Coloring book Giveaway

This blog seem to take a turn into random thoughts, dreams and feelings, and I feel like I haven't wrote anything coherent here in ages...

Anyway, here is a proof that I'm still sane and that I'm doing other stuff aside of think, dream and feel. I've been working on a small coloring book, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. Now that it's done I decided to raffle one of those to everyone who reads my blog.

So if you want to win this lovely package of a coloring book and 5 cool color Crayola crayons, please visit my store and tell me what's your favorite thing in there.

Also, if you buy anything from my store, you automatically win one of those little books.

I'm going to raffle the book on April 6th.

Enjoy!

Rockabilly blog winner!

Remember a couple of weeks ago, I announced a rockabilly special blog raffle?!well it's time ot see who won it.

Only 12 people signed up for this raffle, which surprised me, because this is the biggest gift I ever offered on raffle, I wonder if it means that it doesn't matter what you offer as a prize on a raffle, or that this was simply not to everyone's taste.

At any rate - thanks for all participants, and congratulations to Cabootique who is the winner!

Stay tune! I'm going to announce the next raffle in the beginning of next week.

Aftershoot blues

I'm so tried, we had an evening shoot tonight and one yesterday. it's 4:00 AM and I just finished editing my photos, editing Ned's photo with him, and making chilly before the beans we
sprouted goes bad. For the past few days (weeks?) I feel like all I want is to sleep all the time. I'm not sure if it's allergies, still getting over being sick or just stress and the weird dreams I've been having lately.

I'm happy with the photo I took though.

I hate feeling like I'm not doing everything I want, I feel like I'm missing opportunities and messing up stuff by not keeping in touch with people and follow things though.

I'm not sure if it's really the case or if that's just a feeling, I don't know if I'm really messing up or not.

I'm just so tired of feeling tired, and hate feeling so aimless and unfocused.

Illustration Friday - Theater

The word of the week for "Illustration Friday" was Theater. I used to love theater in high school, I don't really like acting but I love studying the plays and history and going to the theater to watch plays.

One of my favorite theater genre is "comedia del-Arte" which is basically the root of all modern comedy.The characters are almost always the same, and the plots are very similar, the show doesn't really follow a script but just put up a story guideline that allow the actors to make fun and joke and improvise all the time.

In this illustration I wanted to not only show the characters of the play, but mostly to give the feeling of a theater - the way that theater is a little perfect world of it's own, and so I created a couple of shadow boxes made of paper showing a few of the characters from Comedia del-Arte.

There were supposed to be 4 pieces in this series, but, building stuff out of paper is a pretty fragile thing and one box didn't make it, so I had to change my plans. looking at the figures in the box made me think of those butterflies in display cases and so I decided to give this a shot as well.

Mother day's freebe prints

I don't celebrate mother day myself. about 2and a half years ago, when I moved to NY my mom stopped talking to me. Mother's day was never a big holiday in Israel, but here, I keep hearing about people's plans for it and all the cool brunches they are taking their mom to, and I feel really strange not doing anything about it. I guess it's my version of being single on Valentine's.

So for a while I didn't want to make anything special for my Etsy store to celebrate mother's day, but when I run out of those bunny prints really fast and wanted to do that again, I decided to make something that will represent what I want mother day, and my relationship with my mom to be about, which is all about feeling happy and safe.

So I made not one, but two special mother day prints! one with a mommy and a baby penguin one with a mommy and baby goat. You can all have one (until I run out) either by spending some money or by spending some luck and time.

There will be one free print per order for anyone who buys anything from my shop.

Or - you can win a print for absolutely free if you check out the hand painted dishes section of my shop and suggest the next animal I should put on a tapas plate that haven't been used before.
I'm going to raffle one print of each, so there will be 2 winners, one gets a goat and one a penguin.

Please leave your e-mail when you comment so I can contact you if you won!

Raffle will be held on Mother day, May 10.

Brittany Elidemir on louchelink

This week's louchelink interview features an awesome photographer, who's work is very personal, sensual and intimate.

Read interview at: louchelink.com

New Site

A couple of weeks ago, Ned and I went to a Portfolio Review at PowerHouse publisher, one of the people we talked to was really impressed by the fact that we were a couple working and living together.

She talked about other photographers who work as a team and how she, as an art buyer, prefer working without couples because she know they can communicate and compromise and are easier to work with then a single photographer who's just focus on taking a shot and don't know how to listen ot a client or their crew.

We realized that we have been working together for a while and that this is, in fact, one of our biggest advantages in taking picture. So in the past couple of days we worked on setting up a new site for us as a photographer's team.

www.nedandaya.com

New Site

We were sitting in Fornino Pizza this evening, Ned was feeling sort of low, and we were talking about promoting his work so he gets some more cool projects like the Law & Order shoot. I was thinking of how hard it is to find places to promote myself and my own work and how I hate doing that.

It made us realize that one of the things artists want the most is spaces where they can promote and show their art and personality. And that a good way to make people aware of you, is by promoting other people (I was thinking of Joy quarterly magazine, which is really lovely, but the guy who edit and produce it also take a lot of the photos in it, which give the magazine a pretty isolated feel and also, total lack of interest from other people).

