I was having so much fun with the Gocco the other day that I didn’t want to stop with the inclusion cards, so I made some folded cards using a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge that I took a couple of years ago and converted into black and white line art.

It might go up on Etsy, but not yet. One thing I realized a few weeks ago during the list-something-every-day experiment is that you have to list frequently in every category you want to sell in, because otherwise you’re depending on someone looking at (for example) books to look at your store to buy your cards. So I took down the few gift card/tag postings that I had, because listing something priced at $3.50 multiple times at $0.20 per listing cost more than I would make from the item. I think I need a few more card styles before I start listing in a second category.

You’re probably sick of hearing about my Etsy store experiences by now, but indulge me just a little longer and join me in celebrating the week when the number of sales surpassed the number of items in stock. In fact, I’m now faced with a problem I didn’t consider when I first began selling three months ago: I’m running out of stock!

But instead of making new books, today I’ve been enjoying my newly laid out workspace and playing with my Gocco printer. I sold my old desk on Craigslist this week, and now my studio has just one desk, the giant paper cart, my comfy chaise, and a small drawer unit that I’m using as a side table for the chaise. The middle of the room is a large open area where I can spread stuff out on the floor. The paper cart has enough space to not only leave the paper cutter up there, but to have a workspace beside it, so I set up the Gocco printer there and was able to leave the computer and other works in progress on my desk. When I had two desks in here I usually just had paper stacked on the second desk, so it wasn’t a usable workspace. This is very happy-making!

I designed business cards today for my Etsy store and ordered a set from Vista Print. What I liked about Vista Print: they had an Illustrator template that I could download to ensure that the resolution, size, and printable area were all set correctly; their price, at $19.99 for 250 cards, seemed about right; and I’ve found a few people who ordered from them and were happy with the results. What I didn’t like: being forced to go through seven screens of upselling during the checkout process. No, I don’t want address labels, note cards, magazine subscriptions, pens, $25 from Google, or any of the other items they were hawking—good grief! I almost went elsewhere. But when I finally got to the last checkout page, there was a field for a Promo Code, which gave me the idea to Google for “vista print promo code” and led me to this rather old blog page which still had valid links to promotional deals on the site. So instead of $25.73 with shipping, my order came to $9.73. The moral of this story: the internet is your friend.

The other exciting thing that happened this week is that my new paper cart arrived yesterday—all 136 pounds of it. I bought the large one, so the shelves are large enough to hold 23″ by 35″ sheets of Mohawk Superfine, rolls of book cloth, full sheets of book board, weights and other tools, AND my giant Kutrimmer paper cutter on top, where it’s usable, instead of on the floor, buried under weights and other tools.

I also finished off some new Coptic-bound journals, the first of which (shown above) is now available in my Etsy store. The remainder will be going up over the next couple of weeks. I’ve now gone through almost all of the prepared sections of paper I had on hand a month ago: they’ve turned into 15 books. Wow!