DaLove for DaFont

Whenever I tell people about dafont.com I feel like I'm giving away some great trade secret. But that's a little like assuming that showing people the library means they're all going to write best-selling novels.

I am a font nerd. It probably happened long before I worked for American Greetings, but while there I had access to their entire collection of proprietary and non-proprietary fonts, and sweet mother of Garamond it was beautiful. A sentiment's feel can change entirely based on the look of the letters used.
Case in point:Same "three little words," but four very different sentiments.
Playful, romantic, plain (Times New Roman just for contrast, though it can be a useful font and has its own feel and indications, t00) and homicidal. You don't send the second one to your brother or the last to your mother (unless you're me and think it's funny).

This is all terribly important (well, not Darfur important) for my cards, especially the ones I do that are just text with no other art (i.e. the "don't spend it all in one place" and "thank you" cards I do with the wallpaper envelope things). It's been particularly on my brain because now I'm making "have your people call my people" cards to go with business cards as little somethings to give when/after you meet new networky types and want them to actually remember you and your business card instead of sticking it in their pocket/wallet and losing it forever or just not giving a flying fig. I spent quite some time on dafont rejecting font after font for being not friendly enough or too casual and on and on and once I'd narrowed it down to a few I tried them out on mock-up cards and found a winner: Labtop by Apostrophic Labs. We'll see if it stays the winner long-run, but for now, the first batch of "have your people call my people" cards are getting printed up that way and hopefully listed on Etsy this weekend.

And where do I get all my fonts? Dafont.com. They are free. Yes, that's right, free. Font designers are wonderful creatively sharing people. Since I've started selling my stuff I try to only download the fully "free" fonts instead of the "free for personal use" ones so I don't do anything illegal/evil. I should try to contact the designers of some of my favorite fonts and interview them for my blog. That would be swell.

I need to eat something now.

They like me! They really like me!

In the last 48 hours, I've sold five cards to four people. Three poop cards, two "olive ewe" cards. Holy crap. I'm not featured anywhere on Etsy or Etsy Greetings, so where the hell is all this coming from? It's pretty exciting. Am I being secret whatevered? It's like as soon as I re-list the cards, they sell again. I guess now's the time to buy valentines and people seem to like mine. And/or because I keep re-listing them, they're at the top of the pile and my prices are low enough now that they've become impulse items. Either way, sweet. Now if I can just figure out what I'm doing wrong with my camera and get some non-terrible photos of all my other valentines, I'll really be in business.

Doggy Style

I guess I don't have to retake the photos of the thank you cards from the last post since they sold tonight. Woot. I should be taking pictures of all the other envelopes I have floating around here instead. Shelley (my friend's dog who has been staying with my while my friend is in South America) did not like my last photo shoot because I wasn't paying attention to her. She plopped down her toy and camped out on the lightbox light extension cords and looked sad. Obviously, I had to take her picture:

While I'm now at the point where I can't list any more card sets until I photo more card sets, it's not like I haven't been productive. I'm working on a dog sweater a friend of mine bought for her boyfriend's birthday that she wants shipped off to him by next week, so I've been knitting my brains out. The pattern is supposed to be a hybrid of the Israeli and Japanese flags, except with the Israeli flag's colors reversed so it's not mostly white. Quick terrible photo of my progress taken right now in my lap at my computer:

Shouldn't be much longer now. I got a lot done on the bus ride downtown today, more done while I waited at the DMV, and the rest has been during instant Netflix TV episodes of Weeds, 30 Rock, and Miami Vice. Think any of that gets infused into the knit?

Thank You!

Now that everybody's gotten all of their various holiday presents and spent at least half their gift cards, it's time to show your gratitude. EtsyGreetings is having a promotion for sets of thank you cards with free domestic shipping. There's some really gorgeous stuff on there, so check it out.

I'm participating, too, so if you've been eyeballing my "Tank Ewe Berry Match" cards or any of my wallpaper envelope thank yous, now's the time.

