Tax deduction for online sellers

Doing readings and researches... 

Don’t Miss Out: Often Missed Tax Deductions for Sellers

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2010/dont-miss-out-often-missed-tax-deductions-for-sellers/

Angel Policy

Have you heard of the Angel Policy? Some companies that manufacture stamps require you to get permission from them if you are to use their stamps on items that are to be sold. Some other companies are more "Angelic" and doesn't mind. 


It's good to have an idea who the angels are so you could buy their stamps without worrying about legal issues. 

Rubber Stamp Angel Company List A - I
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art60108.asp

Rubber Stamping Angel Company List H - Q
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art60111.asp

Rubber Stamp Company Listing R - S
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art60110.asp

Rubber Stamp Angel Companies List T - Z
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art60109.asp

Pricing your craft items

I'm afraid that this blog might includes a lot of sharing of links... but I want to share good reads!

Found an insightful and honest post about pricing crafts work. The writer mentioned the theoretical pricing model, the reality of pricing models of the majority of crafters, and the progression of your price model as you get more experienced.

http://whatthecraft.com/how-to-pricing/

Broken Glass

[Nerdy post warning]

I hoard beautiful things. From craft stores and daily life.

Yesterday we went to a welder's shop as the roll cage of the racecar needs to be relocated. There were 8 vehicles or so and one of them looked like Mater in the Pixar movie - Cars.

In front of the Mater there stood a broken windshield. My first face-to-face encounter with broken glass. I'd say the lines looked 3-dimensional (even though in maths line is considered 1-dimensional). It was so beautiful. The refraction reminded me of crystals/diamond but in broken glass there's something more than that. I believe that broken glass could be a great photography project (note to self).

Here's a web picture of broken glass from Google search.

Print your own washi paper - online tool

Found an online tool which allows one to print washi paper at home! If you have a laser printer at home it'll definitely be useful for you. Laser printers are more cost-effective than the ink ones.

1) Good for wrapping gifts.

2) washi origami paper DIY.

Somehow origami paper is not cheap in the states and when you buy a pack you're buying both the BEAUTIFUL patterns and the LESS BEAUTIFUL patterns.

Here's the link:
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/2004/list_45_1.html

Viscous bubble solution - interesting wrinkles

Accidental discovery! A few weeks ago I tried some homemade bubble recipes and made a bubble solution. After a fun afternoon the solution laid forgotten.

I looked at it yesterday and the surface is very interesting. The solution become so viscous and the surface carries a lot of wrinkles. The wrinkles remind me of making soup or heating milk in a pot. When it's almost done there's always a thin layer of wrinkled surface of hot soup/milk. Good to know that it could be re-produced a more permanent way! Would be fun to inject some air bubbles...

Belated Happy Valentine's Day

Non-crafty:

Went south the previous days. Winter condition was really bad for driving especially gigantic semi-trucks. Really appreciate those who needa work under such tough conditions to ensure that the roads are safe. ODOT, tolltruck drivers, semi-truck drivers (for delivering food to supermarkets hehe). We were stuck on our way back for a long time becoz of a spun out semi-truck, on a single-lane highway.

Lesson earned : fill up the gas tank while you're leaving for a remote city where there's nothing in between... Bad stuffs happen and you can't tell when will you be unfortunately stuck in the woods for 3 hours.. We didn't have enough gas to stay warm for 3 more hours in the cold + the drive back home.

Crafty/Artsy inspirations:

1) Stunned by the beauty when driving in windy snowy conditions in the dark. Look through the windshield the snowflakes are coming at you. If you stare at it for longer, they are like fireworks!! I gotta brainstorm something..

2) It's a wonderful thing that we humans have binocular visions. Our eyes is a camera. As long as our eyes are open we are looking at everything within our field of vision. If you just let everything fly by you quickly as if you're driving at 100 mph, nothing's gonna inspire you. If you're willing to take a seat, do nothing, just look at the same "field of vision" a little bit longer, you'll realize something. I have been pondering why the studies show that people with a messy desk are more likely to have creative thoughts. Probably they just have more stuffs to stare at, thus there's a higher probability of being inspired.

Online photo editor

Snow on the roof is melting! Bye icicles!

Found this free online editor. Something simple, free, and more advanced than MS Paint but not as complicated as photoshop.

http://pixlr.com/editor/

Aluminium foil greeting card - experiment time!

Another idea hit me today. Why can't we have Aluminium foil greeting cards? Back at high school I used to wrap my textbooks with wrapping paper or cellophane. Now the technique is useful again! 

1) Trim the Aluminium foil so it's slightly larger than the size of the card base. 

2) Wrap the foil around the card. Press firmly along the edge of the card so the foil stays.

3) Use embossing tool and some stencils, add the patterns you want! As an experiment I tried some hearts, bubbles and smiley. Be gentle with Aluminium foil though. 

It's a different kind of beauty when you have only one element in a card. What a wonderful discovery!

Seattle weekend

Spent a short trip in Seattle last two days. I wanted to visit the Asian Art Museum but time didn't permit. Went to the Bellevue Art Museum and it was a pleasant surprise! Gonna share the beautiful inspirations soon. :)

Aluminium foil origami FUN

Got so much snow!!! Wanna go out and make snowman!! [The end]

This idea hit me while playing with Aluminium chocolate wrap - can we do origami with Aluminium foil?? Last night I finally tried it hehe.

