January 9, 2012

I Never Hated Tim Tebow

But I also don’t associate his success with my religious beliefs, ya know? Nice game yesterday young man. Had to get that out…and I have so much more to talk about. Like how grateful I am to all of my friends and customers for the phenomenal success my online shops and my offline sales had this past holiday season. And how my first Jamila Henna experience went ( I love it BTW). And of course there will be a rah rah lets get this 2012 party started right post. But all that will be after I finally finish telling you why I quit network marketing, and why I will probably never go back, and also why that shouldn’t affect your decision one way or the other.

Unfortunately before I can get to writing blog posts I have to make some more character hats for the Homegrown Decatur store (it’s at 100 Church Street in Decatur Ga, right next to the Marta station) and finish working on the latest additions to my womens (and sometimes mens) felted hats collections.

While you are waiting pop over to niseylee.etsy.com and take 20% off any item (even if it’s already on sale) with coupon code FBFRIENDS.

Busy is good!

December 7, 2011

How a Cardboard Box, a Tripod, and a Digital Camera Made a Huge Improvement in My life

The pictures on my Etsy site were what my son would probably characterize as “meh”. I was aware of this problem for a long time, but didn’t think that I had enough photography know how to make a difference. After reading an Etsy Success newsletter about improving shop photos, I scoured the internet for ideas on light boxes, and white lighting and a bunch of other stuff that I have since forgotten. I learned that:

  1. a white shower curtain placed over  a window  with sunlight streaming through would create nice photos
  2. cropping an image greatly improves the look
  3. a (inexpensive) digital camera and a $15  tripod are a necessity – good pictures require a steady hand and u never realize how shaky yours is until you compare the two versions of your pictures
  4. what a difference a cardboard box can make (thanks to my DH the Woodchuck)

I have had some trouble with lighting still and believe I need better /different bulbs. Mostly I just use my room lighting (I have a lot of overhead lights in my studio).

Now for some examples.

Gray Fedora Before

This fedora is not dark gray

Gray Fedora after

Wow, what a difference

Multicolor cap

Too light, too bright,not focused and way too much going on in the background

multicolor cap after

Now you can see the colors in the cap, the design etc

colorful hat before

I used to think this was a great picture

colorful hat and scarf after

Now I know better

To have good pictures, one must take good pictures- lots and lots of them. I take 10 to 20 pictures of each item even though I only need 5 or 6 for my Etsy and Artfire shop. I use Picnik.com to crop and correct my photos- I don’t have an account or premium membership but I’m thinking about it since I’m on there just about every other night.
I learned how to  make the lightbox :

From Strobist and also Darren Rowse although I didn’t know he was a photographer did u? This is one I have not done but may do a large version of because I want to photograph larger items. I also watched quite a few YouTube videos – it;’s true almost everything you want to know about anything is on the interwebz already:)

Now to fix the pictures on my Artfire site….

 

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December 7, 2011

Now Let Me Make This Clear: FREE SHIPPING all week in my ETSY Shop

For some odd reason, folks just love the idea of free shipping – even more than  a 10, 20 or 30% discount!
But what I need to make clear is that when I say FREE SHIPPING, I don’t mean that I will wrap your package in brown paper and ship it media mail on a slow boat through China {True story, I ordered a book from someone in California and it took a month to arrive! I’m assuming that it went through China}.

Priority Mail

FREE SHIPPING VIA Priority Mail

Free or not all of my items ship Priority Mail, sure it costs more , but it’s fast, I can track your package easily, and gosh darn it – you are worth it.
So head on over to niseylee.etsy.com and get in on this FREE SHIPPING promo before Saturday.

Once your order has gone through look for an email from me offering you 35% off all items in the store (if you do it fast you also get the free shipping on top of your deep discount).
What are you waiting for? Christmas?

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November 29, 2011

Here’s What You Should Do

Why is it that people who have no business, are not successful in business, and/or don’t know anything about your business, why is it that these people feel that they are qualified to tell you what you “should” do?
They make me so mad that I take some of their advice and it sometimes works.

