Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Interview with Carroll Baker

This week I am lucky enough to interview not only a fellow Etsy Team Columbus member who is a fantastic photographer, but he's also a magician! How fun! Welcome Carroll Baker!
Tell Us About Yourself: I am a professional magician in the central Ohio area and photography has been a hobby since my days in commercial art doing ads and graphics. I try to see photos and subjects for the photos on a different level. Some shots really stand out because of light or subject and other by using old techniques like black and white or tinting. I also like to do my editing in camera with very little photoshop other than cropping or level adjustments. I have only been doing digital for the last few years.
What Kind Of Items Do You Sell In Your Etsy Shop: I sell photos in different sizes and on almost any subject. I tend to take shots of eye catching and unusual views of life. I also love to shoot old cars and carousel horses.
What Brought You To Etsy: My wife Andrea was a member first and suggested selling my photos. I haven't sold a lot but the ones I did sell are the cream of the crop.
How Do You Promote Your Shop: Andrea helps me keep up with Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk. I tend to spend more time on my magic business as it pays the bills and use the photography as a creative outlet and way to unwind.
What Is Your Favorite Item In Your Shop Right Now: I love the shot called Fall Friends.

What Is Your Biggest Shop Goal In The Next Six Months: To upload some of my beach shots and others from my archive and to sell more prints...lol.
Favorites: I love Chinese food from Joey Chang's bistro in the Mill Run Plaza. I can listen to just about any music but my favorites are mostly songs by Pink Floyd or The Eagles. I spend more time reading or learning new magic, so most of my books are magic related. I loved the Iron Man movie and most comedies and of course anything Magic or playing card related.
It sure was fun to interview Carroll today. I hope to catch one of his magic shows in the future!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Interview with Andrea Baker

I'm back this week with another great interview from an Etsy Team Columbus member. Andrea has a fabulous shop full of goodies...handbags, hair accessories, and other sewn items. Check out the interview and then pop on over to her shop and buy something nice for yourself! Like this, or this! Tell Us About Yourself: Hi there! My name is Andrea Baker and I love to sew. I've been sewing for many years now. My passions migrate from paper crafts to sewing to embroidery to many other things. I love to create unique pieces for you to enjoy.
What Kind of Items Do You Sell In Your Etsy Shop: My shop has business card cozies, checkbook cozies, aprons, hair accessories, and much more.
What Brought You To Etsy: I've been on Etsy since November of 2006. I was looking for a venue to sell the items I was making and just happened upon the site. What luck!
How Do You Promote Your Shop: I promote my shop in several ways. Blog, Plurk, Twitter, Facebook, word of mouth. Social networking is a great tool to use for promoting business.
What Is Your Favorite Item In Your Shop Right Now: Right now I'm really into working with feathers and fabric. You'll see a lot of feathered hair accessories in my shop these days.
What Is Your Biggest Shop Goal In The Next Six Months: In the next six months I'd like to see business pick up about 3 times as much as it has been in the last six months. I really enjoy sharing my creations with the world so having you wear my items is really a great thing.
Favorites: My favorite food is bananas, I love romantic movies, and I've just begun doing yoga and I'm really excited about it. There is something to be said about finding your center and really developing it. It's a great thing!

Do You Trade?

I'm so excited!! Local photographers (and friends) , Keels Photography, is hosting a 5 week workshop to learn more about your DSLR camera! And even more exciting is the fact that I'm going to be trading babysitting time to take the class. I've never been much of a trader of goods/services...but this is truly exciting. Everyone wins!!

Join me if you live in the Columbus, Ohio area!

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Fall Is On The Porch

I'm feeling quite inspired by these photos to go out and decorate my front porch. So far I've got only one pumpkin that came out of my mom's garden. I must go out and find some mums, gourds that I can paint to look like skeletons, and corn stalks!!

Where have you found is the best place to buy pumpkins? I feel like the grocery stores want to charge an outrageous amount!! Where do you buy them?

Monday, September 14, 2009

The Winner Is...

