Naked Pixels

Closed for Christmas!

Thank you all so much for continuing to be patient with the less frequent posts, lack of new designs, and general "Yeah... I'll get to that" way things have been going as I try to get through to the end of this year. And thank you for shopping in my Zazzle store! The month of November was the first month that I had a sales total that qualified me for a volume bonus on my commission! I simply don't have the words to tell you all how happy it makes me to see that people really do like my work, and to be making some money from that even as I'm overwhelmed by so much of what's going on in daily life around here. The daily stuff may get me down and prevent me from always having a smile on my face, but the response to my art has put a smile in my heart.

I've stuck to my promise to post at least once a week until things are ready for me to go back to a more regular schedule with the art and this blog. Next week is an exception. I'm taking the week off for Christmas! I'm in the middle of that push to have things ready in time, and Christmas Eve will bring time with my husband, parents, sister, and neice and nephew. And staying updated as NORAD tracks Santa! Posts will resume after next week has come and gone.

I wish each of you the very best Christamas ever... at least until next year!

Look what people are buying!

That is very much an exclaimation of delight! I know I've said this before, but I have seen a lot more sales from my Zazzle store since they made some changes, including browsing changes, back in September.

I'm still nowhere near pro-seller status, but I've paid attention to what quite a few of the pro-sellers do, and that amount of work would be a bit more than I can handle now. The main thing is that I'm working no harder at it now than I have for most of this year, yet my sales suddenly shot up. That makes me feel good. It gives me a little boost in how I feel about my work, since it would seem just not enough people were seeing it before... not that it wasn't good enough. And feeling better about my work encourages me to try new things with it in the future.

So what are people buying? Amazingly, someone finally bought the shirt no one seemed to understand. In fact, two someones did! And, while there have been orders for different things here and there, two designs have seemed to be rather popular in the past month.

"WANTED: Schrodinger's Cat" Mug by rosaamarilla
Browse other Schrodinger's cat Mugs

The mug has been popular... but the WANTED poster has been bought on a few other things, too! That makes me especially happy. That cat got me interested in physics.

Antique Love Letter Post Card by rosaamarilla
Browse more Antique Postcards

There are matching stamps for that one.

I'm very happy about it every time I get the "Your products have been purchased" email. That didn't even wear off when I got it five days in a row this month! And I keep seeing it pop up every few days in my inbox. It makes me happy because someone likes my work. I would do this even if no one liked it. It wouldn't be a priority on my daily "to do" list, and I wouldn't put it on Zazzle or much of anywhere else that people would see it, but my computer would just be full of things I'd make. It's still nice to know someone else likes it, though. :) Thanks for making my month a little brighter, folks!

What is the mysterious "Other Project"?

The Other Project... hinted at, danced around, but never explained. I've brought it up so many times it must have started approaching "never gonna happen" status in some minds. (More than once, mine.) I even recently blamed some of my slacking off on Zazzle designs and blog posts on this Other Project.

Do you want to know what it is?

Do you?

I could tell you to come back Monday to find out. But, while I'd giggle about that all weekend, I don't really want to drive away people who like my work and potential customers. And, as the foundation for this has been laid, art is being done, and it won't be too much longer before you can all actually see the Other Project, I'm pretty damned excited about being able to finally say what it is!

The Other Project is a webcomic!

This is something I've been wanting to do for quite some time, but it didn't look like I would have the time for it. Only so many hours in a day, you know. I miss writing the way I used to, but there's a good chance I'll never get that back. The communication skills just don't work the same way in my brain anymore. I started looking at the idea of comics and graphic novels as ways to tell a story without having to communicate every word clearly to the audience. Certainly, it needs to be clear to me, but then I can convey much of it through the art rather than text. I'd rather do this as a webcomic, putting it out there myself, than going through the traditional process.

There was still the concern about time for doing this, and I kept mentally pushing it to the "someday" category of things to do. In the past couple of months, though, since the browsing changes that Zazzle implemented, I've seen quite an increase in orders from my store, and some of those orders have been designs that have been there over a year and were never purchased before. I don't feel like I have to push the store as hard as before to be able to make sales.

Doing a webcomic will also bring more stability to my work schedule. I know when I'll update it, and that means I know when the next one needs to be ready by. Working from an already written script means I won't be sitting up the night before the update mentally kicking myself for not having any ideas yet. Part of what I've been doing to prepare is getting a head start on this so that falling behind means it's the comic two weeks into the future that I'm running a little late on, not the one that's supposed to go up the next day.

