Brookelorren

Your shop name *	Brookelorren
Zazzle to me is a... *	Part time job - with part time pay
What is the best advice you have received from a fellow shopkeeper about your shops or designs you would like to pass on to another shopkeeper? *
These are a couple of things that I have learned from others over the last couple of years that help. 1) Put your designs on everything. You never know what somebody is looking for. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to put some designs on certain products, but if I can fit the design on something and it doesn't seem illogical, I'll make it. Just because I wouldn't want an apron that says "math rules" on it, doesn't mean that someone else wouldn't. 2) Make your own quick create templates. I was making all of my products by hand for a long time, because the Zazzle Quick Create templates weren't really what I needed. Making my own templates takes a lot of time, but it's worth the investment. I now have several sets of templates to use depending on what I'm making. I don't use them 100% of the time, but many of my standard kinds of designs work well with them, so I'll use them in most cases.
What PODs do u currently use or have shops on? *	Zazzle
What did you do with your free time before zazzle or other POD's....and what do you do with it now? *
Before Zazzle, I was writing for Associated Content (now Yahoo! Voices) and Squidoo. Now, Yahoo! changed policies so that they don't fit my needs most of the time now; I still work with Squidoo and also Hubpages. As for my free time now, it's almost always work related. I homeschool, go to the gym, take the kids to gymnastics... but I almost always find some reason to create a web site about it or get inspiration for some Zazzle design, or take photos to use in my work. I even incorporate work on my vacations. I used to not understand why my grandpa worked all the time, but now I get it, because he must have liked what he did a lot. I really like what I do too.
What programs do you use to make your designs *	Photoshop (any version) Illustrator
Tell us more about what you like and do not like about each software you use, what makes it special. *
Right now I'm using Adobe Photoshop and sometimes Illustrator CS4. Photoshop is where I spend most of my time. It does almost everything that I want it to. There are a lot of tutorials for it available on the Internet. I'm more of a computer person learning art than an artist, so it helps to have tutorials available for when I want to learn something. Originally I was using it to do simple things like create colors for backgrounds, but I've been branching out lately and it can do most of what I want it to. My most popular design was created using Illustrator. I was using it to make word art, but I'm starting to learn some of it's other uses too. It's been harder for me to learn. I would recommend both to others, but it does take a time investment to learn either.
Will you make custom orders? *	Yes - no prepay required
Elaborate on your answer above regarding custom orders... *	I've never made a custom order before, but I wouldn't have a problem doing a simple customization for somebody. I don't think that I would create an entire design from scratch for somebody, but I'm willing to change a background color, change the text, or make simple edits like that. The hard part is getting in touch with me, since I generally only check my email if I know that somebody is sending me something. Probably the best way to get in touch with me is to message me on Facebook.
List your shop URL's *	http://www.zazzle.com/brookelorren http://www.zazzle.com/bibleshop http://www.zazzle.com/great_arts http://www.zazzle.com/polyglot_zazzle Those are the ones that I will admit to publicly ;-).

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