Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and Holiday weekend sale

Well, I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving and ate some yummy food. I went to the Macy's Parade and had a great time. Now it's time for some holiday shopping =). I already started my shopping and found some great gifts. 

In my Etsy shop, I am having a huge sale. 

~ Holiday Sale ~

(Black Friday) November 27 - (Cyber Monday) November 30 ~

~ Buy 1 Get 1 (BOGO): on all Prints including Fine Art prints and ACEO prints.

~ 20% off: on all Original paintings and Original ACEO cards.

~ FREE shipping on most Original paintings. 

~ Free gift wrapping and direct shipping to that special someone.

Now back to Thanksgiving. I wanted to shear more photo's from the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. I was right up front and got some amazing photo's. 

Kermit Balloon

These Balloons are so amazing.

That's me in the black jacket watching the parade. I still can not believe how close I was. 

Cyndi Lauper waving.

Ronald McDonald

I really love this picture because it shows 4 balloons in an order coming my way.

Snoopy balloon.

Santa is coming.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Hope all is good and everyone will have a wonderful holiday. 

Willowing and Artist Friends group

Well, today I am actually pretty busy. 

I did get a little distracted though and joined a new group =) It is the 'Willowing and Artist Friends group and it is filled with many amazing whimsical artists. You can view and join here.

I have so much to do before this Holiday weekend. I need to finish 2 Christmas gifts for my sister that I am bringing home to Buffalo so they will be under the tree on Christmas morning. 

I need to finish all the details to my 'Black Friday - Cyber Monday weekend sale' that I will be having on Etsy. I plan on adding more products to my store up until Friday including a calender print page. I need to create a sale image to go over my store banner as well.

Well, just wanted to shear the group I joined so have a nice day.

Two Etsy Treasuries from Last Night.

I created 1 Treasury and 1 Treasury West on Etsy last night. I always enjoy making these because I get to showcase artists that I think are very talented and maybe someone else will become a fan as well.

Click here to view the Treasury 'Lowbrow Love'.

Click here to view the Treasury West ' Butterflies and Buttons'.

Etsy Facebook Application Tutorial.

Etsy has launched a new application for facebook which allows us shop owners to upload our shop directly to either our facebook profile page or fan page. All you have to do to add this application, is go the Etsy Storque article here. Follow the instructions and click on the 'My Etsy Application' link.  It will take you to the page shown above. 

You then need to click on either 'add to my profile' or 'add to my fan page' and it will take you to the instillation window below. Put in your username and click the submit button.

The application will redirect you to the Etsy facebook page shown below. Click on add to my page button. It will then take you back to the front adding page shown previously. You will have to click the add button again.

 

Now you are on the page that will give you the option to add the rss feed from your blog, so all your recent posts will appear along side of your Etsy items. Once you are done with all this and clicked the next button you are ready for the next step.

You will have to go to your profile or fan page, whichever one you choose to add the application too (I did both). Click on the plus sign (+) at the top of the page shown below, click on My Etsy, and hit the add option. 

The application shows up at the top of your page next to your wall, photo's, and whatever else you might have on your page. I put the Etsy app. on both my personal facebook page and my art fan page as shown above I think it looks great.

The Etsy shop tab looks like this, shown below.

And here is an image of my recent blog posts because I chose to add the rss feed for my blog.

Hope this helps and enjoy your new Etsy application =)

Etsy Treasury Time - Thanksgiving Theme

I created a treasury yesterday on Etsy and used the theme of autumn and thanksgiving. I really like all the pieces I chose and the shops they came from are all worth checking out.

To view the treasury click, here.

Nibblefest Art Contest on Ebay

I joined an Ebay group about 2 weeks ago that is called 'Nibblefest art contest.' This is a group that each month holds themed contests to be put up on auction on Ebay.

Today starts the November contest of 'Holiday' and I am including 1 original 5" x 7" painting titled Crimson Fairy. It is done in acrylic paint on watercolor paper. Click here to view painting listing.

I am also auctioning 1 original ACEO card title Crimson Sparrow. This ACEO is also painted in acrylic paint and done on watercolor paper. Click here to view the ACEO listing. I created the two images to match each other. 

All auctions for this contest must start at .99 with no reserve. The piece that gets the most auctions wins the contest for that theme and month. 

This group is fun because it challenged me to produce artwork to fit the theme, and it's a fun way to connect with people. 

Thanks for viewing, Julia

Craftgawker - a site for Artists to promote.

While searching through the Etsy forums, I stumbled upon a great site that promotes handmade goodies made by many different talented artists.

Craftgawker is a nice site to search, when you want to purchase an item or if you just want to look at some creative products. Craftgawker allows artists to submit their art to be considered for placement on the site.

 

Artists can submit up to 2 items at a time for moderation to be considered. In order to get accepted your photo's need to be clear with good lighting. To submit photo's all you need to do is register with Craftgawker, it takes about 2 minutes to do. 

