Update on my life

Wow, I can't believe how well things have been going lately.

Etsy's been going great. I found a new way to photograph my items, so I think I'll be doing that from now on. I've made a few sales. I'm making friends on the forums and in the chats. I've been advertising like crazy. My shop is really starting to flourish! So, that's all exciting.

Also, I got offered a third job yesterday (I work in a hardware store and Etsy is my second job). A pediatrician's office that I applied to, like, three months ago called to offer me a job there, so I'm meeting with them tomorrow after I get done at the hardware store. This means that I'll have a little extra disposable income. Awesome.

One last thing: Hey Pretty Cupcake is up and running! Paper Zombie from Etsy contacted me about a month and a half ago to ask me if I'd like to consign with her, and I agreed, and now it's actually happening. So happy! The website is ADORABLE! I'd definitely suggest checking it out if you can. Awesome.

So, that's my brief update about what's been happening in my life. Hopefully sometime this week I'll be starting to post the interviews with the Etsy sellers that I've been in contact with. It should be good. Yay! :)

Interviews!

Ok, for anybody who saw my post here, the questions for the interview are as follows:

1) Your shop name
2) Your real name
3) Your favorite breakfast cereal
4) When did you begin creating?
5) Got a day job?
6) Your inspirations
7) Weirdest thing you've ever made
8) Creation that you are most proud of
9) Explain your shop name
10) Final thoughts?

If you would like to answer them, please copy/paste these questions from the blog and into a convo and send them to me at lessthanthreedesigns!

Thanks! :)

Wow, I haven't updated this dealie since February? This warrants an update, I think.

Let's see... what have I been up to?

Well, for starters, I have a new job. I am a cashier at a hardware store. While this is wonderful, it makes for MUCH less time for Etsy and making new items in general. I am very sad about this, but I honestly just needed a much steadier income that I could count on. Besides, the hardware store isn't half bad. Since it's a small chain store, it's not busy ALL the time. This means I can troll the Etsy forums and I get to talk to my co-workers a lot. Plus, sometimes I have time to fill orders for my Etsy shop and I can ship them out during lunch breaks. Also, I get 20% off, and some of the things that we sell can be used for new items in my shop! All in all, it's probably the best retail job I've ever had. Except that I'm exhausted... But whatever.

As for Etsy and making things in general...

I got a button maker. Now I can make goodies like this:


I kinda like the button maker a lot. I'm currently brainstorming a WHOLE slew of ideas of things to do with it. Also, now I can do promos.

Speaking of promos, I just finished making a whole lot of promos to be sent out with my orders. They are REALLY cute, but VERY time consuming to make. They are little books: they have a green paper cover and some white paper inside. The front has my signature "teeth" on it and says "Less Than Three Designs". The back has information about my Etsy shop and my website on it.

OH! My website! Yes. I launched my website at the beginning of April. It's a lot of fun, but as of right now, it doesn't do too much. I'm redesigning it so that it's more useful/easier to navigate/not so juvenile. We'll see how that goes. I think I'm going to have to buy HTML for Dummies or something... :P

One last thing before I go: my sister and I are planning on doing the Artist's Alley for Otakon, an anime festival in Baltimore. It's in July (the same weekend the new Harry Potter book comes out--I'm going to pre-order mine and pick it up while in Baltimore because I AM that much of a loser). Hopefully we'll be able to get our stuff together by the festival! It should go pretty well. Hopefully. We'll see!

Until next time,
Allison

My friends and I used to run a theater company back during our high school days. We got shut down by our township because they no longer had a free facility for us to use due to the fact that they gave the middle school auditorium that we had been using to a sports team. We are not a poor township by any means. We are just in a place that cares more about sports than theater or music or art or anything else, really. Our high school won a Grammy award for excellence in music (the only school in New Jersey, might I add). It is ridiculous that there is no summer theater for these same children to participate in.

My friends and I have recently started a theater company called Standing Room Only. It is a community theater group, and anyone who wants to participate is welcome. However, since we are college students, we have no spare money at all to put towards our show. We have started an intense routine of fundraising, including a Friendly's night. How this works is basically as follows: On March 14th, from 5 to 8 pm, the Friendly's in our township is donating a portion of anyone's bill who comes in and says they are here for the fundraiser. In addition to this, Friendly's has generously donated a dinner for two that will be raffled off during the evening as well as has given us permission to raffle off gift baskets during the fundraiser. I am asking for donations from the Etsy community for gifts to put into these baskets. I am absolutely smitten with the Etsy community and their hearts of gold, and I am sure that many know what it feels like to want to have somewhere to exhibit your talent but know in your heart that it will never happen. We want to save others from feeling that way. If you would be generous enough to donate an item, if you sent business cards, we would place them in the baskets, on the table displaying the baskets so people could take one, and on a bulletin board near the display. You would be doing something nice for others, and you would get some decent publicity because we plan on having around 400-500 people at this event. If you feel so generous as to donate something, please send me a convo at lessthanthreedesigns. Thank you so much!

My President's Day Sale:

FREE SHIPPING on all orders!
BUY ONE GET ONE FREE on everything in my shop!

Just enter the code BOGO in the notes to the seller section, and wait for a revised invoice! :)

Shop away! :D

It's never too early for St. Patty's Day! :)

Here's my new Treasury. Take a look. There's some really nice stuff in there!

http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php?id=1171818648916U5030849

Hope you like it!

