Pues sí, abrí una nueva tiendita en CafePress.com de animalitos lindos :P
Acá algunos de los productos que pueden encontrar: camisetas, sudaderas, ropa para bebé, fundar para Ipad y Ipod, botones, stickers, gorras, cuadros decorativos, tazas, accesorios, tazón para mascota, tarjetas, bolsas, postales, imanes, etc.
Well, I just opened a cute little animals new shop at CafePress.com.
Here are some products you can find there: T-shirts, sweatshirts, baby clothes, Ipad and Ipod cases, buttons, stickers, caps, prints, wall decor, mugs, accessories, pet bowls, cards, bags, postcards, magnets, etc.
The holidays are fast approaching with Thanksgiving tomorrow, Hanukkah starting next week, and Black Friday/Cyber Monday just days away. As you plan your holiday shopping, think about including gifts from YALSA for your colleagues. In addition to books, YALSA offers gift memberships, subscriptions to Young Adult Library Services, and t-shirts, mugs, and other products at CafePress.com. Read on to find out how you can include YALSA on your gift list this year.
CafePress Products
Looking for fun, book-themed products for the readers you know? Then check out YALSA’s store at CafePress.com! Visit www.cafepress.com/yalsa and check out our t-shirts (with a variety of slogans and in a variety of styles), baby products, coffee mugs and other housewares, bumper stickers, ornaments, tote bags and much more. Pick up a t-shirt that says “YALSA: Telling You What to Put on Your Bookshelf Since 1957″ for your favorite co-worker or a tote bag that says “Well Read” for the bookworm in your family. You’ll find many other slogans and designs at the CafePress site. Your purchases support the Friends of YALSA. Price range: $3.49 to $41.39.
YALSA Books
In the past few years, YALSA’s catalog of professional materials has grown, with ten titles published since 2007! YALSA offers professional books on reading and booklists for teens (Best Books for Young Adults, 3rd Edition; The Official YALSA Awards Guidebook; Quick and Popular Reads for Teens; and Annotated Booklists for Every Teen Reader: The Best from the Experts at YALSA-BK), teen programming (Get Connected: Tech Programs for Teens; Excellence in Library Services to Young Adults, 5th Edition; Cool Teen Programs for under $100; and Multicultural Programs for Tweens and Teens); and teen service delivery (Risky Business: Taking and Managing Risks in Library Services for Teens and Young Adults Deserve the Best: YALSA’s Competencies in Action).
Help the teen or school librarian on your list grow professionally with any of these ten high-quality professional titles. YALSA members enjoy a 10% discount on all YALSA books. To learn more about each title and see ordering information, visit YALSA’s Books page. Price range (with 10% discount): $27 to $58.50.
YALSA Gift Membership
Looking for a gift for a LIS grad student you know or perhaps a new colleague? Give the gift of innovation and inspiration – give YALSA membership! You can buy a gift membership for a new member or offer a renewal for
I'm working on new art that I'll show here in a few days (fingers crossed).
Yes, there are sheep involved.
Meanwhile, just wanted to check in. This is completely self-serving, but thought I'd put it out there. I've tweaked my
Shop page quite a bit, and am trying to really 'work it'.
Have a look if you feel like. (You don't have to buy anything - just go window shop.)
I'm trying to 'put myself out there' without sounding like a used car salesman - and think like a shopper, and put links and images on there in a helpful and friendly way, without hitting people over the head with any of it. Its a fine line. This is the part of being an artist that most of us struggle with - right?
I have shops on
Zazzle and
Cafe Press. I set them both up to look like my website, with the navigation links up top. That way, if people feel like browsing the website, they can easily go back to the Shop page, and from there the shops again. Its like, wherever you go, you're always in my website, you can't escape! bwaa ha ha.
I'm also doing all the behind the scenes SEO stuff like tags, keywords, etc. etc. to hopefully get people 'out there' who are googling "Christmas cards for kids" or "wedding invitations" or "candy art" or whatever to hopefully land on one of my pages, somewhere. There's a lot to learn about all of that, and quite frankly, I find it exhausting. I also have such a limited knowledge of html and all - just enough to get me into trouble, as they say.
That's enough about all that.
Now its back to making art and my colored pencils for a few days.
Fall is almost here!!!!
I tend to find myself irresistibly attracted to charming things -- which has led me into trouble far more often than not -- but these delightful French chickens were crying out for attention and how could I say no? I am far too easily persuaded :) They belonged to the friend of a friend and sat on her table, all round and smooth and quite a pleasure to behold. I've changed the colours but hopefully retained the simplicity of form and it turned out to be a simple yet extremely therapeutic and enjoyable drawing.
