Journals from Vintage Book Covers at Bookjournals.com

Okay, I'm reblogging this for blatantly mercenary reasons as I want to win one of the journals, BUT this really IS a pretty cool idea. I stumbled on to Ex Libris Anonymous, and from thence to Bookjournals.com. This man takes old books and deconstructs them to make journals. And he finds cool stuff in the pages and preserves it on his blog for posterity: Doodles, dedications, love notes, mysteries that will never be solved.

Go check out both sites, the blog and the webstore.

Here are a couple of my faves.

Red & white checkered spice decals at SweetGalDecals.com

At a customer's request, I made up some red and white checkerboard spice jar decals and listed them at SweetGalDecals. I think I'll start mentioning it here when I list something new, just to get some incoming links. Traffic has been extremely slow over there lately.

Lulu's Dress Shop and ecwid.com

I put a little link box over there ======> to show you my new website, Lulu's Dress Shop, but never said anything about it. It's in progress; I'm slowly working on stocking the shelves.

I just have to blather a little about the shopping cart I am using. It's a widget by ecwid.com. These are the same people who developed X-Cart, which is a full-function cart that I use at Sweet Gal Decals, but this widget is such a cute little thing! 'Widget' is a perfect word for it. You build it on their site, plug the html into your page and boom, you have an ecommerce site with a shopping cart. Seriously, if I can do it, anybody can.

I also added a blog version, same stuff, just a different location. It's amazing, because I just had to insert the same widget and there all the stock is, in two locations! If someone buys something off the blog, it will disappear off the website, and vice versa. There's even supposed to be a way to load the widget on your Facebook Page, though I have not figured that one out yet.

If you are even pondering opening an ecommerce webstore I strongly recommend you check out ecwid. I love their philosophy that everything must be simple. In fact, they don't even have a manual for ecwid, because they figure if it needs a manual, it's already too complex. These are my kind of software developers.

And I'll say it again: IT'S FREE. They promise there will always be a free version, even when they move up to a more professional version.

I agree, they're cute, but...

Demand for my decals goes in waves. All of a sudden, these blue bunnies and bluebirds, which pretty much sat on the shelf for months, are hot. Can't make 'em fast enough. If I could figure out what sets off these buying trends, I'd be rich right now!

Shameless Plug: Sweet Gal Decals

I don't mention my website much on this blog, but more and more, I am seeing people telling the blogverse about their websites and it not being taken amiss. So here I go: I have had this business for about 5 years now, making reproduction waterslide decals with the permission of the largest decal company in US history. They are not cheap, as the process is rather costly, but they sure are fun.

Check me out at Sweet Gal Decals, won't you please?