Wow. It has been a good, long while since I updated. I wonder if anybody even reads this thing anymore... Probably not. Heh.

I'm on crafts burnout. I can't seem to think up anything original lately, so I haven't made anything at all. Hopefully that'll change tomorrow. I'm going to a beading party. It should be a lot of fun.

Also, I'm participating in Palchemy through Etsy. I have to send three or more items to my pal, and then somebody sends me items, and I make something out of them and post it for sale on Etsy (crediting them, of course, for the items). Sounds like fun, and I'm up for the challenge!

That's about it for now. Hopefully things have been more eventful for all of you! :)

Ok. Wow. What a weekend.

I am so tired. And hungover. So bare with me on this entry... :\

But I'm going to do a quick recap. Because it was amusing. So, Friday night, I was sitting in the Etsy Red Room Chat. Because I love it. Shane called. So, I talked to him for a bit. But while I was talking to him... Evan called! He told me that I should visit him. So, I took the hour drive to his college. When I got there, Danielle was there, as well. Happy! So, we hung out with some of his college friends and had margaritas and ate steak sandwiches. OMGYES. After a little bit, Jon called us, so we went to his apartment, talked about hookups, random people, and school, and got drunk. I am not so sure what else we did. I do know, however, that I drew a penis on his table with chalk. It was amusing. After a while, we went back to Evan's and crashed (around 3 am).

The next morning, Danielle got up and went to her voice lesson, came back, and we all went to Panera for breakfast. Sooooo goooooooood. On the way back to the car, we saw the record exchange. And of COURSE, we went in. Three choir nerds pass by a record store without stopping? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. That'd NEVER happen. So, we shopped around a bit. Evan bought De-lovely, and Danielle bought some CDs. And we went back to Evan's and watched De-lovely. Which was AMAZING. I highly recommend it. After the movie, we took Danielle to the train station so she could get back to school at a reasonable hour, and me and Evan went to Target and Wendy's before we went back to his room to just chill before he had to go to rehearsal and I had to leave. We sat around and watched the end of some movie, talked to Randy, and thumbed through the score for the Music Man, and at 6:30 I got in my car and started to drive home.

And then I had a stroke of genius.

I decided to call all my college friends who I used to go to school with before I transferred. The college is on my way home, so I wanted to see everyone before I went back to my house where NOBODY IS! So, I called Jenn. And told her I was on campus. And she FREAKED OUT! It was so exciting. While I was waiting for her, Shane called, so I talked to him for a bit. That was fun. But then my phone died. So, I called him on Jenn's phone, said good-bye, and we went to get some food. Actually, Jenn got food, and I sat and talked to her. I told her about all the boy drama I had (since I hadn't seen her since, like, September, and I had dispensed, like, four guys since then... o_O). It was interesting. After that, we ran to the student center. There's this thing that the school does called Wired. Basically, how it works is that there are six teams of writers. Each team has two writers. At 8:00 pm on Friday night, the teams of writers gathered in the library and wrote one script per team. Throughout the night, the judges came in and gave them plot twists such as: include one sickness in your play, three lines of iambic pentameter, the line "drink some orange juice and take a nap, you bitch", an article from the school's newspaper about a kid buying porn with his roommate's credit card, and so on. At 5:30 am, the scripts were collected. At this point, the shows were cast, and the directors had a little over 14 hours to put together the shows: costumes, props, set design, blocking, helping actors memorize their lines, and everything else. The show went up at 8:00 pm on Saturday. Nobody slept before the show. Basically, they put on six different "shows" (vignettes, if you will) within 24 hours. And there were prizes in four categories: best male actor, best female actor, best written script, and best overall performance. These shows were amazingly funny. I want to do something extremely similar to this at my school. I wonder how it'd work out... Anyway, after the show, I folded my program into a paper airplane and threw it over the railing in the student center. And we went down to go get it, because I felt bad. And also, I had to use the bathroom. So, I picked up the paper airplane. And there was a guy sitting at the information desk. So, I approached him and said, "Here! I made this for you!" I gave him the paper airplane. And me and Jenn went potty. And then we went to 7-11 so we could get soda and paper cups so that we could exercise our rights as 21 year olds. So, we played Guitar Hero and had some vodka and coke. And then we fell asleep. I woke up today with a headache (which I deserve). We had some lunch, and then I left the school at around 1:00. I got home around 2:00, and I've been sitting around ever since.

Damn. What a good weekend!

I need to start crafting again tomorrow... o_O

I made two new sets of cards today. I'm pretty excited about them. I got my inspiration from two shirts that I saw at Kohl's. While the designs on my cards are completely different than what was on the shirt, the general idea is the same: rows and rows of the same thing, but one thing about them is different. I think that's generally a trend on shirts lately. At least, that's what I've been seeing. What do you think?

Red and Green Apple Cards

I kind of think these are perfect for, like, teachers and stuff of that nature. People can write, "You're one in a million," on the inside and give them to their kid's teachers or whatever. Hey, I just like apples...



Hearts and Lightening Cards

I don't know. I just kinda like the color scheme and design of these cards. I think they're cute. :)






Now, onto making my mom a birthday card... Lord only KNOWS what that's going to look like... o_O

I made some new cards todaaaaaaaaaaay!





































I'd talk more about these cards, but... it's 12:30 am, and I'm tired. So, maybe I'll just talk about them tomorrow. Or not. Whatever. Heh.