The winner of the lovely recycled pages notebook from SpaceDog Studios is comment #5: Sydney!
Sydney, contact me for more information about collecting your prize!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Back To Reality

I'm having a bit of trouble getting back to my regularly scheduled life...post vacation. So, I'll share just a few photos from the trip.

Portland Head Light, Maine

Lake Champlain, Vermont

Blueberry Farm, Vermont

Lake George, New York

Don't forget to leave a comment to win a recycled pages notebook from SpaceDog Studios on Tuesday's post!

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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Interview with SpaceDog Studios

As a relatively new member of Etsy Team Columbus, I have not had the pleasure of meeting too many of the team members in person yet. Sarah, from SpaceDog Studios is one of those people. But after reading her answers to my interview questions, I cannot wait to meet her! It sounds like we'd get along great! Check out the interview and giveaway below!
Tell Us About Yourself: My name is Sarah, and I'm a total dork. I love reading, tearing it up on Dance Dance Revolution (yes, I know this is at least the year 2000), I take my dog to agility classes, play video games, misspell things on crossword puzzles, and ruin movies for my husband by seeing how fast I can guess the endings. Oh, and coffee, I drink lots of coffee. Oh yeah, and I turned thirty this year!
What Kind Of Items Do You Sell In Your Etsy Shop: I sell handmade books. Nice watercolor sketchbooks for artists, bookmark books for readers, flash card books for studiers, that sort of thing. I make the kind of books I would want.
What Brought You To Etsy: I just heard about it this one day and thought, what the heck? At the time I was teaching and working as a floral designer and I had all this stored up artwork from college that I thought should find a home. So I got on Etsy and tried to sell my art and some bird corsages. I wasn't taking it very seriously at first.
How Do You Promote Your Shop: By posting most days on Etsy, by being visible and consistent on that site. Also, by doing local shows, donating to charities, and doing some blog give-aways.
What Is Your Favorite Item In Your Shop Right Now: Mmmm, I'm always a fan of the recycled pages books, there's something about all that random paper that just invites you to start scribbling all over it. I also really like the last two sketchbooks I posted up-Nightingale and Aoi. I love that vintage patchwork print fabric on the first journal. Orange and purple is a really underrated color combination I think. And on the second, I'm really into that beautiful clash and play of patterns. I truly love things that have no business being together.
What Is Your Biggest Shop Goal In The Next Six Months: I want to hit 1,000 sales by Christmas, which I think will finally happen (although I've probably just jinxed it). And next year, I want to work on incorporating more of my actual artwork by possibly listing it, making prints to sell, or possibly just devoting more time to doing it and finding even just one show.
Favorites: My favorite books-this is so hard since this is my true love and I love so many. I just finished re-reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang which is an amazing book about China and the changes a family (from Grandma to Granddaughter) endured as the country changed from imperial, to Japanese occupied, and finally as it passed through communist phases under Mao. It's really an amazing, hopeful, and violent story.
In general, I think everyone should read The Woman in the Dunes, House of Leaves, Lolita, As I Lay Dying, and The Fountainhead at least once in their lives. Seriously, these are good books. I know there are a lot of other good books out there, probably even better ones, but these are the first ones that come to mind.
Food: Right now I want some strawberry cake from the Golden Delight Bakery. BEST CAKE EVER. Maybe some Jeni's ice cream, and a cup of coffee. Sweet tooth, anyone?
Movies: I always fall asleep. It's been like two years since I've seen a movie I've liked.
Music: A whole lotta Tom Waits, some Duran Duran, all topped off with a dose of Skid Row Youth Gone Wild. That's a good morning. (I told you what to expect in the beginning, remember)
Thanks to Sarah for a fun interview. Sarah has been kind enough to hold a giveaway for my readers...here are the details.
How to Enter: Leave a comment on this blog before Friday, September 11th at three o'clock in the afternoon, Eastern time.
What You'll Win: A recycled pages book from SpaceDog Studios like the one shown above.
And Even More Good News: If you mention this blog, On A Limb Paper, when buying something in Sarah's store, she will ship your items for FREE to anywhere in the USA!