Making Cool Stuff at Cafe Press

I have recently been enjoying making cool stuff at cafe press. This is probably the simplest way I know to sell your art online. You probably won't make a ton of money - but compared to the labor intensive - pocketbook breaking ordeal of art fairs and local shows, not to mention the potentially humiliating experience of gallery owners who  turn up their noses at your cool stuff - well, for me it's a no brainer.

All I have to do is come up with a sharp, high resolution graphic of art that I've made. Then it's a simple process to upload it to cafe press where I can put my art on everything from framed prints and calendars to mugs, mouse pads and stickers. And people have been buying! How cool is that?

Check this out, it's a recent email from Cafe Press:

Hi from CafePress.com!

You've made a sale! Way to go!
Here is a summary of the items you sold:

1 x Flower Peace - Daydream Necklace Circle Charm
   
Retail Price:    $15.60 each
Markup:          $1.56 each
Earned:          $1.56 total (Sales Source: Marketplace)

Log in to your account at http://www.cafepress.com and check out your Sales Report to see more info. Thank you for your contributions to the CafePress.com community and keep up the good work!
Happy Selling!
CafePress.com

Build It And They Will Come

Just last week, I was whining and complaining to my sister about life in general, and how I spend so much time working on all these really great blogs that nobody ever goes to. And now I have to eat crow, because I went to stat counter today and this is what I found!!! One Cool Picture After Another has exceeded the 100 hits and 200 page loads mark! Yowsers! I thought that maybe, on a good day, I had like... 15 visitors.

I find this very interesting because I have not done much at all to actively promote this site. What I HAVE done to "drive traffic" is this:

1. Linked it on my other blogs.
2. Posted it at Technorati.
3. Put it up at My BlogLog.

That's it. I did the exact same thing for Way Cool Pictures and More Cool Pictures, plus I posted them at Blog Catalog, and have actively pursued links for them on other sites. And yet this blog is the one getting the most traffic. It can't be the content, because it has the same content as both of the other two. So, I'm thinking it has to be the fact that I put up three posts a day. It did get stumbled once or twice, and it did get posted on facebook. Both of which might also be contributing factors.

Why do I even have three picture blogs? Good question. And here's the answer: I have a number of friends and coworkers who might be offended by some of the pictures and art that I really like. So, I made a picture blog just for them. Nothing offensive is ever uploaded at Way Cool Pictures. The rest of the stuff that I like is housed at More Cool Pictures. I do not go in for anything too terribly gruesome... well... sometimes... but not usually. And while I never post porn, More Cool Pictures isn't necessarily something you could recommend to your great aunt Martha. Some of it is in very "bad taste", which is what makes it funny and interesting to me.

The two most popular posts at Way Cool Pictures currently is The Amazing Art of Julian Beaver, and Krakatoa Day. At More Cool Pictures, it's Foot Binding and Creepy Cannibal Pictures.

Then, one of my friends complained about having to go to two blogs in order to see ALL the cool pictures. So, I thought, why not... I'll combine the two and call it One Cool Picture After Another. I had no thought of it being more than a convenience for my friends. Interestingly, the favorite posts there are The Piercing and Pain Festival and The World's Largest Penis (no porn - I swear to you - it's not a picture of a person).

So, there you go! Build it and they will come. Be patient. Post every day.... post more than once a day if you have something interesting, relevant, shocking or funny. Eventually, that small trickle of 2 to 3 visitors a day will grow.

My Flickr Profile

I've been playing with my new Flikr account. Surprisingly, the photos I have uploaded get looked at! I've even been invited to submit some photos to a couple of groups, which was fun. And several have been marked as "favorites".

All of this would be even cooler if the photos were pictures that I actually took, instead of stuff I found on the internet. But, hey, I'll take whatever appreciation I can get.

Here is a screen capture of one of my most looked at sets, Burning Man 2007. It's been up for about a week and already has had 86 views and a number of comments.

So, this is what I put on my Flikr Profile:

I am an artist, a blogger, a reader, a writer, a Reiki Master, a gypsy, a shaman, a psychic, a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend.

Other words that apply to me include: out of the box, unusual, outspoken, odd, eccentric, free spirited, employed, unemployed, foolish, wise, stupid, smart, funny, sad, ridiculous, sensible, practical, down to earth, driven, gifted, calm, relaxed, freaked out, dumb, mental, open minded, bound and determined, stubborn, persistent, opinionated, ambivalent, physical, emotional, spiritual, human... the list goes on and on.

