Always so busy!

I've been pretty busy since my last post. 

Johnny and I celebrated our 6th/11th anniversary! It's hard to believe it's been so long. But I've been in love with that man even longer. As of June, it's been 18 years! On his birthday, I'd given him tickets to see the Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" 50th anniversary show at the dome theater...it was pretty neat. I'm not really a Pink Floyd fan...but he really likes them. And it had been awhile since we'd seen a show in the dome theater. It was really nice to have a night out. 

I've been really busy with CandiMaker stuff...as always. I've been planning to retake all my product photos, but the set-up I had just wasn't working out. Initially I had the light on the tall tripod and was holding my phone to take overhead shots...but that was really hurting my back and the photos were less "uniform" so I was having to correct the perspective and do lots of cropping. Then I was using my tall tripod for my phone and the desktop tripod for my ring light...but I needed more flexibility with placing the ring light because the glossy laminate on my stickers catches glare too easily. So I got a tripod that I can leave clamped to my table to take pictures with my phone from overhead and then use the tall tripod for my ring light. Oh! And I decided to take the tabletop off my art desk, cover it with contact paper, and set it on top of the drawers where my Cricut sits. I even put contact paper on the shallow cardboard box that I keep in front of my Cricut to keep the mat flat. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. :) 

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So this weekend my plan is to finally retake my product photos. I have quite a few new sticker designs to list as well. I've also been thinking a lot about different products that I want to make in the near future too. I like to do a lot of planning before I launch new products...make sure I have my pricing and materials and everything all worked out first. 

But first thing tomorrow I'm going to update my spreadsheets with all the new end-of-the-month figures. While I had 5 less orders in August than I did in July...I had more revenue in August. It definitely helped that I had one order for (25) 3" stickers! And today I had 5 orders...breaking my previous record for 4 orders in one day. :) Since June, I get about 5-15 orders per week. AND I've maintained Star Seller every month since June. Of course...that's just for my sticker shop. 

Since I'm not very active in my other Etsy shop...it's pretty dead. I'd been getting at least one order a month in my other Etsy shop...but I didn't get an order in August aside from my sister. She's my biggest customer for sublimation transfers. ;) In fact...tomorrow I'll be printing like 90 pages for her. I'm still trying to decide what I'll ultimately do with my other Etsy shop.   

On that note...I'm going to get a little more work done before I go to bed.

Hellooooo August! Goodbye Computer. :P

I've finally decided that "Johnny's laptop" (that he's had since 2015 but never uses) is now my laptop. *sigh* I really, really loved my laptop. It was a 15in Dell Inspiron that I got in 2013. I've taken apart and reassembled that thing SO many times in the last 10 years. Basically the only things I hadn't replaced on that thing was the screen, top cover, and anything soldered to the motherboard. I just liked the size, speed...and definitely the keyboard for when I was doing transcription. Several years ago, the grandkids knocked my laptop off of the couch downstairs and one of the clips covering the hinges broke off. Then for the last year or so...the screen had to be opened *just* right or it would blink on and off or get crazy lines through it. And yesterday...the network adapter card went out AGAIN. Unfortunately, my laptop is old enough that they don't even make that particular network adapter card anymore. I'd gotten a replacement card on eBay several times but between the annoying screen issue and now the network adapter again...I just decided to retire the laptop. :P And since we have another laptop that wasn't being used, it's not that big of a deal. I'm a little bummed though. I'd upgraded the RAM in my laptop to two 8gb sticks a long time ago and was going to take them out of my laptop and put them into this one...but there's only one slot that supports up to 8gb. UGH. It would've been nice to make this one a little faster...but it's largely just because I'm inpatient. :P 

So yesterday I spent the day making sure I had everything from my old laptop updated on my external hard drives. I also cleaned up the drive on this laptop...got rid of a lot of old/duplicate stuff. And today I'm going through my--literally--thousands of fonts. I useMainType from High-Logic to organize and install my fonts and it's a lifesaver when you have as many fonts as I do.