all things girls can tell

the coming of spring (+ taxes)

 

it's been a long week of plowing through the part of working for yourself that every artist dreads most: tax time. i'm pretty organized (i do draw those kind of obsessive diagrams for a living after all), but it's still an uphill battle. gathering all the information, organizing it, crunching some numbers, figuring out which way is up, determining if the actual filing is something i can tackle myselfand then actually taking the last step and (eek!) filing. this year has definitely been a learning process, so hopefully i'll make it through to improve upon the whole thing next year.

on the bright side, i've taken a come up for air from the data entry / mountains of invoices + receipts just often enough to list some of the new work you got a glimpse of in my recent sneak peek in the online shops. so you can now find the lovely new tea set, pots and pans, and terrarium diagrams on floursack towels at girlscantell on supermarket, etsy and, of course, in the official girlscantell shop.

and, as a secret bonus for all you sweet blog readers, now through sunday (march14), you can use the code "SPRINGPLEASE" at checkout in the official shop to receive 25% off your entire order! enjoy!

sneak peek! new designs!

 

here's a little preview of what's to come!
new designs will be posted this week...
sign up for the super sweet girlscantell newsletter for deals, specials and more!

 

super awesome surprise gifts!

 

sometimes it's fun having friends in far away places. while it's sad when you don't get to see these friends as often as you really should, it just makes totally unexpected gifts in the mail and the few-and-far between visits even better. an old colleague of mine totally caught me off-guard the other day when i opened a sizable, padded envelope and found a crazy fun present.

thanks, lauren! only YOU can be super awesome! (this outstanding print is the work of the one and only matty8080. find his other work here.)

 

ps. if you have a moment, my friend, marisa's, blog, food in jars, has had the honor of being nominated by saveur magazine (fancy, i know!) if you love the canning diagram in my line, you have none other than marisa to thank, so go vote for her! it's quick and painless, i promise!

the photo above is, of course, marisa's.

super inspiration

 

every once in a while, someone sends me a little tidbit that i absolutely adore. like, head over heels can't stop flipping back to look at it / want to just become absorbed into whatever little world i've just discovered.

lately, that inspiration came from a link sent by my good friend, kellbot. from adam voorhes photography, it's kind of the photographic version of the type of visual representation i'm completely enamored of. go take a look!

moving day is near!

 

hello, bloggity friends! thanks so much for your patience - i know i've been posting somewhat sporatically lately, and for that, i apologize. hopefully things will be back to normal some time next week. to keep you all in the loop, as you may know, i've been remodeling the tiny bathroom in my house (almost done! so close!) and now that the project is finally nearing an end, tomorrow i'll be moving back into my little house. yay!

long time readers (well, hello, there!) might recognize my little house from photos (of which there are lots!). my orange living room (in an older photo, above, and i swear i didn't intentionally paint it etsy orange) will probably once again make an appearance here, time and again. what i'm so very excited about is blogging my re-adventures in decorating the great little spaces of my home! i'll be sure to show you all the new and exciting decorating i do (and, of course, all the great little nooks i've always loved).

i figure it's only appropriate for a lady as obsessive about housewares as i am to give you a little sneak peek into my own little place from time to time. so wish me some (much needed! we still have lots of snow!) luck on my move tomorrow!

the view from here

 

this morning, i got up early (well, early for a monday when you're self employed and therefore dictate your own schedule), got dressed, played with janie dog for a little while, put on my clunky boots, then quickly made my way out the door.

i finally got my new studio workspace (mostly) set up for business on friday afternoon - i was so excited to get in and get to work. so excited that the slushy snow from the 28.5 inches (!) that fell over the weekend and that the great cafe i was hoping to grab a cup of coffee from on my way was closed barely bothered me.

so here i am at my desk and it's really lovely. everything has that great 'fresh start' feeling, where productivity comes super naturally. so i thought i'd share my new view, and mention that i've been hard at work on some great new springtime designs (to counter balance all that snow!). i'll share them here soon, as well.

 

best tip: establishing genuine relationships

 

people often ask what the trick is to supporting yourself through a small creative business (or, we'll pretend that's what they're asking when they gawk "you can make a living doing that?" when i mention what i do for a living...).  while there is, of course, no magic tip or trick to make it easy. there are simple things you can do to make things go as smoothly as possible.

the first would be to establish genuine relationships. this probably applies not only to making a living through your handmade art or what-have-you, but also just to, you know, life in general (but i won't claim to be any expert on the matter of "life in general", so i'll stick to blogging what i know...)

• customers - because without them, cheesy as it might sound, you don't have a business. this might sound obvious, but i think people forget this sometimes. so be real. be relate-able. be honest. give them your best. it'll pay off.
• 'employees' - you might not have people on the payroll (dream as you will), but it probably takes more than you to make your business work. the people who make your venues run, who manage the boutiques or shops that carry your work, the bloggers who feature your products... it's really important to not only communicate well with these people, but being consistently easy to work with, helpful, useful and just plain friendly can be the most important thing you do for your business.
• the 'competition' - the truth is, you don't have 'competition' unless you decide those other sellers are your enemies instead of your friends. which is just silly. be consistently honest, open, original and level-headed and things will fall into place. share something you learned with another seller who asks your advice or when you fall in love with someone's work, let them know - no one gets tired of hearing that people like what they do. these are the seemingly casual relationships that not only make work more fun, they really add up to more than the sum of their pieces.

the wise and witty conan o'brien said it best when he mentioned that if you're kind and work hard,amazing things will happen. truer words couldn't be spoken of succeeding in handmade business.

tags by place

 

mid-printing for a couple wholesale orders i recently shipped, i realized i was running dangerously low on hang tags (do they count as hang tags if they don't really hang? they just sort of lay on top of most of my work... lay tags?). luckily i remembered that my friend and studio-neighbor, jeff, prints all kinds of beautiful things on his fancy schmancy photo printers, and so i whipped together a new tag design and we printed them up. 

 

i'd always wanted to customize tags for a few of the fun places that sell my work, so i was incredibly pleased with the results. yay!

super poppies!

 

surely you've seen some of your favorite artisans and craftistas begging your vote for the 2010 poppy awards in the past few weeks. poppytalk handmade has assembled several ballots full of outstanding talent, and girlscantell is proud to have been nominated for the "favourite textiles" category. yay!

so, you know the drill, loves - click here and vote for girlscantell. then be sure to pass the link on to your friends and family through facebook, twitter, email, etc. and tell them to vote for girlscantell! voting lasts until this friday, january 29, at midnight.

if girlscantell wins a poppy, i'll post a special victory sale (which means you all win, really!) so get to voting!

close to home

 

my neighbor and friend, leslianna, has decided to embark on a pretty fun project for this month - for all of january, she's attempting to only eat food that she's purchased in our neighborhood. it's an effort to not only support the countless corner stores and several new restaurants throughout our neighborhood, but also a method of really getting to know all the resources available where we live. it's kind of amazing the wide range of things you can pick up here.

our neighborhood, newbold, is in philadelphia, of course, between broad and 18th st., south of washington avenue and north of snyder. you can read all about her culinary adventures in newbold here!

(the photo above i swiped from another neighbor, pineapplepalace on flickr, is our friends, sam + andrew, enjoying the best indonesian food ever, which happens to be one block from my house, at hardena)