for women’. They’re not, they’re for anyone who wants them… but Etsy’s front page makes casual Joe customer browse by person type… so I thought what the hell. I feel icky though – if I don’t receive cold hard cash in return for my sexism, it’s going back.

Okay, now can anyone tell me what ‘Industrial’ is supposed to mean? Does Etsy have a subculture of 17th century mine works salvagers?

(All Hail) Creation · Art · March 2015

Ghost Stories Volume II!

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For a moment this morning when I woke up I was grumpy, because Donnie was barking at some imaginary threat in the garden. But I’m now really grateful to the paranoid little fluffball because it means Ghost Stories II is up before 9am!

I don’t remember the last time I wrote a blog before 9am.

Ghost Stories II Cover

This issue it a bit different to the last, mostly because Comic Sans called to me, and who am I to refuse the temptation of awful fonts? Get it here and have a good Friday 13th!

Oh and if I Tweet weird things later it’s because I’m watching Comic Relief and grappling with the desire to donate my life savings.

(All Hail) Creation · Art · February 2015 · Internet

Ghost Stories Zine Volume I

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I don’t know about you, but in January, while midway through adding notes and deadlines to my Benedict Cumberbatch Work Calendar, I noticed that 2015 has a large number of Friday 13ths: today, 13th March and 13th November. ‘What a great day to promote quirky or weird art or work,’ I thought. ‘Too bad I don’t have any to promote.’

So I made something new.

Today, in March and in November, I will be releasing Ghost Stories, a zine celebrating all the things that should be celebrated – or at least acknowledged in conversation – on Friday 13th. This issue has haunted graveyards, an advice column from Hades a brief but polite notice from the Ghost-Mortal Alliance Office. You can get it here if you’d like to read it, and enjoy the only pre-made bit of work I had, The Mystery of St Aidan’s, on Story Shack here.

'Ghost Stories I' Front Cover

If you get it, let me know what you think! I’m working on the next two issues at the moment and I’m drafting out new/different pieces, so if there’a anything superduperfabulous that you absolutely need in the next one, now’s the time to ask!

(All Hail) Creation · Indifferent Ignorance · January 2015

Mid-Blog Crisis?

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I feel like I’ve got a conundrum on my hands, and it’s not whether or not I should eat even more haggis today than I did yesterday (while I’m thinking about it, happy Burns Night day! One of these years I will actually get past the food and read some poetry).

The conundrum is that, for the past few months, I’ve been s l o w l y balancing my freelancer books so I’m making more than I’m spending. I don’t spend a lot, mostly because I don’t have a lot to spend, but Etsy bills and material costs stack up alongside the writing and shop sales so I am Scrooge reluctant to part with any cash unnecessarily. I especially won’t bother renewing Etsy items that haven’t sold or are likely to sell, because I might as well concentrate on making and marketing the pieces that are likely to make me a millionaire… which they all will, obviously, since I don’t make anything that isn’t mass market.

Bullshit Brigade Watermarked

One thing I’d really love to keep up there is the Little Book of Indifferent Ignorance, because I love having merchandise for the site that’s available to buy, instead of sketches of what I’d make if I had £100s to invest. Thing is, not a single person has bought the book (or, as far as I know, read it) so my sharp shopkeeper’s instinct is telling me to take it down. I’ve advertised shop-wide sales, I’ve lowered the price, I’ve put an incredibly obnoxious ad on the sidebar here, and zilch. But the sentimental part of me is, well, being sentimental.

I am also feeling guilty for being ungrateful, since I don’t write here for the money, or the outside confirmation that I have an audience.

Unless I am writing for outside confirmation that I have an audience (or worse, for money) in which case this goes deeper than an Etsy download and means I need to reassess my priorities.

Crap.

Should have just discussed Burns Night.

Indifferent Ignorance · January 2015

Spllchkr Gltch

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I just started this blog in almost exactly the same way that I started the last one, even though I remembered writing the last one. Same phrases and everything… I have got to read more.

Today has been busy – I’ve been printing and sorting my first physical sale of 2015, which is very exciting and reminded me how much I like organising stock… which I now realise is not exciting to most of you.

Do you think my computer’s incorrect spellchecker counts as a case of indifferent ignorance? It’s driving me bonkers – apparently this post alone I misspelled organising, realise and misspelled.

Wait, I actually misspelled misspelled.

Speaking of Etsy, I’ve been meaning to remind you guys that The Little Book of Indifferent Ignorance is still available to download, but unless someone buys a copy before 2nd February, it expires. (Etsy is sneaky that way. On the plus side, bad products don’t take too long to disappear from my memory.) I am 99.9% sure I didn’t misspell anything in the book – the 0.01% of uncertainty stems from me not having read it in a while, as well as far too much exposure to product branding.

I’d better cut this post short since I have to go and look at some furniture soon. I suppose I could save it and add something wonderful later, but Broadchurch is on…