Once registered, you can submit your item with a title, URL to where it can be viewed, a photo, and a short description. 

It can take a few days for your items to be moderated, but once one is accepted or declined, you can submit something else.

Mondays featured artist - Merry Go Bears

Happy Monday!

I am so excited about todays featured artist because her creations are so cute. Barbara Choo is a  fulltime Teddy Bear artist. She works with her mother to create these one of a kind Teddy Bears as well as little rag dolls, fairies, and other animals.  

Her bears are all made from mohair, alpaca or selected quality faux fur. They are 5-way fully jointed, have hand blown German glass eyes, have embroidered waxed nose, stuffed with poly fill, and have hand painted faces.

To view or purchase her little creation, please visit her Etsy shop at...

merrygobears.etsy.com

Member of the ACEO Etsy street team

I am happy and proud to say that I have become a member of the ACEO Etsy team. This group brings together all ACEO artist to one place and promotes this type of art. 

An ACEO, for those of you who do not know, stands for Art Card Editions and Originals. Each measures 2.5 x 3.5 inches. They are art trading cards, very much like a baseball cards. People collect them, trade them, use then for scrap booking, and also can put them in frames.

I sell ACEO's that are originals and that are prints made from other paintings.

You can view mine in my Etsy shop.

To view other ACEO's by team members, put ACETSY Team in the search engine in Etsy. 

The team also has a blog here.

Pink Polka Dot Treasury!

I finally got a treasury! yay

It's a Treasury west and the theme is Pink Polka Dots. View it here.

Mondays featured artist - ArtnJoy

Today's Monday featured artist is a fellow Etsy shop owner and talented artist and crafter. A mother of three children, she runs not One Etsy shop but Two. 

Artnjoy is a shop filled with lovely mixed media art that she creates. 

Pennypaperworks is a shop filled with paper goods such as journals, bookmarks, and gift tags.

 

Check out either of her shops and enjoy some nice pieces of art. 

I was featured in a Blog - Needles and Jewels

I was featured by a fellow Etsy shop owner on a lovely blog called Needles and Jewels. 

My Droopy Heart doll, Snow bird ACEO, and Fairy note card and tag set was shown on this blog. 

This blog features different artists and their great products.

Check out the blog here. 

Twitter background, Free personal templates

So I have been using twitter now for a couple months to promote and tweet with other twitter users. The journey so far has brought views to my Etsy shop and I have more and more followers each day. It really is a fun way to chat quickly with other people who have the same interests. 

Since I am not only using Twitter for personal use, but also for business and promoting purposes, I decided to personalize my background. Before changing my background, I first started researching how to do this on the internet. Many forums said to use photoshop, but I do not have photoshop because I have a Mac and I use the photo editing software that came with my computer. So I googled how to create one without using photoshop and came up with a few sites that have preloaded templates and ones that you can start from scratch. 

The site I used was http://www.mytweetspace.com/ and it was very easy to use. This site is great for a business twitter account because the main aspect of the background is a photo and information box. You get to upload an image, your logo, and choose a background template that matches. What I chose is pictured below. I also chose to have a purple border placed around my information box.

Once you choose the design aspect of the template, you get to add in all important text information including our e-mail, shop links, social networking links, and any other text that involves your business. The picture below shows the information that I added.

I am very happy with the finished product which is below and can be viewed at http://twitter.com/missjuliaart

and feel free to follow me for art updates and fun tweets.

 

There are many other sites that have free Twitter templates to use as a background. Some are...

http://tweetstyle.com/

http://freetwitterdesigner.com/

http://www.twitbacks.com/

http://www.twittergallery.com/

But if you google free twitter background you will come up with many sites to choose from.

Trick or Treat and a Halloween Party!

So I know that Halloween is over, but I just realized that I never posted anything about that night. My husband and I dressed up like 40's people. He is obsessed with this blue suit and would probably wear it on normal days if I let him. =)

We were home in Buffalo that weekend, so we passed candy out at my parents house. I was so disappointed though because we only got like 20 kids. It was kinda rainy and cold, but my parents neighborhood usually gets at least 100 kids. They just keep coming and we always run out of candy. My mother bought 10 bags this year, and we only went through maybe 2. 

I asked around a few of my friends if they got many kids, and they too only got a few. So I am not sure if it was the weather, which I doubt because it's Buffalo and we do not let weather spoil our fun. I think that it could have been because of the flu scare. They had it on the local new to be careful and cautious because Buffalo, NY does have a lot of swine flu cases. But other then that I am not sure why we had so little kids. 

We then went to a halloween party at my friend new house. We had a lot of fun and the food was good. They dressed up as Beetlejuice. And look at their puppy. His name is Gus Johnson and he didn't like his costume to much. 

Oh and look at those orbs following my friend up the stairs. Chris, my husband, took pictures all night and those same 2 orbs were near her the whole night. Spooky!