yikes

Apparently, my banner is a "design disaster." There's a number of people who agree. I threw it up in my JillHannah Etsy shop just to get some quick feedback, and "design disaster" is the consensus. Pisswrinkles. Part of that is the fact that, for whatever reason, the text is coming out all pixely. I don't know why and I don't know how to fix it. But I'm also getting comments about the colors not meshing and "design disaster" isn't something people are saying cruelly or lightly.

So what the hell should my banner and shop redesign look like? I don't have money to spend on professionals who will also take the time to really research my particular market and product and what will best connect the two. Hell, I don't even know if there are any real marketing-psychology trained designers out there. There should be. But for my little tiny business purposes, I just want something that gives the feel of both the wallpaper business card envelopes and the snarky cards. Like the name does. The name is perfect. I want a look to match.

Brainstorms, people!!!

HELP!!!!!

I chose the name "Off the Wall Greetings" because I'm selling WALLpaper envelopes and snarky off-beat cards and I liked that the name covered both.

How do I make my banner and visual branding cover both? Something that won't put off my business card envelope clientele or my poop card purchasers?

Apparently, Wisconsin just paid $50,000 for a new logo and slogan, so I no longer feel too bad about my own troubles rebranding myself. (Thanks to Elizabethjewelry for posting the article to the Etsy forums.)
Branding and marketing and image are a whole huge businessy beast unto themselves, and while I like to think I'm pretty good at them, it's much harder and scarier to do for yourself. So, help! You can see my banners below and vote, but no one sounds too enthused and I'd love some suggestions, ideas, or HELP of any sort. Preferably costing less than $50,000.

PS- Here's two more banner attempts to add to the voting pile

Banner 4:
Banner 5:

Betsy, Base, B'DOH!

Maybe I'm just slow, but I just learned about Betsy Search. It's a website that lets you search Etsy things in convenient ways that Etsy doesn't, like a search that only includes shops that will ship to your country. There's a search for just within yarn, another for beads.

Also available at this glorious website, a tutorial on how to stick my things on GoogleBase. Base is the way Google lets you post things for sale that then become Google searchable. I tried GoogleBase once before, but I didn't know what I was doing and ended up adding a few select items one at a time and that blew goats. Now, with the help of the tutorial, I might actually manage to keep my stuff more individually Google-searchable and then more people will buy my products so I can finally afford that giant laser to destroy the moon and take over the world.

Wait...scratch the last part.

I'm now having a helluva time convincing GoogleBase that my xml file is properly formatted...either the Betsy tutorial isn't as wonderful as originally thought, or I'm screwing up some bit of minutia that is terribly necessary for XML and HTML and all this stupid web language crap. This is why I do not want to be a web person. I'm more comfortable screwing around with code than many, but it makes me want to punch things. Glorious update later, perhaps, if I can get a webbier friend to take a look and tell me. This is why it's nice to A) be of my ridiculously youthful and computer-savvy generation B) have giant nerds for friends and C) be a giant nerd.