fresh from the Makery: me against the tools

No project this week, folks. Nope, instead of working on one of half-a-dozen project ideas yesterday, I was struggling with the pop-up butterfly paper punch necessary for one of two client orders I'm trying to wrap up and ship out this week. 

I've used this pop-up butterfly punch from EK Success a few times before, but only on "text weight" paper, not the card stock folders I'm using for this particular order.  Even with a paper proof stage in my custom design process, sometimes you just can't anticipate what might happen when you try to do something 115 times.  Turns out pop-up punches don't work so well on card stock.  Fair enough, now I know, but...seriously?  These are for scrapbooking and card-making and all variety of paper crafting.  And they don't work on card stock?  It's not even crazy heavy thick card stock, at that!  So, okay, fine, this'll be the last order that uses this style of punch on this weight of paper, but c'mon EK Success! For a company that usually makes some of my favorite punches, you sure do have a dud on your hands (my Martha Stewart pop-up hydrangea punch works just fine on the 80# cover weight card stock, by the way, but alas, it was the butterfly motif I required for this project).  Thus, instead of a project to share this week, you get a heaping serving of complaining, backed up with photographic evidence.  Shall we begin?

Round one: For my first attempt at punching these folders, I used the butterfly punch I already had on hand.  Granted, I've used this punch for a couple of orders now so it might have been a little on the dull side (and yes, I've read the tip about "sharpening" it by punching foil but have noticed absolutely no improved punching after doing so).  But after unsuccessfully going through a dozen folders, the now two-piece punch in the above image is what I was left with.  I had no choice but to go out and buy a new punch, which required driving to two Michael's stores (obviously these things are available online but even expedited shipping wouldn't get a punch in my hands until early next week). 

Round two: They've changed the style a bit so instead of multiple little openings in the butterfly wings, there are now only two holes on each side.  I like the detail of the previous punch but thought the lack of detail might actually work in my favor for this project.  I had no intention of continuing to struggle with the heavier weight of the folders, instead giving my understandably disappointed client the choice of keeping the punches on the outside of the folder but using a lighter weight paper, or using the punches on the lighter weight invite that will be layered inside.  But when I got home this morning, I thought I'd give it a try on the folder.  And lo and behold, it worked great!  Well, not great, exactly, but better than the last punch.  I still wasn't confident it would work on all 115 folders, but I thought if I could successfully punch my way through at least half the stack I could always drive back out to Michael's and pick up the other pop-up butterfly punch they had in the store this morning.  Even this brand-new punch, however, required super-human strength, using both hands, standing and leaning directly over the punch for maximum leverage.

And sure enough, I struggled to get through half of my stack.  After about 40 folders it was a struggle to get the punch to punch all the way through, resulting in more waste than I had accounted for.

And the thing is, once you punch it, pull it out, and see that this is all you got for your effort, it's basically ruined since it's virtually impossible to try to punch it again in the exact same spot.  So I said, okay, let me be rational and patient about this (instead of the cursing and stomping that was happening around this time yesterday).  I decided to drive to Michael's in the hopes that that second punch was still there.  And thankfully, it was. 

Round three: Once again, it worked pretty well at first.  But once again, after a couple dozen folders, it got wonky.  And the frustrating thing is it was temperamental in a completely different way!  Instead of not punching all the way through, the punched area was sticking to the inside of the punch, requiring great care during removal so as not to rip the butterfly portion out altogether. 

Even the official page for this product warns, "may require Tweezer Bee to remove punched out shapes."  Really, EK Success?  I need to buy a second product to make this ten dollar piece of crap work?  Instead, I used a sewing needle to gently pry the butterfly wings from the inside of the punch before ever so carefully sliding the folder out. 

Even then, the antennae on each and every folder came out bent!  Easy fix, but still.

And as you can imagine, I added quite a few folders to my ever-growing pile of rejects.

So who won? Three punches, two days, and one very sore hand later, I have 110 of the 115 folders acceptably punched top and bottom.

Success! Right? I don't know, you tell me who the loser is in this story. I conquered the YuDu, for cryin' out loud, surely a $10 paper punch should not be this complicated!

fresh from the Makery: wildly adorable

I'm so excited to finally have this project tweaked and posted in my shop and ready to blog about.

This week I'm sharing a whole shebang of birthday party paper products designed around original, hand-drawn illustrations by Neal!

