Now what am I up to?

Well, I had so much fun setting up the little Happy Greeting Cards site that I decided to give something else a try.

You might not be too surprised to learn that the Discover channel show "Deadliest Catch" has quite a few fans. So I thought I'd see if there was any kind of market for cards and shirts and whatnot that have some of my photos from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where Deadliest Catch was filmed. I searched online and found that most of the Deadliest Catch-related stuff was shirts that refer to crabbing and fishing. But there wasn't much with just lovely scenery from Dutch, so I set up this site on Zazzle (a sort of Cafe Press competitor).

I'll be curious to see if it's the sort of thing people are interested in; I imagine there might be a few people who want a pretty photo of crab cages, or of a rocky coastline, or a lonely tree in the snow—on a t-shirt or a hoody, or a greeting card or poster.

Now, I'm not holding out any hope that Phil Harris or Murray Gamrath of the Cornelia Marie will go buy a poster of Dutch; they probably see it too often to want it hanging on their walls. And I'd be really surprised (but thrilled!) if Sig Hansen, or Sten Skaar, or Keith or Monte Colburn of the Wizard (my hubby's fave boat—guess why) wanted a hoody for their sweeties. But maybe some of their fans might.

And maybe not. It only took a Saturday morning to set up, so it's not a huge effort. I should probably get off the computer now, and get back to drawing, so I can add some stuff to my illustrated greeting card site!

Here's the link to the Dutch Harbor site.

Spring in Seattle

Cherry blossoms in the rain
Originally uploaded by sonyaseattle

Wet. But if the April showers thing is true, then next month will be the most flowerful ever!

A new venture...cards.

Well, here's something new I've gotten myself into.

I was talking to a friend about his wonderful photography, and telling him that I though his images would sell really well as cards. They're cool and dark and kind of gothic; I know there's a market out there for that sort of thing.

So I said I'd do a little research and look into ways people have cards printed and sell them online. This led me to a nice little site, Redbubble.com, which does both; lets you upload images for cards, prints, etc., and lets you sell them through the site. The site does all the work of printing and mailing; all you have to do is supply the art.

So I had to try it. I had actually always had the project in the back of my head, for some future time, so last weekend I set things up, and here is my little greeting card site. The art is all my original work, mostly either pastels or drawings in walnut ink, composited with old bits of paper and ephemera just to make it interesting.

I know I'm not going to get rich from this endeavor, but it's certainly fun, and fills some of my free time (which is crazy, because I already have enough to fill my free time!). But hey, I'm doing it anyway. Take a look, and if you have any feedback as to what you might like to see in that sort of format, please let me know! I plan to add many more card designs soon; mostly subtle, antique-y things like the ones already on there. What do you think?