A new wedding listing

I had to share this new listing for GeeJayCreations because I am pretty proud of how it turned out. It is a new wedding listing and I couldn't believe it, but within about 15 minutes it had 42 views from Etsy. So I guess Sunday afternoon is a good time to list to get views. Unfortunately no hearts yet or better... a sale, but maybe soon. If anyone ever has any ideas for current wedding color combinations, I'd be happy to hear them. I know the aqua and brown theme was popular for a while and I like it, but I'm not sure it still is. I have plans to turn some of these montages into greeting cards.

I want to give a shout out to my friend and fellow blogger, Theresa of Faerie Moon Creations she has been giving me advice and encouragement and her etsy shop is having a big sale starting today!

good news today!

I got a great voicemail message from my partner, Gale, today. She had sold a framed 11x14 "When I say I do" montage, 3 greeting cards and 2 of my notepads! Our Etsy shop isn't doing much yet, but Gale is! I guess that just goes to show you if you have something in front of you, it is more enticing to buy.

I'm like that, too. I'm a sucker for the junk in the checkout lane, the impulse buy stuff I think is what they call it. So is Asher, my 4 year old and they know it. They put all the candy at his eye level, so I think it's their fault if they have to listen to him shriek in agony when I tell him no, he can't have twelve thousand grams of sugar coated with sprinkles or whatever catches his fancy at the moment.

Well I wanted to share my elation with the sales with my bloggin' pals. This wedding montage "When I Say I Do" is our best seller right now. So if you've got a wedding to attend... hint hint haha... we customize at no extra cost ;)

Have a great weekend everybody!

Jaime

Always a student

That's me, always a student. I love to learn new things and I think education is totally wasted on the young... lol. Well maybe just higher education. I am a student of LIFE. Sometimes a student of Hard Knocks. A lot of the times an accidental student.

I've been learning a lot lately. In more than one way, too. More traditionally I've been learning through lynda.com, which is a subscription type service which is so cool and really helpful. You can pay for a months worth of learning time ($25) or a year long subscription ($250). One heck of a deal. Either way, you watch these educational videos (as many times as you want for the length of your subscription) on the subject (mostly computer related programs that I've found) of your choice. I've taken an online course before to learn a web page layout program through the local college here and I feel I learn a lot better with lynda.com. (a lot better? is that right, maybe I need to take English over!) All the videos I've watched so far have been easy to understand and hear and see. If you're wanting to learn a new program or learn more about an existing program you already use, this is the way to go. You can watch the videos 24/7. If you think you might be interested check them out and also on youtube, you can find some free lynda.com videos to get a feel for how they are.

I've just completed a course on Twitter and Facebook of all things and let me tell you what guys... if you are using your blog, facebook and twitter account to help drive potential clients to your "shop", then you can really benefit from watching this group of videos. There is a wealth of knowledge there, stuff I didn't know about or how to use. It was very helpful and there were a lot of links I got from the instructor that will help educate me even further. I even spiffed up my twitter account and customized it, go check me out and please... follow me on twitter!

I had to post this picture of Asher playing his new harmonica I got him for his birthday. I have more fun with it than he does, who knew? now I may try to learn to play!

Spring is here!

Well hello there Spring... so glad you decided to show :)

Aha moment

Happy Friday evening! I've just been reading some of my favorite artist blogs and have to recommend this one in particular to all my artist friends or anyone that is feeling creative (and I think we are all creative beings!).

It's Lindy Gruger and her blog and art called L. Gruger Whimsical Art and Travels Blog. She has in particular a 5 part series called "One Artist's Journey" and I think it is really interesting to learn about the lives of people and how they arrived to where they are in life now. I've humbly suggested her to put the series on a single page to make it easier to move from one part to the next but it isn't really hard to find the next installment. So if you get a chance and want to read about the decades of an artist's life, start here. There are a lot of beautiful paintings and it's an interesting read that shouldn't take more than 30 minutes.