November 2, 2011

Now Faith is the Substance of Things Hoped For, the Evidence of Things Not Seen

I have two friends who are “going through it ” right now and I wanted to re-post this for them, it’s so important that we keep the faith yet it’s the first thing that we lose.

Someone reviewed my site on Linkreferral and said “I thought this was a make money blog”.  I’m not quite sure what a make money blog should do, but I know that I want my readers to leave my site feeling a little better, a little smarter and a little more inspired than when they arrived. I also know that you can make a little money by dibbling and dabbling in things, but persistency, consistency and the right mindset are going to make you a lot of money (and it won’t take 40 years of trying). So lets talk some more about faith; raise your hand if you think that Barack Obama is the POTUS because he “caught a break” or that Bill Gates is the richest man in the world because he “got lucky”, I suppose you also think that Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” was just words on paper….hmmm

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen – Hebrews 11:1“

What do the three men I mentioned have in common? They believed in something that:

  1. They could not see
  2. They had never seen
  3. No one in the entire world had ever seen

Yet here I am, a black woman, living in the boonies in the state of Georgia and I am not afraid, because Martin Luther King had a dream “that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”  And he dreamed it long enough and hard enough and passed it on to millions of people, and what none of them could even begin to  imagine back then, has  actually come to pass.

**Do you think that maybe some people thought that Bill Gates was crazy for dropping out of Harvard ( I mean it’s Harvard, people would kill to get in and he dropped out), and crazier still for thinking that we needed a computer on every desk ( to do what? our  math homework?). Do you think he might have had a naysayer or two or three?  Lots of people probably thought he wouldn’t amount to much, well he showed them didn’t he? Because here I sit in an easy chair portable computer in my lap, no wires,  communicating with people all across the globe.

Now even I thought Barack Obama was on a fools mission, but after I heard him speak a few times, I knew ( and I told my husband, so ask him cause I ain’t making this up) that this guy had read a personal development book or two, and I knew that he knew that to be successful you have to believe it before you see it.  I think we could all see that this man really believed it, and after a while he had a lot of people seeing and believing right along with him; and here we are with the first African-American POTUS ever.

*Faith is the place where each of these men of vision stood firm in their expectations while they proved to the entire world that which (even) they could not actually see.

What are your expectations? Whether you’re expecting to succeed or expecting to fail, chances are you will. As surely as the telephone was seeking Alexander Graham Bell and the light bulb was seeking Thomas Edison – opportunity is seeking you, but it won’t matter if you can’t see it.

Faith is where you should stand while you expect to make more money in a short period of time than you have ever made in a long period of time, even though your friends and family call you constantly asking “How’s that business of yours going?” and then they make a remark like “I guess I’ll get in it when I see you start making some real money” and then they go join someone else’s business, because  you would never lie to your family but a stranger would – but you’re not bitter, cause you’ve got faith and a future that you can actually see.

* I learned this from Myron Golden and it was so powerful that I just never forgot it.

**And yes I should mention Steve Jobs somewhere in here too, so here ya go visionary Apple guy who brought us the  Iphone, Macs (my first PC experience  back in college actually), and may have had some of his ideas pilfered (I dunno for sure).

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November 2, 2011

What’s The Rush? We’re All Going To Die

It seems as if I am always busy. I mean my entire life I’ve spent running and gunning, setting goals and trying to achieve them. I’m so much of…something…that I can’t even enjoy a vacation properly because I am always certain that there is some place else I ought to be or something else that needs doing.
The past five years have been financially sobering. But the past 10 days…well they’ve been a wake-up call.
Ok, this is not a gloom and doom post it’s only a pause at Reality Checkpoint Charlie. It’s me telling you to slow your roll. Life is for the living, and we don’t all get to do that forever

October 24, 2011

She’s Got Bette Davis Eyes…..