I'm trying to list more of the bigger-than-business-cards-but-smaller-than-regular-cards wallpaper envelope ones. I took about a gazillion photos and finally got them onto my new computer, but I'm not very happy with how they turned out so I may retake them all. I need to date a photographer.

Merry This, Lacking That

Today, December 1, was supposed to be the big Coming Out Party for my "Merry This and Happy That" cards. Listing them on Etsy, photos up on Flickr, Twittering my brains out, and then dolling myself up in business cute (not to be confused with business casual) and hopping around to appropriate-seeming salons, coffee shops, and boutiques in the Andersonville, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park neighborhoods of Chicago (time and other life-factors to determine where and how many such places I'd hit before the day's end).

Today, December 1, I was still not quite happy with the cards when the cleaning people got to my apartment and I had to leave with the dog so he wouldn't eat them (the people, not the cards), and after digging my car out of the snow and heading off to run an errand or two, I rolled down the driver side window to help finish clearing the snow when CACHUNK the whole window fell off its track and down into the door where it stuck, jutting up slightly and uselessly. And it was cold. And wet. And I had the dog with me. And I don't have a garage or any indoor safe place to keep my car for any length of time other than my parents' house 45 minutes away.

So my car is in the shop and my dog and I are both back at my parents' where I'm trying to get work done. I brought a suitcase full of paper and tools and my computer and such and I'm hoping to be at least somewhat productive and double hoping that they can finish my car tomorrow (a maybe at best from the mechanic).

This is the kind of thing that is far from tragic or terrible. It's not a big deal and only a temporary annoyance, but it's still frustrating. As they say in Yiddish, "A mench tracht und Got lacht" (please note it rhymes), or, "A person plans and God laughs."

Cards may be up later tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. But there should be cards.

Eveloped in Wallpaper

I have wallpaper envelopes coming out of my ears.

A few weeks ago I started making a new version of my "screw email" cards with recycled wallpaper envelopes. People liked them a lot. Some people said they loved the envelopes and the feel of the cards but wished they had a different message, so I designed some cards that said "thank you" to fit in the same envelopes.

Find more photos like this on Indiepublic

Then I was at a favorite local coffee shop and noticed they had gift cards with crappy envelopes that didn't fit right. Lightbulb went off in my head right away. I talked to the shift manager and left some of my "screw email" cards and envelopes with the suggestion that I make specialized gift card sized ones with or without cards that said something giftcardy or the name of the coffee shop or something.
I was back a week later with a handful of envelopes in perfect gift card size and cards with the messages "thank you" and "don't spend it all in one place," the latter being my idea of funny.

That particular coffee shop owner still hasn't gotten back to me despite much cheerleading on my behalf from several of his managers (he went out of town for a week and I've stopped by a few more times, c'est la vie), but on Wednesday a different coffee shop expressed serious interest, and everyone I show any of my envelope/card combos to gets really excited and thinks they're the greatest things since sliced bread. It's all pretty exciting and flattering.

Find more photos like this on Indiepublic

And the latest exciting news and my real inspiration for writing: one of the people to whom I gave some of my cards/envelopes was my therapist. After all, much of what we talk about is me being sick/demi-dead (really no secret after my last few entries), and this was something I could do/make even on my demi-dead days. She loved them and asked me if she could show them to a friend of hers who sells high-end jewelry. I said of course! She was a little concerned about the confidentiality and what to say if the friend asked how she knew me, but again, I don't think it's such a shameful thing to be in therapy. As long as she's not telling her friend what we discuss, a connection is a connection, and why is a therapist any different from a dentist or a personal trainer? Ideally, if time and money were no object, everyone should have one. It's healthy. You don't want them talking about your particulars, like your gingivitis, flabby arm muscles, or recurring sexual fantasies about gorilla suits, but we're all human and imperfect and seeing specialists to work on things to better our lives is positive. Not shameful.