I have a bunch of blogs and websites.. come and see them if you are interested, they are: shirley twofeathers, Mandala Madness, Way Cool Pictures, More Cool Pictures, Gypsy Magic, Green Dolphin Studio, Way Cool Quotes, The Prosperity Project, As Within, and Question of the Day. How's that for a long list?

Now, the question is, will this profile and the uploaded pictures bring me traffic to my blogs? or interest in my art? or is it just a nice diversion?

50x50

Today, while researching Hex symbols for possible inclusion in Mandala Madness, I stumbled onto a really interesting website/art project called 50x50. It is an ongoing online work of art made of 50 pixel square images from artists around the world.

I thought it was pretty cool, so I submitted this image, called "Ring of Power", I'll just have to wait and see what happens with that. And then, I got to thinking about my Sell Art Online blog, and how I haven't posted there in months, so I got busy and did a little work on that.

It's a lovely rainy day today, and once I get caught up on everything, I must might go looking for online galleries and really go crazy putting my art out there!

This is what's new in my world today

At Mandala Madness we have two new posts, art and poetry:

Communion

art by Shirley Gibson

Stop using words around me
I can’t hear you when you are always talking
Be still and listen with your skin,
like when there is a monster under your bed
I love it when we talk like this…

~Grace Gibson

~

Also today I am working on gratitude at the Prosperity Project, I've got some great quotes up at Way Cool Quotes, and a nifty new gadget at Way Cool Pictures:

Designed by Oliver Blackwell, the “WashDryIron” is an all-in-one machine that can handle up to 16 items at once. All the washing, drying, and ironing take place in seperate compartments with each piece on hangers to prevent creases. Mr. Blackwell expects his machine to sell for $1,389 - $1,562 when it’s released.

Cool huh?

War and Peace

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.

~Jane Howard

posted today at Way Cool Quotes

New today at Way Cool Pictures:

A striking image from the 2006 Chelsea Flower Show in London, UK. The garden was designed as a 'natural haven of peace, inviting visitors to journey from the stressful world of consciousness to an altogether more alluring destination, idealised in dreams..'

After the 2006 Chelsea Flower Show closed, this figure was bought by Olivia Harrison, the widow of George Harrison. She has been continuing to restore the large Victorian garden at their house in Henley-on-Thames, UK.

Beautiful isn't she?

And then as I was surfing for pictures for my picture blogs, I came across this one, and decided to post it as today's Question of the Day.

My answer was that I engage in warlike activities all the time, for example... I might be engaging in a war on dirt in my house, a war on weeds in my garden, a war on mice in the walls of my home... etc etc. And it occurs to me that maybe there is another way to go about accomplishing my goals without having a warlike attitude.

How about you guys, what do you think?

And so I started thinking about peace vs war, and I was able to come up with a desktop wallpaper for Mandala Madness. I think it came out pretty cool, here it is:

A beautiful mandala to bring peace to your desktop.

If you want to download it, just go to Mandala Madness. If you have a desktop wallpaper mandala image, or get inspired to make one and want to share it, just let me know. I'd love to post it at the blog, and I would of course give you credit, and links back to your web pages. So don't be shy.

And last but not least:
On the prosperity project today, we have one of the weekly meditations that come to me via email. It's from Pragito.

Description:
Suddenly you see a friend you have not seen for many days and you feel joy arising in your heart. But your attention is on your friend, not on your joy. Then you are missing something and the joy is momentary.

When you see a friend and suddenly feel a joy arising in your heart, concentrate on this joy. Feel it and become it, and meet the friend while being aware and filled with your joy. Let the friend be on the periphery, and remain centered in your feeling of happiness.

When and Where:
You can try this technique in many situations. For example, the sun is rising, or you suddenly see your pet, or any external situation that brings a feeling of joy arising in your heart.... be centered in your own feeling of joy. Instead of being
object-centered, become self-centered.

Whenever there is joy, you feel it is coming from without. That is not the actual case. The joy is always within you. The friend/the external situation has just become a situation to trigger the joy within you.

Benefits:
Whenever this happens remain centered in the inner feeling, and then you will have a different attitude about everything in life. You become the emotion of joy itself, and there will be a great change in you.The joy spreads through your whole being and your awareness deepens it.

And that's it for today!

And then I did this...

I am still mulling over the issues of tags and labels and the best way to organize Way Cool Quotes, however I did get the "label cloud" for this blog finished. Looks cool, huh?

Having finally stopped obsessing over labels and tags, I posted to a number of other blogs. Here's a "teaser" from the post at Way cool Pictures. It's a test of a fire fighting foam system at Ellsworth AFB. but something went hilariously and terribly wrong...

