Happy Birthday Blog!

Happy Birthday to my blog ! It was on this day 1 year ago i decided to create this blog and wrote my first post. I was hoping to write an incredibly witty and meaniful post on this day 1year later, the reality is i have a bad head cold which makes even the simplest tasks seem like climbing mount everest and i have 2 young boys to contend with who also have colds and a bout of conjunctivitis, and who are pulling at my leg and chatting away at me as i type. So, please to forgive me, i hope this post makes sense.

I will however, on this momentus occasion give myself a pat on the back for still being here a year later :) It hasnt felt like a year at all and I throughly enjoy hearing from my readers from all around the world when they come to visit. What i like most about it is i can read about their lives and struggles in life and art and find parallels in my own world which helps me find my way and progress to the next stage.

One of the goals of starting my blog was simply to keep a record of my artworks for myself and share it with others. I was hoping in keeping a blog would remind me of mistakes and keep pushing me forward. I think it has definitely done that and much more and i am very happy to see how far i have come in a year. I feel like my artwork has improved as has my marketing and networking skills and i feel like i am on the way to at least earn a small income from my art which was also one of my goals in order to be a stay at home mum with my boys.

So a big Thankyou to all my regular blog readers for supporting me know matter how long you have known me i hope you keep coming back. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

I will sign this post with this week's weekly smudge while i am here.

As per my previous post today Keeping a Track of your Artwork i have been thinking and planning alot lately about becoming a professional artist. By professional i just mean creating art to sell rather than just have it for display in my own house.
So in thinking about this i looked into getting various materials printed for self promotion one of these being stickers. (i bought some little bags for people to carry their cards/ artworks away in these were just purple and brown paper bags) i wanted to include some stickers on them i also wanted stickers i could use for various other promotional uses.

I looked around for a basically short run cheap sticker option all of the ones i looked up in Australia turned out just to be too expensive for what i wanted as they only did massive runs like 1000 plus.

Then i came across this link from a blog somewhere (Apologies if it was a readers' blog but i cant just remember where i got the link from)
Moo.com and on careful consideration (shipping is ALWAYS a major issue to australia) i decided to go with getting some Moo stickers. Left are some of my designs.

It only turned out to be $16- AU to get printed and shipped and for 90 stickers that price point didnt look too bad. Designs were of my choice so i could vary the artwork i choose, I added my url to the sticker and wham bam there you go a nice little promotional sticker. :) The website was easy to use and i would definately reccommend it for people looking for this type of option.
Here is the link for the stickers book, but they also have a range of notecards and other printing options.

Note: If you decided to do this yourself you may want to make sure you add your url and your name well inside the center of the sticker as to make sure it doesn't get cut off in the trimming and edges.