Mother's Day gifts

The real gifts of Mother's day are of course spending time with our children and grandchildren.  Every year my one daughter and her family take me out to a wonderful brunch that's on a riverfront and near a park.  After stuffing ourselves we amble on over to the park and walk off the food while the kids play on the playgrounds.  I love that! I look forward to it every year.  And it's a two-fer for her husband since he's giving her a Mother's Day gift while she's giving me mine.  Win-win! 

Don't worry.  My other children stop by during the day and drop off a little gift and sit and have coffee or a little treat with me.  Sometimes we watch a show together or play board games. 

I wanted to share some gift ideas for your Grandmothers for Mother's day.  Just a little something the kids can give Grammy. 

     Journals are fun and these are designed just for Grandmothers.  It has day and weekly planner, note, and to-do list pages among others.  A  gift grandkids can give that special Mom-Mom

Or Grammy

  

Or Gran

 So she can keep track of her play dates and movie nights with her grandkids.










Hope whatever you do you have a Happy Mother's Day!

It's Been Awhile

It's Been Awhile since I posted on this blog.  I've been dabbling.  Making Coloring books and Journals and putting them up on Amazon.

I put a coloring fitness journal  and a Snowflake Coloring book on Etsy.  I'm trying to get into publishing more printables as I can make them once and sell forever. Just a little diversifying.  

I still make top hat and baby shower items to well in my Etsy shop.  Soon I'll be putting printable baby shower games there too.

This is a cover for my  Snowflake Coloring book, available in my Etsy shop.

Check it out.

Make you Own Coloring books

Did you ever wish you could learn to make your own coloring book?  But it has to be easy peasy.  No complicated Photoshop or similar programs.

Well now there is a solution for you.  It's called Super Simple Coloring Books.

Let's face it, lot's of people say that
coloring books are a low content book.

But when you look at the time and money
it takes...
- to find images
- buy PLR image packs
- work with image software
- hire and wait for outsourcers
to deliver your work

...I'm sure you'll see it's far
from low content.
But wouldn't it be great if you
could speed up the process?

Not have to buy expensive image
software, or PLR packs?

And most importantly....speed up
the whole process?

Well, here's the solution to
all of those low content problems.
Super Simple Coloring Books

Barry J McDonald has just come
up with the easiest way to do it.
I know you'll be amazed by what
he found and how you can create
images faster than ever before.

He's just come up with an amazingly
easy way of creating coloring book
images.

And when he says easy....I mean 'real' easy.
He even showed his 7 year old son how to do
it, and here's what he created.
Super Simple Coloring Books.

I loved this course.  It's a series of videos that are only 5-15 mins long each. He shows you where to get free content and how to use it.  He even shows how to put the books together and get them up on Createspace or Amazon.  Sometimes that right there is another whole course in itself.  But it's included in this one so it's like getting two courses for the price of one.
Don't miss this opportunity to get into the profitable Adult coloring book market.  You won't be sorry.

Brush Lettering Obsession

My new obsession is brush lettering.    I LOVE IT!

I'm not very good at it yet, but I love it. 
  Here's some examples of my practice: 

I learned about Brush Lettering from Random Olive.  She has a Brush lettering guide that teaches you the basics.  She is also on Periscope a couple of times a week to
demonstrate how she brush letters and what supplies she uses.

 If you are interested you can buy a copy of her Brush Letter guide .  This link takes you to her page explaining what it is. (affiliate link).  Or click the Buy now button on the right sidebar to GET IT NOW, no waiting.  It's a digital file and worth every penny.  She gives you Capital letters, small letters and numbers and lined practice sheets in two sizes.  You start with the larger  size to learn the strokes and then graduate to the smaller size. 

 Once you've learned the basics, you may be interested in my   Halloween Themed Practice Guide.  It an e-book of 31 Halloween words and phrases.  It does not teach the brush lettering basics.  It's a lined practice guide to advance your practice.

Hope you join me in learning this new skill.

