Finally added the Crafty Book Addicts community on LJ.  You may not be aware of how much I like to plan things, but I really like to plan things.  So instead of planning, I decided just to create it now (instead of sleeping) and worry about the fine print later.  that’s what happens when I don’t go to bed at a decent time!  So if you are a Book Addict (ie person who loves books) and a crafty one at that, then please go join up.  You must also be a member of the Book Addicts Book Group since we are a community for Book Addicts (and there would be no point if you weren’t now would there) and you must be crafty.  See the community for more info.

Zazzle has *finally* sorted out their email notification system and I got 267 emails from them today :p  Oh joy!  Every email I should have had since it “broke” arrived in my inbox this morning, and they just keep coming, so quite possibly it’s still not working quite right, as I know for a fact I have not had 32 new orders today lol but they keep insisting I’ve “just made a sale” *head spins*  Anyway, nice to see some emails instead of nothing.  Now I don’t have to keep checking manually to see if anyone has bought anything, or commented or “joined my fan club”.

Christmas mail delays are irritating me no end.  I am waiting for presents I ordered online to arrive in time for me to post them elsewhere, and I am (and this is a BIG worry) waiting for craft supplies to arrive in time for me to make other presents *chews lip*

Speaking of Christmas, I currently have negative money, and I found out today that I might also not have any heating for Christmas.  It is beginning to sound a bit like a Dickens novel, but I rang the oil company today and due the the “Christmas rush” they might not be able to get to me by Christmas!  Who’d have thought there would be a Christmas oil rush, it’s not exactly like a gold rush I suppose *strokes chin*  Anyway, should there be no heating, then I may be offline due to it being too damn cold to type, or sew or knit or read books.  I will be hibernating or perhaps moving me and the kitties in with the rele’s.

So my eye has been bleeding again. It seems to bleed at night when I’m sitting down doing nothing and not exerting myself, sneezing or being stressed - unless of course it’s just a delayed reaction to what I’ve been doing during the day!  I took more photos of it this morning, it’s looking more vampiric by the day and the good news is I will probably still have it at Christmas and I will be able to scare small children and repulse people while they’re eating their Christmas dinner - see everything has an upside!  I made another batch of Tablet last night but I’m not eating it, nuh huh.  I will have to hide it from my sister though lol

When I stocked up my Zazzle shop a few weeks ago (3 almost) I set myself a little test target just to see if anyone would want to buy anything that I created, and also because statistically less people know about Zazzle than Cafepress.  Well I exceeded the target I set for the month in just under three weeks, so thank you everyone who bought anything from the shop and especially to all the crazy Twilight obsessed fans who are just buying everything I have.  Thank you all!  I’m really surprised at the popularity of keychains btw, I guess they make good stocking fillers.

It might be a bit of procrastination on my part but I am still trying to reorganise my sewing/craft room workspace instead of doing any actual sewing.  I’m taking a break for lunch (even though it’s 3pm) as I just managed to dig my way out of mountains of fabric. Remind me why I think I need more fabric?  Speaking of more fabric I am fretting quite a bit that some things I ordered at least 2-3 weeks ago have still not arrived from the US, whereas a beautiful bracelet (a present and unfortunately not for me) I ordered via Etsy arrived today, also from the US.  I just hope they aren’t holding my fabric up in customs as I REALLY NEED IT and it’s very sexy.

Still also waiting for my recent ebay purchases but since some of them are from Saturday I know I’m being unreasonable.  I just want them now. (like I don’t have enough fabric lol)

Photos of the new and improved sewing room will be posted - maybe a before, during and after makeover lol.  I found stuff up there buried deep within the depths of the spare room that I forgot I even had, but also I found fabric that I bought in Glasgow last Christmas and that reminded me that the shop (Mandors) will be having another sale this Christmas so I definitely need to put that on my to-do list.  I seem to remember last year having to enlist the help of a couple of family members to carry everything I bought.  Fabric is heavy you know.

Book Group

Just a quick mention about the book group since this isn’t the book group blog!  1984 - George Orwell and Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer are the books for this month, and in the Paranormal Social Club we are reading Pleasure Unbound - Larrissa Ione.  And of course you can read whatever you want and come talk about it with us.  Virgin Suicides and Time Traveler’s Wife discussions are still going if anyone wants to jump in.  Plus also we have very sexy Rules of Book Club designs on a bunch of items on both Cafepress and Zazzle.