I also have a wonderful queue of requests for my type designs which is a great but pleasant surprise. I'm going through them all in between drawings, but here's the last one I managed to do, for my niece:
I'm pleased to say that the sticker for it won me a TBA Award at zazzle on the 28 August :) Thanks Marisa!
French Hen products at Floating Lemons at Zazzle
Marisa cherry pink products at Floating Lemons Type at Zazzle
Decided to start drawing in a new moleskine ... I'd forgotten how much I like the surface of the paper for my colored pencils, it's so lovely and smooth.
I'd been to the markets in Aix-en-Provence and discovered a stall that sold hundreds of glorious beads in all shapes and colours. HAD to buy some ... and then of course I HAD to draw them, so here's a selection. They're like glittering glowing pieces of candy in real life, quite delicious --
Once I'd finished the sketch I scanned them in, cleaned them up, added a bit of a shadow in photoshop and here's the cleaner, finished product ready to be placed on cards online:
Beads card and products at Floating Lemons at Zazzle
And finally, here's another play on my previous text design, done especially for Clara!
Clara cards and products at Floating Lemons Typography
Things are a bit slow around here ... I'm still recuperating. The good news is that I am free of infection and therefore finally free of antibiotics. But my neck is still a bit sore from the operation and my foot still somewhat swollen -- apparently it has been so traumatized that it will take another month or so to fully recover! I hobble along quite well though, so am at least no longer sofa-bound :)
Still, the pace of life is no longer frantic as limping around takes time and I still get exhausted at the end of the hot summer days. Am appreciating life and drawing what lies before me, in this case my coffee cup, saucer and spoon. The coffee stain is a photograph of an actual one so I guess I should apply the term Collage to the above. Lots of fun doing it.
I also had another special request for the above. I hope she likes it. Cheers!
Coffee Break products at Floating Lemons at Zazzle
Yasmin purple products at Floating Lemons Typography at Zazzle
Yasmin products at cafepress
Yesterday I went on a bit about my Cafe Press stuff. You'll forgive me, I hope. I was just excited to see how my alphabet art looked on products, and was thrilled that it actually looked pretty good. Because I've done some other art in the past that just doesn't work well on products (even though it might be wonderful as a children's book piece or whatever), and I'm getting a little smarter about "thinking product" when I do a design now.
So to continue with this theme, I checked out Zazzle. I've known about this site for a while but had never really investigated it before.
What I really really really like is that they have multiple options for some products, whereas Cafe Press only has one. For example, aprons:
These are like "Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear" aprons. And I'm crazy about this khaki color. They also come in white and yellow. And what's nice is that someone shopping will just click on the icon of your image on an apron, then they'll have the option of having the design put on different styles, and they can also pick a color. You don't have to physically make a separate listing for each different option.
Same thing with tote bags:
I've figured out I have a "thing" for tote bags. I don't know why, I just love them.
In addition to these two styles, they have others which are more colorful, as well as a beach bag, one with blue checks, etc. I just picked the ones that this design looked best on. But again, someone shopping can like your design then choose to have it applied to whichever bag they like.
And mugs!
Wowee, they have a lot of mug options. They have a whole bunch of different "inside" colors to choose from, as well as these cool travel mugs, some frosted ones, a pretty stein, etc. Really cool.
So I set up a little
shop. BUT...
What I haven't figured out yet is how to rearrange the items. I don't think you can, actually. Which is not good. They just get put in there in whatever order you create them.
Also, I tried to make neckties, and it drove me crazy. Somehow I managed to do one the way I wanted to, but what it does is automatically "tile" your art over the whole entire tie. And its impossible to get it undone. Except that I managed it once, somehow, by clicking every button they have over and over until I made it do my bidding. So the tie thing is not so good.
But we like that it is FREE
FREE FREE to set up a shop. So you can try it and not like it and have lost nothing. Cafe Press also has a FREE option, but there you may only put ONE image on one of each product, so its very limited. (You could have more than one image in the shop, but you can only list each product one time, so you have to pick and choose which item gets which image, if that makes sense.) You could always open more than one free shop, and some people do. Or you could upgrade to a paid shop and then the sky's the limit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another thing I want to talk about here is
greeting cards. I know a lot of illustrators want to make greeting cards of their art and wonder about how and where to do it.
Both Zazzle and CafePress can do greeting cards. There's also
Greeting Card Universe, and now
Imagekind does cards as well.
