Valentine’s Day Cards for Tabletop Gamers

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and I’ve been having a ton of fun reinventing old cards and creating whole new ones for each sort of geeky/nerdy niche that I’ve been working with lately. Without further ado … here are the tabletop gaming cards!

The top two cards represent a whole series that I’d like to do… of different interests that nerdy and geeky boys and girls love. Comic books, sci-fi, math, code, you know the drill… while I doubt I’ll get them done before Valentine’s Day (who needs just one day to tell someone you love them, anyways!), they will be coming very, very soon. 🙂

The bottom card you might recognize! This is a re-envisioned version of my original d20 card, in classy red, black and white especially for the holiday.

 

In Which I Get Braces and Go on Vacation…

 

Yup, that grinning, braced dork is me. 🙂 Despite how the picture looks, I’m not 12. I’m *cough* thirty *cough* six *cough*. Today, I got braces cemented to my teeth for the second time in my life.  I spent over a decade either without dental insurance or without enough money to pay for what the dental insurance wouldn’t, so a lot of things that needed attention didn’t get it. Now it’s time to correct all of that. 🙂

My winter vacation is about to begin! I put the Etsy shop in vacation mode yesterday after having a fantastic Christmas season. I was averaging 30-40 orders a week and somehow managing to stay on top of them. I got enough orders in that period of time to be able to afford to get a 100-notepad printing on an offset press so I don’t have to print out each sheet. These notepads are beautiful. Just the same quality, down to the same weight of paper, just more compact and a hefty 100 pages instead of the mere 80 I do by hand. 🙂

For the moment, I only have the offset press pads in the WWHBD notepad, but over time I hope to expand that out to also include the other, non-personalized pads. The next one I’m targeting is the DM’s notepad.

Paper Tiger is growing literally by leaps and bounds, and I can’t be happier. I haven’t had much time to get out new products because I’ve been so busy filling orders, so this coming vacation is also going to give me some time to work on a line of Valentine’s Day cards.  I have a couple of previews:

I’m going with mostly black, red and white, with classy red envelopes to go with the cards. I don’t at all like the pinks and violets and other gentle shades often associated with Valentine’s day. These cards should go beautifully with a dozen red roses.

These are just the first two. I plan to do one more re-hash, like the d20 card is above, and a laundry list, including one or two personalizable cards, so you can give your lover a very, very personal card.

I also found a new small card size that I really love. The ‘Mini Baronial’ cards that I have even have tiny stationery boxes in their size.  They look adorable, as you can see here:

I’ve put up twelve packs of each of these, and I’ve been giving away single freebies with greeting card orders. I’ve always had a soft spot for tiny things, so I love making tiny little cards. In fact, I’ve got a whole set of my solar system christmas tree card in a tiny version for all of the gift tags I’m putting on christmas gifts. 🙂

I want to expand on these and add some more, especially for Valentine’s day. I’ve got a set called ‘Horny Little Love Notes’, so I’m going to transfer them into this size (they’re a little smaller, now), as well as give them a few different more Valentine’s Day motif.

In addition to the small cards and the other regular sized v-day cards, I’ll also be adding some more notepads, even some personalized ones meant to go with the cards.

If you’ve got an idea, or you’d like a particular greeting card, leave a comment below!

Paper Tiger should open back up again in the first week of January, with a whole new bunch of fun, geeky gear for gift giving!

Thanks for making this such a fantastic year for me! I’ll be out of town next week and partially buried in work this week, but I might pop my head up for a blog post or two in my spare time. 🙂

 

Christopher Hitchens – Dead at 62

Image via Wikipedia

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
― Christopher Hitchens

I was born into a Presbyterian family, became an evangelical in High School, then an agnostic after a particularly eye-opening summer camp experience, then a pagan, then back to an agnostic, and finally … about five or six years ago, I dropped all pretenses and went back to my natural state – atheist.

These days, I often rail against all of the navel gazing that the big atheists do. There’s a good point to it … much of the world still has archaic beliefs about what an atheist is, what we believe and what kind of people we are … but as an atheist, it’s exhausting to have to say over and over and over again why you don’t believe in god. People like Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins do that work for us, so that we can go about our lives without having to stop and explain every few seconds.

I have a Vanity Fair subscription just for Hitchens. It will now lapse. Sadly. The man was a breed of man that rarely exists anymore. Well-groomed and extraordinarily well-spoken, well-written, well-anything. He often showed up at speaking appearances with a glass of liquor in one hand instead of a glass of water. He said what he thought, very eloquently, and didn’t pull punches. Ever. This is a man who once got beaten down because he could not stand to let a sign with a swastika on it be left untouched… and here’s what he said about THAT:

“Once you credit them like that,” he said, “you do all their work for them. They should have been worried about us. Let them worry. Let them wonder if we’re carrying a tool or if we have a crew. I’d like to go back, do it properly, deface the thing with red paint so there’s no swastika visible. You can’t have the main street, a shopping and commercial street, in a civilized city patrolled by intimidators who work for a Nazi organization. It is not humanly possible to live like that. One must not do that. There may be more important problems in Lebanon, but if people on Hamra don’t dare criticize the SSNP, well fuck. That’s occupation.”

