With Halloween literally around the corner, I finally decided to do something with the barrels of dead marigolds outside of my studio. After browsing Pinterest for inspiration (my new favorite addiction that I credit Kristi for getting me hooked on), I put my kids to work after school and we came up with a great way to fill the wooden barrels with the essence of fall! It took us an hour out of our day, a lot of gold thumbtacks, 11 pumpkins, some clearanced fall decor, and a can of shiny gold spray paint.

I love hands-on decorating. It gets me away from the computer and takes me from 2-deminsional designs to 3-dimensional creations and always proves challenging without my "apple z" command from my keyboard! I drew the lines on the pumpkin with a back sharpie. My children then proceeded pushing thumbtacks into the pumpkin following my lines. My 5 year old then decided to make a smiley face on the pumpkin with the thumbtacks, so I had to redirect her–art direction is hard with a strong-willed and creative 5 year old! We would have done more thumbtack artwork on the pumpkins in barrel two, however I under-estimated how many thumbtacks this project would actually require!

Nearly an hour after we had started we ended up with some festive barrels that should last until Thanksgiving, then it's on to thinking about what to do for Christmas....hmmm....any ideas?

If you have an account on Pinterest don't forget to re-pin this and follow my Pinterest account!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Melody

Okay, so I can't stress enough how important it is for folks with websites to blog. I see so many not utilizing this fabulous feature! If your website includes a handy little blog platform or news feature, use it!

There are so many reasons as to why you should blog, but for now I'm just going to mention the obvious basics. (Yes, I realize I don't blog enough, and I plan on changing that...you should see my library of things I want to blog about! Enormous!)

1. Fresh content on your website is good for SEO (search engine optimization). By adding a new article even just once a week, you are adding new keyword-rich content to your website for search engines to index.

2. It gives your customers a feel of what YOU and your company is about and personalizes your website. Not to mention it gives them something to come back to if they find your articles interesting! If they visit your blog, they are most likely going to visit your sales pages!

3. Sharing your blog articles on Facebook and other social media, even sharing on your personal profile, can drive extra traffic to your website. Granted, not all of your friends buy your product, but their visit to your website to read your blog article counts as one more unique visitor to your site, and that means it's increasing your site's rankings in the popular search engines.

4. People like reading blog articles more than they do product descriptions. Have you ever flipped through a magazine and seen one of those advertisements that looks like an article in the magazine but is actually just a paid advertisement? I've caught myself reading those before, when most of the time I flip right past the regular ads. Instead of posting your product on Facebook with just a link to the product page, try posting an blog article link about something interesting then cleverly sneak your product into that article.

5. It's free PR advertising for you! Blogs can be the best way to tell your customers about something that is new, improved, scheduled, or changing. It's a great place to showcase where you will be and what your business is up to these days. If you use something like Google's Feedburner, you can also set it up so that your subscribers can receive notifications directly to their email inbox each time you post a new article! How easy is that!

So there you are. Five reasons you should be blogging! Blogs don't need to be long, they aren't essays. If you don't feel comfortable writing them, find someone that does! We will soon be offering a blogging service through Sublime Ballyhoo (a new service Kristi and I are working on) so keep an eye out for that!

Happy blogging!

 How dare I call myself a graphic designer?  Not everyone is, you know. Being able to select a fancy font and four clip-art graphics in your word processing software doesn’t exactly make you a designer. Nope, to get a good graphic designer you have to mix together a lot of personal creativity, patient attention to details, plenty of classroom hours, mastery of new technologies, and that special “eye.” I feel I have that mix.

With 5 years of schooling, a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Visual Communications and Design, 3 years of working at a printing press, 2 semesters in the department's design internship program, 2 years of inhouse experience, and almost 12 years of freelance experience, I feel like I've got a pretty good understanding of how good design all comes together.

Sublime Artistry has developed over the years as a productive home-based business with a clientele list across the United States that continues to expand through the referrals of enthusiastic clients and hard work. I have done design projects and contract design for nonprofit organizations, design firms, banks, schools, entrepreneurs, corporations, and many more.

