A few nights ago Butterfly wrote a very thoughtful response to my post. Part of what Butterfly wrote is “It seems to me that you spend a tremendous amount of time organizing your own and other people’s work that only indirectly have to do with the actual art of creation.  It seems that you hardly ever have time to sit down for hours on end to craft your art, or am I getting completely the wrong impression now?”

Bottlescape Reflection, Digital © Diane Clancy

For the ACEOs I had bought special envelopes so that I could send three together. When someone purchases 1 or 2 ACEOs, I use a regular card and envelope. When I send 1 ACEO (and business cards), then the envelope is less than an ounce. When it is more ACEOs, it is heavier. So I am fairly prepared when someone buys ACEOs.

So, now that I have an order for a fine art card, I need to figure out how to ship cards in a simple way. It would not fit in a regular envelope – the card comes with an envelope all in a sleeve. And of course I want to send my business cards too. I did have a pile of other envelopes that the card would fit in. So another issue to figure out – to see if that would work, and if not, what would. I got my ruler out.

Postage regulations have gotten much more complex the last year or so .. so I went to their site to check the new regs (again). Once the envelope goes above 6.25″ in width (I think it was), then you get charged a higher price.  The envelopes I had were 1/8th inch too wide.  That would have doubled the postage to use that envelope – that wouldn’t work.

So then I went online to check to see what size envelopes Staples has – ones that would require the least amount postage. It became clear that the size 6 x 9″ would work great. Then there were several kinds of quality envelopes to choose from – all at the Staples site.

Since I wanted to get the order in the mail the next day, I decided to go to the local Staples to buy there. Well, of course, they had different kinds – so it seemed – and not many choices.  I made my choice of an envelope. I had a vague memory of the prices online and the store seemed more expensive .. so I used the computer there to look up prices again. It seemed to me that it was 50% more in the store.Ok ,,, I decided it was worth it to have them that day.  Then at the cash register, I decided to give it a try. The guy asked his boss, and said if it were true it was cheaper online, then give me that price.  So I saved 1/3 of the price ….  in a small operation like mine, I work hard to be frugal.

It took a long time to make this decision, but I now have a system for sending fine art cards – and it fits up to 8 cards at a time. Now I need to get more cards listed at Etsy and other places.  There will be more tomorrow on these issues on organizing. Certainly there is organizing that isn’t so productive – but some of it is – in my opinion.

I think this image is very lovely!! in many ways it reminds me of the reflections that I used to get lost in as a child. There were some shiny window sills in our house and I used to watch the clouds in the window sill – which had then become water.  I loved going into these other places and dimensions.  This has the same feel to me. Thank you for coming by!

~ Diane Clancy