Love/Hate Relationships

You have them, I have them. I mostly have them with craft stores. I love my local Michael's because they seem to have most everything if I need it in a pinch. There are a few things that I have to order online (which I prefer anyway) but sometimes you want to go to the store and pick up the item of interest and hold it and look at it and see exactly how big or small it is and READ THE PACKAGING before deciding to invest in it. On the other hand...Michael's makes me dizzy with their ever changing coupon policy. I will go in one day and all the sudden they won't accept my 60% off competitor's coupon. The next week I'll return and they will accept the 60% off competitor's coupon. On one visit they told me they would only accept up to a 40% off competitor's coupon. I wished like mad that my local Joann's was re-opened. (They had closed for about 6 months during this time to move to a larger location.) Also, my Michael's store will only accept ONE coupon. Doesn't matter if it's their coupon or a competitor's. =(

My local Joann's is a different story. Since they re-opened their doors here where I live, their store seems to be bigger but they really don't carry any more papercrafting items than they did when they were in the old location. I was really looking forward to a bigger selection of my crafts. One thing I LOVE about Joann's is that I can use more than one coupon at a time and they can be a combination of their coupons and competitor's coupons. Not to mention that Joann's allows their coupons to be used on books (not magazines) whereas Michael's does not. I don't buy my adult coloring books from Michael's anymore for this very reason. =)

Yesterday I discovered EtsyRank.com. What a great (free) tool for Etsy sellers!! I'm in the process of going through and cleaning up my listings. I hope this will boost my sales. A few weeks ago I fixed all of my shipping information for all listings. I've also been removing a few items that were listed for quite a while without selling or attracting very much interest. When they came up to renew it just wasn't worth the listing fee. =/

Anyway, I'm off to go have lunch. Tuna salad is calling me and I'm starved. Then I have a birthday card to get started on. Have a great day!!

Leap Day

I figured today was as good a day as any to post since I have not posted anything since my cheesy happy new years post. LOL Actually, I have been sick the last couple weeks. In January I drove up north to visit my daughters for a week. My youngest had surgery so it was a good time to go see them and help Chels with her recovery. I fell in love with Sara's cat, Misha. He is just the sweetest cat and will play as long as you can keep up. It was nice to see some real rain while I was there, too! LOL Seriously, the Sacramento valley doesn't know the first thing about rain. :b However, it was not fun driving home in it. The rain was coming down so hard that my windshield wipers couldn't keep up. >.<

I stocked some new stuff in my shop at the beginning of this month and even managed to make a few sales -- oh(!), and even got a custom order!! Super kewl! The recipient was very happy with the cards. =) So I have been adding a couple things here and there but not much since I have been sick. I'm hoping that starting in March I can get on some sort of regular schedule and post new items weekly.

A couple of months ago I heard of an app called Evernote. Papercrafters are using it to keep track of their stash...what a great idea! No more buying duplicates, right? You download and use the app on your phone and you may also access your account via the web. It's nice because I was able to sit down and put together my "notebooks" and write "notes" for them at my computer and then sync it with the Evernote app on my phone. It's taken me a couple months to catalog most of my stash but it was so nice when I was in Hobby Lobby this last weekend and needed to know if I had a certain 6x6 paper pad. I just opened up Evernote and saw that I had it already and put it back on the shelf. =) I'm not saving the images of all of my stuff. I felt that was a little too tedious, took up a lot of space and really didn't do me a lot of good. It was also very time consuming to go find the images online and drag and drop the pics. If I really need a visual of something I own, I can always find it online and if I can't...oh well. Life goes on. =)

Anyway, that is about all for now. Dinner is in the oven and will be ready in a few minutes. I hope everyone is enjoying their extra day today. Happy leap day!

P.S. I finally finished Dexter. It's only taken me a couple years. :b

First thing's first!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!