Cute and Strange Creatures

Your shop name *	Cute and Strange Creatures
Zazzle to me is a... *	Hobby that I wish would become a full time job
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? *
1. Make designs of products that you would love to use/wear/have yourself. 2. Describe thoroughfully your products in the product descriptions and use the most relevant tags - the tags that you would use to find such products. 3. Read the forums regularly. They can be an awesome source of information and advice. They are also a great tool for promotion because many people are looking to promote certain products and your products can be amongst the promoted - I've actually received a lot of sales this way. 4. Constantly make new designs and release new products with designs that suit the products. 5. Have fun.
What PODs do u currently use or have shops on? *	Zazzle Cafepress Printfection Spreadshirt Greeting Card Universe (GCU) Redbubble
What did you do with your free time before zazzle or other POD's....and what do you do with it now? *	I love drawing, reading, listening to music, looking at my RSS feeds. I like staying in the park with my lovely kids and drawing with them, making paper models and watching my girls play with them. I am a keen gamer. We have Playstation 3, Xbox and Nintendo Wii and currently I love playing Dance Dance Revolution and Final Fantasy 13. Actually, I wish I had a little more time for games now.
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. *	I use the CS3 versions of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. My program of choice is Adobe Illustrator, because I love to create vector art and Illustrator is a great program once you get used to it. The disadvantages of both programs are the hard to find tools, the somewhat overcrowded menus, but I guess this is due to the abundance of tools and options, which is really one of the big advantages of both programs. My favorite feature of Photoshop are layer styles. About Illustrator, I like everything, the Pathfinder tool is maybe the most magical for me, it's very useful.
Will you make custom orders? *	Yes - sometimes free, sometimes fee required upfront
Elaborate on your answer above regarding custom orders... *	If customization is big, it's design work and it should be prepaid. That way, if the client doesn't buy the products, you are compensated. If it is for applying an already existing design to a new type of product, which has actually happened to me, I would make it free of charge.
List your shop URL's *	http://www.zazzle.com/borianag

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