I am so psyched about my CafePress shop!! This month, I have made the most I have ever made on Cafe Press! I even sold a Vive La Raclette! t-shirt - although that may be returned - I just was about to take the shop down because I realized that my graphics were not great. The top sellers right now are Loteria Celeste and I Love Paris 2 from my valentine collection! I highly recommend CafePress to any artist or designer. No muss, no fuss.

I am, of course, still putting auctions up on E-bay, but business has been slow. I have put 6 auctions up this week - and may add more. As a backup, I have transferred a lot of my listings to my I-Offer store. The advantage is that the listings stay there for 3 months, and there is no charge unless I sell something. The disadvantage seems to be that the payment interface is not easy for buyers. I usually have to harass people until they pay me - and they say that they cannot pay on I-Offer. I then send them a PayPal invoice.

I still need to work on my Maison Celeste website, and I have been paying for a Yahoo! store for three months that I haven't used yet. Talk about losing money! But this is all a learning experience.

I have been experiencing a burst of creativity, and I have developed some new designs that I am playing around with. I worked hard on a line drawing of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and have come up with a good rendering, which I have scanned into Photoshop and cleaned up. Then, I had an inspiration: What if I made a layered collage of the Virgin? I spent a lot of time tracing the outlines of all of the elements in 9 different stages. My first try on this, I used magazine images. It was a little complicated around the robes, but I was happy with the overall results. I also made a large copy of the Virgin (I split her in two and put her back together!), and I am busy embellishing this with sequins and glitter glue.

I have only 19 more school days left!!! I cannot wait to get out! Right now, my students are reading books and listening to them at the same time on CD or tape. This gives them a chance to see the words while hearing them pronounced correctly. They are taking AR (Accelerated Reader) tests on them, and I will tally up their points at the end of the year. I love this, because it is blissfully quiet most of the time in class! I wonder if I can keep it up until the end of the year... I did promise a Mother's Day craft project, but that can be next week!

While working with my hands, I have been catching up on my Six Feet Under (Season Five) from Netflix DVDs. I also have been listening to great podcasts by Nancy Marmolejo of Comadre Coaching with Catherine Bruns of Balanced Life Coaching. The podcasts are really inspirational and helpful - you can check them out at Coaching A Go Go. I also like to listen to Kathy Cano-Murillo and CraftyPod with Sister Diane. Eventually, I am going to have my husband download podcasts for me to listen to in the car and while working out.