maybe you’ve noticed something new on my website today…
finally, my online shop is ready! it took a long time but we wanted to make sure that everything works well. i really like the design. it’s clean and well-functioning. i hope it’s easy for you to look around.
you can read more about why i decided to open a shop on my “about this shop” page. the catalogue includes some of my original drawings, prints, postcards, posters, and handmade books and useless toys. i make all the handmade goods at home, drawing at the kitchen table and sewing my toys on the living room floor. everything for the shop is done from our second bedroom. the website was designed by my husband, paul. prints and postcards are made by local print shops so i can supervise them directly to make sure of the quality. all orders are packed by hand. i get to be my own boss and deal with people directly, without a mediator.
one of the final things i arranged for the shop was printing a lot of postcards. i’ve been selling my postcards at the fringe festival in saskatoon, and other art fairs, and they’ve been really popular. but those postcards were just color copies of my drawing images on nice white cardstock paper.
my new postcards are much nicer. the paper is thicker and the images have a glossy finish. for the first time, the back of the postcard is designed with the plastique monkey silhouette icon. it’s pretty cool — looks just like a real postcard. in my shop, there are sets of 6 postcards, featuring some of my drawings, my loud silence photographs (with the doctor and nurse dolls) and images from my spencer (amigurumi) storybook. as an opening special, all postcard sets are being shipped for free anywhere in the world.
i wanted to have my spencer book (the boring life of spencer, the ennui dog)ready to sell in my shop for the opening, but i’m still working on improving the design and the price. at art festivals and street fairs, i’ve been charging $85 CDN for one book, because i was paying so much for printing. at that price, some people bought it, but many more just read the whole thing (and brought their friends over to read it again), because they couldn’t afford to pay that much (i wouldn’t either!). the spencer book is always so popular that there’s line-ups to read it. i really enjoy watching people laughing so hard as they read it.
anyway, i’m hoping to have the book ready in the next couple of weeks. i’ll be putting the whole story up on this blog, so you won’t have to buy it to read it. in the meantime, i made a set of spencer book postcards, featuring pages from the book. you can look through them in my shop (there’s a slideshow).
my shop is just getting started. if you have any comments, questions or concerns, please let me know. i’d like to hear from you.
i hope your experience at my shop is pleasant and i hope you can find something you like.
IRASSHAIMASE! (welcome!)
