Extortion on Ebay

Anyone else noticed that sellers on Ebay are now making your feedback contingent on whether or not you leave them positive feedback first? I’m sorry, but as buyers, we’re already the ones taking the biggest risk first by sending some stranger money for an item that we have not received, and the only proof we have that we’ll actually get what we’re supposed to get is that they haven’t yet cheated too many other people. Our reward for taking that risk first should be that once we’ve completed our end of the bargain (i.e. paid for our purchase within the seller’s guidelines) we should receive positive feedback. It should not matter whether we ultimately leave positive feedback, negative feedback, or neutral feedback for the seller. We did our part, and therefore we deserve our feedback.

Some cutting edge sellers have finally realized that if they provide bad service, they get poor feedback for it. (duh!) So instead of leaving their buyers feedback upon receipt of payment (like they should) they wait until after they receive positive feedback from the buyer. This is in effect rendering the Ebay feedback system completely useless because now the buyers are afraid that they’ll get bad feedback in retaliation for justified bad feedback to the seller, even if they paid immediately upon winning the auction and within the payment guidelines of that seller.

Well I don’t know about you, but I personally am sick of this. I have a feedback rating of at least 75 (I know this because I got a star from Ebay upon receiving my 75th transaction rating) and I am happy with that. In my entire time as a Ebayer (primarily as a buyer but occasionally as a seller) I have received only 1 negative, and that was due to some miscommunication and a misunderstanding between me and the seller. She later regretted giving me negative feedback, but alas there is nothing that can be done about it now.  So, being secure in my lovely 75+ transactions, 99.99% positive rating, I have decided to stop leaving feedback for sellers who try to, in effect, blackmail me into leaving them positive feedback. So, every time I get an email or paypal slip from a seller indicating that they will leave me positive feedback only once they have received the same from me, I am not only not going to leave them feedback of any variety, but also going to send them the message below:

“Hi. I received all of the items, and am very happy with them and with your service. However, I am opposed in principle to sellers who refuse to leave me feedback until I have left them feedback. This is unfair since I will have already completed my part of the transaction long before the items are ever shipped. As such my feedback should be based entirely on that fact, not on whether I rate you for also completing your obligations correctly. As such, I never leave feedback for people who require me to first leave their feedback because they are in effect trying to extort a positive feedback listing from me. I am secure enough in my 76 positive feedback listing to not need to give in to this extortion, and therefore do not participate in this practice. I just wanted to let you know why I will not be leaving feedback of any variety for you, which is a shame since I was thrilled with your products and would have been happy to leave you a glowing recommendation. Thank you and have a nice day.”

I also plan to do some research in the Ebay community to see if they have plans to do something about this. (for instance, not allowing the seller to use the paypal shipping system for items that they have not yet left feedback for, etc.) and if not, then I’m going to raise a serious stink about it. I do not take lightly to extortion!

Ok. Stepping down from my soapbox now…

Buying a Condo in Northern Virginia

After nearly two years in Northern Virginia (for those of you outside the D.C. Metro area, that’s Northern Virginia, or NOVA, as opposed to the Rest of Virginia, or ROVA. Really they should be two separate states seeing as everything about the two areas is completely different. Many Northern Virginians have been saying this for years, but since many of them have never lived in ROVA, I never really considered that they knew what they were talking about. Now having lived in both ROVA and NOVA, I can agree that yes, they should indeed be two different states, and it’s quite a shame that it will likely never happen) I have decided to attempt to buy a condo. Now, everyone probably knows that it’s a better idea in the long run to buy than to rent (therefore, you’re not throwing your money directly into someone else’s pockets, but are indirectly sliding it into a pocket you may or may not possess in the future assuming that you keep the property long enough to both build up some equity and take advantage of said equity). But two years doesn’t sound like an unduly long time to live somewhere before deciding to buy, right? However, I lived in Blacksburg for 10 years, and the entire time kept saying that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay so I should keep renting. Well, I am not even going to do the calculations to find out how much rent money I threw directly into someone else’s pockets during those 10 years because it’s way too depressing, but suffice it to say that it was a lot. As such, I decided that since I do like NOVA enough to stay for at least a few more years, that it was high time for me to get myself in gear and take the home-ownership plunge.

