All Things Littleput

12,000 sales- lets party!!!!!! :D (or at least have a give away!)

Yay friends and fans and customers of Littleput I reached an amazing milestone this week with my 12,000th sale!!!  I am thrilled!!

To celebrate this milestone and the launch of my newest and most favorite product, the photograph banners I am doing a BUY ONE (of ANYTHING) get TWO Banners FOR FREEE Sale. Yes darlings, buy yourself a block or two,  a set of accordion books or any other item from my shop and get your choice of ANY TWO BANNERS, for free! Simply check out the item(s) you want to pay for and leave names of the banners you want in comments and I'll include them with your order, I'll even cover the cost of shipping them!  Give Away lasts until this Sunday Nov 7- banners last until they are g.o.n.e.  :D

Easy peasy?

I hope so!

Thank you all customers and fans for your support over the years, I hope as I continue to grow as an artist you continue to enjoy what I do! Love, Ryan

12, until 12,000...

Today is the day that I do milestone math. I just realized that in 12 sales, I will have sold, 12,000 things on Etsy.com. That is pretty amazing for lil' old me :) And I am gratefully amazed!

I am thinking of some super giveaway amazing sale, I must after all, thank you, my customers, and celebrate with a littleput of fan fare :)

Stay tuned, I've got a few joyful tricks up my sleeve!

Summit. Of. Awesome!

Tomorrow I will (yay) be teaching an awesome quick workshop on pricing, product development and branding with my good friend and mentor, Marlo Miyashiro of Creative Arts Consulting.

The class will be LIVE in the Etsy Virtual Labs at 3:45 pst for all to see. 

The Summit is at Portlands Awesome Kennedy School and I am super excited to be a part of an event with such a cool name! If you want to know more, visit their web page, at Hello Craft. or tune in to the labs. Yay, yikes, yay!   

Wish me luck and happy branding all :)

Playing with TTV. (yes I should be working, but I guess this is-ish) :)

Portland's most famous bridge- yay!

The end. :)

  

Busy weeeeeeeeeeeek!

Today marks the start of a very chaotic week.  And since I am feeling busy and I have a lot of new readers I thought I'd use this time to share my older Craftypod podcasts with you. 

This first one:  Marketing your Art 

is where I talk about branding and selling on Etsy. Its full of tips and tricks and hopefully some very good advice. Thanks so much to Sister Diane for making me sound like a champion!

Enjoy!

This is what it looks like on my desk today...

because next weekend is Crafty Wonderland, one of Portland's biggest, coolest, hippest shows. It is also my first time attending so as these things go, I am feeling a little bit frazzled; What do I make? What do I bring? What will sell?  What is redundant?   

Since I don't exactly know what to make, I've just decided to make everything. So my desk is a mess, my floor is a mess and my fingerthe arth coverth wif varnif.  :O)  

I feel a little overwhelmed but lucky for me I have good friends who understand this chaos and Lea stopped by today for a bit to lend a helping hand. (That desk mess, all her :) Kidding!)   

And now, back to work I go. 7 days until count down, and you think my desk is messy now... :)

Have a great weekend all!

ps. Thanks Lea, I actually feel almost ahead of the game now!

Achoo!!!

I don't know if you know this or not but the self employed are not allowed to be sick.  

I know that my cold doesn't know this and it came anyhow.  

Luckily, I survived.  :)

But it put me back a week in orders and other things and now there is a strong sense of overwhelmedness and there isn't enough coffee to make up for it.

Questions, 1 and 2.

1. What do you do when you are sick and can't work?  

2. What do you do when you feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start?

If you have a week I can borrow, that'd be great :)

The Making of 148 accordion books (in pictures)

 
Wedding season is ON!  Which means wedding favor season is hopping in my shop too!  

This week I put together 148 Littleput Accordion Books. for weddings and other sorts of things. These little hand folded accordion books were the inception of my business and the reason my business name is Littleput Books.  I took some photos to document the process, enjoy...

First cut everything to size...

Then glue 294 pieces of Japanese washi to 294 cuts of mat mat board. Be sure to have something to watch or listen to, this takes a while.  Also, have some coffee on hand, you're going to need it. :)
Make a dress for your scissors.. no wait, just keep peeling off the little triangles and keep going.

Until you have a ridiculously useless and incredibly beautiful mini-scrap washi sticker pile.  
Stack up all the 294 pieces of washi covered mat board and count.  All there!  √

Take a jelly bean break!  You deserve it!

Now hand fold 148 pieces of 16" paper, into a 1 inch accordion. One sheet at a time.

(tick tock tick tock...)

Halfway there! Celebrate with more Jelly Beans!

Now stop!  (This is a three day process, so don't try and over do it.)

Phew, the hardest part is finished- 148 hand-folded pieces of paper for 148 hand made accordion books, halfway done!

Next.  Glue the insides of the accordion books to the outsides of the accordion books. One at a time.  Make sure they are centered or you'll have to start all over again...

 

Find many boxes and things to set them in so the glue can dry. 

Once they are dry, wrap each in a complimenting silk ribbon (make sure you use new scissors, those glue ones won't cut anything, ever again... :) )

And you're done!  148 accordion books 3 days to make and hopefully a handful of very happy brides!  Lastly, use the remaining jellybeans to bribe your son to sweep the floor and go take a nap...

The end!

 

   

Spring, break!

So, the thing about being a full time self employed person and a mom, is that things tend to sneak up on you (especially the mom stuff).  What snuck up on me was the fact that Miles had 2 solid weeks off for Spring break. Lucky for us I know people who have lots of airline miles & live in gorgeous places.

 
So with very little planning and even less notice, we took off to visit the grandparents- This little place above is one of the many homes I lived in as a child. Yes, it is in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. 11 miles from the nearest house to be exact.

You have to hike down an amazingly steep hill to get there and (of course) hike back up it to leave.  There is no phone, no internet and only solar electricity. You bring in what you need and carry out everything you didn't use.  It is quiet, riddled with mice and incredibly private (isolated?).

But the view is rather stunning.  :)  If you can believe, I spent 3 solid days with no iphone and no internet. It was a nice break from my everything online life but I am glad to return to electricity and filtered water.

I am currently all dialed in at my mothers house in the small coastal town of Gualala, yes, Gualala.  Say it, c'mon, you know you want to, Gua-la-la.  :)

We arrived late yesterday, after climbing out from the wild and now I am all plugged in and raring to go :)  I don't have many pictures of here yet but I'll be sure to post them when I do.  Oh wait, here is one:

This is the road from grandparent one's house to grandparent twos.  For a spur of the moment spring break, we couldn't have done much better.

Hope all of you are having an amazing tuesday!  I've got some great posts in the works. It's incredible how much thinking you can do when you can't go online :)

Peace!

 

Away~

Hey all!

I'm gone :D

Sorry to up and jump ship while things were just heating up J  But Miles has two lovely weeks off from school so we’ve left Portland and are on a little “us time” adventure. 

I am headed into the internet-less abyss for a few days so please excuse the closed shop and blog absence.  Have a great Easter and stay tuned, there is a lot to cover when I get back. (Monday-ish)

See you all soon!

Ryan *I’m guessing you know my gender by now… :D

Ps!  A big lip smacking thank you to everyone who answered my questions below.