Just a reminder that today is the final posting day for overseas mail that is “guaranteed” to get there for Christmas (of course it doesn’t mean that if you post after today that it won’t get there but it’s not guaranteed)

Consequently Zazzle has free postage offers for today and Cafepress are giving free postage on their FLIP mini camcorders.

There are also lots of sales on Etsy today and this weekend, so now’s your chance to pick up something special at a discount. Remember too you can filter your browsing results by locality which is great if you want something in a hurry - order from someone close to where you live! I’ve been buying a few things there this week and it occurred to me that if anyone came up with handmade things for teenage BOYS they would make a fortune because there isn’t anything and they are so hard to buy for. I checked the gift guides on Etsy and not only is there nothing for teenage boys, men are not really catered for either. I guess it’s a girl thing huh? Wanting to have pretty shiny handmade things lol

*goes into man bag production overdrive*

Speaking of men, I was shopping in the men’s underwear section of Tesco last night because I’ sick of freezing (I’m tempted to say “nuts off” considering what I bought) and decided to invest in some thermal underwear! I bought some men’s long johns in attractive white with handy little pouch for storing things or keeping your mobile phone handy. I may have to dye them purple or something though as I don’t like white. Next week I’m going to get the matching t-shirt, also thermal

I bought the object of my fabric lust yesterday btw. There was never any doubt that I would buy it but I’m still short on ideas what to do with it when it arrives. It is very pretty though. I keep thinking moulin rouge and corsets. I don’t know why.

Only Vampires Love You Forever design remains my top seller on Zazzle. It’s now available in four colour options and it’s selling like hotcakes. Keychains in all designs are also flying off the shelves. I also added some embroidered hats, totes and t-shirts in two new forum related designs - 100% Book Addict and Paranormal Social Club. Probably doesn’t make a lot of sense now but it’s all part of my not so cunning plan.

I’m hoping this doesn’t turn into a bit of a rant but I was kinda annoyed when I woke up this morning, checked my email and found one from Zazzle announcing now that my Book Club (you do not talk about Book Club) design was not allowed to be sold in the marketplace because they have rules about parody.

Ok I get rules, I love rules, but only when they make sense and are consistent.

What annoys me most is that when I do a search for book club, other designs in other zazzle galleries come up!  When I do a search for Fight Club, I get 12 pages of results!  TWELVE PAGES!!!  Some of the designs are blatantly ripping off the soapdish image from the movie dvd/posters yet - hell there’s even a design on there called FART CLUB - these are allowed but somehow mine isn’t?

FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I run a freaking Book Club for crying out loud.  The designs have been up for over 2 weeks but now there’s a problem with them?

Well Cafepress don’t have a problem with them, they love them.  Quite honestly I wasn’t even going to bother uploading them to zazzle in the first place as it’s such a chore to get anything done over there but then I thought, sure why not.  We’ll there’s an hour+ of my life I’ll never get back and I love so much wasting time like that when I have so much on my plate right now. So if anyone wants one, you can find them in the Cafepress shop.  I’m not sure I will continue with my zazzle experiment.  I’m wasting too much time uploading designs, manually creating products, editing them, changing them, removing them, uploading new designs, being told days/weeks later that they’re getting removed for whatever reason meanwhile similar products continue to sell in other galleries.

Consistency people consistency is everything!

Needless to say I did fire off a reply to their email this morning highlighting all of the above and more.

Yesterday I was sent a new sewing pattern for a handbag (purse). It looks lovely and I did actually think at one stage yesterday that I would make one that day, but one thing lead to another and I realise now 36 hours later that I haven’t even made it into the sewing room. After a quick check I can confirm that I have everything I need (that’s what happens when you stock your spare room up to resemble a craft shop) so there should really be no delay. It is very pretty, so my challenge for tomorrow is to choose some fabric (from the many options available upstairs) and get cracking on it. Of course I may well get distracted at the “choosing the fabric” stage of the plan.

Also yesterday I was put in touch with a site that gives you money if your t-shirt design gets voted as the best one of the week. This is all good, so last night I dreamt about t-shirt designs and woke up this morning with exactly none. I feel inspired to do this though since it’s a bit of a challenge to come up with something new and it sounds kinda fun.