There are about 10 pictures in the post, too many to put up here, so go see it. It's really funny!

Speaking of pictures, On Way Cool Pics I posted several incredible images of the awesome surreal art by Vladimir Kush. Here's one of them:



If you visit the site, just be aware that some of the images previously posted might be a little "over the top". No porn, nothing too offensive, but if you are sensitive, you might want to approach this site with caution. I call it the "dark side" of Shirley.

On a more uplifting note, I was going to post desktop wallpaper at the Mandala Madness blog, but I ran out of time, and didn't get one found or created. If any of you out there reading this have, or know of, great Mandala Art wallpapers for the desktop that are free to use and distribute, please let me know. If you want to contribute something you've made yourself, it would be greatly appreciated, and I'll be happy to plug you, your art, and your site on the blog.

Let me see... what else... On the Prosperity Project we are saying "thank you" for unusual things. If you'd like to contribute your own thank you's that would be great!

So that's it for me today!
Blessings to all my readers and supporters.
I love you and appreciate you more than you know!

Labels out of control

So today, I have been working on the labels for Way Cool Quotes. There are so many that it's just out of control. I wish I could find a way to tag the posts in 3 different ways, and have the option of posting each one.

With Quotes you've got first of all, the author. If I'm looking for Abraham Lincoln quotes, I want to be able to click on "Abraham Lincoln" and pull them all up. And then you have the more general categories such as "humor" and "motivational". If I am just looking for an inspirational quote, I need to be able to click on "living large" and then pick and choose from there. On the other hand, I might also be looking for a quote about something really specific, like for example "fog". I would then want to look at all the quotes with the word "fog" in it.

I do have a nice little search widget which I got from Beautiful Beta, and that would take care of the "specific word" issue, and even the specific author issue. However, I cannot seem to make myself limit my tags to just a few categories. Plus, sometimes I find it really difficult to decide just what category a quote might fit into. And then there are lots of quotes that just don't seem to fit into any category. So what happens is that I tag each post with every tag that I can think of that seems appropriate, which gives me a gagillion tags that are only listed once.

With the label cloud hack, I have been able to avoid having ALL of them show up on the page, but I just keep thinking that there must be a better way to organize it all. So that's what I've spent all morning doing... tagging and retagging a gagillion quotes.

Ok, enough said about that, now I'm going to get busy and get the label cloud hack going on THIS blog.

Hello Again

So here I am, I know it's been a really long time since I last posted, but I have had a bad case of bloggitis... and it got the better of me... and I had to take it down a notch or two so I could at least get a grip on SOME of them.

I have thought of a way, though, to keep this blog updated without too much trouble, and I thought that I would duplicate my post over at Zaadz if I didn't have time to come up with anything new or interesting. This way, there will at least be a running dialogue, new content, and the illusion of getting this blog up to date.

Illusions are good!

The blog I'm currently having the most fun with is Way Cool Pictures. This is a part of today's post.

It looks like a house that couldn't possibly be for real, but it is...

As for the rest of the story, here it is:

On the Prosperity Project, we are currently working on Gratitude, this is today's post:

Two things I can say "thank you" for are:

The image is kind of dorky, but I have been coming up with a new "thank you" image every day for the last... 15 days or so, and it's getting to be slim pickins!

This month's Project (gratitude) has been working really well. I really think that we are all getting a lot of benefit from this one. If you would like to join in, feel free - we would love to have you!

And then on the Question of the Day, today, I posted this question:


Your body communicates with you all the time. If you were to take the time right now to really listen, what do you think your body would be saying?

Hmmm...

And I think that right now, my body has got to be saying "Shirley, for crying out loud, shut up and go to bed!" and I'm saying, "But wait... there's more!"

Continuing with the "body" theme, the current quote from my Way Cool Quotes blog is:

What is always speaking silently is the body.
~Norman Brown

I don't know about you guys, but sometimes my body isn't very silent when speaking. Some times she yells!

And then there's Mandala Madness, todays post is about Madhubani yantra paintings, this is the first part of the post:

The wall paintings of Madhubani are a queer mixture of aestheticism, ecstasy and sex. Put here on paper are some of the same representations.

The major part of the painting has a circle of yantras representing different gods and goddesses. It is the influence of Tantra on the religious scene. The Kali Yantra, Sri Yantra etc. form the conglomeration of yantras, akin to mandalas, a symbol in Tantrik art.....

I have a little bit more information and another image posted on the blog, so if this interests you, you might want to check it out over at Mandala Madness.

