Everybody's Working for [Thanksgiving] Weekend...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and is enjoying the long weekend. I hope your Friday wasn't too Black.

As for us, we had our first Thanksgiving with just the two of us. We enjoyed some homemade cinnamon rolls and some great coffee as we watched the parade and then set the turkey a-roasting. There was much eating, as I imagine there was for everyone on Thanksgiving, and we will be enjoying leftovers for some time to come. (Gobbleritos, anyone?)

In a little stroke of brilliance, Kelly suggested that we check out Michaels' pre-Black Friday sale on Thursday night, and I bought them out of the frames I use for my 10x10 prints. We were in and out in like 20 minutes, probably saw less crowds than an average weekend, and saved about 75%.

And then... the orders started flowing in. We spent all of Friday on my business. I ran out of frames and trekked all over the valley looking for more. Kelly played customer service rep for me while I was out, and helped me pack orders. We put in a massive print order, which didn't arrive in time to ship. So, this morning we finally hit the post office and shipped... 14 packages! (I have five more that need to go out too).

Here's the part of it that looks really cool. I transferred my earnings out of my Paypal account, and the amount I made this week in sales is about what I see on each of my bi-weekly paychecks from my day job. That makes working from home seem very, very attainable. It was exciting, very much so.

Here's the Debbie Downer part... I spent $200 at the post office today. And about that much in printing and packing materials. And north of $100 on frames. Just as seeing all the money come in was hugely exciting, seeing a huge chunk of it go back out again was sort of deflating.

I know that I have a 30-40% profit margin on my items so over half that money was bound to disappear, but I got a little carried away seeing my Paypal account fill up. It's still hugely gratifying to see so much success flooding into my shop, and it does make working from home seem closer. I just also learned the number one rule of business... gotta spend money to make money. :)

In other news, I finally sold some of the Harry Potter pieces that took me SO. LONG. to finish, so I'm really excited about that.. and I finally sold one of my Pulp Fiction prints, too. That means the only item I have yet to sell is my Elf print, which I only posted yesterday.

Anyhow, I finally got to see what gets the retail world all riled up about Black Friday. Hopefully, Cyber Monday is good to me too.

Now, with a little over a week left until I really need to start thinking of myself as "in my thirties" (as opposed to just "thirty"), I'm pretty sure that week is going to fly by, along with the rest of 2011... Who's got big plans to finish out the last month of this decade?

Yer a Wizard, Harry!

I've posted a new typographical tribute to one of my favorite cinematic and literary franchises: Harry Potter. You can get just the prints, or you can purchase them framed, all from my shop.

It's hard to overstate the effect Harry Potter has had on popular culture in the US, the UK, and around the world. The story works very well as a hero's journey to his ultimate confrontation with his antagonist, as well as the story of a young boy going through adolescence into adulthood.


The series is obviously not everyone's cup of tea, but for those who "get it", it's a magical ride into a world that exists just beside our own.

This is where I would normally interject some interesting facts about the featured movie. Instead, I'll just say that I've spent just about every free hour for the last four days on creating, tweaking, and posting these pieces (including the last 3.5 hours of this almost-humpday). Now, I's goin' to beds.

New Work

So, this month hasn't gone quite as planned. While there has been some writing, there has been much more graphic designing going on. I still hope to meet my deadlines, but it'll be a bit of a scramble now.

On the up side, I have some new work to share. These will be going up in the Etsy shop soon, and I'll write more about them when they do.

I give you.. my Harry Potter set: Villains, Heroes, and Magic.

Breaking Radio Silence

Okay, so I realize it has been forever since I posted here. Here's the latest with me:

The Pacific Northwest- In Mid-October, Kelly and I took an amazing nine-day journey. We flew to Seattle, and then drove our way down the Pacific coast back to North Hollywood. The trip was AMAZING. We also had an agenda: find a new place to live. We'll be looking to start a family sooner rather than later, and Los Angeles just is not the place for it. Now that we're back, we've been seriously looking into moving to the Portland area within the next six months or so.

Seller's Success- Since we got back, I've moved my focus away from my art to finish another, long-outstanding project: my guide to opening a successful shop on Etsy. I finally finished writing and spent most of Halloween weekend proofreading, formatting it into a very lovely PDF, and posting the item up for sale. You can view it in my Sellers Success Etsy shop here.

Other Creative Pursuits- The Sellers Success guide was my first success in a series of three goals that will bring me through the end of the year:

October: Finish and publish Etsy Guide

November: Finish the first draft of my novel

December: Illustrate my novel.

Yup. I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but I'm currently seventeen chapters into what will be a twenty-one (or so) chapter novel. It's a project I started a loooong time ago, originally as a screenplay, and finally finishing it will be a colossal accomplishment for me.

It's an action-adventure novel, young adult friendly but not necessarily young adult targeted. It'll be about the length of one of the medium-sized Harry Potter novels when I'm done. It will also feature a full-page illustration for every chapter, and I'll probably post some of my ongoing work on those here, once the work is actually ongoing. :)

Holidays- This is my favorite time of year, but it's also like hitting the very bottom of the slide, where you just fly forward and you're on the ground before you even know it's happened. Halloween, Thanksgiving, My birthday, wife's birthday, Christmas, Mother-in-Law's birthday, New Years, ZOOOOOOOOM! Year's over. Between all of that, and my novel, and the other various business odds and ends I'll need to do, I may be fairly silent here until the calendar rolls over to 2011.

Don't stop checking in every once and a while, though. I'm going to try to finish a few more typography pieces before the end of the year, and I might post some illustrations as well, so pop in to say hi every now and again.

What's everyone else's plans for what's left of 2010?