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

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"!!

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 :)

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!!

Friday Frenzy

Well it's Friday and the frenzy is on! I have one week, ONE WEEK! to have everything ready for our show next Saturday and I am no where ready. I haven't been in a show since last spring, before we found out Mom had cancer so I am pretty nervous. Will I even remember how to assemble my elaborate display my husband made for me???? My partner just spews her poems like they are nothing and I struggle to keep up with her... I don't think I can and I'm just trying to do the best I can. She is so hilarious, yesterday she left me a voicemail while driving (Oprah would kill us) and as she was driving inspiration hit her so she called me to record the writing in case she forgot it before she could write it down. I just have to worry about keeping my end of the bargain up. There are not enough hours in the day! I've also been getting show applications sent to me for this years coming shows and have excitement and anxiety just thinking about how I will be received all over again. Oy.

So here is another creation of ours. My dad, who is an artist too, thinks the typeface is too hard to read. Any one else think that? I am using the pretty typeface as part of the design as well, but I do want it to be readable.

Butterflies and snow

Hi everyone, it's been a week since I posted. I've been busy getting ready for an arts and craft show that I'll be in next Saturday. My friend and creative partner, Gale have been cranking out our work. (The butterflies are one example of what we've got going on). One thing we're having trouble with is pricing. We don't want to price ourselves out of the show, but we need to make it worth while, too. I'm sure everyone that sells their stuff asks the same questions. This will be our first show together as a team and it is exciting and also scary to think our stuff may be rejected. You really put your heart out in the open for people to tramp all over with art or anything that you create. Oh and by the way, I've created these digital designs with her poetry (please respect our copyright) and I'm trying to come up with some different ways to actually mount them to sell. So far, I've come up with framing them (not so different) and decoupage them to wooden plaques. Anyone have any great ideas that they would be willing to share with me? I'd love hear your thoughts.

We've had I don't know how many days with snow and I am sick of it. I'm ready to get outside and I am more of a fair weather kinda gal. I don't like to get out when it's cold. Now we are looking for another possible winter storm this Sunday. Yuck. I long for the days of late spring and summer. It's days like this that I wish I lived in Hawaii or Fuji or some fantastic place like that.

My fellow blogger friend, Kathryn of SassmowthDesigns mentioned today the One World One Heart being over and all the giveaways that was going on. (I didn't win any either, Kat) I know that I enjoyed the One World One Heart as a spectator and ended up following a whole new bunch of great blogs. I now have so many that I keep up with that I find I am not getting as much done as I want to! Oh well, they are usually such great inspiration that it will pay off. And who can have too many friends, right?

Also, if I have any Florida friends that are in the area of Wolfy's Waterfront Bar n Grill in Sanford, please email me and I'll mail you a gift certificate for there that will expire before I get back down to Florida. I only have one, so if there happens to more than one, I'll put your name in a hat. You've got til this Saturday the 20th to contact me.

What to do, what to do...

Some of you know that I have been working on some designs for a collaborative effort with a friend of mine, Gale Woolems. She is busy and we don't get to meet often but have sometime set up for this Wednesday. I'm going to show her my designs that I've got ready and I hope it's along the lines of what she was thinking. More so, I hope that it will be something that will be profitable for us both.

She writes poems and songs and stuff and I'm taking her words and designing them and making a montage around them or sometimes drawings and paintings. Our plan is to print them out, frame them up in some cases make greeting cards out of them and there is talk of maybe a small book. We have big ideas and no money. hah! We obviously have no business plan either.

I am leery to publish them to any sites yet for one: she hasn't seen them and we will edit them together and two: I worry that people could very easily take her words and use them as they please. We all know how easy that is. I'm at quandary as to how to market them online without fear of them being snatched and sent in mass emails along with all the spam we all get. They are similar to emails that we get, you know like angel poems or friendship poems. Only these are her words, not something by some unknown author. But I guess those started out as someone's words also. So you see what I mean. oy. what to do.

Does anyone have any advice about this sort of thing. We have no money to do any lawyer sessions.