Sorry, been MIA

I have been absent the lasr few months.   I Have been busy trying to get this business off the ground, and it seems that I am not getting anywhere with Etsy.   I thought that Etsy was the best there is next to Ebay, and neither one of them are giving me the satisfaction I need as a seller and my cards.   I know also one of the reason for this, is I have been concentrating on swaps, and not my businesses.   This is a lesson learned for me.   After I make these Christmas cards, I am off swaps for a while.   I need to do the following things:

Concentrate on both of my businesses.

Concentrate on why I am doing my businesses.

Update my blogs.
Update my facebook page
Concentrate on what God wants out of these businesses.

Concentrate on both of my businesses.

Notice how I said "Concentrate on both of my businesses" twice.   I did not quit Archivers to do swaps, but the owner of the group felt like it is totally neccessary to swap out totally professional work, not my best work, although she says in the emails, our best work.   Swaps have to be wrapped just so, which I am willing to do.  You cannot have certain items on a swap piece, which I am willing to do, but with me making very little money at the moment, If I get out the pieces on time, I am doing good.

OK, enough with the gripe session, it is time to move onward and upward.   I need good website to promote my items on, and having my 14 year old nephew as a webmaster is not it.  He means well, and I love him for asking, but I went to one of my networking meetings the week before, and topic was how to promote your business.  the person who spoke, gave some good information on how.   I have most of it, I mean I have a facebook page with both companies, joined an online networking group, where I can promote both groups.   I am on a couple of yahoo groups to promote my businesses.  I have an Etsy store, I sell on ebay, and I have these two blogs.    I know I am not doing enough or my sales in both companies would reflect otherwise.

Well at least one:

I will show you at least on of my projects I worked on.  Yes, it was for a swap for this group I am in, and I mailed it yesterday.   I can make one for you, if you would like a copy of it for you Disney scrapbook you are working on, or would like for me to work on.

This is for an Animal Kingdom swap, and it is made out of the following :  1 bazzill Suade Brown Dark (12x12), Bazzill Grey (12x12, do not know the actual name of the paper since it is discontinued, but you can use another bazzill grey paper, I had this on hand), Creative memories White (12x12), Remininence leopard print (12x12), Bazzill Poka dot Beige ribbon, Mementos Black ink. elephant is from an unknown source from the internet (but any jungle animal will do).  The scallop and smooth oval circles were cut out from the Cricut cartridge Storybook, one of my favorite cartridges.  The scallop borders is a lighter unknown brown bazzill paper (it too is also discountinued)    

This is the sketch I drawn from:

The only thing that I changed up from the orignal sketch is that I have an oval instead if a circle.   I took the top of the paper Leopard print and where the writing goes, I flipped it, and used it on the ribbon.   I replaced the stars with the elephant to give that African look, and I put the journaling directly under the pictures instead of off to the side.  Now for the tricky part.   The scallops under the patterned paper were not on the orginal.  I faked a piece a scallop paper to make it look like there is a second peice of paper underneath.  I cut a scallop border from the Plantin Schoolbook Cartridge, then traced it onto a lighter brown bazzill cardstock.  

Well that is it.  I hope that I can get back on track.  I hope you have a wonderful start to the summer.  if you have kids, have fun finding them something to do for the summer.   My nephew will be busy, and other neice and nephew are not old enough to get busy.   (nephew is 3 and the neice is 1). I have no children, yet, so I get to skip that luxury.   Talk to you next time.