My Calendar Makeover, "(I Am) One Grateful Turkey" Launched

These first few months spent building products as well as this site, there were so many moving parts and pieces that fourteen hour days were not at all unusual. This accompanied long, involved attempts to move beyond maintaining my other business on the books and actually use newer technologies to produce new sales, which eventually went nowhere.

Putting the site together amidst all those sunk costs really challenged my ability to learn quickly, or at least as fast as I could. I did not want to "hire" somebody else to construct my site--"I'll build your site for FREE!"-- at which point I would then be "connected" to the expert and their 25 percent forever... unless I could find a way to miraculously break free. Since the idea is to become an independent shop owner, I had to do everything myself from the start to develop expertise that might transfer to other ideas later.

Aside from the challenges of taking existing pieces of art that I created by hand and effectively using design software to render finished products with a polished look, I have "flailed forward" to get an understanding of the Web software and how to set up effective navigation, and yes, I have learned some important lessons and will continue to do so.

The initial lettering on the "My Calendar" designs just looked too amateurish to keep them online, once I started to get some clue as to what I should be doing on my Web site. I spent just a little more time in Adobe Illustrator to make them colorful and embossed. Nothing too outrageous, just more professional and attractive.

When I decided to create a design especially for the holidays, "(I Am) One Grateful Turkey" took on a life of its own. Not everybody likes cartoon graphics, but enough people do that I think this concept will appeal to many. Hope you all like it!