I'm starting with a limited series comic to test the waters. If, for some reason, the whole process doesn't work as well for me as I expect it to, I only need to finish that limited series, and then I can quit without it meaning abandoning the project in the middle of it. If it does work as well as I think it will, then I've already got plans for an on-going story done as a webcomic.

Either way, I will still be doing things on Zazzle. New designs will be less frequent, but the store will be there and will be added to. And if the webcomic really is something I can continue doing, I'm sure there will be shirts, posters, and the like at some point. I would sell those through Zazzle, as well.

Rather than looking at this as changing what I do, I see it as growing from what I've been doing. I'm taking what I've learned from doing random pieces as the ideas hit me and giving it some direction, channeling it into something that follows a more clear path. I like to think my work is growing up. :)

Keeps your eyes open for an announcement for the webcomic!

My Work and The Near Future: Trust Me...

When I posted "Holiday Shopping and Coming Attractions" I talked about getting more content out in time for... well, holiday shopping... but not as much as one might expect at this time of year, and certainly not a flood of holiday designs. There are reasons for this that affect more than just the holiday shopping season, and I've given some thought to why I don't explain what's going on and what effect that might be having on the general perception of how serious I am about what I do. Even when I have addressed personal topics here, there's a lot I don't say. Honestly, my personal life isn't your problem, and this blog is about the art that I do. But my personal life is affecting my productivity, and I feel like I've strayed a bit from what I originally said I was going to do here. So before I make any changes to what passes for a "Mission Statement" on this blog, I want to explain things. It's a long post, and I won't be offended if you don't read it. (There is a "tl;dr" at the bottom of the post, though, if you'd like to skip down there.) But if you'd like an explanation for what's going on with Graphic Content by Rosa Amarilla, here it is.

What was this supposed to be "About", again?

When I started this blog, I put up an "About" page, both about the blog and me. Part of that page says,

"I didn't want to build a website to advertise my Zazzle gallery, and I didn't want to start what would essentially be a "spam blog". Nor do I want to Tweet myself to death about the gallery and lose all my Twitter followers. So I decided to start a blog where I could advertise my Zazzle designs and talk about what I've learned from doing this. I've made a lot of mistakes and learned from them. In fact, the whole "start a blog to improve your web presence" was one of the lessons I had to learn from having done this poorly for over a year. I also wanted to talk about the creative process... what inspires me, how I approach a project.

I want to strip down the personal aspects of how I do this and lay them out bare so others can see this is "real" work, but also very fulfilling work. You don't always see that when you only look at the finished product, all dressed up and pretty. What happens before that finished product is all... *drumroll*... naked pixels."

I don't feel like that's what I'm getting done anymore. At least not to the extent I meant to do that. There's a division where I talk about art and other artists, then I advertise that my stuff is in the store. I just don't seem to get around to talking about my own work as anything other than advertisements, though. And that is, obviously, not how I intended to do this.

So do it that way! What's stopping you?

This is where the personal issues come in, and I'm going to make this as brief as I can while still explaining how it's affecting my work. The two main things standing in the way are my own health, and my husband's health.

Due to a couple of chronic, yet manageable, health issues I keep a daily chart of things to help recognize larger patterns in my day-to-day health. Soon, I'll be going to the doctor to find out if some of the problems I've had with being able to "get caught up" this year are really due to slow recovery from psuedotumor cerebri, or if there is now something else affecting me. (Sometimes, one illness puts you in the risk group for another illness... ) Either way, it's something that can be managed, but we're going to need a different strategy. That's become apparent from going over the chart.

I am simply exhausted all the time. I'm eating well, getting an okay amount of activity, my blood pressure and blood sugar are good, and my doctor isn't unhappy with where my overall physical health is at this point and insists that I shouldn't be so hard on myself about my weight. I just can't get fully rested. I sleep well, and for a healthy length of time each night. Muscle aches won't fade, though, and even though I'm not sleepy I'm just always mentally tired. Depending on what I do in a day, physically tired goes with that. And it doesn't take much. Something as simple as doing my weekly grocery shopping becomes the one thing I can get done that day. Mowing my yard knocks me out for most of a week. Some days, I need to take an hour or so to sit down and rest after I get dressed for the day. Mental work does this to me, as well. My doctor already has me taking "rest time" every afternoon because I was stressing out to the point of chest pain over how much I'm unable to get done and how limited I feel.

