Nothing yanks my crank more than someone who thinks that life has a three strikes and you’re out rule.

Someone in my FaceBook stream asked why is it that we mourn celebrities more than we mourn ordinary people? The answer is obvious – we don’t. I can offer my condolences on the passing of your loved one, but chances are that I (and others) don’t know anything about your loved one – what they looked like, who they married, how many children they’re leaving behind, their favorite movie or song. So while we mourn your loss we don’t really feel it the way we would if it were our own loss.

Celebrities on the other hand –well if something they did or said ever affected our lives  in any way shape or form then we can really feel that loss.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about, and after a conversation with a friend of mine I’m feeling some kind of way about what I was going to say but I’ll say it anyway:

If you’ve ever been active in MLM/network marketing and/or read a lot of personal development books then you’ve probably heard in passing stories about Grandma Moses (who did not start painting until she was in her 70s) and Colonel Sanders of KFC fame who at age 65 had to start over when an interstate put an end to his roadside business. What these two lives illustrate is the idea that it’s never too late to start over and life really does have a second half.

Which brings me to Whitney Houston and how saddened I was by her death. Back in 2007 I had a huge fight with a co-worker because I said that Brittney Spears was going to be alright and he said that there was no way in hell that she could come back from all the craziness. Obviously one of us was wrong, and I should’ve put some money on that.

I believe in comebacks. I love a good redemption story. Nothing makes me happier than to see someone turn to face their demons and then vanquish them (probably why I was such a big fan of the shows  Charmed and Supernatural). In short I believe in a second half  – and I’m always surprised to discover that there are  people who don’t.

Whitney died before her second half and that my friends means its over.

Do you believe that we get a second, third, fourth chance to hit our stride and make  our mark?

Pantone has chosen the color of the year for 2012: Tangerine Tango. Besides the sweet alliteration, Pantone says the spirited “reddish orange hue” will provide the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward in the coming year. Orange has grown in popularity with designers and consumers alike, and now it will get some time to shine.

“Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.”

It will be interesting to see what designers come up with using Tangerine Tango. While it brings a bit of life and excitement to the party, it’s also extremely versatile and can be used in a conservative manner.  I am particularly fond of orange hues myself  and look forward to creating spring and summer items using various textures and shades of tangerine tango. Expect to see everything from hats and scarves to pillows and wedding accessories. Do you plan to add a splash of  Tangerine Tango to your 2012?

via Pantone

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!

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.

This fedora is not dark gray	Wow, what a difference
Too light, too bright,not focused and way too much going on in the background	Now you can see the colors in the cap, the design etc
I used to think this was a great picture	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….

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?

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).

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 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…

These will be available on my Etsy and artfire sites as soon as I stop crocheting and start posting:)

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!