Pseudo seed cards and paintings for sale

Hey, I have some new cards up in Snarkface! I'm also selling off two of the paintings from my collection. More details follow.

Follow-up to my "No Junk Mail" experiment: we received one (1) piece of junk mail in our mail box yesterday. This is far less than normal, but maybe it was a fluke. We'll see what happens today. Also, thanks to everyone who answered my phone book survey! I'll wait another day or two and then post a summary.



Anyway, here's the inside of the card pictured at the top of today's Blathering:



If you like this card, you can buy it at Snarkface.com.

For those who prefer non-snarky cards, I've also been posting cards to Whimsy. Like this holiday season card:



Thanks also to Erin and Rand for letting me turn a couple of the photos I took at their wedding into greeting cards:



I've also turned my Worm Writer cartoon into a Snarkface card.

In my Etsy shop, I've decided to finally sell the 8" x 8" Zombie Love acrylics painting that has been hanging in our house.



I'm also selling The Apple, a mini-painting we've had on a mini-easel beside the front door. I've kept it around for so long to remind me to better appreciate what I have rather than angsting about what I don't.

No More Junk Mail? (and when's the last time YOU used a phonebook?)

I had never heard of the Red Dot Campaign until just recently, and we've decided to try it. Apparently only two percent of Canadians take advantage of a little-known Canada Post policy that allows people to stop unaddressed junk mail arriving in their mailbox or dropping through their mail slot.

I am highly skeptical about how much this will help our (currently ridiculously huge) volume of print junk mail. What about all those not associated with Canada Post, paid to stuff advertisements in people's mailboxes?



Anyway, today's our first day trying this...I'll report back to let you know if the Red Dot sign makes any difference in our print junk mail volume.

I've already registered our home number and my cell phone on Canada's Do Not Call Registry and added my info to IOptOut.ca (the latter's website looked when I checked it just now; hopefully the problems are temporary).

I was also intrigued by all the info on the Red Dot Campaign site about related services. It never crossed my mind that you could opt out of getting paper phone books delivered, for example. So then I got thinking...do we really NEED a paper phone book? I always use the Internet to look up info.

So here's a survey question:

When's the last time YOU used a print phonebook?

Crafty

Was in a crafty mood and did some hand sewing (adding reinforcements to my iPhone wallet) as well as painting. I just discovered (too late) from Allison's LJ that there was a huge craft festival in Toronto this weekend! AUGH!!

Though maybe it's a good thing I didn't go; I would probably have spent too much.

Jeff and I traded closets this past weekend. Our recent renovations focused on switching Jeff's upstairs home office and our bedroom, and I got a small walk-in closet as a bonus. Jeff spent today building custom-made shelves and putting up hooks; I'll post pics in Flickr soon.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Free greeting card offer expires this Friday

Branching out into non-holiday cards at Snarkface:

I've been inspired by the last few weeks as Jeff and I traded off colds. Not the kind of inspiration I particularly seek out on purpose, but I'll take it when I can get it.

Only five days left to get your free greeting cards on any of my Zazzle shops, by the way. I tested out the promo code yesterday and it worked fine - I only had to pay for shipping ($3.99 to ship five cards to Canada). Basically, you get a $14.95 credit. Right now my cards are $2.95 each (this is the minimum royalty; I will likely increase this in the future), so that means five free cards! See this link for details.

Just choose your five cards and enter "GET5FREECARD" in the promo code field. Your total will be adjusted before you have to pay. I won't get any royalties for these cards, of course, but I'm counting on you all to help promote my new card shops. :-) Also, if you use the links below to buy the cards, at least I'll get a referral fee.

My card shops:
Snarkface - snarky
Inkygirl Gifts For Writers - writing-related
Whimsy - general (cute, inspirational, etc.)

Thanks for supporting my art, eh? I'll be gradually adding cards to all the above shops over time. I have a huge number of cartoons and doodles that I'm going to be turning into cards, and will also be creating new ones.

Craftiness, Poslfit and Winter Holidays revisited

I've started painting again. One of my favourite Corel Painter brushes is the Sponge brush, so I figured it's time I experiment with sponge painting in real life.

Sent off my book manuscript yesterday. I use Microsoft Word 2004 for the Mac and I've always hated it, but I think that part of the reason is because I've been too lazy to sit down and actually figure out how to properly use stylesheets. I once accidentally wrote an entire manuscript in superscript without realizing it. This time I actually did go through and make sure to use styles all the way through.

I still hate MS Word, but not quite as much.

Thanks to those who posted comments about my winter holidays/festivals card on Snarkface. I incorporated many of your suggestions and uploaded a new version of the card:

Seasons Greetings (whatever that season might be)

I took most of my original holidays from this Wikipedia entry but it looks as if the entry may not have been entirely accurate, so your comments were very useful. You can find a list of some fictional winter holidays and festivals here. Gary McGath also pointed out the Butter Lamp Festival in Tibet.

And the word/phrase that had nothing at all to do with winter? Poslfit, a word invented by some friends of mine.

I've also added some more cards to my Inkygirl Gifts For Writers page.

Snowman Writer's Gift