Add to this my husband's health. He is a disabled Marine, and we've had a fight with the VA going on for a couple of years now. It's not so much a matter of proving our case, but being given an opportunity to prove our case. They've managed to completely avoid treating his condition, which has caused the condition to worsen over time. They've responded to inquiries from our Congressman with letters that essentially say they are aware that my husband has filed an appeal, they don't know when they'll be able to get to it, and our Congressman shouldn't bug them about it again for at least a few months. They've lost track of their copy of my husband's medical record from when he was active duty, so when they do address his condition they try to do so as if it were a new development. Then they realize it's not, that they don't have everything together, and that resets the entire process. They have him rated at a 20% disability level, even though at this point he goes through weeks at a time of being almost completely confined to bed, and he is severely limited in what he can do physically even when it isn't that bad.

In two years, because of the VA not treating him and making excuses for why it's not their fault that they haven't treated him, my husband's condition has gotten bad enough that, while we did expect he would eventually be this disabled, we had no reason to expect it to start getting this bad for at least another ten years.

This does not mean we haven't had help! Someone from the Wounded Warrior Regiment has done everything he is able to in his position to help us, and continues to work on getting representation for my husband in his appeal. My parents loaned us what was not a small sum of money to be able to buy a mattress that has helped decrease the frequency of "confined to bed" days, and taken the edge off of the general pain level. My sister has been amazing in helping us make the trips we've needed to for VA appointments, since those drives aren't possible for me and my husband's condition has rendered him unable to drive at all. And my mom has spent extra days on "Grandma Duty" with my neice and nephew so that my sister could make those trips with us.

If you ever want to do something to show thanks and support for the men and women who should be held up as our Honored Warriors, please support the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund. They also help those from other branches who become wounded while serving with Marines, and there is just no way my husband and I will ever be able to adequately repay the help, kindness, and respect we've gotten from them.

So life is slowing me down... what am I going to do about it?

Part of the problem around here is what I've been doing to try to compensate for how things are slowing me down... I've been trying to hide it. I'm trying to keep putting out content as regularly as I can, even when that means that I delay working on a new piece by choosing to write a post. Or I delay that "Mysterious Other Project" I keep teasing you all with by choosing to put out something that won't take as long to get ready. Or I delay getting things I need to catch up on at home done because I know doing them will set me back even further on my art, and I don't want anyone to think I'm burning out on this and end up taking my work less seriously. Not when what I have done is starting to get noticed more! Trying to cover up my shortcomings is making me fall further behind.

My solution to this is I'm going to ask you to trust me for a while.

Updates to my Zazzle store are about to become even less frequent, and they'll mostly be new items in already established product lines when they do happen. Trust me when I say this does not mean I'm running out of ideas, or running out of steam when it comes to the whole Zazzle thing.

I'm still not revealing what this "Other Project" is yet. If I say I'm taking time to work on it, please trust that it does exist. "Working on the 'Other Project'", is not code for, "Spending a day being lazy while pretending I'm working on something". :-) It's just not something I want to explain until it's ready to be made public, and while there is a lot of groundwork for it that I'm working on laying, it should really help condense the amount of work I need to do each week and allow me to keep pushing forward with my art and do the Zazzle thing. If I spend a little more time on that, and a little less on what I have been doing, I believe I can have this ready for January 2010.

I've always made an effort to explain why I'm not writing a full post on the days that I've had to skip here. If I start skipping days and not explaining, please trust that I'm not losing interest in writing this blog, and that regular posting will return. There will always be at least one post a week unless something happened to our internet, my computer, or me. If anything like that did happen, a way would be found to post a notice.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

I enjoy what I do, but I do also take it seriously as work. That means I'm not abandoning it, and I do feel I sometimes owe people an explanation when I need to cut back or change the way I do things. One of the strengths of doing this on my own, as opposed to traditional employment, is that I can adjust things when they need to be adjusted. If work and life are getting in each other's way, I have the power to move them around and get them to flow together again. And that's really what this post is all about... making sure that it's clear that this is an evolving thing, and that I sometimes need to make changes to keep it going. I'm not burning out or giving up. Trust me on that. :-)

"But you promised me a PONY!"

It feels like I'm blogging backwards this week. Monday's post was stuffed with links to great Halloween items on Zazzle, which is more like a Friday post. Today's post is an update on Project Ponies.

As I said on Twitter Wednesday, the drawing and coloring for the ponies is finished! My plan was to spend Thursday getting these images resized and placed appropriately on products, then announce the new line in today's post.

