Movie Poster Inspiration

I decided to come up with some of my favorite movie posters. I like all these movies, but I tried to choose posters I like for aesthetic reasons too.

What are some of your favorite movie posters?

Dog Sitting Photos

I've been dog sitting through the site DogVacay lately. These are some recent pet sitting photos I got:

You can see my pet sitting profile on DogVacay if you're ever in the Chicago area.

Slice the Pie Music Review Website

Slice the Pie is a website that pays you for reviewing music. You can get about $0.05-0.15 per song you review. You will review music in a variety of genres. The amount you are paid depends on how well you review a song. You need some knowledge about musical terms to write reviews, but you can still write reviews if you don't know a lot about music. These are some things I've learned from reviewing music at Slice the Pie.

Tips

You can submit a review after 90 seconds of listening to a song and you can type while you listen. 

Vocals - How are the vocals? Are they in tune? Is the singer talented? Is the song delivered well? Do the vocals have good expression?  

Lyrics - If you can make out the lyrics, how are they? Do they stand out? Are they deep and interesting or predictable and cliche? 

Music - Is the melody memorable and original? Are there too many digital effects? Was the volume okay? How is the length? Since you only have to listen to the first 90 seconds of the song, think about how the intro is and if it works well with the song. 

Instruments - If you can make out specific instruments, how are they? Are the instruments full and rich? Do they fit with the overall song? Are the instruments weak and safe? 

Rhythm - Is the rhythm engaging or more subtle? Is the rhythm consistent? 

Commercial Potential - The main goal of Slice the Pie is to find songs that have commercial potential. Even if you don't like the style or genre of a song, do you think it has commercial potential? Would it fit well on the radio? Is the song catchy? 

You score each song on a scale from 1-10. Try to keep your score between 4 and 7 because you want your score to be close to the average of all the ratings for that song. 

Your reviews are measured by your "Rank" score. You can be Bronze, Silver, or Gold rank. The higher your Rank, the more you get paid for each review. Look at the Rank bar beneath where you review music and try to keep this high. If you take your time with reviews, you Rank will be higher. 

Referrals

You can also get money for referring people to Slice the Pie. You get a unique referral link if you click the "Invite Friends" button. For the first 60 days of their membership, you will receive a bonus of 15% on all the money your referrals earn for reviewing music. After that, your review commission will go to 10%. If you get active referrals, you can make money this way. 

Cashout

You can cash out through PayPal once you reach $10. You can review as many songs as you want as long as you have Energy left in your Energy bar. When you submit reviews, you use up Energy. When your Energy runs out, you can't submit any more reviews for a little while. Make sure to look at your Energy bar to see if you are about to run out.

I've made more than $100 sofar reviewing songs. If I spend some time each day reviewing music, I can make about $20 a week. Overall, Slice the Pie has made me appreciate what I like about music more and has helped me developed my writing skills. I'd recommend checking it out if you like to review music and want to earn extra money. 

Shop Updates and Labels

I bought a new domain name, movetheneedlepaper.com. My old domain was movetheneedlecreations.com, but somebody bought the domain before I had a chance to renew it and didn't respond to the email I sent them so I had to change it. movetheneedle.com is also taken so I chose movetheneedlepaper.com,

Since I changed the domain name, I decided to update the labels for my items. Before, I had some of my items labels and others weren't. I made new labels on printable sticker paper with my new domain on it and used it on all my items. I think it's better that everything is labeled now.

Here are some in the process photos of cards I put labels on: 

 If you have the old domain bookmarked, make sure to change it!

Kitchen Inspiration

Here are some photos of inspiration for your kitchen.



Use see through containers to hold items that don't need refrigeration so you can see how much you have left of an ingredient. This photo is from Martha Stewart.



Use a cake stand to hold items you use frequently like olive oil and salt.



This kitchen won a kitchen of the year award on House Beautiful.



This kitchen uses fun, pastel colors to make it unique.



