Recently in puppytoes merchandise Category

It's been a while since I wrote anything here, mostly because just about everything has completely taken a shit lately.

I wont go into the gory details, but life lately has involved: 1. me backing into Dave's truck in the driveway, 2. the roof of our newly-enclosed porch springing several leaks, 3. finding out we will also have to re-roof the house, 4. a newly-purchased, non functioning pellet stove, 5. a 5 year old TV that decided to think it was on the SAP audio channel, even though it wasn't, and 6. a near electrocution hazard as the leaks in the roof decide to gush water on the SAP-stuck TV we stuck out on the porch.

In the midst of all this, I was trying to get the puppytoes.net store ready for the holiday shopping season. New products became available, and they were too yummy to not add my designs to them. Things like long sleeve tees in black, brown, and navy, and new green and navy tees. Such a great departure from so much white!

Eventually things will all work out with the leaky roof and car repairs, but earlier tonight as I sat here playing poker, I got four emails in about 20 minutes alerting me to sales I made at the puppytoes.net store. That means in the last 3 days I made about 10 sales. I know it's the holiday shopping season and all, but that's an awesome couple of days for the store!

Then for some reason it dawned on me that these people most likely bought this stuff as gifts for Christmas. So when someone feverishly rips open their Christmas present, they'll see my design on a shirt or sweatshirt. And all of a sudden, I feel this enormous pressure because I don't want to ruin someone's Christmas present! I don't want it to be like one of those presents you open as a kid, then say something like, "Oh, it's socks", or "Oh thanks, you got me underwear!" I want someone to rip open their present and say "That's effin' awesome!" And it's not coming from a place of vanity, it's coming from the fact that on Christmas I enjoy watching others open presents much more than I like getting presents myself. Don't know why. I love surprising people. I love being able to find that one neat or special thing for someone, and it makes me happy to see them enjoy it.

I really hope those receiving presents from the puppytoes.net store will enjoy them!

Last Monday I had a fantastic order in the puppytoes.net store - three boxes of poker night invitations and two sheets of custom postage. I was thrilled because I seemed to be the only one who thought that poker night invitations and matching custom postage was an awesome idea. I'm wierd like that, I like adding little details (like custom postage) to make things special. I'm glad someone else thought it was a good idea, too.

Anyway, so I was psyched also because this was the first time any of my custom postage sold.

I've been checking the store's order report daily to make sure the orders are moving along and I noticed that part of the order shipped to the customer while the custom postage was stuck in production. It was stuck in production since September 4! That's insane! If I was the customer, I'd be pretty pissed.

I emailed the support group at Cafepress, and today I got a response that the partner producing the postage (name omitted so as not to damage their reputation, as per the usage guidelines) rejected my image because of their content restrictions, meaning I can't use:

an image that's obscene, offensive, blasphemous, pornographic, sexually agressive, deceptive, threatening, menacing, abusive, harmful, and invasion of privacy, supportive of unlawful action, defamatory, libelous, vulgar, violent, or otherwise objectionable; no material that depicts a celebrity or their likeness, no leaders or politicians, current or former world leaders, convicted criminals, newsworthy, notorious or infamous images and individuals, or any material that is vintage in appearance or depicts images from an older era; copyrighted images, trademarked images, patented images, or other IP, viruses, worms, etc.

This is the image. I took an image of a King card from my Royalty Free Art Explosion image library, made it a line drawing, added a club, a K, "Texas Hold'Em" in Rosewood Std font, and slapped a tan background on it, and voila! I thought it looked pretty cool.

So what's the problem? Does it look "Vintage"? Is a King a celebrity or infamous person? The thing is that according to the restrictions, they can reject an image without explanation. Well, if I'm selling the stuff, it would be nice to know why things are rejected because 1.) I've got a customer who is willing to drop a chunk of change in my store, and it's just bad business to let them hanging when I'm not even notified, and 2.) how can I correct a problem if I don't know what the problem even is?

I'm not posting this to be argumentative or slam any services, I'm just frustrated that something that was a pretty cool idea gets censored (no better word for it, I guess) with no explanation, while the poor customer sits waiting to receive the order placed over a week ago.

And if the customer who placed this particular oder happens to be reading this, I apologize profusely for the inconvienence, and I hope to get to the bottom of the whole thing soon.

Anyone else have any similar experiences?

Back when Cragar was about a year old, I took this photo of Dave holding him. I thought it was hilarious for some strange reason, and because of his bodybuilder style pose in this photo, Cragar got the nickname Arnold Schwarzenauzer. It still makes me giggle helplessly when I see it.

So, in honor of my dear Arnold Schwarzenauzer, I'm featuring a new design inspired by this very photo. If you're schnauzer is a bodybuilder in training or just needs a new shirt for his next workout, come to the puppytoes.net store and check it out!

About three months ago I got a crazy idea to start an online store with cafepress.com. I started with their free basic shop, and soon the bug bit me and I upgraded to a paid premium shop. Several weeks of insanity followed, trying to come up with new and clever designs. The store started with a couple of schnauzer designs, inspired by the infamous Cragar, but has expanded to include poker, chemistry, and floral designs. Seems a little disjointed, I know, but those are the things I enjoy the most. Where did the chemistry part come in? Heck, I have to do something with the 4 years I spent in college studying chemistry and the 13 years spent working in R&D!

Sales started in May, with a total of 12 shirts sold for the entire month. Not a record-setter by any stretch of the imagination, but I was still pleased to know that someone actually spent their money on a design I made.

Inspired by the "rush" I had in May, I started working on more designs. Almost all of them have been poker-related, mostly because aside from working on the store, I've been playing a lot of poker. My Poker Stuff section has bulged to over 20 designs in the last month or so, and I'm currently working on even more ideas.

I've been thinking of different ways to get the word out about the store, and aside from optimizing for search engines and tagging, I thought including a special category here may work, too.

So in an act of shameless self-promotion, I decided to include my monthly featured design here on puppytoes.net.

The featured designs for July and August will of course be poker designs, especially since the World Series of Poker is in full swing. The design I chose to feature for July is "All-In, Baby". I incorporated a spade into a tribal design inspired by a friend's tatoo. Being a fan of tribal art myself, I thought it turned out pretty good. If you're a poker fan, check it out and tell me what you think!

In addition to my monthly featured designs, I'll also post new designs I'm excited about. I have a couple of poker ideas in the works - not centered so much on t-shirts but on calendars, clocks, and prints to hang in anyone's poker room. I'm also thinking of putting designs on 2.5" round magnets to serve as card protectors. I may have those ideas ready to roll out in fall.

If you've made it through my Shameless Self Promotion, 1. thanks for not falling out of your chair in boredom, and 2. let me know what you think of the store and its designs. If you may be interested in finding a design you don't see there, contact me and I'll see what I can come up with!