(Note for other Zazzlers: If you often find yourself having trouble getting designs to sit properly once you've uploaded them to go on products, this may help. I found the guide files for products while doing a little digging around on the site and through the forums when I first started doing this. I keep that page bookmarked so I can make sure I have things sitting right before I save the final image and upload it.)

Unfortunately, the new line isn't ready today. "Best laid plans", and all that. I've noticed my art programs running sluggishly for a while, so I spent most of Thursday afternoon doing some clean-up on the computer. Right now, I could put up a shirt with the new design, but I've put a lot of work into these ponies and really want the excitement of announcing the whole line. If I haven't got the whole line ready by Wednesday of next week, I'm putting what I have at that point out there and I'll post updates when more is added. I know it's a bad idea to delay it for too long.

Sorry, kids, but you're just not getting ponies today. Think of it as a warm-up for Christmas... the promise of something new and exciting, paid for with lots of waiting.

Tricks and Treats!

First, a little update news...

I was nearing the home stretch on some humorous art involving the book of Revelations and some beloved cartoon ponies (That should keep you guessing for a few more days!) when I woke up with serious ear infections in both ears and my third case of strep throat in the past two years. The doc says strep throat is airborn and seems to be more prevelent in my area than it once was. I'm actually not their most frequently seen case, though I probably do still hold the dubious honor of having the worst case my doctor had seen in over twenty years of practice.

That knocked out working on the ponies for a few days. I'll be working on getting well this week, but I'm already doing enough better that I should be able to finish the piece. Especially since I shouldn't be moving around too much and drawing pretty much demands that I sit still for hours at a time.

In other news, I believe the changes to Zazzle's browsing system that I talked about last month have had just the type of positive impact I expected. I have now had more orders since those changes rolled out last month than I had all year up to that point! It seems that people are finding my products more often now, and I'm glad you like the designs enough to spend your money on them. :)

Enough with the news! It's not too late to order Halloween merchandise yet, so here are some suggestions...

Ghosts

Ghosts were people too!!! by flyboy103181
Make bumper stickers online at Zazzle

Let's get Sheetfaced Ghost Halloween Womens Tee by Jamene_Clothing
See more Let's T-Shirts

Goblins

Halloween Goblin Dance by hallocards
Make a custom shirt at zazzle.com

Do Not Feed the Goblins by thefrozenduck
View more The frozen duck Mugs

Ghouls...

Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun by countdracula
Design a customizable bag at zazzle.com

... and Zombies

i shotgun zombies by strk3
More I T-Shirts

Sorry, ghouls... you only got one spot because I couldn't resist the zombie design!

And one more plug for my Witches Stitches line!

Witches Stitches Mug by rosaamarilla
More Witch Mugs

Full Disclosure: New FTC Guidelines and This Blog

The Federal Trade Commission has published new guidelines that we've all been hearing would be on the way for a while now, go into effect (as I understand it) in December, and mostly are concerned with bloggers and other online outlets. I've read the report, and it looks like this blog wouldn't really fall under what they're aiming at. The guidelines are written in some rather vague ways, though, without very clear definitions of "We mean this. We do not mean that." With the possibility of fines up to $11,000, most people seem to be saying, "Better safe than sorry."

Thoughts on the New Guidelines

Quite honestly, the only impact I expect anyone to see from the new guidelines is the uproar and court challenges that will come when someone is judged to not be following them. A lot of this seems to indicate that the FTC has no real clue what's going on online. The guidelines are aimed at bloggers and social media, with traditional journalism being rather exempt from having to follow them, and the one thing that really jumps out as having the possibility of effecting things offline is this:

"Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor."

If this were to result in weight loss product commercials with the skinny person who chants, "If I can do it, so can you!" being followed by someone who is still overweight saying, "Liar! I stuck to the program exactly and I weigh more now!" I might actually start watching commercials again. And I think I'd actually pay money to see a Wal-Mart commercial with the smiling people going on about the friendly greeters, helpful staff, and the happy shopping experience mixing in footage of actual Wal-Mart stores... with the greeters who look at everyone like they must have come to steal something, the staff that doesn't know where anything is and clearly resents you asking, and the customers treating the carts like the world's most angry bumper cars while children constantly scream because someone won't buy them a toy.

I doubt we'll get that from it, though.

