Photos of Sea Stars at Haystack Rock in Oregon: Now Available for Gifts

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!

Personalized Items with Photos of Purple and Orange Pansies

Every now and then I take the time to look through my photo archives. For an amateur photographer, the stash I've collected for myself is a little mind-boggling. It's one of the many reasons I decided to start putting my work on merchandise I can buy for myself or others, and you, too, can give as gifts when you like.

The first fun thing I did with a few of the shots featured here is put them on leggings. I realized one day that even though I've designed hundreds of pairs of leggings (print on demand makes it possible to design tons of things that only have to be made when someone is ready to buy them... whew!) almost none of them had photos on them. (And those that did were super-abstract and maybe a little weird for your average Jane. For example.) Back to my story. I'd been designing fairly abstract leggings for a little stretch there, so when I looked through the photos, I thought it would be good to find some that would create an abstract vibe when they were printed on leggings. I felt pretty good about what I came up with. There are 6 so far.

A few days ago I thought of those purple and orange pansies and all the shots I captured the day I took these pictures. I was leaving artist friend Phyllis Sharpe's house and she'd just bought these. Maybe she had planted some that day, if I remember correctly but I think several were still in flats. So I pulled out my camera and tried to capture them in different light. So in some ways they're just sort of ho-hum pictures of flowers. I mean. How many ways are there to shoot photos of flowers and make them really interesting? Well, some people can make those shots really sing but these are kinda nice too. I thought they would look good on cards, a water bottle, mousepad and phone case. I put the shot on a bunch of other things, too, but I've put just the things with template fields for personalization into a collection so far so that's what you'll see here.

As I mentioned, there are quite a few items printed with the photo featured in this second collection. If you're in my store and search "pansies" or even "purple and orange" or "purple and orange pansies" you'll see the other items too. What I'm learning while I work in Zazzle is that whenever possible, it seems to be recommended that you (you the Zazzle designer or, in this case, I) take things further and go ahead and add a template field with names or phrases all ready to go. I'm fascinated by this and have so very much to learn about what sells and what doesn't. There's been no rhyme or reason whatsoever to the things I've sold in the short time I've been at this, so I don't have enough personal data to go on yet. But I love the learning, and there's definitely plenty of that happening in this endeavor.

Why don't I post some of those individual item photos over here at the end, just for fun, then sign off and let you look. Enjoy!

My Photos of Banana Leaves on US Postage Stamps!

It's pretty exciting to tell you that I now design custom postage stamps. Hm. Well, yeah. Exciting is the right word. All told, I've designed more than 50 unique styles of stamps so far. But this post is about the ones mentioned in the title and seen in the photos. As of this writing, I've put 13 different photos of banana leaves that I've taken on US postage stamps. Yay me!

Incidentally, you can do it, too. (So yay you!) I mean, here's nothing about me that's so special that I have this secret, hidden trick. In fact, tons of people do it! Design their own postage stamps. Like so many of the other things I'm writing about these days (as in a hefty percentage of what you find on this website, in fact,) I discovered this nifty trick through Zazzle.

A couple of things to know if you decide you want some of these OR if you want to design your very own:

  • They're not cheap. I mean, when you buy custom stamps that I design or that someone else designs, or you design your own and buy them for yourself, the markup is pretty hefty. But of course it is! There's always a premium cost for a premium offering. Still, it's good to get that out of the way.
  • They have to be approved. Whereas most of the other designs I create on the Zazzle system allow me to use my own judgement and interpretation of their terms, postage stamps must be manually approved by an actual person who either works for or is a trained representative of the US postal service. I mention this because not only will you need to factor in a custom design timeline when you order some, but if you design your own, it's good to add a day or a few days to the estimated timeline if you're wanting some special stamps for a special occasion.

I have a collection of hundreds of photos I've shot that feature my honey's banana leaves and banana plants in general. And I've prepared quite a lot of them for this purpose - print on demand in general, and postage stamps specifically - but for now I've created this starter collection. Funny thing is, that stamp in the image at the very top is one I've sold twice now. Long before I ever even shared the link to my Zazzle store, I sold these stamps. In fact, this sheet of stamps were sold twice within the first week of my very first sales. Which I just find so interesting and fascinating. There's just no predicting what will and will not sell. But these did. So that's pretty cool. And they were purchased by someone I don't know... on the west coast, in fact.

I'm sure there's more to tell you but those are the basics. Sometimes I take a lot of photos. Quite often those photos have featured these gorgeous green leaves. And occasionally, I put them on items that are meant to be printed on merchandise. Including stamps. Feel free to get some anytime you like!