When I found myself feeling way down low over the passing of my dog Tidbit I visited a local animal shelter to walk a dog. Little did I know then that a docile hound dog in a shelter kennel would become the sunshine of my life.
We choose the shelter dog adoption option! But of course, we hope that you shall too.
My shelter dog Valentino has an important message to share with you. We put it on a postcard so that you shall share it too!
By the way... The sun hanging on the wall above my dog Valentino on the sofa was a handmade gift to me from my son William. He welded it out of scrap iron.
Read more about the dogs who are, or have been, a bit o' sunshine in my heart and home at Dog Pawsitive Tidbits.
I am linking this article up with Noner Says for Share A Link Sunday, a blog hop for writers to share their writings. Come join us, won't you?
Cat Stevens can barely compare to the Christmas morning sunrise surprise my dog and I shared on our beach walk today. Christmas morning has broken but my decorative porcelain plate will hang around forevermore to commemorate this day, our first Christmas together.
Stormy weather of the week stepped aside to allow the heavens to burst into a beauty of a morning glory view. But of course, we captured it (along with the song) for you to enjoy too!
Years ago I had a large collection of decorative porcelain plates lining the ceilings of each room of my home. Alas, that was a lifetime ago and my collector plates are long gone. Of course, the memories served upon the designer plates is now held in a special place in my mind.
I recently began designing my line of decorator plate collectibles on Zazzle, a print on demand web site for buying and selling an array of custom-made products. Using my favorite pictures to create decorative porcelain plates for my home and yours is fun (as well as lucrative!)
Today's plate design is the image you now see as the background and header template for this blog, abitosunshine! I think my heaven-sent sunshine looks great no matter where it's found, don't you?
What can you do to earn extra income with those fabulous photos of yours? Why, you can set up a Zazzle store!
Using your own photos and graphic design, you can create products to sell to family, friends, and the public. Zazzle is what is known as a print on demand company, which basically means that once you have created your product designs and listed them for sale, Zazzle will print the product when a customer orders it, then ship the item to the customer, and you reap the rewards for the sale via commissions as a Zazzle Associate.
I learned about Zazzle from one of the best - Sandyspider - now, I share knowledge learned over the years with you.
I highly recommend a good photo editing program. I use COREL Paint Shop Pro (not free, but affordable.) Many of my graphic designer peers use Adobe Photoshop.
I use Corel PSP to enhance my own photos--to crop, resize, increase resolution, and more and I use Corel to add text to my images instead of using the text gadget on Zazzle to add to an image once uploaded to a product. Believe me, Corel offers me many more options for image and text editing than any free program I tried in my early graphic designing days.
Utilize information from knowledgeable resources. I found a great article to help you with the task of setting up shop at Zazzle: How To Set Up Your Zazzle Store
Step 3 Create and Sell on Zazzle
Create and post your first Zazzle product for sale. Just do it!
Video Tutorial for Adding Products to your Zazzle Store
Zazzle Tips
I design for each product separately making sure my image is sized to fit the product. I do NOT use the 'Quick Create' option. The reason for this is I do not want my designs cut off or resized or reshaped to many products of many different sizes and shapes—they will NOT always look right and that means dissatisfied customers, returns, and less earnings for me!
Use your Zazzle Associate ID (found via your Zazzle account dashboard) to promote all pages and products on the Zazzle website, your own as well as those of others. Yes! You do earn a commission on referral sales for promoting the work of others—IF you remember to use your associate ID.
Discombobulation Design
On an evening walk at the beach with my dog Valentino, a storm was brewing. My thoughts, as well as the dog's, seemed a bit discombobulated (hence the name of my design) and as I was snapping pictures of the sunset over the pier my jittery Valentino jumped, knocking the cell phone camera out of my hand as I snapped the photo. I recovered and immediately took another picture.
Once home from my beach walk, I downloaded my pictures from my phone and went to work on creating this pillow on Zazzle. Basically, all I did was crop the images to be squared, re-sized them to the product guidelines for resolution and pixel size, and created my discombobulation design!