I am currently renovating a building to use as my studio/office and physical location and will be posting a blog article soon about those adventures!

While I am the sole designer at my location, I have a vast network of colleagues and professionals that I outsource to as often as needed. I've brought Kristi Dvorak on as a part-time contract project director which makes my workflow more productive and helps to keep me on schedule. I still maintain the design part of our projects, but I have learned and finally accepted that my weaknesses are someone else's strengths and I'm not afraid to open my arms and welcome their expertise when needed. While I may be one designer working from my home, I truly do have a team behind me. My continually growing network of creative individuals, businesses, and online resources makes Sublime Artistry just as powerful and competent as any design agency. If it can be published, either by press or web, we can visualize it and create it.

Okay, so a picture is worth a thousand words. Contact us today and see for yourself why so many clients keep coming back to Sublime Artistry.

Kristi came to us with eight years of advertising agency experience, having been with two of Nebraska’s largest ad agencies working for a variety of clients such as Raytheon Aircraft, Rain Bird, Runza, Cellular One, Bryan LGH, Martha Gooch, Cushman/Ransomes/Ryan, and many more. She also worked for three years at Ameritas Life Insurance Corp. as a communications specialist in the marketing department until her and her husband and brand new baby daughter moved “back home” to rural central Nebraska. Since there were no jobs available in advertising/marketing in her small community of 600 souls, she worked for five years as head bookkeeper/office manager for a fertilizer company, until another short move down the road led her to become a licensed insurance agent. A short time later, she was presented with the opportunity to become her hometown’s first economic development director, which she did for two years. Then, while freelance proofreading on a website designed by Sublime Artistry, she met Melody. They clicked instantly, and soon she was able to return to the line of work she truly enjoyed.

These days, Kristi spends her time with Sublime Artistry coordinating projects from start to finish; populating, revising, and optimizing websites; writing; proofreading; building email campaigns; working with clients; scheduling deadlines; and pretty much anything else we throw her way! She also contracts out her services directly to businesses for a variety of business services such as proofreading, business correspondence writing and formatting, flyers, databases, photo and document scanning, email campaigns, and website maintenance. She is also a partner with Melody in their newly created service called Sublime Ballyhoo, which is soon to be launched and will provide businesses assistance with website maintenance, social media, blogging, email campaigns, and SEO maintenance.

In her spare time, Kristi works on her dad’s farm spraying thistle, runs a small scrapbook store, loves to scrapbook both by hand and digitally, and “play” with old family photos. She loves spending time with her husband of 17 years and her nine-year-old daughter. Apple products bring a twinkle to her eye, and Kristi is also a Disney fanatic and enjoys almost anything Disney related, including her new (small but growing) collection of Disney Vinylmations.

Also, check out the article that was published in a local paper about Kristi and her new business location. (Article from arnoldne.org and The Arnold Sentinel.)

Are you looking for the perfect solution for social media sharing on your website or blog? Want a tool to increase sharing of your product or pages? Wibiya is that tool. We've installed it on our website and love it. You can see an example of it in action at the bottom of every page on our website. Of course, we don't use many social media venues ourselves, but you can load this toolbar with all kinds of neat icons and gadgets.

When designing websites we're always looking for those type of things that can benefit our clients, and we love sharing them! I believe this is the perfect tool for any person looking to increase social media sharing on their website. Wibiya has a free plan available for those that are limited on budget, and also offer paid premium plans for more custom control and features. Check out Wibiya and get your social media toolbar today!

If you need help installing it on your website or blog, contact us and we can set it up on your site for you, but you will still need to sign up for the service yourself, then contact us with your login.

Happy sharing!

Like the bar at the bottom of our site? Get yours here:

Today I got my report card. Well, not the report card that tells me how I'm doing as far as quality and expertise in my field, but a report card that compares my 4th quarter income to other designers that use the same FreshBooks invoicing system as I do. To be honest my 4th quarter was pretty slow for my graphic design business, since I focused a gigantic amount of attention on my photography business during that quarter (those invoices are billed through a different system so they aren't on FreshBooks) but instead of rambling on about how much money I didn't make in the 4th quarter, I wanted to point out some interesting facts that this report card tells me about my business.