That being said, my therapist's friend is having a jewelry show on Thursday and loved my cards and wants to feature a display's worth of them for sale! So now I have to come up with a way of displaying them that is

• ●portable (so I can drop it off with my therapist on Wednesday)
• ●classy (I've been doing farmers markets and craft shows, but this is high-end jewelry, which has a different feel to it)
• ●self-explanatory (I won't be there to say "the ones on the top are $1.75 or 6 for $8 and you can choose your own card and envelope combo, blah blah blah")

I'm thinking of going to Target or JoAnns and getting a big cloth bullitin board/frame thing or two and then using cards of the two sizes as "signs" to say "cards my size are $_ and come with the envelope of your choice"

If you have any other ideas/suggestions, I'm more than happy to hear them. Keep in mind I don't want to spend more than about $15-$20, since my profits aren't that high to begin with.

Also, if you own a business and want some gift card envelopes and/or cards, let me know! It's a sliding price scale based on how many you want and if I ever find a faster more efficient way of making them (still working on that...I'm up to about 10 an hour, which is ass-slow but I can watch a movie or listen to audiobooks or have a migraine at the same time, a major plus).

I've been making envelopes for days. Plaid, floral, solid, weird, paisley, stripes, you name it. And they're coming out of my ears. Let's just hope they do well selling Thursday, on Etsy, and in the universe.

Yo' Mama's Day Card

Who says Mother's Day has to be purely mushy? I have friends who are now popping out babies. It is weird, and I want to send them Mother's Day cards. I had this "Holy shit! You made a baby!" idea for them, and then I figured a lot of Etsy is 20-somethings like myself poking through the Mother's Day cards, and they'll buy something for their own mothers, but suddenly they seem my BRILLIANT card and have to buy it for their friends who are babies. So far, I've gotten a convo from one woman telling me she totally understood the feeling and wanted to get the card but her friend who is the actual mother doesn't have the same sense of humor. Considering Mother's Day is more than a month away, I'll take that kind of response as a very good sign.

Printer and Purim: Fun with the Letter P

I thought I broke my printer. There was yelling and paper jamming and pulling and pushing and forcing bits of printer to go in directions that they did not want to go and forcing bits of paper through millimeters at a time and more yelling, but it all came out in the end! And it printed for about a day. And then things started looking weird and I thought it was a residual effect of my earlier printer woes. And people kept buying cards and I had to make them and print them and send them but they were coming out funny and I tried all the printer utility things to realign and clean the cartridges and I'd try printing again and it still looked funny and then I realized my color cartridge was running out.
OfficeMax and a fresh color cartridge later, problem solved. I feel pretty silly, but at least that's all it was.

Tomorrow night is Purim. I love Purim. I listed my hamentashen cards really late (last Friday), so I still have a bunch of them. Maybe I'll just give them to random people. Too bad I don't bake or I'd totally make real hamentashen and put them on the plates and give them to friends. That would be cute. Is it tacky to buy hamentashen and give them to people? Does anybody reading this even know what hamentashen are?

Oy!

Why am I "in charge" of the Jewish street team? Is it my infinite knowledge of street team starting? How about street team workings? Or even my deep ties to my Jewish heritage and the Jewish community both on and off Etsy? Nope. Not really. It's because I said "there should be a Jewish Etsy street team," and people agreed.

I'm not quite sure what the difference is between leading random groups and organizations (I did this sort of thing a lot in high school and at Oberlin) and, say, cleaning my living room. In one case, I'm all pro-active and go-get-'em and I have a decent natural sense of what needs to get done right away and what is better to put off until things are further along. In the other case, I separate my crafting papers into sub-categories in the middle of the floor and leave them there for easier access while a weird layer of old clothes, yarn, flat-rate boxes, broken small appliances, laundry, and other miscellaneous crap coats the entire area visible from the entryway.

But I've started a database of the Etsy Jew Team members. I finally got convos out to every person I have on "the list" (sorry about the "list" of Jews...I'm reading Man's Search for Meaning right now and it's a little creepy, but that's what it is) and I have a game-plan for where to go from here.

And oh! Right! I still have a shop somewhere! I have Purim cards in my head and the paper here and I even bought a circle paper cutter thing for the project, but I can't open the part where the blades are (stupid weakened body). I should just eat crow and wander over to my neighbors' and ask them. They're nice. They'll think it's funny/cute.