10 Stitich Afghan Samples

 

Ten Stitch Blanket Swatches

 

 

 



     I've been swatching  the 10 stitch blanket that I found the pattern for on Ravelry.  I Love this pattern!  It's so simple;  just plain garter stitch and only 10 stitches on your needle at one time.   And if you keep going apparently it makes a blanket.  Fabulous mindless easy knitting.
     Number one was made with Red Heart variegated yarn; Heartfelt .  I was looking for a design for my grandson who wants me to make him a blanket.  I didn't like it for this pattern.
     Then I discovered Vanna's Tapestry yarn.  It's dyed perfectly for this blanket.  Number 2 is the Scandanavia colorway and number 3 is the Peru colorway which I'm really loving.  I like the interplay of the solid strips and  the variegated parts.  I think as the blanket grows you could add other striped yarns and it would flow right together.
     The last swatch is my favorite though.  I'm using Red Heart Zebra for the straight parts and Cherry Red for the corners.  I think this blanket will come out looking fabulous.  
     The ten stitch blanket pattern can be found here and it's free!

On another note I just learned how to make a collage for the blog and this post was to test it out.  I think it looks pretty good.  And that's what I've been up to lately.

Happy New Year!!

I love New Years.  I always feel so hopeful.  Like it's a new beginning.  Leave all the things behind that didn't go so well last year, wipe the slate clean and start again.

I was looking over last year's resolutions and this year's will be about the same.  I don't feel like that means I failed because I 've made progress or rethought most of them:

My Goals for 2014 were:

 

1. Blog at least once a week and maybe more.
2. Get those patterns on Ravelry.  I have lots of good ideas like a bunting (or garland) a month pattern and a blankie a month pattern.
3. I'd like to figure out Google +
4. Continue growing my Etsy business.
5. And that diet and Exercise.

 

 

1.  I didn't blog once a week but I blame that on the whirlwind the year became after my son proposed to his girlfriend and we spent the first 7 months of the year preparing for and having a wedding. 

 So I still want to try and blog at least once every two weeks.  Maybe that's a more reasonable time frame for me.

 

2.  I still want to put patterns on Ravelry.  I think I got two on there this year.  Not bad, but I can do better.

 

3.  I've decided I don't care about Google +.  People were predicting it was going to be so big, but I don't think so.  I'm concentrating my media output on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram now.  Especially the last two as they are photography based.

 

4.  My Etsy business grew quite a lot this year.  I had almost 300 sales in 2014.  I'd like to continue growing my business.

 

5.  Sigh!!  Diet and exercise.  I lost some weight but gained it back over the holidays.  This is still an important goal for me though. 

 

6.  I'm doing some creative things for me.  I joined Lifebook 2015  which is doing mixed media art once a week.  Hope I can keep up.  Here's the link if anyone is interested in joining.  Life Book 2015.

It's not free but the price is really reasonable and you can break it into three payments.

 

Those are my resolutions for the year.  What's yours?

 

 

 

Why I want to learn how to create and sell digital products

 “Are you ready to make your creative work more lucrative, stable, and sustainable in the long-term? Join April Bowles-Olin for an introduction to digital products and how they can enhance your creative business. This course will show you how to produce and position viable products for generating multiple revenue streams and passive income. RSVP right here to watch it live and get access to the workbook for FREE. This post is part of the Create Digital Products blog tour.”

I Love digital products.  I have bought several over the years and also taken advantage of free ones.  I have always learned something and I often go back to them to study them some more.  I'm a reader and a visual learner so I appreciate having business manuals, patterns  and articles about entrepreneurship  at my fingertips to peruse when I have a question.
I will often sign up for someone's mailing list just to get their free e-book or report.
I like knitting and crocheting items to sell in my Etsy shop, but they have to be made over and over. 
I want to learn to make great digital products because you produce it once and can sell it over and over.  Plus I like the idea of someone using MY report as there go-to info product.
April Bowles is getting ready to teach a course on creating and selling digital products and I personally can't wait.  I took a course from her a few years ago on "Blogging for your Creative Business" and I learned SO MUCH.  I believe a lot of success of my Etsy shop is due to all the fabulous information I learned in her course.
And she gives you a lot of bang for your buck.  I still have all the interviews she did with various successful entrepreneurs downloaded  on my I-phone to listen to.  She always includes a LOT of bonuses.
So if your thinking of taking a course about digital products I would definitely recommend hers.
This post is part of a blog tour.  Otherwise I received no compensation for my post and all my opinions are my own.  I just love April's stuff!