Several things in my life reached a favorable conjunction in order to cause me to actually consider this. First, my current lease is over at the end of October. Second, my roommate is only paying me through the end of September ’cause she’s moving out then. Third, I got to thinking about my future pockets and how I’d like to be sliding a bit of money into them rather than throwing it unabashedly into some stranger’s current pockets. So I started looking into it.

I’ve already done a few steps prior to this writing (sorry, but I didn’t want to jinx it by announcing to the whole world before things started moving) so this is a belated attempt to catch my readers up and keep on top of things. So as of now, I have a realtor (a really nice Christian guy who I’d be happy to give props to if I had a website for him. As it is, all I have is an email and phone number and I don’t hold too kindly with passing out that kind of information, especially without permission. But if he tells me he wants props on my blog, I’ll come back here and update this post for all of you who are looking for your own really nice Christian realtor guy in NOVA) and have been pre-approved for a nice chunk of change (not a great one; I can’t for instance afford to live in the area I currently rent as a home-owner, but I can afford to go out a little ways and get a quite cute little place). Unfortunately, the bank guy I was first working with could only pre-approve me if I could put a significant chunk of change down, and I hadn’t been planning this long enough to have a down payment saved up. So, I talked to a friend of a friend who thinks they can get me 100% financing at a pretty good rate. If so, I’ll be a happy girl. If not, very sad, cause I’ve already got my heart set on having my own place.

But in any case, I have now shifted my plans anyway. My original plan was to buy at least a 2BR/2BA place and rent out one or more of the bedrooms. However, now that I’ve decided it would be quite nice to live alone (I am getting to the age where a girl likes to have some independence after all) my price ranges have dropped. Not sure yet whether they have dropped enough to where I can actually afford to live alone, even if I can qualify to live alone (a difference that many people do not understand, which is why we’re currently seeing such a huge influx of foreclosed homes recently) but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. In fact, there are a couple of places that are priced low enough that I should be able to even put the 5% down if I use my 401K as my down payment (or maybe as collateral toward it somehow if that’s possible. Anyone know if I can do that?). Granted I’d have to go from driving 20 minutes with no traffic to 45 minutes with no traffic (easily 1.5 hours when traffic gets bad) but I think it will be worth it to be able to both have my own place (as in I own it) and have my own place (as in live alone).

So, for those of you who wonder why I suddenly have been a busy little bee with everything except my art, now you know. Buying a home (even a condo, which I equate more with an apartment search) is not something you can do quickly or easily. It’s quite exhausting in fact. But exhausting in a good way. So for those of you that pray, please be praying that I’ll be able to recognize God’s will and know if this is the right time for me to be doing this. And check back often for updates on the process.

My (graphics) fairy godmother

An absolutely wonderful blogging lady (who I have not yet had the pleasure of virtual meeting, but hope to soon with this link) named Karen has started a blog called The Graphics Fairy and from what I can tell, the sole purpose of this blog seems to be to share her arty goodness in the form of graphics that we can download.

Now I have seen other people who are willing to share their goodies at times, but it’s far more common to find people who are trying to sell their goodies instead. But from the “about the site” post, it seems that her motives are entirely pure. Not only is she willing to let you use the graphics in personal art and pieces for trade, she’s even an Angel company, which means she’s letting you use them in pieces you plan to sell, as long as you use no more than four of her graphics in any one piece. I think this is so nice of her, and I so wish I had an award to give her. Unfortunately, I have not yet (here’s hoping!) been blessed with a “Nice Matters” award or she’d definitely be a person to pass it on to. At my company when someone does something above and beyond the call of duty (so to speak–we’re not exactly in the business of saving lives or anything) their coworkers have the ability to present them with a star. It doesn’t come with any formal recognition, or any monetary value or anything. It is just a way to recognize your peers and let them know you appreciate them. So in lieu of any actual award to give Karen, I am hereby awarding her a virtual star for going above and beyond. Thanks, Karen, for sharing with all of us!

I’ve been tagged…

Karyn over at Fat Orange Cat tagged me to list six weird or interesting things about myself. I promptly told her that she was very mean for making me do something so difficult (and I think I may have scared her off a bit) but then I thanked her profusely for being my first tagger. So, I have to now list the six things and then go tell the people I tag to come check here…Here are the official rules: list six weird/interesting things about yourself and then tag a further six bloggers (by going to their blogs and telling them to check out your blog post related to this) to keep the momentum going. List your six tagged bloggers at the bottom of your post.

