It's such great fun to learn new things. Maybe especially when you weren't even setting out for a lesson at that particular time. Such was my experience when I went back to refresh a couple of my memories from some of my travel days in nights in Cannon Beach, Oregon a few years ago. We camped. In the rain, even! But we also got to see some of the most magnificent creatures at the base of Haystack Rock.
I'd thought of them for as long as I've had these photos in my files - and the memories that accompany them - as "starfish" because that's what they were always called! But I now know that they're called "sea stars" for such a simple, good reason: they are not, and never have been, fish! So there you have it. Science wins again.
Whatever you care to call them, they're beautiful and I had great fun putting my original photos onto a few of the products Zazzle offers for customization and personalization for our gift-giving needs.
One of the many things I love about designing print-on-demand items - and perhaps especially what I enjoy about creating designs for printing through Zazzle - is the seemingly-endless numbers of things I can do in this arena. (I'm leading to a specific point with this, if you give me another minute of patience.) Some days I want to walk down memory lane and pull out travel photos from this or that nostalgia-generating trip, and when my eye settles on a favorite, I might choose to design merchandise with that specific photo. Sometimes it's a set. Other days I love creating invitations and thank you cards. Or stamps. Or writing blog posts about some of the aforementioned products in this new blog. At still other times I know it's time to pause and create a brand new piece of digital artwork. And then there are the days I neither design artwork nor merchandise but instead create collections from designs I created quite a while back. There seems, in fact, to be a never-ending array of things one Can And Should Do when one is heading down the path of creating merchandise designs featuring their own artwork or photography.
I mentioned the point, back there at the beginning of the paragraph above. Remember that? Okay. Here it is. Sometimes I'm all gung ho in the middle of covering digital template surfaces with my images when I need to do something else. Like work on a Squarespace-based website for one of my clients, or have a training meeting with one of my collaborators. And sometimes? Sometimes I just get a different idea In The Middle Of Said Product Creation Session... and I forget to come back.
This happened, most definitely, with these sea star photo gifts. I have four or five photos that I thought were good enough to have printed on merchandise. But you'll notice from the collection that one or two of the images are MUCH more liberally represented in the samples. That is because I moved on before I'd created everything I possibly could have. Repetition is the name of the game in this industry. Also? I've written a fair amount about my own ADHD leanings. Repetition gets boring. Let's face it. It just does. Fortunately I can usually accomplish a fair amount of work with a single image before that time arrives. Still, if you see a hip flask, for example, with one of my photos of starfish but notice a different photo you like better and you'd like to have it on a hip flask instead? Please oh please do not hesitate to reach out with your special request. I'll be more than happy to put that other photo on a flask for your gift-giving needs. I may get around to it anyway, one day. But it's also possible I'll have moved on to working with a color photo of a peacock or of some of the banana leaves waving in the breeze in my front yard. So I always encourage your emails. I love to customize and it would be my pleasure to create something specific for you, if you don't see it in my offerings.
Hm. That was a long way around the point. Thanks for your patience. And go check out my Sea Star Collection!