Purple Fedora & Purple/Blue "Caroline"Growing up in the 60s and 70s wasn’t all psychedelia, granny dresses and barefoot hippies in torn jeans. We also had something that’s sadly missing today (and that’s just my opinion feel free to disagree), we had real glamor. Like women who wore high heels while they did the dishes glamor, long silk dressing gowns and perfectly coiffed hair in the morning glamor. Pencil thin skirts and low cut blouses, gloves and hats whenever you leave the house, and those wide-legged pants/skirt outfits. Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, and Bette Davis – yea I like old movies sue me.

In high school we used to buy our hats at the little Chinese stores in Brooklyn where we bought our slippers. We thought we were really mysterious and sexy in our cloches and fedoras. I love hats still – even though the temperatures here in Georgia are not conducive to year round hat wearing.

I do love buttons this year!I started working on felted hats in 2010 – after I realized that my crocheted fedoras just weren’t holding up like I wanted them to. The felted cloches and fedoras sold well enough last year, but as my skills improve so do my sensibilities and I just want my hats to stand out in a crowd. I am inspired by the fully clothed but sexy and mysterious as hell women of yesteryear.

I have named this collection “Bette Davis Eyes” simply because it’s the song I that I hum as I work on my hats (only when I work on these hats, weird huh?).  And anyway, I do believe that it’s all in the eyes ladies…

Green Cloche with gold trim and flowerThese will be available on my Etsy and artfire sites as soon as I stop crocheting and start posting:)

October 17, 2011

Me Going Natural For Real – Week 1

Before you ask, let me answer – no I am not going to turn my blog into a natural hair journal. I really want to write about Occupy Wall Street  and we are the 53% but I have not found the right words yet (cause u know I want to be fair and balanced when I do it:). For now I’ll just say – damn it’s good to know  we still have a pulse.

I did want to follow up on my last post though. While I was researching that post I started reading CurlyNikki.com for real…which lead me to naptural85…which lead me to believe that I needed to seriously get with the program!

I have nice hair, or so I’m told, BUT, I haven’t been nice to my hair AND I was getting tired of the pony tail.

So last week we went to Smileys here in Macon (it’s like this big indoor/outdoor yard-sale-gone-wild kinda place) and I ran into a guy who was selling pure shea butter amongst other things. Being blinder-than-a bat-in-sunlight I bought a shea butter and a shea butter pomade (instead of the two bottles of shea that I thought I picked up) . I wanted to do naptural85s 5 day wash n go thing  so I got my spray bottle and my pomade and slapped a couple of twists in my head  and  I really was able to ride that curly twisty look all week.

This weekend we had a deployment here at work which required spending most of the weekend there. I  co-washed my hair on Friday night and put 5 or so braids that I twisted up into knots. I didn’t want to take them out Saturday so I wore one of my crocheted berets  (had I known it would be a 14+ hour day, I would have taken my hair out) and Sunday was a no brainer hat day.  I took the braids out this morning and and used some Bronner Brothers Castor Oil  moisturizer (cause it was looking kinda dry).

I received my box of Jamila Henna from mehndiskinart.com and hope to get that done this weekend – after I trim my very dead ends.

Will post before and after pics if I am happy with the process. In the meantime please share your henna mixes and experiences with me. Thanks!

October 6, 2011

Hair – it’s more than a musical

Understand that I am not my hair, I know that I’m so much more than that.

But let’s face it, my  hair precedes me, it’s what you can’t help but see when you look at me.

Hair is supposedly a woman’s crowning glory  and mine has tried to live up to that. The problem is I’ve never really been into the whole pamper thyself thing. I get my nails done once or twice every summer. I succumb to sporadic bouts of “must get to the beauty salon every Saturday”. And every once in a while I wear makeup.

Sometime within the past year I decided (once again) that I was going to stop putting relaxer in my hair. I used relaxers to …well, relax the curl in my hair so that I could do my wet and go thing that I’ve been doing for about 25 years now. My hair had started to do weird thing though, each day there seemed to me that there was as much of my hair on the shower floor and in my comb as there was remaining on my head. So I quit cold turkey, no winding down, no one last time for old times sake, I just stopped.

