Thursday, December 16, 2004

Deck the Halls with Tons of Patterns....

Be careful what you wish for.... you just might get it.

I had given up on two of my designs being picked up by one of my distributors. After all, I’d sent the samples off in July and never heard a thing. Last Friday, my fax beeped and across came the order, which must be in the USA at its destination on the 28th of December. Yikes!! One of the designs was no problem because No Late Knight Snacking is already printed up, but Dream Sampler is one of the designs which I had only been printing out the covers myself for the chart packs. This works well for anything under 300 of a design because the cost per cover is about the same and I don’t have to carry the inventory around already paid for but waiting to sell. Luckily, the printer I work with was able to find some press time this week and I will hopefully have all the newly printed covers in hand by tomorrow at the latest to batch with the pages and stuff into bags. Since stuff with the chain stores also has to be boxed a certain way (100/box) I also ordered boxes to put them in since chart packs are bigger than the boxes I had made to hold leaflets a few years ago. (That was another learning curve and I will be using up that size box FOREVER!)

So as soon as school is out for the holidays, tomorrow, I am putting my family (along with some of the company we are expecting this weekend) to work so that this second pattern can ship out on Monday. I sent the other one on ahead last night with Purolator because I know how badly the holidays are going to muck up shipping deadlines.

I’ve also been totally enthralled with an illustration project that is certainly getting my hands back in the habit of using pen and pencil instead of needle to capture images. I should hear back from that client about the approval on the pencils tomorrow so that I can move on to adding colour. Yay!

My office looks pretty crowded with patterns waiting to be assembles, so I couldn’t resist the title of today’s blog. One of the hazards of a home based business is that your halls get decked (or blocked) with things other than holly and mistletoe... but next week it will be such fun to sleep in a bit!

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