New Wordpress Install on Savant7

Savant7 is an account I’ve had for some time. It’s been a good storage unit. Hosted some pics. Some experimental pages have been hiding here. Basically just a big bucket of stuff. But with some new projects comes the need for a new blog, so welcome to the world Savant7.

Bigger Than Scooby Doo

I had a Chia pet when I was a kid. Who didn't? Mine was a Scooby Doo Chia and I watered it faithfully for about, um, three days. LOL. I'm not sure Scooby even sprouted, but I do know we had a dried up shell of a Scooby Doo chia for years afterwards. Just another dead chia in the junk closet.
This I think will be bigger than Scooby...the Barack Obama Chia coming soon to a store near you. Oh yea, there's gonna be a bunch of these sold. But I suspect they will be an easy garage sale find within the next year. When that time comes, when they are 25 cents apiece on a yard sale card table, at that time I think I'll get 12 or 15 or them and make a wall display. An entire wall of Obama Chias. That'll be cool.

A Cool Twitter Trick

OK, I saw this cool little "Send to Twitter" button over on Alltop.com and thought to myself, "hey, I must steal that idea." Here's what it looks like.

Post to Twitter

With a little CSS you can clean up the formating (I had to use a table in this example cuz I can't do the CSS on this blogspot blog). I'm not sure where I'll use this, but it's a cool thing to know.

Win a Free Mouse Pad

I've got a new store over on Bonanzle called Mouse Pad Factory where I sell all kinds of cool and interesting mousepads. A new promotion I've just started is Free Mouse Pad Tuesday. This contest is run on Twitter and entering is as simple as tweeting a predetermined tweet, or message.
This week our Free Mouse Pad is a very cool pad with Maxfield Parrish's famous artwork 'Ecstasy" on it. If you're on Twitter stop by and join the fun. If you're not on Twitter, maybe now is the time to jump in!

New Store on Bonanzle - Mouse Pad Factory

I've opened a new store on Bonanzle that will feature only my mouse pads. I'm calling it Mouse Pad Factory. Along with the Bonanzle store there's a corresponding MousePadFactory on Twitter as well as Mouse Pad Factory photostream on Flickr.
Only a few pads listed at the store as of yet, including some of the Mucha and Parrish art, such as Parrish's Daybreak.

Pierre Auguste Cot - The Storm & Springtime

I came across a couple of wonderful works by Pierre Auguste Cot and adapted them for the metal cigarette cases I sell on eBay. These two pieces are "Springtime" or "Le Printemps" and "The Storm" or "Bequest of Catherine."
These two paintings were done in 1870s which was Cot's most productive period. Both these paintings are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; The Storm belongs to the museum while Springtime is owned privately.
You can find these Pierre Cot Cigarette Cases at my eBay store, All-4-Corners.

Driving Traffic to eBay Auctions

One of the big challenges of driving traffic to eBay auctions is that they end in 7 or 10 days and all your efforts now link to an expired auction. You can sign on to your favorite forum and talk up your product, but in 7 days it's wasted breathe.
One thing I've done is build out a little site where I display RSS feeds of many of the items I have for sale. It's not a storefront, just a self-updating showcase for my current auctions. My thought is that with a little promotion I can have these pages consistently ranked by Google and perhaps shoppers will find it to be a convenient back-door into my auctions.

Art Nouveau Mucha Gift Ideas
Classic Car Gifts
Cool Mouse Pads
Cool Trombone Shirts
Gift Ideas For Girlfriend
Historical and Personality Watches
Historical Tractor Watches
Metal Business Card Cases
Metal Cigarette Cases
Thank You Gift Ideas

Battle of Chickamauga on a Mouse Pad

Special for history buffs is my new Battle of Chickamauga Mouse Pad on eBay. This is my standard 9.25" x 7.75" rectangular mousepad, neoprene rubber non-slip backing with the polyester fabric top. The art comes from a 19th century lithograph of the battle, and I've added the banner as well as inset photos of the two generals, Rosecrans and Bragg.
As an experiment I've added h1 tags around the first "Battle of Chickamauga" in the listing as well as bolding and italicizing the phrase further down the listing. See if this doesn't give the listing a little better searchability for the phrase.