I’ve survived for almost a year now with no chemicals , but (since my hair is the first thing people see) I think my first impressions haven’t been all that great lately.  I’ve been discussing the whole natural hair thing with the girls at work, and we’ve been swapping products (which weigh my hair down or just feel kinda icky) and I see people online talking about twisting and pinning your hair at night so that you can have curly hair in the morning (which is too much work as far as I’m concerned), or buying expensive products that  will enhance one’s natural wave pattern.

If you are serious about going natural check out curlynikki.com, hairmilk.com, motowngirl.com, nappturality.com and youtube, there are a ton of videos there that will teach you everything you never wanted to know about going natural.

Anyway, one day  my co-worker said to me (for like the 3rd or 4th time) “if I had hair like yours…” and that’s when I realized I just need to  to love the hair that God gave me, take care of it  and let it do whatever it wants to do on any given day.

Howz your head?  I’d especially love to hear from you if you’ve done the natural hair thing . And if you are very good, tomorrow I’ll give a free pattern for wide headband  (at least it will hide the gray)

Oh, I did dye my gray though , cause that just got to be really annoying. Next i’m going to try henna

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September 13, 2011

Got To Catch Em All…Pokemon!

About 18 years ago the Woodchuck and I were given the gift of Jalen . We named him Jalen because due to familial duty and all that we had to include the name Simon and we searched high and low for something that flowed with Simon but couldn’t find anything until that fateful night at the end of March Madness in 1993 when the Fab 5 were …but you know all this already don’t you? Because Jalen Rose talked about it on ESPN one day and you were watching weren’t you? And you were going to let me just go on and on telling you a story that you already knew when you know that every second I spend writing is a second I spend not crocheting!  Well his Mama named him Jalen but his Daddy called him Pooh Bear,go figure.

Anyway I am telling you about Jalen, because I wouldn’t know a PokeBall from a baseball if it weren’t for him – you do know what a pokeball is don’t you?  So Jalen watched quite a bit of Pokemon back in the day and he also dragged the Woodchuck and I to ALL of the Pokemon movies – or maybe we dragged him since he didn’t drive and surely a child cannot exert so much influence over his parents that he makes them do what he wants even when they don’t want right?

When I started to crochet   hats, I (like any good Mother) made quite a few for the Jalen, until.he told me that frankly he is just  not a hat person. I was crushed, but I knew that someday, somehow I  would change his mind and bring him back into the (hat) fold.

My future super model niece Sydney

Back to the PokeMon -I believe that it was the “amazing girlfriend” Sara Nicole who first mentioned a Pikachu hat (this after she saw my first try at an animal hat).

When I found a break in my projects (I was working the Bette Davis Eyes thing and my fingers were so tired of wool) AND a skein of Steelers yellow, I decided to look around for a pattern for a Pikachu hat. Sara Nicole wants the hat for Christmas so I have plenty of time to figure it out, but I’m slightly ADD and must do it now or else…

Very long story short, what I found didn’t fit my vision of what I actually wanted. Instead I pulled up some Pikachu pics via the Google and made a regular double crochet hat with a hole on either side of  the first row after the increases for the ears. Once the basic  hat was done I went back and did the ears in a circle, adding in the black after 10 or so rows. Circles for the eyes and cheeks. A botched embroidery job for the mouth (gotta work on that). And Jalen says that  yes he will wear this hat!

Flush with success I asked him what else I ought to make – he says Charimander(?). I say well let me think about that, and while I’m waiting for an inspiration maybe I’ll do something easy like a PokeBall beret?

P.S. Of course Pokemon is copyrighted and all that but I’ve spent so much on Pokemon stuff form movies to games to toys to collectibles – that I don’t think they will mind my hat tributes, but then again Jimmy Buffett did come after me for selling a washcloth on Etsy called Margaritaville

 

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