And then there's my "R" rated picture blog... Way Cool Pics (yes I know the name is really similar to the other one - but it's too late to change it now) This picture blog may not be suitable for everyone. No porn, nothing too offensive, but some of the images are a little over the top - so if you're sensitive, you might want to NOT go there.

However, that being said, today's picture was hilarious and cute, so I'll include it here, this is it:

Hi Sweetie,
Can you smile pretty for the camera?

LOL
And on that note, I'll just say "goodnight"

Way Cool Quotes

Way Cool Quotes has been an idea in my head for a really long time. Several years ago, I started making greeting cards using my artwork. I call them Way Cool Art Cards, and if you are interested, you can go take a look at them at Green Dolphin Studio.

As I made the cards, I began collecting quotes to put in them, and haunting quote sites. It occured to me that a quote site might be a good way to promote the cards, and I filed that idea away, and never did anything about it. In the mean time, my collection of quotes was growing, and growing, and growing.

Then one day last month, I was looking for a specific quote to put on one of my blogs and I had a heck of a time finding it because I was having to sift through file after file, looking for it. "Self," I said, "if I had a quote site, I would be able to find this quote really easily. All I would have to do is put in a key word, and voila... there it would be."

Two minutes later, I was on blogger getting Way Cool Quotes off the ground. This is my favorite blog. It's useful, it's pretty, it's inspirational, and it's easy.

The Question of the Day

The idea for Question of the Day came from a brainstorming attempt to stimulate more conversation and bring something interesting to The Prosperity Project.

It occured to me that it might be worthwhile to spin off with a small site composed entirely of questions to stimulate out of the box thinking, self examination, or even just entertainment and social networking. I thought it might be a good way to get us talking to each other.

We have been having a lot of fun with it. Here is the feed, if you are curious and want to check it out.

In case you are new to feeds and subscriptions, this is how it works: When you click on the link, you will go to a web page that gives you all the options there are for subscribing to the blog. Don't worry, subscriptions are free - and you won't get spammed. It also gives you a preview of several of the most recent posts.

This is just one way to take a look at the material on the site, and decide if you want it to come to you via email, or if you want to maybe have it show up on your home page, or even embed it in your own website. I like having feeds of my favorite sites available where I can see them when I first log on to the internet. That way, I can see if anything new has posted, and I don't have to hunt through bookmarks to find them.

My New Calendar

Today I discovered 3D Boxes, and made this really cool calendar of all the work I have been doing on my most current blogs: The Prosperity Project, Way Cool Quotes, and Question of the Day. I also made one just for the Prosperity Project because I think it will be really helpful for us as we work that project. It was simple to do, and I really like how it came out.

The Prosperity Project

The project I am spending the most time on currently is The Prosperity Project. This was the blog that started all the other blogs, and a number of other internet projects. I got the idea for it one evening at work. I was mulling over my prosperity issues, and it occured to me that I know a heck of a lot of different prosperity techniques, stuff that is really supposed to work. And yet, I don't spend any time really doing any of them.

Because I am always more motivated when working in a group, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could pull a bunch of people together, maybe we could spend 30 days working on each prosperity technique. That way, we would be able to really put those ideas and techniques to the test. Find out what really works, and what really doesn't work. At the same time, we could support each other and share ideas and resources.

The idea of doing the project as a blog came about because it seemed like the simplest way to include people from anywhere. That would also solve the problem of when and where to get together because we could just log in whenever it was possible or convenient.

Currently, (April 2007) we have between 4 to 8 people who participate regularly, it varies a little from month to month. So far, we have researched prayer, gypsy magic, acts of kindness, feng shui, de-cluttering, Ganesh mantras, and Steve Pavlina's million dollar experiment. Some of our projects have stimulated little spin off blogs. These are at this point still works in progress, some more progressed than others, and they include: The Prayer Request Hotline, Gypsy Magic Spells and Charms, and Loving Ganesh.

One thing that has happened, which was totally unexpected, is that the cumulative effect of consciously working at prosperity from all these different angles has resulted in life changing experiences, bursts of amazing prosperity and good luck interspersed with equally powerful periods of introspection difficulties as our obstacles and impediments come clear and get cleared.

We welcome newcomers, and if you are interested in joining this group, feel free to just jump on in. It won't matter to us in the least if you start in the middle of a project, so don't hesitate to start with whatever it is we are currently working on. It costs nothing to join, and requires no sharing of information. We do have a couple of people who participate anonymously. All that we ask is that you give it your best shot - whatever your best happens to be on any given day - and comment when you can. Absolutely no pressure, and lots of support.