I do realize I only scored 4 out of 5, but I'm going to explain why 4 out of 5 isn't such a bad thing, particularly for my clients.

 1. I don't break the budget.  However, my services are still top-notch, my clients rave about the quality of my work. I simply do not charge what my competition is charging in most cases. Take the average invoice size on the report card above: My competition is charging nearly 6 times more on their invoices than I am. I even sent out more invoices than my competition in that quarter. That does add up on a company's design budget!

 2. My clients keep coming back for more!  They like the work I do, so they keep coming back, probably because I'm cheap but I'm going to flatter myself and assume it's the quality original work I produce for them. While my "new client" revenue is down compared to others in the design industry, my "recurring revenue" is up, which means my clients are loyal and enjoy making return visits.

 3. I'm dirt cheap.  Just look at that average amount invoiced per client billed!  Whoa! Others in my profession are charging 10 times more per client than I do! That's a lot of George Washington's people! Maybe this is why I still drive the vehicle I bought 10 years ago and not sporting that new lime green Volkswagon Bug I've been craving for years?

In summary, I work hard for my clients and get them their money's worth. I ponder that I could be making more money if I would put my foot down and catch up with the Jones's....but I love my occupation and enjoy the fact I get paid for doing what I love, even if it isn't "comparable" to what my competition is getting paid, I think that's A-okay. Because in the end, after the project is done and the invoice is sent, I know the report card from my clients is going to be an A+...and they will still have change burning a whole in their pockets to pay me for additional design services down the road.

Video courtesy of huskers.com

The winner of our GROW Nebraska member Website Giveaway is..... Danielle Tegtman owner of  Candles by Blazin' Saddles  from  Stamford, Nebraska ! Danielle currently does not have a website but sells her candles on Grow Nebraska's online store. Congratulations Danielle! Sublime Artistry looks forward to working with you to create your official Candles by Blazin' Saddles website! Watch our website often for more free offers and surprises!

Our SublimeSiteCMS and Insta-Site(CMS) are already super easy to use, but now with the newly revamped support system, you'll be flying even faster through building and editing your websites! To view the new support system, log on as an admin to your website, then in the black bar at the top, click on "help." This will take you to our revamped site support system including all the information and tutorials that you need to build out and maintain your SublimeSiteCMS or Insta-Site(CMS) website!

It's a vicious cycle I'm vowing to break...so...with that said, you'll be seeing some changes on my website: updates, fresh info, more blog posts, and navigation reworks to make things easier to get to and find. If you have any suggestions to how I can make the Sublime Artistry website easier for my clients and client prospects to navigate please feel free to comment below. We love feedback and suggestions!

Keep a look out for the "freshened" Sublime Artistry, coming soon to a browser near you!

Comfoltey Financial Services Logo & More...

We are LOVING the world of e-commerce. While SublimeSiteCMS is still our "baby" we've ventured into the world of other great content management websites that deal more with shopping carts and online stores.

Heavenly Creations, LLC has been a client of ours for many years. We completely redesigned their product labeling/packaging a couple of years back, and this year convinced them it was time to create a website that worked more like an online shopping cart, was easier for them to update themselves (without a webmaster), and that looked great too!

You can learn all about Heavenly Creations, LLC and their great gourmet food products and gifts on their new website at jellyfromheaven.com. I've tasted their product first hand and will tell you it's rather addicting and definitely delicious!

To save on coding/developing costs Heavenly Creations wanted to go the route of Big Cartel, which is a great basic web cart solution for small businesses that have 100 products or less. We built their website using a pre-existing Big Cartel template that we customized to represent Heavenly Creations and their products. They had many additional pages they wanted to include and maintain, like recipe ideas, Guest Book, friend's websites, blog and more so we decided to implement a free blog like tumblr.com which worked great with the Big Cartel system and still allows the client to maintain their own blog/page updates and operate multiple blogs under one account.

Heavenly Creation's old website scored in the 30's using a web grader tool on the internet. We were very excited that just 3 weeks after the launch of the site we had nearly doubled their score! While the grading system wasn't the most e-commerce friendly, which is why we didn't score higher, it did show a huge improvement in the effectiveness of their website!