And I Decided to make a new website in which, every 2 weeks Ned and I will feature another artist or photographer or musician or friend.

So now it's 7:00 in the morning and the website is done! it's called LouchLink and since I wanted to finish the layout today, Ned is the first artist who's featured on it (we couldn't get anyone else on such short notice...) but from now on, we'll be featuring other artists and awesome people.

If you would like to be featured, e-mail us some photos of your work and a few sentenses about who you are and what you do, or follow the "submit" button on the site.

Good night!

Sales today: 3
Items posted: 3
packages send out: 1
Main source of inspiration: A fabric shopping spree at PurlSoho made me think about colors.
Best thing to eat: jambon de bayon Sandwich at Blackbird Parlor and Baklava for dessert.
Listening to: The deathgate cycle audio book.

We were sick all week, however, during the night I feel better and then - I work! and so tonight, Ned took photos of a cups Tarot deck I finished last night. And I manage to make another 2. It was a very good night.

The cool thing was this - I listed the deck, then, I posted a photo in flickr, then I opened the new Exel work file I downloaded from the Etsy site to try and keep better track on thing and, well tried to figure it out since I've never worked with it before (I'm still not sure it's working...) and then I went back to my etsy page to check the view - and the deck was gone! it was already sold!

It's the best feeling in the world.

A little Better!

Sales today: 1
Items posted: 3 (a fox, a deck of cards and a weasel )
packages send out: 0
Main source of inspiration: A shoot we had yesterday, nothing concrete came out of it, but I have some cool ideas.
Best thing to eat: Man, we totally let loose today - 3 meals out and non of them healthy! but the best (and worth) was dessert at Blackbird Parlor - I had the Baklava!

After the excitement from the shoot and last week being so strange that I couldn't bring myself to do much, I finally manage to dedicate a whole day to the Etsy store - and there are some results!

Last week Eliza Fox was sold to a nice lady in Ohio, she mentioned that if I make another guy she'd be interested. So when I finished making Edward Fox I send her a convo and she bought it right away. I'm sad to see him go, he's the best fox I made so far and I'm especially proud of him.

Also posted today - the first of the low budget tarot deck, basically, the same cards I've made in the past, but because they are unpainted and the case is simpler to make, I could knock the price by quite a bit. So that's good... I hope that some people who wanted them before but could not afford them, might buy this deck.

The Weasels always take so much more time then I plan for them, but I enjoy making them so much. When I made the first one, I named it after my neighbor's son, since then I created the whole family across the hall, 4 weasels in all. So now I had to find a new resource of names... I decided to name this one after the downstairs neighbor, a really nice shy girl called Laurel. I'm going to name the next one after Laurel's dog!


And last, but not least - I manage to get a treasury, as today was dessert night - I named it after my favorite dessert ever - peanut butter chocolate pie.

So - one sales and a lot of promotion and crafting, over all a very good day!

Thursday

Sales today: 1
Items posted: 1
packages send out: 1
Main source of inspiration: a shopping mistake
Best thing to eat: Eggs Benedict in Pastis (it was so decadent, but so worth it...)

I just realized that for the past week or so I've been managing 2 blogs that are basically the same, both were made to share the experiences I have through running the Etsy store, one on we-love-etsy and one on indipublic and that on top of the not very used personal blog Homeworld and a couple of website and a flickr account.

It felt really strange to have to split the store blog info into 2, so I decided that what I need is yet another blog to have all that info in (plus I really hate NING's graphics - it's too overpowering and sell I say - ugly).

So here it is, in all it's glory - new blog weepee!

And without farther a due, today's Etsy news:

A Sad Story of Shopping and Returning
One of the things that I really like about the store is that it pushes me to do stuff that's really hard for me, like being assertive. So this is what happened - a while ago I went to Staplers and got 3 packs of cover stock paper in green, gray and cream, I thought I'd use them for pages in books I made, but they were too heavy and so they were left aside. Then, when I started prining out the Tarot cards I remembered them and the cream was just perfect for this.
So, eventually, the paper was over, after about 15 tarot decks and I needed new one. I went to the store and got some new one, but, coming home, it turned out that the different brand doesn't work well at all with the printer and I can't use it.

If this was just for a personal project I would toss the paper away and forget about the whole thing, however, because this was for the store, I felt more responsible and assertive and me and Ned went into the city today, and though the package was open, they were still able to refund the money.

This story is boring, but it has 2 important morals - the first is that it's good to be assertive, cause I feel much better about myself after I returned the paper. The second is that necessity is the mother of invention, because, having no cream paper, I tried the gray and it came out really really great.



A Happy Story About a Weasel

We both woke up early and in a really bad mood this morning. We didn't feel like eating anywhere in the area and eventually took the train to Ned's old neighborhood just to have breakfast in a really fancy place he loved going to when he was living there. It was a really nice breakfast. On the way back I asked "do you think something sold in the store?" and he said "yes" and then I asked "what" and he said "Everything!" and I said "I wish the weasel would sell, it's really cute and it makes me sad when animals that I make don't sale.

I got home and what do I see?! It did sell! that was really cool. I send the package out right away.

Also, a tutorial I made in the morning about making weasels got published on Cut Out + Keep.