We need more people like that in this world. People who are unafraid of what the consequences may be for standing up for what is right.

I didn’t always agree with Hitchens, but I’ve always reveled in reading or hearing what he had to say. How could one not? Such eloquence, such mastery of the English language, such undaunted, unwavering, unswerving devotion to doing the right thing.

Rest in Peace, Christopher Hitchens. Rare is the man today made like you.

 

On Having Opinions While Running a Business

I’m a little disappointed in myself for not using this blog very much, so today I’m going to talk about WHY. In short, I was afraid to post anything that contained anything more than fluff pieces because someone actually threatened me with not promoting or talking about my products based on an opinion that I wrote here.  The exact details of the conversation aren’t important. What is important is that it was over an extremely trivial issue, and I let the threat and overall conversation influence me and actually make me gun-shy.

 

The 2012 Places Calendar – My Favorite ‘Places’ Photography

I wasn’t sure what to name this one, so I named it ‘Places’.  Basically, this set of images are those that I’ve taken that seem to evoke ‘place’.  They give you an idea of where you are and how things should feel in that space.  Or at least I think so. 🙂

These shots have all been taken over a number of years and I’m pleased to announce the upcoming 2012 calendar featuring them:

 

Some Old Commissions for New Adventures

Before I started my last campaign, I searched around DeviantArt for a few artists who would be willing to do commissions of the prominent NPCs as well as of the races that I was putting together.  The game imploded before I could get everything I wanted, but I got a few pieces that will work great for this campaign.

I love to have lots of visuals in everything that I do, so I hope to have some amazing, high-quality printed maps on huge sheets of paper, as well as pictures of all of the major NPCs and some (if not all) of the environments.  To that end, I’m going to start looking for some more artists who want to do commissioned work like this (I really don’t mind paying to have some quality fun, especially because I lack this sort of talent).

These images were all paid for by me and are copyrighted to their respective artists, so no funny business!

Lucia, the main NPC driving the plot.

Lucia, in fine dress.

Nightfall Gnomes

The first two are of the major NPC in the game – ‘Lucia’.  She sent the NPCs on many of their quests and was one of their options to back as the possible new leader of the settled human lands.  I had two pictures commissioned of her – one in her ‘Paladin’ uniform, and one in more royal dress.

The third image is of my “custom” race.  Dark gnomes have been done before and exist in bestiaries, but I still take credit for these babies as all mine.  I called them ‘Nightfall Gnomes’ in the first game.  In this one, they’ll go by ‘Terror Gnomes’.  I’ll probably actually be writing /them/ up, first. 🙂

 

Toys Photography and Calendar

A while back, I saw some really gorgeous photography of some miniatures interacting with a very large life and I fell in love with the concept.  I did several shoots involving toy soldiers, tiny little miniatures used for railroads and anything and everything I could get my hands on.  My photography props department, these days, is two or three big, plastic bins filled with toys.

These represent the best of my toys, plus the new calendar that I’m creating with them.

 

Awakenings: A Prologue

What’s below is the opening prologue to the Pathfinder campaign that I’m working on.  It’s about a 2nd, maybe half-heartedly 3rd round draft.  I’m never happy with my own writing, but it’s been an enormously long time since I’ve done any creative writing, so I’m even less happy with it, now.  I know, however, that the only way I’m going to improve is to get my ass writing, so here it is!

I’m becoming a bit obsessed with Willem and his plight.  I’ve yet to come up with a good name for the campaign, but I’m sure it will come to me as I keep working on it.

Special thanks to @TheAngryDM for coming up with the name to Willem’s horse!

 

Latest Project: Calendars!

It’s that time of year when everyone is thinking about next year … and that, of course, means calendars!  I’ve been dying to do some mini calendars for a while, and I’ve finally found the perfect, super-thick, ultimate-heavy cardstock necessary to do mini-easel calendars the way that I’d like.

Last week, I added a new product showcasing the concept with some of my flower photography taking the forefront:

      

This week, I’m working on a smaller set, with 6 months to one 8.5×11″ page, with a D&D theme:

The finished work is awesome looking. The individual icons are just subtly geeky enough that you could put this on your work desk and people might not even be able to figure out your secret nerd identity.

If all goes well, I should have this new calendar up tomorrow, and may be even more with that!

Update: The RPG calendar is now up in the shop and available for purchase here!

 

On The Importance of Thinking

My husband is a High School drama teacher.  When we first met, I’d never been to a single play, but I was excited to learn about his world and he was very willing and patient to show it to me.  His kids have become our kids.  Several of them were in our wedding, and several others helped make sure our wedding happened.  I instantly bonded with these kids because they were the same as I was in High School.  The nerds, the geeks, the ones that were often left behind and ignored by the jocks and the A-listers.

For us, 20 years ago, the factor that brought us all together was band.  The music building somehow belonged to us band kids.  We’d sit in the lobby on the tile floor at lunch and play D&D.  We all dated each other, slept with each other, broke up with each other (I dated the tuba player, a saxophonist and two drummers during my four years in High School).  The thing was … we didn’t belong anywhere else.  We were told that every day by the other students in the school.  We were the weird ones.