We hope you enjoy visiting our February P.O.M and don't forget to try out some of their product while you are there!

Special thanks to Jared Burns for doing ALL of the code development on this website! Jared took my design, sliced and developed it to work with the Shopify system. Without his knowledge and expertise this wouldn't have been possible. He did awesome work and stayed true to my design!

Visit sewcooldesigns.com today to see for yourself how energetic and user friendly the site and its products are. If you are curious about creating your very own unique online store contact Sublime Artistry today!

Finally, a shopping cart website for our portfolio! It turned out great and is even being featured today as "shop of the moment" on the Shopify website! Read more in our project-of-the-month blog!

So I put my Nebraska roots to work. The Nebraska Lottery was running a contest for the next Nebraska $1 Scratch ticket design so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I put my thinking cap on and began brainstorming...there weren't really any limitations besides couldn't be a previous scratch ticket game concept so it was pretty wide open. I thought it only fitting to represent the locals and our way of life out here in the "boondocks" of the midwest, so I chose to design my lottery ticket around a "cow-pie toss" theme. Cow pie tossing? Really? Yep, and proud of the idea! Why not?

Well, with my rancher husband's expertise, and my illustration & design skills I was able to concoct an anatomically correct cow, and illustrations of cow pies that met my husband's satisfaction. After all, he's the one out there working in it all day, what better expert than the cattle man!

I submitted the design the night before the deadline and a couple of weeks later found out that I had made it to the top 20 finalists! Then from that point it was up to the public to vote on the winners on the Nebraska Lottery website.

I was super pleased when I was contacted and told that I had won 2nd place in the contest! How rewarding! To see more of the entries and other winners you can go to the Nebraska lottery website at nelottery.com »

Everyone loves to eat, right? Package design for food products is one of our favorites as we always manage to encourage the client to send us a packaged sample when it's all said and done!

The client that is being featured for October is from Rochester, Minnesota. They wanted to update the look of their special Pleasoning® that they sell inside their restaurant, The Canadian Honker Restaurant & Lounge. We took the elements from their existing logo and carried that through into the label design elements with the geese flying in the sunset. The size of this label is small, 2.5"x6" with a 0.5" overlap so it was challenging working with so much information in a small place but feel we accomplished the updated look to give their product more personality and a style of it's own. We're sure the taste speaks for itself!

The environment is important to us all, and I love working with "green" clients to ensure the future for the generations to follow. The September FRESH(p.o.m.) is a product logo and label design we created for Latitude 27 out of Englewood, FL.

Their product line is named "Clean with ATTITUDE!" and they needed a sophisticated design that screamed "environmentally safe" with a clean simple style to it. Within the logo we bring nature into play with the green color and simple geometric leaf shape that houses the words "Clean with". The label designs play off that same geometric shape housing the tagline "Tough on the job. Easy on the Earth." The style stays simple and clean and reinforces the aspect of the environment. We also decided to use color coding on the product's labels to make it easy for customers to identify product lines and products. We designed labels for 3 bottle sizes.

To see more about this product you can visit their website at cleanwithattitude.com!

For August we are featuring a logo for a local grocery and deli that is coming to our small community. Being a rural community, we wanted to keep with that "general store" look and style. The design takes you back to the past with an old west feel. A mixture of fonts play nicely together to create the effect of classic style old-time grocers, using a western font to set apart the main service of the business.

Watch for more projects in our portfolio that will incorporate the Main Street Market & Deli logo as we are currently working on a website for this client that will feature locally produced 100% All Natural Beef that can be ordered nation wide! 

The prizes are called out in large orange brackets in the center of the poster because the client really wanted to stress the prizes. The registration website and more details are laid out in an attractive typography treatment with all the information in a nice little package at the bottom of the poster.

A website masthead along with a t-shirt design were created to go along with the event poster.

For those of you who may be inspired to check out this event and try it out for yourself, you can register at slipnsliderelay.com!

Check back next month to see if your project makes it's claim to fame on our FreshBlog's "project of the month."