MaryLou's time2cre8

Happy birthday to me... happy birthday to me... happy birthday... Well, you get the idea. I'm a year older. It was painless, and I even got to pick out the restaurant for my birthday meal -- Red Lobster fit the bill just fine, and I snarfed down a platefull of lobster, crablegs, and shrimp. Yum yum.

I've been hanging out in the Etsy forums reading posts by a bunch of angry shopkeepers after the publication of the new Etsy Constitution. The biggest bones of contention are the elimination of the Vintage category, the limitations placed on selling Commercial Supplies, limitations placed on selling prints of artwork and/or digital images, and copying. The stance they initially took on copying was that it was 'okay' for one person to copy another's work as long as they didn't list more than three of the copied items and they gave credit to the originator. Good grief. Copyright lawyers were scrambling for their class-action lawsuit forms. The sellers of Vintage are all left out in the cold, and many of them mentioned that they had specifically contacted Etsy admin as recently as January and were told that selling vintage on the site was acceptable. Sellers of Commercial Supplies have been told they can only de-stash... but the number of listings per seller is now 100... personally, I could de-stash and list a few thousand items. Wonder how they're going to police that? It's just a sad state of affairs.

All that being said, I'm pretty heavily vested in the site now, with it on my business cards and all. And I just don't have the time or energy to try to move somewhere else. I've started to list a few things on eCrater (www.time2cre8.ecrater.com), but I'm not sure how much I'll move over there. One of the best things about eCrater is that there are NO FEES!!! And Google Checkout (the PayPal alternative) is free through the end of the year. So that's a nice way to experiment. I have a feeling they'll be getting a bunch of new business this week.

I've still been making some stuff. Specifically, some more little books. This time I decided to use some of the paper coasters I've filched from restaurants over the years and turn them into little accordian books. I think they're fun. Maybe not as much fun as the pointy-head guy, but fun nevertheless.