Bloggers who run their blogs as if they are freelance journalists should probably be held to some standards of journalistic integrity. That's not what all bloggers do, though. Not only are many bloggers (and, within the context of the new guidelines, that seems to include people posting on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc) networking with people and making posts in a casual conversation type of way, they are fairly transparent about their recommendations... for that very reason.

The average person is going to be jumping up and down with glee as they type, letting the whole world know that a company sent them something for free! The average person is more likely to say, "I go to my aunt's restaurant for Mexican food... she lived in Mexico for ten years and and knows what she's doing in the kitchen!" than simply, "Hey! Eat at Abuela Maria's! It's the best place in town!" and neglect to mention that they know "Abuela Maria" in any way.

And the FTC can only tell Americans what to do on our blogs. When I first got a computer, somewhere over ten years ago, I remember being surprised to find out that a lot of countries didn't have as many people with access to the internet as America did. I'm not going to pretend to know exactly where things stand now in other countries, but I do know that as time has gone by I've come in contact with a lot of people online who have never even set foot on American soil. They have computers in the workplaces, their homes, their schools, and they are people of all different ages and backgrounds who spend a lot of time online. They are on the same internet that Americans are, and the FTC can't tell them what to do.

How Recommendations Work on This Blog

So that everyone will know I'm not refusing to follow the guidelines just because I don't like them, I'll spell out how things work here.

When I link to things on Zazzle - whether I do it here, on Twitter, or somewhere else - whether it's my own store, or someone else's, there is a referral ID in the link. It tells Zazzle that I sent you there, and I get a referral commission if you buy something. It also works for the widgets on the sidebar and Other Zazzlers page, and when I put a picture link in a post. When it's for my own stuff, that means I get two commissions if you buy something - a designer's commission because you bought something from Zazzle that they use my work on, and a referral commission because I sent you there. As far as I know, the referral commission counts even if what you buy isn't the product I linked to, but something else you found while wandering there after following my link.

Note the emphasis on "if you buy something". I could link to stuff all day long, and you could even click every link, but as long as you don't buy anything I won't get any money from it. 

I do not make deals with people for linking to their stores or products. Not even a promise of reciprocal linking. I'd be surprised if I found out anyone that I've featured here as another Zazzler even knows that I've done so. I'm happy to support other Zazzlers, but I do link to things I actually like.

That goes for my links page, as well. I do actually know Gymshoes of Gymshoes Music, and there are a few people on that list (like Llanor Alleyne and the person behind Vincent's Yellow) that I've connected with on Twitter. They didn't ask me to link to them, though, and I've recieved nothing more than thank you's and smiles for doing so. (Full Disclosure: Those thank you's and smiles are worth so much that I could buy several small countries if they could be converted into money.) The only thing I've gotten from the Sons of the Storm was a response from Samwise Didier to a comment I left. And that's because I left the comment on their site. If I had any reason to believe Samwise even knew this blog exists, I'd swell with so much joy that I'd just burst and become a splash of giggles all over my living room walls.

Long story short: I link to people because I want to. It's not even necessary that they know I've done it.

Books, magazines, artist tools... anything along those lines that I review... I've either bought it myself, or it was given to me as a gift from someone who had nothing to do with creating or marketing it. If I am ever sent something at no cost other than taking time to review it, you'll know. I'll either be so happy that I have enough of a regular audience that it's worth sending to me, or so amused that someone thinks I have enough of a regular audience that it's worth sending to me, that the post will probably start with, "OMG! They sent me this FOR FREE! I get to keep it!" But only if I like it. If I don't, it's likely to say, "They wasted money on shipping this to me that could have been better spent on improving the damn thing."

And if anyone thinks that's just the talk of an idealist who hasn't been given the opportunity to sell out yet, I invite you to test me on it. Send me free stuff so I can prove myself. :)

Holiday Shopping and Coming Attractions

A message from Zazzle went out a few days ago reminding all of us that the holiday shopping season is almost here. I thought this was one of the most interesting things in the message:

Black Friday is November 27. Cyber Monday (which beat Black Friday in US online purchases in 2008) is November 30.

Honestly... I'm not just saying this because I sell things online... save yourself some trouble and buy what you can early from the comfort of your own home.

Or, you know, if you enjoy the crowds, lines, adults fighting over a toy like it's the last piece of food in a village going through a ten year famine, and getting the finger in traffic as often as the radio plays "Jingle Bells"... To each his own.