I commented to Lindy that I just realized that I am almost 40 and have not journalized my life really at all. She has inspired me to do that. I see the importance of chronicling your life as an artist and want to partake in that more routinely. Even though I've thought of my blog as a sort of journaling, I want to have something just for myself to see how I've evolved.

Have a great weekend. ~Jaime

Wordless Wednesday

GeeJayCreations made 1st Etsy Sale!

I'm so happy to report after just one week, GeeJayCreations made our first sale. It is a lovely wedding montage with the most beautiful poem called "When I Say I Do". The buyer opted for a white mat which looks stunning. It comes with a white or a black mat and the picture here with the frame is just to show how it would look in a simple matte gold frame.

We are not offering anything for sale in a frame on Etsy but we do at our shows. Does anyone sell work that is framed with success on Etsy? I'd be interested to know your thoughts on it.

Does anyone know if you re-list an item on Etsy (like the one we just sold) does it show up on "recently listed" items again? I didn't see mine and it is totally buried in the main section I put it in (weddings). Doesn't it put you back up towards the top again if you re-list? I looked all the way down to page 15 and couldn't find it. What's up with that? I guess the wedding category is really crowded this time of year.

Anyway, celebrate with Gale and I, we are doing the "Happy Dance"!!

hmpfff...

So I've been thinking lately I want chickens. Hubs said no way. :(

Check out new Pages tab!

Check it out! I've got tabs! They don't really look like tabs, but they function like tabs. I didn't know this was even available, so I think I have my friend Kat of sassmowthdesigns to thank for that, I think she is the one that tweeted this great tutorial by passionforbeads. Do you ever go to the links in the tweets? I do and I have learned quite a lot that way.

If anyone wants to trade banners and add a page for this like I have, just add the page and contact me to swap banners. You can add up to 10 pages, how cool is that?! The pages are just for Blogger users though, sorry. But I'll swap banners with anyone, (well just about, ha ha)

GeeJayCreations Etsy is finally up

Good evening friends,

I had forgotten how long it takes to set up shop on Etsy! I've spent a better part of the day on it and only got 10 things listed. Oh well, it's good to spread it out a little I think. I've already had a few items get hearted and two people listed us as favorites... yippee! Gale is thrilled too. She is not used to all the wonder of the internet and she is very impressed... showing her all the razzle dazzle makes me feel like I know a thing or two... ha ha! If you have a chance and like our stuff we've created then please, check out our Etsy shop and heart our shop :) I will be adding more of our work daily.

A few more designs

Well I do a lot of Live and Learn around here... I wish I had taken pictures of these before I slipped them in their protective sleeve. I was in my slurry of Friday Frenzy before my show when I took these pictures, in hopes I wouldn't have anything left to photograph after the show ;) I could carefully pull them out and re-take the pictures, but I am so busy just trying to get them on Etsy that it will have to wait. I will have the digital shot of it without the mat and sleeve so it will be very clear for the etsy shop.

Show Pictures

Pictures of GeeJayCreations 1st Show!

Wow! Hinds site really is 20/20. Looking at these pictures tonight for the first time really gives me a peak at what the public saw of our booth. It's okay, but not great. I see a lot of room for improvement. To give myself a little credit though, I did throw this together in record time with all of the cutting, matting, packaging of everything you see on the rack that isn't framed done on Friday the day before the show. I'm glad I'm looking at these to help improve our look before our next show which looks like will be April 24th unless we run across something that is sooner. So we have some time.

The large framed pieces are from my Photomontage side of my business, separate from GeeJay Creations. Also, there are still quite a few of my original note cards on the spinner rack, which we got for $15 a flea market! What a deal! Doesn't it look professional?

My tablecloth, which is just a large piece of polyester straight from the bolt needs some attention for sure. It doesn't cover all the way to the floor or sides and doesn't cover at all hardly on the other side. Even though it opens up to the neighbors booth (see below), I want it to look nice. I also want to address the floor under the booth to utilize that space a little better.

