Shamrock with Knotted Background plus What Happens When You Spend Too Much Time on Etsy

note: copyright watermarks do not appear in actual image.

I was uploading the above image on Etsy last night after a full, exhausting day. It is a greeting card on off white, vanilla colored card stock. Then I went to bed. This is what happened:

I dreamt that Etsy charged me $85 to upload the image of the shamrock. I contacted them on the phone and said: "My understanding is that a listing is 20 cents, not 85 dollars!"

The woman on the phone told me that there was nothing she could do and that I needed to talk to my bank representative. So I waited in line at the bank and finally talked to a teller. I was passed off to a number of bank employeees. Every time I was passed off, I got more and more angry (as if they were doing it on purpose to make my life miserable... which is about how I feel about banks these days, especially the ones that have been bailed out, that they create circumstances to keep/make the general populace in debt in any possible way, especially through deregulation and through convincing the government that they are too big to fail).

Finally when I got to an employee that could give me some answers (an employee in a tight business suit... it was so tight, in fact, that it hugged her knees together so that she couldn't move them apart at all: not even sit in a natural way, but off to one side). She got on her computer and told me that the reason that the listing was 85 dollars was because I had uploaded a huge picture.

"But, it's a greeting card! And I can't make 85 dollars on a greeting card! I just wouldn't upload such a huge image when the product itself is so small!"

And then she turned her monitor around to show me. Just one pixel of the image took up the whole screen and you had to scroll like mad to see the whole image. In fact, you couldn't see that it was a shamrock at all because all you saw was one huge pixel after another.

Of course, I was laughing when I awoke and so was everyone else in my life. "That'll cost you at least $1,000 in postage to send that shamrock!" someone said. "Also, you'll need a tractor trailer truck to move that shamrock!"

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)

My Etsy on-line store and Artfire on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby

Wedding and Anniversary Custom Art Archival Print with Two Trees and Two Doves

Note: the copyright watermarks do not appear in the actual art. You may have to zoom in to see what it really looks like.

This is a piece I have been slowly working on during my phase of painting very detailed pieces. The detailed pieces are still not completed, but I managed to complete this one.

It is a series of custom prints that I am working on just for Etsy. I had been browsing the site one night and saw a number of tree and dove art pieces for weddings and anniversaries and most were stark graphic depictions in 2 - 3 colors. I thought I'd try a more painterly approach and see what happened. The sky is actually painted seperately from everything else because I wanted to try a number of sky colors. I'll be posting those versions soon in the same place.

The piece is indeed up in my Etsy shop here. I notice that it is getting more views than usual, so maybe Etsy is a wedding store? A place where people buy gifts? Who knows. It's my first on-line store experience aside from CD stores and my website store and I'm still trying to figure out who the community is.

I have been sick with the flu for awhile… huge necessary detour… and this art piece seemed like a good one to take a chance on as my fever was diminishing (with a few symptoms lingering). I just didn't feel comfortable delving into pieces that are taking a long time to design and complete and where a wrong move could derail months of work.

It's not a masterpiece (as so many gifty things aren't), but something that may have appeal in that community.

My Website

Music MYSPACE (hear clips)
My Etsy on-line store and Artfire on-line store for purchasing some of my CDs and some of my art

My band site: Saratoga Faire

My Renaissance band MYSPACE: The Spirites Consort (hear clips)

Purchasing our Saratoga Faire CD on CD Baby