Christmas in July...cont'd

Since I'm reorganizing Culinary Note Cards to be a Christmas store, it calls for a good thorough cleaning out of graphic junk, meaning cards, tags, and stickers that simply don't make sense (meaning no one in their right mind would buy such a thing); and I'm now offering "from my kitchen" type gift tags that are 3" x 1", and come in packs of 20 for around $7; text is fully customizable at Zazzle, of course, front and back. Here's a few holiday starters.

You can just tape them to packages or punch a hole and string them so you can write on the back.

My 2010 Snowman Chef: Cookie Baker

Maybe the rest of you wait until mid December to start thinking about Christmas, but my season starts in July. I've got lots of work to do this year, since I've changed the kind of "from my kitchen" gift tags offered now, and Culinary Note Cards is now going to be 100% Christmas cards, tags, stickers, and ornaments. Sure, there are regular note cards there, but I've moved all the recipe binders to Chef Catering Biz Cards and the non-holiday CNC stuff will stay in the store, but I won't add more to it.

To rev up my enthusiasm, I created the 2010 Snowman Chef! It's a baker this year because bakers have been very good to me at Zazzle this year, and I'm pleased to offer them up a bit of a reward; we'll see how the sales go, but he's pretty cute, so he'll sell to other kinds of culinary pros or he won't. My picnic snowman of the past - except 2008's picnic snowman - have been top sellers every year. This snowman is slapped on cards, business card gift tags in different sizes, "from my kitchen" type stickers, recipe cards, letterhead, and in ornament form.

Huzzah! Free biz cards - er, sorry, they're for me.

Zazzle gave me a little reward of free biz cards the other day, and since I didn't have a biz card - marketing for my online biz is, um, online - what the heck, I made one.It's also the Christmas holiday season for me design-wise. I have to create this year's best-selling snowman - last year's made killer sales - and instead of the cut-out postcard gift tags from last year I'll be making tags from Zazzle's mini cards, which come in more convenient packs of 20 for much less of a price than a biz card, and folks won't have to cut anything out. I'm also re-doing a lot of the Christmas stickers so folks can customize them (what was I thinking, anyway?). In other words, I better get crackin'.

The end of Picnic Week

Had a lot of fun doing Picnic Week - a small range of picnic graphics for folks who dig outdoor eating. The focus was invites in the form of postcards and note cards, and flier type announcements via nifty Zazzle letterhead. The chicken drummie-slash-hamburger recipe card shown here can be turned into a postcard by changing the text and removing the back graphics. Others are a picnic basket with wine bottle and glasses in the grass, and a dancing picnic trio with ant, plate, and fork on grass with a red plaid blanket. It made a cute business card, too, sans ant. Next up: grilling!



Next up is grilling!

The end of Fruit Week

This week was Fruit Week - I've pretty much been choosing "weeks" just to keep the graphics going - so this week ends with a little pop art strawberry. Blueberries, raspberries, all done, and I know I've got some other kind of strawberry over at Chef Catering Biz Cards (plug, plug), but I don't really have pop art kinda stuff, so there you have it. I don't know what I'm doing next week, though. I like my brain images of "celery", but who gets excited over that? I'm also in a summery mood, and am thinking of "parfait". Maybe a fruit, and a veggie parfait? That would be coolish.

Feature: Simply Amazing Art at Peppers Polish Mafia

Pepper's Polish Mafia at Zazzle is an amazingly fantastical shop featuring a very distinct style and wild imagination. I often check out her store to see the latest incredible creations there. There's a deep whimsicality to every image, from a blade of grass to an eye. Pepper's subjects range in people, animals, mystical, magical creatures and plant life, on all Zazzle's wonderful, fun products.

For the foodie in me, her Marshmallow God (titled "King of the Mellow") is simply wonderful, and the crying onion ("I'm not feeling it!") is sad and funny and cute.

A real treat is her home page, and scroll down where you can see her amazing art in animated coolness, too!

Feature: George Barr, sci-fi and fantasy fun!

George Barr's store is titled The Enchanted Thingamajig, but the location is actually Geo_Barr at Zazzle. He's got a great imagination and the creative hands (I wanted an opportunity to say "chops", but it doesn't really apply) to put together a variety of sci-fi and works of fantasy, like this totally cool Rogue's Gallery image. Love the lizard man on the right end!

Dragons, elves, alien cats and other critters big and small reside there, plus Celtic and other magical creations, with a smattering of skulls and other worldly creatures just for fun.

Many images are large enough to snag you a goodly sized poster, but George's art is available on a wide variety of great Zazzle products.

It's worth it to look around the store so you can see the detail put into many of the images there, and the colors are just beautiful.

You can also check out George's blog for the latest cool stuff.

My clip art is now at Big Stock Photo!

My clip art at Dreamstime is going pretty darn well, so I decided to bite the time bullet and try to get it over at Big Stock Photo, too. Can't hurt to sell in more than one place, that's for sure. I uploaded 3 images there to see "how it goes" and it's pretty much the same upload and waiting time to get published there. My locale is www.bigstockphoto/profile/Margarets

Is this, like, Girl Power?

I've never been much of a feminist; I figure if a gal wants something, she should go out and get it, but then again I don't think women have become happier by having careers or letting our neighborhoods become cold, empty shells of what they once were. Maybe it's my small town upbringing. Still, having fun dressing up dolls is a whole other matter. I drew a girl and boy chef and thought it would be super cool to play dress-up, and this is the starter package result:
Now I just have to inch my way up to slapping them all on biz cards, t-shirts, mugs, cards, and stuff and I'll have myself an unlimited way of breaking the rut on tomatoes, steaming pots, and chefs. Love the scuba diving one! These will all eventually be at Chef Catering Biz Cards "My Job" category in the non-cooking section. Huzzah!

Postage stamps for foodies now available!

I debated a long time whether or not to include postage stamps at Chef Catering Biz Cards; it's just one more thing to size, upload, describe and tag. With all the differently sized things I already create - I'm not one of those Zazzlers who just make one graphic and slap it on everything no matter if it fits or not - it takes a couple of hours to do this, and then that, and adding more stuff just cuts down on my new creation time. Well, whatever! I decided to do it and they look great! Of course, you can change or remove the text to suit yourself.

There are two new cute girl chefs (blonde, and AA) on the bottom there; I also have a boy/male version, and I just might do what I've seen a couple other people do, which is dress them up in other biz attire (doctor, handyman, etc.) and let 'her rip in another category in the store. Thinkin' ain't doin', though!