Gale had some good ideas of adding some signs explaining what we do so that people will actually come up and read the poetry. She also had an idea for our larger 6x9 greeting cards which won't fit on the spinner rack. Let me see what you all think of this:

I think it has potential and want your opinions again. Her idea is to have a large piece of fabric (think shower curtain size) and sew clear pockets made from plastic to slide our cards in to display them. It would need to be hung so I thought of a self standing rack that we could use as a wall behind our table. It will only utilize the space above the table and people would have to reach over the table to pull them out. What do you guys think? Can you think of something else? We are looking for another spinner rack for cheap in the bigger size but until then, I kinda like the idea of having blinders on the people when they come in our booth. What I mean when I say blinders is they couldn't look into another booth unless they stepped out of ours. It would kinda shut out our neighboring booth which I don't like to seem unfriendly but we could use the vertical space that way. They may actually like it, because it would give them a backdrop for their stuff.

What are your thoughts? Ideas?

More close up pictures of some of our work we are selling on a post tomorrow. I'm about ready to set up Etsy! Thank you all for your support, you all just make my day when I read your comments :)

Asking for advice...

I am thinking of changing my website, logo, business cards, Etsy, blog, twitter, Facebook Fan Page... everything, you name it to a new name... my name. It's not like I'm very well known. I just bought my name as a domain. I've been reading my Artist's magazines again and they all say it's more professional than artsyfartsyme for someone like myself trying to make a go of it as an artist....

I've only been going around as artsyfartsyme for a little over a year... What do you all think...

www.jaimehaney.com

or keep everything artsyfartsyme?

Ahhh the let down after a show

Ahhh...

Howdy all! I'm BACK!! and still exhausted... ha ha. Now I'm jumping from the frying pan into the fire as my mom used to say. I've got my first show in almost a year under my belt and feeling great! I'm now on a hot deadline to get my heirloom tomatoes seed sown like today! ok, probably tomorrow since it's like almost midnight here. I'm having a record sales in that department. I had to go buy more supplies like pots and soil today. I'm up to 245 tomato plants.

My new business partner, Gale, was a blast to be at the show with. We cackled and had a great time the whole day. It started out pretty good, I didn't oversleep... I only got 2 hours sleep because I was just trying to get "one more thing out... ! " I'm sure a lot of you will know what I mean on that! Luckily, the stuff I stayed up so late on was the first to sell. And speaking of sell. I was so pleasantly surprised at what great and encouraging comments we received all day on our work. We were just beaming.

Well back to the start... it was an hour from my house and close to that from hers. We were going to meet at Burger King for breakfast. I was doing good... only 15 min. behind schedule (I'll be late for my own funeral) and we are calling each other back and forth. She is so funny... she calls me when she gets great ideas and this time she was singing again on the phone to me from the paper towel she had just written some new song lyrics to. We hang up and I call my best girlfriend cause she just got off her midnight shift to say hi and Gale beeps in... "Jaime! you are not going to believe was just happend!" turns out her old truck which was carrying our very big wooden display busted something and water was everywhere and now not running. Luckily she was in the parking lot already. So I had to think fast... I got back on with Kelly and she made a quick 2 mile or so jaunt to us and we transfered the display to her old truck and made it to the show with time to spare. We didn't get our breakfast but Yay! they had donuts for the vendors Yippee! So we were sugar buzzing while we put up our work and jabbering the whole time. I told her amongst the many times I would lose something that she didn't know she was in business with such a flake.

But the day flew by and we were successful and we are all excited about doing it again. I slept so good the next day and my husband even let me sleep in. aaahhhh heaven!

I'll post pictures soon. I didn't really think to get many but I did get a few of our display.

Thank you all for your super encouraging thoughts and words.... they all worked!!