Where to Screw Email

The Screw Email Blog lives! In my estate sale scavenging, I found two shoeboxes of letters and postcards for sale, postmarked and filled with abandoned story and sentiment. (I'm the only person at these sales who looks for non-blank cards.)
Now, I have over 100 cards, so I can keep the blog running for at least that many posts, and by then I figure it might actually catch on enough for people to be comfortable sending me things.
You are included in people.

As a result of my postcard shoebox purchases, I now also have a whole ton of blank vintage postcards, too. I figure I can sell five postcard grab-bags, but here's the question: do I sell them with all my other vintage finds on jillhannah.etsy.com or do I put them on Off the Wall Greetings because they are cards and a bit off the wall?
Suggestions? Inklings? Comments?

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.

Angry Head, Crafty Heart

My head is misbehaving. I was supposed to have a table at the Handmade Market today, and while I tried really hard to go, I couldn't stay vertical long enough or deal with the sun without too much pain to function. I've been like this more or less since Wednesday, and it's not good. I'm having trouble keeping up with life. I want to be a real person, and when I'm feeling ok I do all these real person things and get frustrated by my own hesitancy to do more and make specific plans with hard deadlines and wonder if I'm just being a big fat chicken-butt. But then my normal daily mild migraine morphs back into Evil Death Migraine and I'm useless. I try to be productive and do productive things, but I can't think straight and I screw up my work stuff and can't concentrate long or hard enough to do the things I need to, anyway.

So no Handmade Market today. And I have all these cute envelopes and mini-cards I want to list on Etsy, but right now I'm just not up to it. I'm only even on the computer because I put it on my nightstand so I could use it from my bed, and I keep having to close my eyes and type blind because the glare is bothering me, but lying around doing nothing all day was getting old.

Let's be businessy about this: anybody who is interested in some of my new screw email or thank you cards (they're just like the screw email ones, but in a different font and they say "thank you") with wallpaper envelopes, if you comment or convo me or email me, I will send you a grab bag at $1 a card/envelope set instead of the normal $2 each (plus shipping). You can request color schemes, florals, paisley, plaid, stripes, etc. if you want. You just have to be nice and know that they may get mailed tomorrow and they may not get mailed for a week and I just can't deal with lighting my lightbox and photoing and whatnot to make an Etsy listing, so you're getting them on the super-cheap.

Sorry I'm so fussy. Constant blinding pain makes me fussy.

Why isn't my acupuncture appointment until Wednesday?

*Photo Light and Time by sevenbridges available on Etsy, and such a wonderful illustration for a migraine

Screw Email

I made something. It's another blog, but this one will be entirely cards and letters people have received. Love, hate, apology, the dishes in the dishwasher are already clean so please don't add dirty ones and if you get a chance put them away. I want them all. You should look at it and submit stuff to it so it doesn't die.

http://screwemail.blogspot.com/