Which end is up?

Anyone?

I'm having a bit of trouble here.

Chandelier!

I found a chandelier! For $90!

I went to an estate sale on Tuesday with no expectations and there it was, hanging in the garage. They had a bunch of other chandeliers and light fixtures and insane quantities of other crap, but mine was just there, hanging, being exactly what I needed and $90.

It was filthy. I thought a little late of taking "before" and "after" photos while I cleaned it off with a wet paper towel, but here you can see the "before" and "after" with the clean one on the left:


Now I still need to fix it up. It's missing some of its hanging crystals, and they don't seem to be the standard "u drop" ones I'm finding on Ebay. Plus whatever aparatus is required to go from socket to bulb, be it fake candle or something else. I just have no idea about that part. Then getting it wired into my actual ceiling...but considering I've put all of $90 into it so far and had feared/expected to sink at least $400, I totally win. Now I can still afford to slipcover my big armchair (probably in this fabric)!

Also at the fabulous estate sale: art. Tons and tons of art. Framed portraits of John Wayne and oils of houses and trees and things "handpainted in Taiwan" and prints of birds and a million other individual things that made no sense with the rest of it. It would take a person a solid day to look through it all, and I wished I knew more about the values of things. I'm sure a knowledgeable person could make a killing in there; maybe not Antiques Roadshow, but signed? numbered? original? crap? I ended up with three black and white scapes of Roman-looking ruins that clearly went together but were different sizes. There was a group of women (family, perhaps?) digging through the art with me and one of them noticed the scattered set. I modified my mental picture of my dining room walls to include the trio and decided to take them home. Here they are with my $6 Salvation Army and $10 garage sale mirrors:

Things are coming together quite nicely, I think.

Nice Package

Talking about stamping the outsides of packages led me to thinking about how people package their items in general, so I started a forum thread on Etsy. It took off to 84 posts and counting and sparked my brilliant new plan for how to package my non-snarky card orders (like businesses and such who want the wallpaper enveloped thank-yous and whatnot). Photos to come...

I want to keep the discussion going. When you buy something, does the packaging matter? What surrounds the immediate item? The actual container used for shipping? Should it be sturdy at a loss for pretty or pretty at a loss for ecology? Form over function? How about if you sell things, what do you do to make your package prettier? Does it match the style of what's inside the package and/or the rest of your shop? Branding, people.

Things to think about as I head to yet another neurologist for yet another possible approach to killing my migraines.

Mailing stickers by Donovan Beeson available for sale at donovanbeeson.etsy.com

AKA "Jill sent me" Discount/Love

Stacey (AKA AsspocketProductions AKA StampinNaughty AKA Amazing Arts) rules. Those two stamps (only with my full address...had to white out parts so my loyal blog followers wouldn't come to my house and kill me in my sleep or anything...this means you Interlochen Amy) should be heading my way once Memorial Day is over and done with. Yay!

And here's the real kicker: Stacey is offering you, my blog readers, 15% off her stamps (that means stamps, not books, cases, acrylic blocks and the like) if you say "Jill sent me" in a convo or when you check out.

Persoanlly, I've come to use stamps in place of my love of stickers for decorating packages and branding things. Like I said yesterday, you run out of stickers. Stickers have to be replenished and I always feel like I have to wait for a special package or occasion to use a special sticker. Not with a stamp. Using a stamp doesn't take away from using it again. It's like love. That's why when I send people things (both official Etsy orders and random mail to random friends and family) the envelopes tend to show up covered in stamps. It's like covering the package in love.

So if you're looking to buy some love, say "Jill sent me" and Stacey will discount said love 15%. And no, I'm not getting kickbacks or anything. Just spreading the love.

lettering, stamping, branding, and oh my!

What? I have a blog? Oh, right.
Last few weeks have been completely insane with non-business-related things (local bff moving away forever, trips to surrounding "i" states, friends visiting, condo on the brain) but I'm trying to get myself back to work so I can have my rebranding done and my Off the Wall Greetings shop up and gorgeous by June.

You know that lovely banner Bean Sprout Studios designed for me? In the interest of branding and consistency and all that fun marketing crap that just makes "it looks and feels better" sound like deep psychological manipulation, I asked her what font she used. Turns out to be "Lettering Delights Letterpress" from scrapgirls.com. For $3, I decided it was worth paying, even though I normally stick to the free fonts from DaFont.com. I've been through DaFont over and over again and for $3 I can Lettering Delights Letterpress my brains out on everything and be done with it.

Thing already in the works with my new name and font: a stamp from Stacey of AsspocketProductions that says offthewallgreetings.etsy.com so I can stamp the insides of all my envelopes and the outsides of all my packages and your forehead. I really like her work and she's a fellow Illinoisian. I'm buying one of her fabulous custom Chicago Skyline address stamps, too, so I can stamp my new permanent condo address like a cool person all over everything. Way better than address labels, since I never know how many labels I'll use and at some point you either move with tons left over or you have to keep reordering them or using the weird ones from awkward charities like the Foreskin Foundation*. Stacey also has a whole fantastic shop of naughty stamps appropriately named Stampin Naughty, but I know I'd just get myself into trouble with those.




*I made that up.

Color Decision!

My internet is being fussy and flaking out on all sorts of things so I can't post the post I was going to post.

Instead:

These are my colors. I'm making a decision. Time to get my stamp made and design myself some business cards and start filling the shop!

(other post was about moving and condo, AKA 99.9% of my brain space right now. Hopefully postable tomorrow.)

Jill's Condo Decoration Master Plan: A PowerPoint

***Finally got this to work/publish!***

Moved!

All of my everything is out of the old apartment. There was more final grabbing of unorganized and unsorted garbage than I wanted, but that's when I could get help moving and carrying things.

And now? Unpacking and prettying up my new condo for the rest of my life! My birthday is in a week and everything I want is for the condo. I've been on Craigslist and Etsy compulsively, plus ApartmentTherapy and other various style guides to Guide my Vision.

Some people take notes, cut out photos from magazines, etc.
I make PowerPoint presentations.