That's right, I'm using him for his drawing skills. Finally!  For this round, I used two sheets of illustrations - a gorilla and a snake in various poses and gestures - to create, in addition to the standard invites and thank you notes, favor tags:

...and cupcake toppers:

This ensemble is, I hope, the first in a series of husband-wife illustrator-designer type collaborations.  I look forward to future excuses to have cupcakes around the house. 

fresh from the Makery: duct tape and V-day

It's not what you think.  From the sound of this blog title, you're probably expecting something a little kinkier than I'm about to deliver.  I hope you're not too disappointed.

That's right, more sexy stationery! Today I have not one, but two projects to share! And I'm on time!  I was rifling through my craft area in the garage and pulled out some orange glitter and turquoise duct tape.  You'd think orange glitter would be a snap to use up, right? But for some crazy reason I've had a helluva time putting this orange glitter to use, part of the delightful welcome pack I received shortly after signing up on the Fiskateer blog.  I've had the glitter for about a year, maybe a bit longer.  Shortly after receiving the glitter, I was making my weekly visit to Paper Source where I came across this handy dandy "quickie" glue pen (I guess this post is a little kinky).

If all else fails, as I always say, make stationery, right.  Anyway, fast-forward one year and I'm finally putting the two together.

The orange glitter makes me think of oranges, naturally, and with all this love in the air, the timing made me think of the soda pop, Orange Crush, and the result was this card.

The glitter holds pretty well but I may make a second version with a finer glitter.  The whole point of today's projects, however, was to use materials already on-hand, so these will have to do for now.

For my second project I wanted to use some of this bright turquoise duct tape I accidentally purchased awhile back thinking it was more like painter's tape (oops).  I figured somebody's come up with something clever and sure enough, duct tape is one of those surprisingly crafty materials that runs the gamut as far as how folks have put it to use.  I saw a couple of posts on Instructables about duct tape bookmarks, specifically magnetic in nature.

Since I also had on hand a sheet of inkjet magnetic paper leftover from my paper goods shop, I decided to make a magnetic duct tape bookmark for myself.

And I put it in my shop! Hey, why not?  I'm mulling over ways to, you know, make it mine, but for now, the basic version is available.  If you like turquoise. And books. And magnetic things.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what I'm reading in actual book form that requires an actual, magnetic duct tape bookmark? Mary Roach's Bonk. So, yeah, a moderately kinky post, after all. Hey, I do what I can to make your Mondays more bearable. (You're welcome.)

fresh from the Makery: because cheerleaders need a little Etsy love, too

It's Tuesday! Oops! Last week, I came across the leftover fuzzy pink pom poms from this project. With Valentine's Day right around the corner and fresh off the heels of revisiting the Chick Flick Notes, I quickly came up with a couple of projects to use up the rest of the pom poms, beginning with my first "art print" in my paper goods Etsy shop:

When trying to think of a project that would utilize the pom poms I naturally thought of cheerleaders and remembered the cheer from the beginning of the classic chick flick, "Bring It On."  I love that movie. So much.  Anyway, this is what I came up with:

The silhouette and text are printed on matte photo paper using my fancy schmancy 8-color inkjet printer and the pom poms are attached via glue gun. Zots would probably be a more archival solution and I may experiment with those but I worried they wouldn't hold as well.  You can get the print, sans frame, in my Etsy shop.  Colors are customizable (I'm thinking high school/college colors?).

Next I used the same silhouette/pom pom/varsity letters idea and applied it to yet another Valentine's Day card, with a decidedly less snarky message inside.

Pink, and more pink! When did I become so girly?

fresh from the Makery: a little lite housekeeping

Okay, maybe this shouldn't count as a new project for the week, but I did reprint some of the Chick Flick Notes that are, once again, in my other shop. So they're kind of new.

Even though the FreshonMondays Etsy shop was started for products that come from Makery projects, regardless of materials used, it's making more sense to me lately that anything graphic design-y or involving paper should go to the RBGColor shop, "design studio and paper crafts" shop that it is, and anything involving felt or other non-paper materials will stay in the FreshonMondays shop. Basically, my scattered web presence is a big branding nightmare. So this is my effort at untangling that presence just a bit. The Chick Flick Notes are now their own category in that shop (you could say I've curated the dozens of quotes a bit...serving suggestions, if you will). I also moved over the Marie Antoinette recycled screenprint proof stationery.

So, anyway, that's that. God forbid I ever edit myself and focus on one thing! That wouldn't be any fun!

fresh from the Makery: you rock!

V-day is only five weeks away! Do you know what you'll be sending to your Valentine yet? How 'bout these folded notes or mini cards, both inspired by the Sweetheart printed candies:

They kind of speak for themselves, don't they? It doesn't help that I only got four solid hours of sleep last night. I promise I'll be more chatty next week!

fresh from the Makery: can you say niche market?

