Paper Doll Artist Spotlight

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about artistic rubber stamping is... With one single image there are so many possibilities! I absolutely love it when my rubber stamp customers email me their creations. It's often something I wouldn't have thought of doing, or is a similar idea but done in a completely different style. Each individual brings such new perspective to art, inspired by how they view beauty.



I just wanted to share with you Karen's paper art dolls. She sells them on ebay under seller ID keerng if you'd like to see what's currently available. She gives me inspiration and motivation to make some more dolls :)



It also makes me feel good to know I can help others start their own craft business/profitable hobby, especially with the economy at this point. I enjoy the idea of sharing, my Angel Policy allows people to sell a wide variety of items using my stamps or molds. I'll also be offering digital downloads/cd collections soon for scrapbooking, collage and die cutting. If any digital artists are following me, stick around because I'll be creating images you can incorporate into your art too (stock photography.)

Hooray! Tax day is OVER! + Stampbord Sneak Peek

Cats are ridiculous :) Last night when making a last minute double-check of all my expenses, I laid out all my receipts on the floor. The cats came in, and even though there's lots of places to lay down, they decided to plop themselves right on my paperwork. I let them sleep there for a while since they seemed so comfy on the paper. They lay down on anything new. I bought a laundry tub yesterday, set it down when i walked in the door... as soon as I turned around both cats were sitting inside of it.



I am so glad that tax day is over with! I had an unusually complicated return this year due to having to file a business loss. There were over a dozen forms I had to fill out :( There's got to be a simpler way to do this stuff... someone please invent it? Even though I'm not sure when the economy will start to recover, I'm hopeful that I can do better this year. I have lots of great new stuff planned and now that this is over I can get back to posting projects.

When I got to the post office there was a HUGE PROTEST going on. Swarms (hundreds) of people gathered and lots of noise as cars went by honking. They were all very upset about the insane amount of government spending. Something about how it equates to us being taxed and we the people have been taxed enough. It was wild, I had no idea I would have to battle my way across the post office parking lot to get in.

Stampbord! I've completed a few projects for the Stampbord website. I have no way of knowing which artwork will be posted or when, but at least one project will have a full tutorial on their site in May. Until then, here's a little sneak peek of a domino size Stampbord project. I won't be sharing any more of what I've done until they have posted them on their website. I'll be sure to post a link to the step by step tutorials once they post it.

Here's my little domino size flower pot paperweight:


I'll be 'craftin it up' some more soon :)
Kimberly

Upcoming, delays and misc.

Hi all! I know it's been a while and I apologize for being a bad blogger.

I will have tons of exciting news to share with you very soon. I recently purchased a Quickutz Silhouette and a Cricut die cutting machine (I like them both for different reasons.) I'll be doing a nice comparison of those machines and showing off some pictures soon. I plan to introduce a couple new products to my website including stencils, die cut paper shapes/stickers/embellishments, image cds for people to cut my designs on their own die cutters or to print out and use with paper crafting.

Many of you have suggested collage sheets of my color art, however I've decided against the expense of a nice printer and especially ink cartridges. Instead I will be offering large versions of my images on cds for you to make your own products from.

I've also been working on tutorials for Stampbord's featured how-to project of the month and galleries. The first of my tutorials will be their project featured in May. I have a few other nice long tutorials in the works to share with you soon!

On the not-so-bright-side, Ranger Ink, the manufacturer of Mold-N-Pour has been out of stock for about a month. So I'm running terribly low on mold compound and there is about a week delay on any order I receive with a lot of molds/compound. This should resolve next week, but I am forced to wait for them so I can't say for certain :(

It's tax time again! I always wait until the last week before I do my taxes. This is mostly due to the outrageous amount I end up owing as a small business, I need a lot of time to save up enough money to pay them! If you have any plans to start a small business of your own, my advice is to keep 30 percent of all your profits set aside for taxes. Depending on your state, this could be more or less. I think here in Oregon I get taxed more severe than some states due to our wealth of public services. For example, last year I only made $8,000 and I still had to pay over $2,000 in taxes. How the government expects me to live on $6,000 a year total is beyond me... But where there's a will there's a way (or at least a credit card.)
Anyway, point being I'm doing a lot of paperwork to try to maximize my business expenses/deductions and this is a very stressful time. If you have placed an order this week, I apologize again for any delay. Most stamp orders should be moving quickly, but mold orders are running about a week late.

Kimberly