Zazzle lets you put type on the back, so I put my © PaulaPertile and website address as well as the title of the art.
Zazzle also lets you choose a background color, whereas CafePress does not. For example, I uploaded the same art to both sites. Cafe Press automatically centers the art (which I don't like) but will allow you to adjust the size at least. But unless you "bleed" the art off the edges, it ends up just floating in the middle of the card.
Zazzle lets you adjust the art up or down a bit more, and also lets you pick a background color. So for these letters I chose black (I know... who sends a black greeting card? well, I would) and I like the way it looks. If I had wanted a black background (or other color) in Cafe Press I would have had to make a new art file in Photoshop, figure out what size to make it so that when it was shrunk down and centered it would fit the card proportion exactly. A lot of bother.
Here's what I mean:
My
greeting card on Zazzle.
I've made it customizable, so people can add a greeting inside if they like. But that also means they can redesign the whole bloody thing, including taking off the © on the back. So I guess I'd better go back in a make it "fixed". Don't you think?
But I do like the black background. But I don't like that they put the Zazzle logo on the back.
Now on Cafe Press,
here's the same card idea. (Actually its the notecard.)
I centered the art and left the background white because it was too hard to do a new art file and make it black. There's no place to put your name or anything. But the good thing is I don't think they put anything on the backside, although since I've never ordered cards from them I can't say for sure.
On Greeting Card Universe I've made a card, but am waiting "approval". That's the thing there...your card isn't instantly available. Someone behind the scenes has to decide its "OK" before it will show up on the site. Also, you have to upload your card art in a 5 x 7 inch format, exactly how you want it to be. So here's what I made, just for fun:
They let you put your name on the front, and let you choose different fonts and colors. I don't like that much, but its what they offer. They let you put a greeting on the inside too.
On the back they put the Greeting Card Universe logo. I've ordered cards from here that I've made, and I'm very happy with the quality.
And GCU is FREE as well, which is nice.
Then there's
Imagekind.
This is a screen shot of the "create a card" interface. You choose an image in your gallery, then select the "make a greeting card" option from the pull-down menu. It lets you resize your image and crop it some. You can move it around, which is nice. I used this little Round Man image because he was already uploaded there.
The nice thing here is that they let you choose which kind of paper it prints on.
They also print a thumbnail of the image on the back of the card. And you can pick white or black for the "back of card" color.
You can also order boxed sets. (Cafe Press has a boxed set option too...not sure about Zazzle, GCU doesn't I'm pretty sure.)
Imagekind lets you do one gallery of images for free. They have a couple of paying options if you want to do more.
I imagine there are other places to do cards. These are the ones I know about, and now you know how much (or little!) I know about them. If anyone has more experience and would like to share, please do!!!!! We're all trying to figure this same issue out, so we might as well share info, don't you think?
I do think Cafe Press and Zazzle are good for making mock ups of test products if you're thinking of licensing things, or to make gifts, or self-promotional things. Its also nice when people just BUY something and you make some money!! I think the success with these places depends a LOT on what your images are. I know I've done pretty well with making some things and selling them on ebay at Christmas time (which is another whole post, for another day.)
If you're interested in doing this yourself, I encourage you to check out each place and give it a try. It does take a fair amount of time though to upload art, then figure out a description, then repeat that over and over and over again as you make your products.
One thing I've realized that I now have to do is make my prices match for similar products in the differerent sites. Some let you do a 'percentage' mark up, some let you decide a specific price, some are fixed. That's another whole headache to work out. This is where it would be nice to have an assistant! Someone to do this "grunt work" while you're off in the other room making new art.
So once again, here are the sites, if you want to have a visit:
Cafe PressZazzleGreeting Card UniverseImagekindOne more (important) thing: Make sure you read and understand each site's copyright and image-sharing policy and make sure you're OK with it before you upload anything. Some are a little bit "sketchy" in the "we may share your images" department. Like GCU is just slightly, maybe, loose with it, depending on how you interpret their terms, or how fussy you are about the issue. I have to go back and read Zazzle again. In the heat of the "ooooh, look at the cute tote bags!" moment I may have glazed over the nitty gritty. I'm just saying...be sure you know where you're putting your art before you "put" it.
Have fun!
Images are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or copied without permission.
Pues sí, abrí una nueva tiendita en CafePress.com de animalitos lindos :P
If a blog isn't self-serving there's no use having one ;) Your prints of the caramels etc. on etsy are my favourite. One day when I can sell my own art I'll buy one :) Very best of luck with putting yourself out there, I'm certain the prints will be a hit! Great Twix magnet too...yum!