Hello Goodness!

Today I found out that my Texas Twister earrings were featured on the blog Hello Goodness by the Etsy seller TimidAcorn. You can see some the vintage shoes from her shop above. Make sure to check out all the other lovely earrings also featured on her blog as well!

Make like a tree...

I managed to snag a treasury slot last night, and this time I was more prepared! My theme is pretty obvious - trees. It will be up only until tomorrow, so make sure to take a look soon. Should you miss out on seeing it live, there's a screenshot I took that you can see on my Flickr.

Business Cards

Overnight prints on the left, Gotprint on the right.

I recently ordered new business cards from gotprint.net. I had been looking to find a better deal on business cards that were of good quality but inexpensive, since I was looking to use stickers that I could place on the back of the cards to create promotional coupons. After browsing the etsy forums for suggestions, I settled on Gotprint. I ordered 1000 cards for $22, including shipping. This also included a 5% off coupon that I found via a google search.

My old Overnightprints cards were approx. $30 for 300 cards, which is far more expensive. This also including a discount coupon that I had found with a google search.


After looking at the two cards side by side, I've determined that while the Overnightprints cards were of a slightly better quality, the price difference at Gotprint makes their cards worthwhile. While the designs on each set of cards is slightly different, the main thing I noticed was the feel of the paper. The texture on each set of cards was pretty much the same, but the Overnightprint cards felt a tad thicker and sturdier. Also, on the back of the cards, the paper around the black text did not seem as white on the Gotprint cards. I believe this was due to the nature of the paper used - Overnightprints used a whiter paper to print on.

If you look very closely on the Gotprint cards, you can see some slight pixelation at the edges of the text. I am not certain as to if this is because of Gotprint's printing, or if there was a problem when I resized my files from 300 DPI to 350 DPI. Also, my cards are designed so that when you lay two cards above and below each other as shown in the photos, the designs combine to make one large logo. The alignment in the Gotprint cards was slightly off, but this is another thing that I was not sure if it was due to my files or due to the way Gotprint crops and cuts the cards.

I was also happy about finding a better deal than Vistaprint's 'free' business cards deal. Because of Vistaprint's habit of scamming their customers, I wasn't really willing to give them my business, even through Paypal or various other 'safe' methods of dealing with them.

Overall, I was very satisfied with my new cards, as this enables me to have very affordable marketing. I've already sent several batches of promo cards out to various places.

Oxide Gallery Opening

I was recently accepted into a new gallery opening up in Denton and their grand opening is coming up on the 30th. Anyone who's in the DFW area is welcome to stop by for the fun and festivities and to see some lovely artwork of all varieties.

Jewelry Geeks

My latest online social networking experiment: JewelryGeeks.com
This one, I think, applies especially to me, because not only am I both a jeweler and a geek, I'm also a geek for jewelry, or jeweling (we usually like to call that metalsmithing, but I'll let it slip this one time) Take a look at my profile here.

The last social networking experiment I tried online was Twitter, which is still going, occasional though it might be.

There's monster on my pants!

I'm not usually one who goes gaga over baby things, but I have to say, these monster pants by Joeyandaleethea are pretty kickin'. If I happened to still be a kid, I'd totally wear some. But maybe that's just because I've always had a thing for interesting pants.

Green

Green happens to be one of my favorite colors, which is why I'm always delighted when I can get that perfect metallic green color in the process of oxidizing my jewelry. Try as I might, I can never get the silver to turn those colors on purpose, only by accident. As an added bonus, the blues and greens in the oxidation perfectly compliment the green of the Chrysoprase stone I used in this ring.