Plantable biz cards turned out beautifully!

One of the wonderful aspects of selling my work through etsy.com is that they've made it possible to request - and fulfill - custom orders. This has been a huge boon to me as I can often sell people on the idea of making their biz cards, tags and customer appreciation or other promotional gifts out of plantable paper. For many, it's the first they've heard of the concept.

Although I've made custom plantable papers before, the most recent one turned out really, really well. I made the paper base out of completely recycled paper - newspaper page proofs - for a creamy white color. I added wildflower seeds plus flower petals and bits of metallic and mohair yarn scraps from his weaving. Adding the petals and yarn bits increases the time it takes to make each sheet, but I think the effect it achieves is worth it.
The Pretty Peacock can be visited here.

Three week update and Newf News!

Now that things are slowing down a bit I've had time to create some new cards. Rather than pressing flowers or leaves into cards, I decided to print images on the paper I make. Fortunately it soaks up the ink really well. I really like how they've turned out and am busy at work on some completely new images.

In other news, I was asked to review a manuscript for publication. Finally I get to use my PhD for something directly relevant! I am a little curious how it came to be that I was asked to review a paper instead of the hundreds or so other PhDs out there who are far better known. In truth, it feels great to be asked to provide an expert opinion on the quality of a piece of research. My non-academic day job certainly doesn't offer much of what would pass as respect. That is one of the things about academia that I took for granted. Pretty much everyone respects everyone else at some level. Being asked to review a manuscript means someone respects my opinion. Lately that feels like a refreshing drink after walking through a desert.

I've got to get as much done as I can in the next 6 weeks because we are expecting! A puppy. In a few weeks we'll be going to visit the family Katy came from so we can pick out the puppy we like. They have 2 black females. She won't be able to come home with us until she's 8 weeks old. I know it will be a ton of work. It's happening earlier than we'd like. I wanted to have one arrive sometime in October when the weather is cooler, but the female became pregnant earlier than everyone anticipated (thanks to a very eager male) so she'll be coming home sometime around the 4th of July. Katy will have a little sister who really is her sister! She'll be coming with us to meet the puppies too. I think it will be fun to see her doggy family. I wonder what she'll think of so many newfies! She seems to recognize them when she seems them, or just goes bananas over big shaggy black dogs that drool a lot. Either way, it will be a riot I'm sure.

She is the inspiration for one of the new cards I'm creating. And maybe just maybe one of these days I'll have time to draw some more monkeys. But for now, I'm hoping these will be the catch of the day for Father's Day.

For the love of - Lunaria

Last year I planted a bunch of lunaria seeds from plants I found growing by the railroad tracks that run through town. I didn't even know what the plant was called at the time; I just loved the seed pods.

Lunaria is also called the "money plant" because the seed pods look like silver dollars. It's a fragrant plant that produces big bunches of purple flowers and unique seed pods that look like silver dollars. They grow to about 4 feet high and produce big wide leaves that are perfect for hiding an ugly foundation. They grow well in partly sunny locations and are perennials so they produce flowers in the second year.

This year the lunaria I planted last year took off! I will be planting more of them for sure.

I pressed some into the paper I make and embedded seeds from the plants into the pulp. They can be planted just like my other cards.

As usual, I had a newfie helper during the photo shoot. She loves hanging out outside on cool, breezy days.

I scored one of the REAL 'treasuries.'

It was just luck, I suppose. When I need a break from editing stories, I go see what's happening at etsy. Today I noticed someone alerted everyone that an opportunity to make one of these things called a 'treasury' was about to open up.

Members of etsy, the online company I sell my artwork through, can compose collections of other etsy member's artwork. The collections are called "treasuries" and are basically a 3 item x 4 item poster style collection of thumbnail images of listings on etsy.

The etsy website's front page displays a treasury and they are rotated throughout the day so fresh ones are always available for viewing pleasure. The best ones are themselves a work of art.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the one I got to make is a work of art or anything, but it is pretty, and I did it on the fly while trying to do about 6 other things at the same time. All of the pieces are available for purchase - including that scarf in the middle on the bottom row!

