I bought this frame at the Great Glebe Garage sale in the spring, it was falling apart and had a grungy mirror in it.

This weekend, I took the mirror out, epoxy glued the corners back together, gave it a thick coat of white paint and got to work making it into a bulletin board.

I bought a roll of cork and hot glued it to a piece of cardboard. Then, I covered it in a piece of grey linen. To assemble - hot glue everything in place and tack a picture hook on the back. Voila!

The materials for this project cost more than the frame! Oh well… it was a fun and easy project and the result is pretty good. Sort of shabby chic.

After some initial fears of approaching stores with my cards, I ventured to my local Workshop Boutique today and delivered a fresh batch of cards. I hope their shoppers will like them. It’s a pretty nice feeling to be “in a store.” Yup. Pretty nice. (PS: buy now!)

And! Good news Toronto shoppers, there’s cards heading to your town too!

Uh oh. Look what happens when my cat, Orville, supervises the creative process – he puts himself on the product. Orville loves eating and is quite the gourmand, so it’s fitting that he inspired these yellow and white recipe cards!  Gocco printed in a deep tabby orange.These cards are in the shop today .  (Orville not included!)

This post is about using what you have.  Over the last couple of years, I’ve bought a lot of paper and used a lot of paper!  I have also saved a lot of “scraps.”  I knew that at some point, I’d find a way to use up these remnants.

I was thinking of ways to reduce the number of plastic bags I’ve been using for my greeting cards and I thought a little paper wrapper would do the trick.

With my Gocco, I printed up *dozens* of these little bands and let them dry overnight.  I may change up the design a bit so that it doesn’t cover so much of the card… but for now, I’m pretty happy with the results!

Getting into the habit of keeping tabs on expenses and inventory came quite easily for me.  For about a year and a half, I collected articles, pictures, magazine clippings, colour swatches, paper samples… you name it.  And my inner Martha Stewart had me cataloging all of these items into neatly organized binders and folios.

Being organized really keeps my mind at ease.

Today, I finished my current inventory list.   Now, to start making those numbers go down!  Let me go find my “Marketing” binder…

The good news: I printed another set of cards tonight. The bad-ish news: I spent the majority of the evening tweaking things like Google Analytics and PHP code for Wordpress because I want *certain* sidebars on *certain* pages.. and only those pages. I am picky.

The good news: I found out about Indie Public yesterday. It’s like Facebook for craft and independent design. The bad news: I may get hooked. There sure are a lot of people on it!

The good news: I bought the new Craft, Inc. book. The bad news: I still haven’t finished reading the last book that I bought on writing business plans.

Let’s end this post with some good news. I contacted Workshop Boutique about my cards and they’ve agreed to sell them. My products in a store. Awesome! I’m going to try to get them downtown by the weekend.

Another card completed and added to the shop.  This image caused some trouble due to the solid colour areas.  The first screen that I made didn’t produce a super clean image, but luckily the second one did.  Phew.  I am so happy with the pearly inks.  They add a subtle shimmer to the prints.

The Gocco is busy today!  This morning I printed a series of “crafty bird” cards and prints (various sizes and colours).  Here’s a sneaky peak of one batch drying.

I’m busy in the shop this weekend making prints.  First up, the ‘home sweet home’ print.  I love this one.  Mod lampshades printed with navy ink.  Perfect for framing.

I started printing cards last night - a limited edition of 10 pearly pink thank you cards.

I had a bit of extra pink ink at the end of the run, so I used it to print up some stickers for the shop. Yay!