 Use baskets to organize your food. This person used chalkboard paint to make labels.



You can arrange plates you have collected on the wall. I like that this arrangement uses two walls.

How do you like to arrange or decorate your kitchen?

New Food Photos

These are some recent photos I took of meals I've made and eaten:

I made this salsa for my mom with fresh tomatoes from my garden, oregano and garlic.

These french fries were pretty easy to make. I just cut up potatoes and fried them in hot oil and they came out really good.

This pasta has peas, avocados and fresh basil.

 

 I made homemade granola with oats, sunflower seeds, maple syrup and peanut butter. I put chocolate on half of the granola bars.

I used fresh broccoli from my garden in this bean salad with tomatoes.

What do you like to cook?

How to Sell on Craigslist Tutorial

You can make money online by selling on Craigslist. I've sold a few items on Craigslist and these are some tips I've learned.

What to Sell
Craigslist is good for selling large items because you can avoid the shipping cost and people can pick up in person. These are some ideas of thing to sell:

- Furniture: Furniture is good to sell on Craigslist. If you want to get rid of furniture, you can even give it away for free and leave it in your alley. Some furniture that is good to sell are tables, chairs, couches and toasters.

- Bicycles and Cars: Bicycles, cars and boats sell well on Craigslist. Include a clear description of what you're selling.

- Artwork and Large Paintings: If you have large paintings or other artwork (either your work or artwork by someone else) Craigslist is a good place to sell them because you don't have to ship them. If you're an artist, you'll also help spread the word by posting on Craigslist.

- Handmade Items: Post about your handmade business on Craigslist. Even if you don't get sales, you can advertise your business by including a link to your website.

- Digital items: Craigslist is also good for selling digital items like eBooks. All you have to do is send them a PayPal invoice and email them the digital item. You can also post a link to your online store or website with the digital item.

- Services: Any type of service is good to post about on Craigslist such as dog walking or babysitting. You will reach out to the local community and many people are looking for some type of service.

- Anything else: It's free to list on Craigslist so you can sell basically anything you want. Some other items you might want to post about are clothes, media (CDs, DVDs, books), autographed items and electronics. Popular electronics like iPhones and laptops always sell well.

You can also look in the "free" section of Craigslist. Try picking up some free items and then reselling them.

Making a Listing

To make a listing, click on "post to classifieds" on the left hand side. You can register for an account if you want to, but you don't have to. Click "for sale by owner" or "for sale by dealer" and then choose a category.



Choose the location that is nearest to you. You are only allowed to post in you local city.


Give your posting a catchy title and description. You can also choose to set a price and specific location. Have the replies set to "use craigslist mail relay". This will hide your email address to protect your privacy. You can choose to show on maps. I recommend only doing this if you're offering a service or having an event like a garage sale.

The next page will let you upload up to 12 images. Add at least one photo! Take photos of your item and offer a few good quality photos with close up of details and shots from different angles. Upload your best photos first because you can't change the order. For more photography tips, click here to see my photo tutorial.

Then just click the "publish" button and you're done. Your posting expires in 7 days, but you can use the "My Account" section on Craigslist to renew it if you created an account.

Accepting Money

Always be safe. If you're worried about safety, consider meeting in public instead of having the person come to your house. You might get scam emails on Craigslist after posting so be aware of this. Know exactly what type of money you are going to accept. It's a good idea to accept cash only to be safe.

Selling on Craigslist is pretty easy and it's free to do so it's a good deal. 

Have you ever sold or bought on Craigslist?

New Sold Items

I sold a few items. I sold this New York City Wavy Map Greeting Card:



I also sold this Spring Garden Journal to my sister:



Have you bought anything on Etsy lately?

Fire Inspiration

I love looking at photos of fire. Here are some finds of fire photographs:









What do you like to look or take photos of?

Favorite Etsy Apps for Social Media

Etsy has a page where it lists a bunch of applications that are Etsy related. These are some apps I like to use that are related to social media.