Earth Day - Photos

It must have been wishful thinking to plan a blog post for every day this week. As soon as I get home from one job, I've got to turn into business woman - answering emails about custom orders, arranging large orders, wholesale orders, packaging up orders, printing out labels, re-ordering mailing envelopes for mailing out orders and packaging wholesale orders. It's a lot of damn work. And that's not to mention photographing a new product I'm launching - tree free paper.

I spent about an hour of Earth Day actually outside. I planted some seeds, but mostly I was out taking pics and providing entertainment for my furry four-legged helper.

She made 'friends' with a squirrel who must have a nest in our plum tree. They chattered at each other for a while, and when the squirrel ran off after barking excitedly at Katy, she squealed in excited-frustration-disappointment... arrrrroooorahhhhhooooh she yelped.


Then she flopped down at my feet and waited patiently for me to finish, getting up every so often to sniff my face and give kisses. She was so well-behaved, and cute, that I couldn't help but take some snapshots of her newfyness.

I photographed a set of "Herb Garden in a Card" using mint and rosemary plants growing in a pot. It was a very fragrant photo shoot.

It even attracted the attention of the canine authority. I accidentally broke a piece of mint off, so I held it out to her. She sniffed it skeptically then turned her nose up at it. So I ate it. Yum!! Fresh breath. I should have gone inside to give it to Bad Breath Max, but offered a second piece to Katy who promptly gobbled it up. Hopefully she won't decide to help herself to it any time she feels like it now!

It was pretty cute how it all went down. Blech! I'm not eating that. Not not not. Gross. Oh..... so you're eating it? Well.... where's mine?

Stinker.


So, that's what I did for Earth Day - work work work and more work. A little yard time, hanging out with the newf, eating mint.

... pssst ... The herb cards are available in my etsy store now. They can be used to grow basil, oregano, mint, rosemary, lavender and chives.

11 day blog vacation over!

In case you couldn't guess, I disappeared into blog oblivion because of the incredible free advertising my little store received. I have just now begun to come out the other side of it, which means two things:
* sales have tapered back to slightly above normal
* I have enough time to blog again

While I'd love to write something thought-provoking here tonight, I'm just going to give you an 'advance' of posts I have planned for the upcoming week:
* Earth Day
* hamadryas baboons and the FLDS scene
* making a fake entrails dog toy - good, clean, fun evisceration
* shooting at the gun range

That should be a pretty good week!

Boing! Boing!

My plantable handmade lavender cards got featured on an insanely popular blog sometime early this morning. I woke to a nearly cleaned out store. ALL of my plantable cards had sold out. I found out I got featured on the blog when I logged on to the etsy forums to ask whether people had seen them anywhere. It didn't take long at all for someone to provide a link to the website that gave me a TON of absolutely FREE advertising at boingboing.net, a "directory of wonderful things."


Wonderful, indeed.

The exposure got me several wholesale inquiries plus a really, really exciting one from a company based just over the mountains. The want me to create 1,000 cards for them to distribute at a trade show. I even get to keep my biz info on the reverse of the cards. I cannot imagine having 1,000 of these cards out there in the world. You can't buy that kind of advertising! Next thing you know, Al Gore will be knocking on my door.

It wasn't all rosey over at boingboing. Being a blog that allows comments t be posted means people from all over can comment on my cards. Well, some of them thought I am an environmental EVIL-doer. I even got lumped into the same crowd as Big Tobacco at one point because evidently American Spirits cigarettes distributed something like this. And no - their paper didn't have tobacco seeds in it!

This is by far the best negative comment:


But this one had my coworkers (at my other job) wonder what I was laughing about:
"Lighten up FNARF. Sheesh. OK so we have to avoid invasive species, but you combined evil Big Tobacco, ecological catastrophe, cheap gimmickry and empty-headed liberal tree-hugging do-gooderism into the simple act of sending a card and planting a seed. It's not like we're sending cards with atomic zombie boll weevil eggs.

Although now that I think about it, that would make Mother Earth so very happy...."

I particularly enjoyed the empty headed liberalism bit and the atomic zombie boll weevils.

Oh, and someone else chimed in and said "I hate to be a party pooper because I adore this type of stuff, but I have never gotten paper-seeds to germinate. And I'm a farmer, so I kind of know what I'm doing."

.... emphasis on KIND OF.

I suppose the 30 plus seedlings coming out of paper I made are just my imagination.

You can read all of the boingboing comments if you click the photo and scroll down.