As for what to expect in my store for the holidays? Not too much holiday-specific stuff. I'll certainly be adding a few things here and there, but I'm more comfortable with doing designs that can be enjoyed all year long. There should be at least one new line showing up in the next couple of months, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility of two. A few of the old lines will be expanded. This is the time to buy a shirt that you thought your sister would love a couple of months back, but you just couldn't justify spending almost twenty bucks purely on a whim. Or getting those shoes that you know would look adorable on your kid, but fifty dollars worth of gas in the car was more important than fifty dollars worth of adorable on your kid's feet.

(Side note: I was so happy with how these shoes turned out when I designed them that I ordered a pair for myself. If you're going to buy shoes, order them soon. Zazzle prints most stuff and sends it out really fast, but shoes take a while because of the process used. They are worth it, though! They are actual Keds shoes, not just made in the same style, and I love mine. The sizes seem to run a little small, so you may want to order one size larger than what you normally wear.)

I had intended to slow the Zazzle designs down a little for a few months while I focus on some other things, but I've been keeping a list of ideas for future designs and this is the perfect time to pull it out. And since I'll mostly be focusing on "new designs and products" rather than "Christmas-specific new designs and products", I'll be happy to throw you some links to other Zazzlers who are decking the halls and cooking the Christmas goose.

Just don't look for too much of it before Halloween is over. Please... I don't want to start Christmas while there are still pumpkins on porches and little goblins on sugar highs.

Witches Stitches: Re-designed and Expanded in time for Halloween!

The original Witches Stiches design has been redone to get rid of the "shop sign shape". It now looks like this:

Witches Stitches Ladies Shirt by rosaamarilla
See other Witch T-Shirts

It's still available on everything it was available on before, but I just wasn't as happy with the sign shape as I thought I would be. I really felt it was taking something away from an otherwise great design.

I've also expanded the line! Witches Stitches is now a member of the H.A.G. Guild (Handmade Arcane Goods).

Witches Stitches H.A.G. Shirt by rosaamarilla
Create a customized t shirt using zazzle

And if a fictional guild for a fictional sewing shop to belong to isn't enough, you can now get these designs on more products than before. I've added bookmarks and white-on-black designs for more options with shirts and tote bags. It's important to note that Zazzle does not actually have an option for creating bookmarks. These are actually long, skinny business cards printed as bookmarks. Ordering "one" actually means ordering one package of 20. But the price is low, so go ahead and get a box! You can keep the extras in case you misplace a few, or hand them out to other people.

You can see all the new stuff (and re-designed old stuff) in the Witches Stitches line in my Zazzle store. It's not too late to order yet... Zazzle gets things shipped fast... but don't wait too long if you want it in time for Halloween. The line is designed, though, to be less about Halloween and more about crafting humor. Don't feel like you'd have to pack this stuff away for 11 months out of every year!

Remember the page where I link to things?

Mm hmm...that page. If you haven't taken a look at it in a while, go see if anything has changed. I do add to it "a little here" and "a little there". Recently, I added a link to a very interesting Vincent van Gogh site that came to my attention when the site author found me on Twitter. It's at the top of the list right now... you can't miss it!

I've also swapped out the featured stores on the Other Zazzlers page. I think the last one is the only one I haven't already featured in a post. Of course, as I remind everyone every time I change that page, it's worth it to go back and look from time to time because those widgets will show new things that have been added to the stores, as well as older items, and you just have to click on it to go to that store.

I have removed the link on the navigation bar for the page that outlines my terms for freelance work. The page still exists, but has a note in bold text explaining that I am not doing this anymore for the foreseeable future, and the page link is no longer sitting up there just begging people to click on it.

It is very important to me that I be able to give someone who hires me for a specific project the attention and work they deserve. It's important enough that it is in my terms that I'll tell you if I can't take any new projects rather than give you something I didn't do my best on just so you'll pay me. I've made it clear recently that, while I enjoy my work, I am somewhat over-worked. (And while I haven't talked about it much yet, the big project I'm working on has been growing in a direction I am extremely happy about but didn't expect.) If I were looking for a freelance artist and came across this blog, I wouldn't contact this person about a job. I wouldn't expect that she could take the work right now, and would just look somewhere else instead of wasting a couple of days on emails just to find that out.

That's why I've taken the link down. Now just isn't the right time, and that means that page would only serve as a source of confusion and disappointment. This also helps streamline things for me, some. It makes the "I know what I'm doing/ I know what I'm not doing" line for my work a little clearer. If you find yourself needing something special designed and you want to see if I could do it, go ahead and contact me. I'm just not actively promoting that as part of my work at this point.