What tempted me is NOT about the silver color. It's about the soft metal properties of Aluminium. Paper is awesome but has its own stubbornness - such as if you fold a paper in half, the paper won't lie flat the way you want it to. On the contrary, Aluminium is like a tame doggy. You could make any shapes out of it!!

1) Here's what I started with - origami paper + Aluminium foil - both of same size.

My lesson learned is - the origami paper used for supporting the foil has to be strong enough. It can't be too thin or the whole thing would be too soft for origami.

2) Glue the two together. In this experiment I applied glue to the shinier side of the foil.

3) Then... do some origami!!

Here's the final product - camellia origami.  See picture below -
1) Crepe paper X thin origami paper
2) Fabric X thin origami paper
3) Aluminium X paper

I've made camellia origami using different materials. Then attempted to flatten them with a tap.

From left to right:
1) Aluminium-with-paper
2) Crunched aluminium foil
3) Aluminium foil
4) Chocolate wrap of aluminium

Here's the result. The foil strengthened by paper is still standing strong. I love how Aluminium and paper get along with each other.

I hope this opens up lot more projects for you! Feel free to share your experiments with me!

Scrap paper - 3D little decos

Good morning!! Snowing outside again! How I wish to go up to the mountain! Hehe.

Every time when I go to craftstore I get stuck in the sticker aisle for long. They're so good to look at! Peeking into infinity. Peeking into a black hole. But most of the time I grab nothing from that aisle coz the stickers aren't cheap...

Here's another use of punched out shapes - can glue them together and make them 3D!! Tiny and cute ornaments. Good for cards, or other projects you're working on.

It would be awesome if we could have a paper crafters group and we could order stickers in large amount altogether.. Do let me know if you've heard of any!

Scraps are awesome!

One good thing to do with paper scrap is - store them away and when you feel like procrastinating, punch them. I like circle and heart shaped punch the most. When time has come, they'll be very helpful. 

Came up with these tonight... so many friends got sick lately :( . The hearts are finally useful! Yay!

 

Greek letters

It is awesome we have so many cultures and languages on this planet. I've always found Greek alphabets mysterious and elegant. Whether standalone or in a mathematical expressions. What a lovely font to use as most of the alphabets resemble English! Imagine receiving a "Happy Birthday" card in Greek letters!

For lazy folks like me who don't wanna google up how to use Greek in MS Word :
Found this website - for typing greek with a normal US keyboard. After typing that in you can copy the greek letters into wordpad/MSWord and adjust size, color etc.

http://www.typegreek.com/

Scan N Cut - how to make the mat sticky again without replacement

A while back I stopped using my Scan N Cut because the mat wouldn't stick anymore. Those mats are not cheap so I searched online to find a workaround to either clean the mat or make it sticky again. Luckily found below blog - the author used Zig 2-way glue to bring her Cricut mat back to life! I tried the same to my Scan N Cut mat, and it worked too! The trick is - don't apply it too thick or it'll be too sticky and will leave some residue on the mat. The glue is really strong.

http://imperfectlybeautifulms.blogspot.com/2010/02/make-your-cricut-cutting-mat-sticky.html

Dry Embossing Stencil - DIY

Dry embossing stencils are not cheap and the patterns available in store aren't abundant. I'm gonna try making some following this tutorial from ehow.com . Will write about it soon. If it works, it would be worth the effort.

http://www.ehow.com/how_12070970_make-dry-embossing-templates.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Updates -

Tried it with a small circle punch and some cardstock scrap. It was not easy to fold the card in a way that the circles overlap perfectly in every fold. Might get challenging if the stencil you plan to create is more than a simple circle.

Shortcut - If you have a cutting machine, you could do the same by cutting out 8 rectangles with the circle inside it. Stack them and staple them. The alignment will be a piece of cake.

1% of improvement does matter!

Found this on livehacker. Worth reading for crafters as we're on our own and there're so many things that we could optimize, in order to reach our goal.
http://www.lifehacker.co.in/work/The-Value-of-Marginal-Gains/articleshow/29825208.cms

Quote: He explained it as the "1 percent margin for improvement in everything you do." His belief was that if you improved every area related to cycling by just 1 percent, then those small gainswould add up to remarkable improvement. They started by optimizing the things you might expect: the nutrition of riders, their weekly training program, the ergonomics of the bike seat, and the weight of the tires.

Note to self :
- Spend less time on social media
- Lift weights. Healthy body healthy mind.
- Be time-efficient when using computer for any work. Web-browsing could suck up time.
- Work on having a more organized workplace. (It's challenging but do-able)
- Plan ahead for the agenda of the day. Every morning. Make a list.
- Keep writing this blog. Persist!!!

:D

Hello world! Have been making little crafts since last summer. Didn't start out seriously just thinking that it is fun. But looking at how much fun I've been having from doing it over these months, I decided that it's time to treat it more seriously.

So here I am! Decided to start writing here so I could log down little stuffs and inspirations from daily life and share the techniques which I find useful. There're thousands of millions of blogs out there so I'm secretly hoping that someone will somehow click their way here!