Featured Designers: Lasgalen Arts

Tell me 5 things everyone should know about you
1. I'm a freelance photographer who loves everything creative. I can't let a day go by without doing something creative in nature. Whether it's domestic like decorating or photography, poetry or any visual art, I need to be doing something. The arts are important to me. I support them when ever I can physically and monetarily.

2. Gardening is another passion. Because of my spiritual beliefs I treat my plants inside and outside my own yard with respect. The whole process from seedlings, sprouts, adult plants and in death moves me. Trees are especially important to me. I feel quite connected to them.

3. And boy can I cook. Yes I'm bragging but if there is another 'thing' I love doing it is eating. lol I've been a vegetarian for about five years now and I've found amazing ways to cook the common bean. Cookbooks are read like novels and I have way to many of them. And bake too. My biggest vice in life (other than books) is chocolate. I share this addiction with my whole family.

4. I'm crazy enough for anything J.R.R. Tolkien that I read The Silmarillion and all three books of The Lord of the Rings each year for the past 11. My first stores name comes from LoTR. Eryn Lasgalen is the name the elves gave Murkwood Forrest after the War of the Ring. To me it symbolizes hope and rebirth. This was important to me when starting this unknown venture called Zazzle.

5. And lastly I love my family very much. Without the encouraging support I get from them I could not do this. It's important to me to feel as though others agree that this is worthy of pursuing at this stage of my life. I know it's not easy to understand the hours put into it without seeing a weekly paycheck. Their patience amazes me.

What programs do you use to make your designs?
My photography equipment is a Canon 40D with various lenses and an old Olympus OM10. For the graphics work I use Fireworks 8 and occasionally Gimp. I also use watercolors and draw.

How has zazzle changed your life/lifestyle?
I became unemployed in May of 2009. Not one to sit around as I was looking for work I started investigating PODs. Once I decided to open Lasgalen Arts on Zazzle it became a full time job. This also sparked my dormant art projects and more creative outlets that had been put aside once I was working outside the home. Other than my freelance photography Zazzle is my "job."

What is the best advice you received since starting zazzle?
Don't give up. There are days I feel it's not worth the time and then an amazing thing happens, I sell something. I feel right now I'm on the verge of having potential. Once I make Pro Seller I know I'll be driven even harder to produce more products.

If you were abducted by aliens and knew you would have to wear the same
shirt for the rest of your life - which one from your store would you want
it to be?
You mess with me and you'll be plagued with poisonous dart frogs upon your heads.

Poisonous dart frogs by lasgalenarts
Make a customized t shirt online at zazzle.com

If you had to pick a birthday card for someone, from any shop that is NOT
yours, which would you pick and why?
This cards design jumped out at me. The eyes of the doll are so expressive. I also appreciate the quality of work gone into the art of making the doll and how beautifully it's presented here.