For Christmas I made my Dad, who's a paraglider and uses a MyTouch 3G, a custom phone cozy featuring an Android dude with a little more lift than usual.

Wee!

The result is, of course, available in my shop as one of the custom listings but I don't anticipate selling a whole lot.  Talk about niche market, huh?

fresh from the Makery: quitting while I'm ahead

Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but I will say, less than a day after my second and most recent craft fair, I'm done with in-person sales for awhile.  The East Bay Mini Maker Faire was great. Despite some last-minute shuffling due to the rain and a $75 outdoor canopy I didn't end up needing, I thoroughly enjoyed participating in such a richly geeky event and felt that my mostly niche market products did better there than at the more general purpose craft fair earlier this month.  I sold seven phone cozies and a fair amount of both the Mother's Cookies notecards and the chick flick stationery.  I was much happier with my display this time around, not only because I had a lot more space to spread out but thanks to a few cardboard displays I purchased (laying either the phone cases or stationery flat didn't work very well at all last time...I mean, really, what was I thinking there?), a lot more signage, with information and pricing clearly marked, and a couple of quirky details, like the old-school rabbit ears antenna I used as a mini clothesline for a few phone cases and the QR tag I created for prospective customers to scan with their Android phones (or iPhones, as a few did, just because they could) to take them right to the custom listing in my Etsy shop.

In addition to the products I had at the last craft fair, including a few additions to my inventory of phone cases, a few of which didn't sell and are now in the shop (here, here, and here), I put together a portfolio of wedding invitations.  Time will tell if the event will produce any new wedding stationery clients. In the meantime, that's where my focus is going to shift because these felty crafts, as enjoyable as they are, don't exactly pay the bills. As my brother would say, bacon bits. Just bacon bits. (Not that the other shop brings home the bacon, exactly - maybe turkey bacon - but you know what I mean.)

fresh from the Makery: let me eat cake!

So, I had a birthday yesterday. As my brother likes to say, sixth anniversary of my 27th birthday, to be precise. Leading up to this year's milestone (I've documented past birthdays here, here, and here), I was a little nervous about the way the numbers were lining up, turning 33 on 10.10.10. But it turns out 101010 is 42 in binary code which, you know, is the answer to life and the universe and all that good stuff. That made me feel a little better. And I had a great weekend. I even baked my own birthday cake. A few weeks ago, I bookmarked this post on Boston Mamas (a blog I still subscribe to, even though I no longer live in Boston, precisely because of posts like this that instruct you on how to make a rainbow cake and rock a unicorn birthday party!). With the one-year anniversary of my Android phone case coming up, I thought, well, if I was to make a birthday cake for my phone cozy's 1st birthday it would be a rainbow cake, naturally. As my own birthday approached, I figured, hey, might as well kill two birds with one stone. Hence, I present you with the general-purpose Android birthday cake:

Since I'm not much of a cook, I knew I needed to cut corners to make this thing happen.  Neal's made a few tasty cakes in his day and I remember him mentioning once that he'd read that if you're going to cut corners, it's okay to use boxed cake mix and save your energies for homemade frosting instead.  I do like me some buttercream, so that's just what I did, using the Best Recipes recipe for vanilla buttercream frosting. I used Trader Joe's box yellow cake mix for the cake itself and it did not disappoint.  Unlike Boston Mamas experiences, though, I do think the yellow cake mix affected the vibrancy of my colors when baked, and might go with a white cake recipe in the future (since all cakes henceforth will, obviously, be rainbow cakes).  But it might also be due to the fact that I went with a more pastel palette, using green, blue, and pink for the cake and most of the frosting.

 

Isn't that perty?  Also, I only had enough butter for about half the recommended amount of frosting needed for a two layer 8 or 9 inch cake.  This wasn't a huge problem, though, since I knew I wanted to do something crafty with my cake layers and wouldn't necessarily need all that frosting, anyway (who am I kidding, you can never have too much frosting).  I used one round (cut in half and layered) for the Android head and saved the second round for the antennae, mini cake, and this morning's snack.  Since it was also little Android dude's birthday, he got a little birthday cake of his own, (which made its way to my son's daycare today where my daycare provider is likely "enjoying" the aftermath as I type).

Thanks for a great year, little Android dude. Or, should I say, thanks, Google, for making such an adorable little logo with a creative commons attributions license.

