Got me some AWARD

OK, Zazzle Today's Best Awards are based on vague criteria, I'm pretty sure, but the awards are fun to get and you get to be on the first page, or close to it, for a couple days and show off your fun creations.

I had a temporary job sometime in 2005, if I recall, and it was filled with really terrible spaces of time with absolutely nothing to do. Now, I'm the kind of gal who begs for work when I'm not busy, so when I say there's nothing to do, there IS nothing. So I downloaded a fun little drawing/painting program and experimented with it. I didn't really have a direction except I was in a desert kind of mood - drew an animal skull laying next to a dried up pool of sludge, among other things, then happened to draw this buffalo roaming on the desert or plains, and it became one of my favorites of all time. He's a hairy little bugger, but cute as all get-out. I had him up on Etsy as a pre-made "identity package", but recently dumped Etsy in favor of Zazzle. Here he is in notebook binder form, but "Buffalo Love" comes in business card, marketing postcard and sticker form, too.

Chef Catering Biz Cards expanding to other small biz

One cannot live on culinary graphics alone; I had a shop set up at Etsy for graphics-for-crafters, but the problem is that Etsians are, on the whole, cheap and struggling. It was fun making up images that didn't involve tomatoes and forks and steaming pots, so I opened up a Zazzle shop called Margarets Art. As time went by I found myself neglecting it, of course. Too many shops in the kitchen, as it were. So I'm moving that store into Chef Catering Biz Cards and dumping it into an "Other Small Business" category. I'm still re-creating some of the graphics I lost in the (computer) Big Crash of 2009. It's been pretty fun, but I'm at the point where I can come up with new stuff, too. See ya there!

Hell-o-ooo, I'm Soooo Bronze!

Got me a new digital badge and that's because I'm now a Zazzle Proseller! Huzzah! I'm currently at Bronze level, which is the first level up, but I see to get to Silver (that's level 2) I have a looooooooong way to go.

Of course, I'm at that point where I've opened too many shops because I like to organize and departmentalize and it just doesn't work on the internet for some reason, so I'm moving Margarets Art - non-cooking biz cards and stuff - into Chef Catering Biz Cards and moving Cooking Clip Art - the t-shirt and stuff shop - into Culinary Note Cards.

Latest Recipe Binders

Love doing binders over at Culinary Note Cards at Zazzle! Here's the latest, and they're super cute! I'm not sure what folks would use the tropical drinks one for, but I adore the graphic - so colorful and fun - and just might make that one my own personal binder as a catch-all for my collection of retro recipe books. Cheers!

Favorite Cookbooks

I love a lot of cookbooks, but if I'm going to get one these days it's most likely for the delish graphics inside. I'm talking, of course, about those nifty 60s and 70s cookbooks with all the yummy illustrations contained therein. Like this wheat germ cookbook. I actually have parts of this one at home, I got it in a haul from a very old neighbor (the lady was old, not the neighboring part) who had files and files of clipped this and that and I did a little party for her so she wanted to reward me, I guess. Either that or it was in my dear departed Dad's collection. Just don't remember. Well, that said, here's a recipe from the book of unknown source:

3/4 cup chilled buttermilk
3 tbsp. KRETSCHMER Wheat Germ

(measure, blend, serve)

I love these little "product" cookbooks; basically you just add their product into anything you're already making - meat, salad, sides, even desserts in most cases - er, just look at the bacon producers peddling bacon in ice cream and caramel covered bacon. OK, the caramel covered bacon is total yum, but you know what I'm talking about. You hardly need a cookbook to add wheat germ into a meatloaf recipe, but you get a nifty keepsake cookbook out of it.

I should have a binder for all these clippings. I did weed it out a couple months ago, and now the stack is only about a foot high; I know I could do better. I can certainly order a binder from my Zazzle shop, but which one? I am a ball of indecision. I'm thinking the fairy one, I always liked her.

Margarets Bags now at 1000 Markets!

It's official - I'm totally off Etsy and am now at 1000 Markets. I found a bag I could make 1000 of without wanting to kill myself, and I'll be throwing some more complicated or delish-tacky creations there once in a while, but mostly I'm going to concentrate on small envelope style bags (bigger than a wristlet, but with a wrist handle in case folks want to swing it rather than clutch it) with matching accessories. I love matching accessories. Zip pouches and snap pouches. *sigh* Life can be so fun!

Doodle City

So, what do you do when you're falling asleep at work at 1 a.m. and need to stay awake until 4:30 or so? Doodle, that's what. A single doodle for 15 seconds equals at least 20 minutes of awake time. I doodled my way to wakefulness many times over the past couple weeks, and now I'm turning them into graphics for my many ventures. This strawberry doodle got a Today's Best Award on Zazzle. And I turned a conglomerate of them into a recipe binder. I made a set of general cooking doodles, fruit and veggie doodles, coffee and tea doodles, and small appliance doodles. Lots of future fun to be had, all thanks to one of the most sleep-inducing jobs in the world.

You can make anything out of felt

Or, at least, The Precioussss can - check out Mr. Spock, who she made for a friend-for-a-friend:
So cute, and all carefully hand stitched as usual.

Cheers!

Brand spanking new...or rather, an update on an old fave of mine, a selection of retro, tropical, exotic drinks in party colors and decked out for the holidays. Good for alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinking.

I had a whole set of drinks graphics that were basically line drawings, but my current watercolor graphic style (oh, if I only had the room and the skill to actually paint!) demanded I pretty them up a bit and the results are quite nice! The cards are available at Culinary Note Cards at Zazzle; coming soon via Culinary Greeting Cards at Greeting Card Universe, er, pending approval.

Do U Fondu?

I made this totally yummer-licious Edam and Avocado fondue for a gal's party a couple years back, and shortly thereafter made an image of a fondue pot with forks and a little flame. Seemed that a green pot would be a groovy retroish color along with the colored tips. I've never been able to figure out what to do with it, really, except to turn it into cards and whatnot. Found it in my "things to update" dump file and made a super recipe card and Christmas card out of it. Coming soon to the usual places I sell stuff at (I'm even too tired to make the links - hey, check out my sidebar, you'll find them).