Facebook


I use an Etsy, Storenvy and blog application on my Facebook page so those sites are directly connected to my Facebook.

I use Etsy Theme to showcase my Etsy store on my Facebook page. I use the Storenvy application so it links directly to my Storenvy. There is no direct Blogger application, but I use Networked Blogs which posts new blog updates.

I also use IFTTT to set it up so every time I renew an item on Etsy or write a new blog post, it posts a Facebook update. IFTTT is a really useful site that automates tasks for you and there are a variety of websites and things you can do with it. I recommend checking it out.

Twitter 

Hootsuite lets you schedule tweets in advance. It's my favorite Twitter application to schedule tweets and check my @replies. You can also connect your Facebook and Google +. Etsy Fu lets you post random items from your shop.

FriendorFollow allows you to easily unfollow people on Twitter that don't follow you back and see who's following you that you're not following.

What Etsy apps do you like to use?

Favorite Authors

These are some of my favorite authors.

Nick Hornby has written a lot of books that have turned in to movies like "High Fidelity", "About a Boy" and "Fever Pitch". I like the way he writes about relationships and music.



Audrey Niffenegger wrote "The Time Traveler's Wife". She's also from Chicago and I like that she uses Chicago settings in her book.



Nicholas Sparks is the author of "The Notebook" and writes a lot of romantic novels that I like.



I like Chuck Palahniuk's style of writing. He wrote "Fight Club" and "Choke" which were turned in to movies. I went through a period where I read a lot of his books.



I wanted to include a children's author too. Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite children's author and I love this photo with a quote by him.

Who are your favorite authors?

Art Supplies Wishlist

I recently bought some items at Dick Blick. I mostly just got sketch paper and glue, but they have a wishlist section on their site and I thought I'd post some items on my art supplies wishlist:

Speedball Composition Gold Leaf Kit



I love playing around with gold leaf. I used it once as makeup for a fairy Halloween costume. I might try to make a journal or card with it. I'm pretty sure this is imitation gold leaf and not the real thing.

Tube Wringer


The tube wringer is meant for paint, but you can use it with other tubes too. It helps you get the last bit of paint (or whatever) out of a tube.

Sakura Pigma Micron Pens



These pens are acid free and archival. I like to use them from anything from drawing to writing notes.

Spectra Sparkling Glitter



I love using glitter especially in my greeting cards and art journaling. I like this brand because it's affordable and comes in different colors.

What art supplies do you like to buy?

Make Money by Searching the Web

I found two websites you can use that will give you money or gift certificates for searching the web.

Bing Rewards is a program from the Bing search engine that gives you rewards, such as Amazon gift certificates, for using their search engine.

A similar program to this is SwagBucks where you can win money for doing searches. On SwagBucks, you earn points for a variety of tasks such as taking polls and watching videos. If you do searches through SwagBucks, you have a chance to win points (I've won a few times so it's not that hard to get extra points this way). You can redeem points for various items such as money through PayPal, gift cards and more. SwagBucks just uses the Google search engine so it's the same results as Google. You can have the SwagBucks toolbar installed to make it easy to search.

How do you like to make extra money?

Back to School

It's back to school time. Whether you are a student or teacher, these items are great for back to school:

Mini Math Journal



This cute mini journal uses math script decorative paper. It's perfect for sticking in your backpack for quick notes or doing math problems.

Yearbook Graduation Greeting Card





This graduation greeting card is perfect for somebody planning to graduate. Also check out the Black and White Yearbook Coptic Stitch Journal.

Vote Black and Red Flat Greeting Card



Autism Awareness Journal



This journal helps promote autism awareness. The puzzle theme makes this item good for children or special education.

A is for Apple Greeting Card



This greeting card would be great to give to a teacher.

Of course, all journals would be good to use for school. Journals are good for either taking notes or sketching for an art class.

Enter the coupon code "BACKTOSCHOOL" to get a 30% discount (minimum purchase is $10) in my shop (ends Oct 1). Do you shop for back to school?