Oh, and a few new phone cases (here, here, and here) were added to the shop this morning. I promise the Makery will get back to projects that don't involve robots at some point in the near future.

fresh from the Makery: this week we explore pattern, texture, and glitter

Preparing for the craft sale this past weekend, you could say felt Android phone cases have sort of invaded my work/craft/living space.  But the silver lining to slow sales on Saturday was a bunch of stuff to list this morning, including a facelift on a few existing listings with new images, and several new phone cozies.  For starters, I made a standard droid dude version of my phone case:

Also new is a basic case that includes three colors instead of just two (I've been using a different color for the pocket on all of these limited edition cases so I thought I'd try that on the more basic option):

The original batch of limited edition cases is truly limited since I can't seem to find that patterned felt any longer.  I have enough to make two cases from each combination so they're somewhere between "one-of-a-kind" and "limited edition". "Two-of-a-kind", if you will which, oddly, sounds less, I don't know, special than "limited edition". Doppelganger edition, perhaps?

Anyway, I have found some new textured felt I've been playing with and listed two such cases today, starting with an alligator skin texture in red, paired with a gray Android, lining, and stitching:

The other fun felt find has a cobblestone texture...you know, for that old world effect:

I've got two or three more color combos for each texture that I'll be adding over the next couple of weeks (and/or trying to sell at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire on October 24th).  Finally, I picked up a sheet of glittery, hot pink felt that I toned down a tad by pairing it with a gray droid and lining:

For some reason most of the glittery felt is too stiff to use for a phone case. Why you'd want it pre-stiffened is a little beyond me, but that's why this is the only phone case with that little extra je ne sais quoi that only glitter provides.

back to life...in the cloud

Fresh from my first craft fair, I wanted to share a few images and thoughts.  I've been hesitant to participate in craft fairs until now primarily because, taking custom orders exclusively online until now, inventory has always been a bit of an issue.  But I hunkered down this past week and produced enough Android phone cases and paper goodies to fill out the smallish table I was given. 

There was a lot of editing throughout this last week of preparation - I went from nearly a dozen or so items to focusing primarily on the phone cases, a few Mother's Cookies items, and a couple of other note card sets ready to sell. 

I incorporated a few tips I picked up from a number of different craft fair checklists, including the height variations in my display, the free and edible offering of actual Mother's Cookies Circus Animals, and bringing my craft with me to work on during the six hours of the fair, something that didn't really work out too well in the end.  With the presence of the Mother's Cookies goodies, both edible and easy on the waistline, I decided to go with a pastry shop inspired display, using a silver charger and a couple of different cake stands.  While I liked how these worked visually and for display purposes, they weren't that practical when visitors wanted to peruse, for example, the 65 or so different chick flick notecards I had to offer yesterday.  Additionally, the phone cases, displayed more or less flat, sort of disappeared, prompting the venue's owner and organizer to offer me a little decorative suitcase to use to sort of prop them up.  I actually had an entirely different idea for displaying these that I didn't get around to but will definitely get together for my next event in a few weeks.

I used the elements of my Etsy shop banner for my table sign and thought, how clever would it be to carry this over into my individual product displays using an actual Dymo embossed label maker?  Clever, perhaps, but again, not so practical since the signs proved a bit hard to read.  I think I'll do something similar to my sign name, only smaller, next time around.

Other thoughts...While I'm still looking forward to the East Bay Mini Maker Faire later this month, I'm just not sure the craft fair/sale is for me.  For starters, it feels too close to my experiences in retail, experiences I'm not particularly fond of reliving.  Not to be all complain-y, but it's exhausting having to stand for hours on end with little or no break and repeatedly explain and pitch your products. Much easier to put it on the Internets and let the customers come to me.  Which brings me to the conclusion that the Android phone cases, targeting a niche market as they do, perhaps just fare better online.  Very few people recognized the logo, let alone carried an Android smart phone.  The one guy who did happened to be an employee of Google.  The only phone case I sold yesterday I sold to a woman with a Blackberry.  I explained the nature of the product and offered her my card with my Etsy shop info if she'd prefer a custom order.  I felt a little guilty but she insisted and seemed pleased with her purchase so who am I to argue?

Also, initially I thought, well, it won't be too tedious.  I oughtta be able to crank out several phone cases while I sit there for six hours, understanding of course that I'd experience, with any luck, frequent interruptions to interact with customers and hopefully sell some product.  But I was discouraged from sitting and crafting and I totally get it. I'm just not sure I like it or have it in me to do it too often, let alone monthly or sometimes weekly as some of these hardcore crafters do.

On a positive note, it was a really welcome change to interact with other crafty folks and supporters. One surprising hit were the chick flick notecards, the day's biggest seller (that's not saying much but still), and quite the conversation piece.  And of course, I learned a bunch and I'm hoping the event will prove to be a useful trial run for the Maker Faire coming up.  I'm also hoping to capitalize on the slightly more, er, geeky audience sure to attend.