Shaking off the dust

So I kind of disappeared from the blogosphere for months on end...it's not that I haven't been doing things, just that nothing has particularly struck me as blog-worthy.  I promise I am working on things though...exciting things!  Most notably, I am working to get myself established on Etsy, a website where you can set up a personal shop and sell handmade or vintage goods.  Since I have had numerous people ask me about buying my dinosaurs, I figured this would be a good way to get organized about it.  I have a lot of work to do before that happens though.  For example: 

I have set up the shop and made a paypal account, but I am still researching shipping prices.  I also need to sit down and make my shop look pretty, which means making a banner and taking quality photos of the dinosaurs.  I want to be able to list a fair number of them at the beginning so people won't show up at my shop and think "man, she doesn't really have anything here".  Even if all I have there is pocket-sized dinosaurs made of felt...I think it's probably better to have ten of them than two.  I'm also trying to figure out a fair price that balances the end result (a stuffed animal that fits in your pocket or the palm of your hand) with the amount of labor involved (they're entirely hand-sewn, embroidered, and take probably 2 hours to make if I actually sat down and worked straight through).  I don't want to get ripped off, but I also don't want to try to sell things that people won't pay for.  After reading a bunch of the blog entries on Etsy, I am also considering ways of personalizing the packaging and such...like, making little tags with some kind of shop logo, or a tag with the buyer's name on it.

Oh, and if all of that wasn't crazy enough, I actually need to make more dinosaurs before I start listing anything.  I only have two available now that have embroidered spots (my original ones don't) so I should probably have more.  I can always give the option for custom ordering, of course, and I probably will because then I get fresh color combination ideas.

Oh, and I'm still in AmeriCorps...so basically working full time...and getting into our busiest time of year.  Probably not the best time to be starting a side business, but at the rate I'm going, I might have a while before I actually list anything. *sigh*

Anyway, sorry for the rant-type thing, I just needed to get all of this into a form I can look at.  Once I launch my shop I will be sure to post an exuberant stream of excitement (and promote said shop like crazy).  Until then, I'll just keep plugging away...

 

By the way, if anyone is super excited to see my empty Etsy shop, it is called PocketTheSaurus.  I am quite taken with the play on words, although I imagine there are plenty of people nowadays who have no idea what a "pocket thesaurus" is.  Since they probably have iPhones for that.  And now I sound like I'm 85 years old.

.Song. .Sung. .Blue.

So I haven't posted in quite a while, but basically the pertinent information from the last few weeks is: I live in Pittsburgh now and I like it pretty well, I enjoy many parts of my AmeriCorps position (like painting the porches of old ladies who think my name is "Karen") and overall, life is pretty good.

In other news, it has been raining here for the past several days, and the combination of sitting in an office pushing paper most of the day and the grey sky has been getting me down.  I am trying to fight it off with creativity, but have been kind of hopping from one thing to another.  I did manage to make a hat though!  I am quite a fan of this hat, it makes me want to crochet more.

I used a pattern by Vickie Howell, which can be found here. 

Also, since no blog post would be complete without a dinosaur:

I didn't know I was moving to the city of dinosaurs when I came here, but I love it!

Moving In

This is just a quick update to inform you that I am in Pittsburgh!  I got back from my two week training in New Orleans yesterday, and so today and tomorrow I will be settling in and figuring out how this city works before I start at the office on Wednesday.  At some point I will try to write more about New Orleans and put up some pictures maybe (I'm awful at remembering to take pictures so I hardly have any, oops) and also give a little information about my AmeriCorps position with Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh.  Right now I'm just excited to be finally almost moved in.

Road Test: Passed

Today, August 11th 2010, I, Kira Yeversky, took and passed my road test.  I am now a licensed driver, according to New York State.  Hooray!

More tiny wordless stories

I actually drew these before the other series, way back in the fall.  I don't know how to get my scanner to not destroy the image quality, but it did.  In other words, they look SO much better in real life.

(These are all 2.5"x3.5", by the way.  I used pencil, colored pencil, crayon, and a little bit of pen.)

Tiny Wordless Stories

These are some tiny drawings I made this past school year.  They are all 2.5 x 3.5 inches, which is the size of ATCs and ACEOs (artist trading cards/artist cards, editions, and originals)  There's a whole community of people who trade them, apparently, but I just liked working with the small format.  Unfortunately, my scanner does not like scanning the small format, so the quality has been compromised.

I think I will leave you with these for now, but be prepared for another series (in color, but with worse scan quality) later.

Doing Something Different

Okay, so up until now this blog has been dedicated to whatever random thing pops into my head.  This will probably still happen a lot, but I'm going to try to focus in on my creative exploits, possibly culinary exploits as well (since gluten-free cooking is kind of like an art form).  Basically I want to emulate my good friend Jihan, whose blog The Moldy Cannoli is always making me want to be crafty and then post about it on the internet.  So we'll see how this goes.

So!  To start, we have some dinosaurs.  I have been making them over the last few months whenever inspiration strikes (or, recently, when someone offers to pay me for one)  The little ones are the original design, and I am still perfecting the larger pattern.  The small ones are made of felt and are entirely hand-sewn, the bigger ones are made of fleece with some felt details.  Although the jumbo dinosaurs are machine-sewn, they have hand-embroidered spots on their backs, and the eyes are appliqued by hand too.

Ralph (left) and Waldo (right) are about 16" tall.  And fun to squeeze!

The circle of dino-friends...I have made more, they just aren't in this picture.

Close up!  This is Phinneas.

This is Enrique, who I made for my friend Linnea.  Note the spots!

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed my dinosaur friends...I have sold a few to friends and am hoping to make an Etsy site to sell them from, but we'll have to see if I get bored or overwhelmed trying to do that.  Oh, and there are more photos of them up on my Flickr site, if you want to have a look.