Classical Music Composer Mouse Pads

Been so busy getting through Christmas that I haven't spent much time on new designs this month. Now that things are slacking off it's time to debut some new items.
Just today I listed some new Classical Composer Mouse pads at All-4-Corners, my eBay store. These are my 9.25" x 7.75" rectangular mousepads, neoprene rubber non-slip backing with the polyester fabric top. Very cool and well made mouse pads.
So far I have the Bach, Beethoven and Mozart mouse pads...featuring a portrait and signature of each. If anybody has a suggestion for another Classical composer to include just drop me a line and I'll put it on the to-do list.

Blackberries, Raspberries amd Blueberries

This is nothing, just a link to the new Blueberry phone blogspot that I threw together. Seems some people search for Blueberry phones when what they really want is a BlackBerry. Personally, I like raspberries best.

Novelty Wall Clocks at RetroRanger

When I think of Cafepress I think of t-shirts, and I don't think I'm unusual in that aspect. Cafepress is a t-shirt place. but I find this Christmas season that I'm enjoying some good sales of non-tshirt items...especially license frames and wall clocks.
I think I'll make it a point to beef up these non-tshirt items in the coming year. Today I started adding new designs to the Novelty Wall Clocks section of my RetroRanger store on Cafepress. I have a lot of clock designs that I sell on eBay through my print-on-demand supplier and I'm planning on adding many of the top sellers to my Cafepress inventory.

Eat Me Said The Cake To Alice Shirt

Yep, that was the line uttered by the sexy hitch-hiker in Stephen King's Desperation, "Eat me, said the cake, to Alice."
Gosh, what a great line I thought. Maybe if I had a t-shirt that said "Eat me, said the cake, to Alice" then I could a have a bond with sexy hitch-hikers. Maybe with such a t-shirt sexy hitch-hikers would find me irresistible.
This is the Eat Me, said the Cake, to Alice Shirt at my Zazzle shop CoolTeeShirts...uniform of the day for sexy hitch-hikers.

Throw A Sheep Shirt on Zazzle

OK, let's be honest, when it comes to Facebook I'm not a poke kinda guy. I'm not gonna buy you a fish and I'm not gonna throw a sheep at you. But that's just me.
New t-shirt at my Zazzle shop, coolteeshirts, is this Throw A Sheep Shirt. If it has to be explained then you probably won't want it anyway.

New Tubas Will Eat Me Shirt on Zazzle

I've been wrestling with my new Zazzle store Cool Tee Shirts. My plan for this shop is to only load designs that have proven successful on Cafepress. Hard to justify loading up designs that haven't sold already. I'm also taking the liberty of reworking some of my older designs. My Paint Shop Pro abilities have improved greatly in the last couple of years, so I find I can improve some of my earlier efforts.
For example, new at Cool Tee Shirts is my Can't Sleep, Tubas Will Eat Me Shirt. This is an improved edition of a design that has been a good seller as Killer Tubas at my RetroRanger shop on Cafepress. I think this new design is 100-percent better than the previous effort, and at least 5 times scarier.

Cool Mouse Pads at My eBay Store

I've been busy the past few days designing mouse pads for my eBay store, All-4-Corners and also listing some of the mouse pads at my Bonanzle store, CoolUniverse. Check out Dragstrip Girl, a mouse pad I worked up today. How hot is she? 1956 backseat Chevy drive-in movie hot. Oh man, they could be your grandparents! That's just sick.

Anyway, I built out a page on my Savant7 site listing a bunch of the cool mouse pads that I currently have listed on eBay. Feel free to check them out and then buy a bunch. They make excellent stocking stuffers!