I’m now watching reruns of the Apprentice UK season 4 with Jack who didnt see it the first time. I’m trying hard not to remember who wins. Roll on next season, I love watching these duffers make idiots of themselves while spouting off how brilliant they are lol.

Oh and also my True Blood bag arrived today. Can’t wait to take it out for a test run which should be interesting considering the show hasn’t been on yet in this country. heh!

Hmmm, well this is a design I’ve had on Cafepress for a few months now but I put it in Zazzle at the weekend and people seem to love it!  I changed the background colour and they are selling like hot cakes

Who knew!  Anyway the keychains are particularly popular but so are the mousepads, the greeting cards and the mugs.  I really like the mug options they have there, so much more choice!  Cafepress briefly had travel mugs in the summer but now they seem to be permanently out of stock.  I even made shoes like this too lol.

Now I’m going to change up the design on the Cafepress stuff and give them the pink background option too.  They don’t have keychains on Cafepress but it should work on some of the other products.

We are still having that really hard frost, that’s been there since Friday and hasn’t defrosted.  We just get more layers on top of more layers.  It makes the garden look so pretty though and hides a lot of the ugliness from the crappy gardens down the street so at least I don’t have to look at their mess for a while.  Downside is that it’s very bloody cold, and I have about 5 inches of oil left in my tank, so I will have to order very soon.  At least the barrel price of oil has gone down so hopefully that will have affected my prices in a good way.  The kitties are not impressed with the cold, and are either wedged under a radiator or wrapped around my neck.  Last night I had to provide a hot water bottle for them as it was so cold here once I switched the heating off for the night.

My virus seems to be on the way out too.  I’m really surprised it didnt last very long but I’m glad as I don’t have time to be sick right now.   The Barry White voice has gone, the germs seem to have relocated from my throat to my nose but at least my head is a lot clearer and I can get on with stuff.

Got a big parcel of fabric today that I ordered from ebay last week.  Mainly boring things like interfacing but some nice checked wool dress making fabric that I liked the look of and a little bit of silk.  Don’t know where all the other things I order have got too.  I just hope the US stuff doesn’t get held up in customs and cost me more money

I decided yesterday (and the postman agreed) that I sounded like Barry White after a hard night of booze and cigarettes.  So I decided to track down some Barry and compare.  Actually I kicked Barry White’s ass, my voice is much deeper at the moment and maybe I should go out and do some one night only appearances around town.  (Remember Phoebe from Friends with her “sexy” deep cold induced voice?)  Problem is I feel too sick to leave the house let alone go out on the entertainment circuit lol.

This damned virus is getting in the way though and I have so much I need to get done, including a term paper due on Tuesday and a bunch of stuff to make for the shop and for Christmas, but it’s making me a bit useless at the moment.  Stupid viruses, I feel like a man, I’m complaining so much about such a small thing.  The IT Crowd was on last night but I couldn’t enjoy it as much as usual because trying to laugh results in a coughing fit and it shoulds like I’m hacking up a lung or something lol.  I recorded it and will watch it again when I feel better and can give it laughing justice.

Everything was white when I got up this morning.  It’s not snow, it looks like really thick frost.  I had no idea it was so cold last night but then I may have a fever.  Still waiting for the postman to deliver something/anything but the Christmas rush has started already and the postman is running about 2 hours later than usual.

Part of my order from Zazzle got cancelled while I was sleeping last night.  They had a problem with one of the images, which is odd because of the four items I ordered three of them had the same image and they were all approved. *scratches head*  They sent me a nice email with links to the approved and un-approved items so I could see what the problem was, but unfortunately none of the links they gave me linked to any of the products, so I am still clueless.  It will be a surprise when the package arrives since I have no clue what I will be receiving.

Colour me confused!

What else is confusing about these people is that I never get any emails from them if anyone buys anything, comments on my shop, etc but I do get emails from them advertising stuff, confirming my orders etc.  I have all the notifications set correctly, I emailed them about it last week and all I got back was make sure you check your junk mail!  I was under the impression that no one was ordering at all but that’s not the case.  People are ordering, I just don’t get told about it!

Ah on Cafepress everything is so transparent.