Hmmm…I’m not a very interesting person, maybe I should focus on weird or unusual.

1. I’m 30 and still not married. Not all that weird, but neither have I ever been engaged, nor even come close to trying. In fact, I’ve only had two “boyfriends” and neither of them were all that serious. Maybe I’m just flighty.

2. I’m 30 and I don’t want to be married. If you had grown up where I grew up, you’d realize just how weird/unusual this really is.

3. I don’t like pie. And if you could see me, you’d think this was weird, too…I’m quite poofy, but certainly didn’t get this way from pie, cause even if it’s the only dessert available, I’m perfectly happy to leave it sitting there.

4. I don’t eat pork. And no I’m not allergic, nor was I raised this way. I just gave up pork a little over a year ago for strange personal reasons that I’m not going to get into here (it’s way too long and not all that interesting) and have only had it twice since then. And both of those times were accidents.

5. I sure miss pork (not the weird part), but still don’t eat it (the weird part, since there is nothing holding me back from doing so other than my own stubbornness and the fact that I’m so proud of having gone without it for over a year–well except those two times that I couldn’t help)

6. I got tagged the artist of the week over at Altered Belly the very same week that I was momentarily thinking about giving up my art. But of course I can’t do that now. I mean, come on! I’m an [important voice] Artist Of The Week. It’s my duty to stick with art now. So all I have to do now is pull myself out of this arty funk I’ve gotten into and I’ll be all set

Ok, so the people I’m tagging are Tami at Artistic Visions, Kim at Cabbage Head, Amy at Londonphilia, Arlene at Altered State of Mind, and Scarlett at Scarlett’s Web. Sorry I didn’t have six people to list. (If I tagged you it’s because I read your blog and already know you; I didn’t want to tag people I didn’t know through a group or from a past life).

Arlene sweetly created an “I’ve Been Tagged” graphic when I tagged her, and said that any tag-ees can use it, so I added it to my post. I just love it; thanks for sharing Arlene! If you get tagged and would like to use the graphic, please visit Arlene’s blog to download it.

Yippie! I’m an “artist of the week”

Belinda over at Altered Belly has started a new thing called Artist of the Week. She sends out a questionnaire to people who have expressed an interest about possibly being an artist of the week at some point. Then you reply to the questionnaire and also send a few samples of your work. At some unspecified point in the future, she may or may not choose you as the artist of the week. So of course I sent my info along hoping to eventually be chosen. This is the second week she’s done it, and guess what! I’m an artist of the week! I can’t believe it. So, please go click here and read all about little (uh, figuratively speaking) old me.

Free Islamic Cross Stitch Patterns

My new blogging friend, Tracy posted a comment on my Eid swap post, below. She sweetly shared a link to a website with free Islamic cross stitch patterns. This is a great find, as I have had a heck of a time finding any Islamic crafts. I’m not sure how many people actually read all the comments, so to give this site its due, I decided to make a post about it. I sure hope you enjoy!

Eid Mubarak: Ramadan cards on swap-bot

I started a swap for Eid al-Fitr cards on Swap-Bot today in honor of Ramadan, which, this year, starts in two weeks and runs through October 11. It’s actually quite annoying to me that none of the main-stream greeting card sites ever include Ramadan in the holiday offerings, even for e-cards. I suppose it’s made more difficult by the fact that Ramadan is a moving holiday (it gets earlier each year by 11 days due to the lunar calendar used by Islam.) However, e-cards for most of holidays are available year round so you can schedule them in advance, but many of these sites do not offer Ramadan cards at all.

Last year I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the USPS offers Eid stamps every October (which is going to make them look foolish in just another year or so; by October this year, Ramadan will nearly be over. Next year, it won’t be in October at all…hopefully they’ll adjust their calendars accordingly.) Since I could not find Eid cards to send to my Muslim friends last year, I sent them generic greeting cards and used an Eid postage stamp, the best I could do. This year however, I decided to take matters into my own hands; I have made a couple Eid greeting cards that I plan to use for my friends. (I had high hopes for selling them, but did not get enough of them finished to act on this hope. If I can make several more in the next week, maybe I can sell them at the local Muslim markets. But the money isn’t even the issue; I just don’t think it’s fair that it’s so difficult to find cards for Eid when cards for Hanukkah, Diwali (a Hindu festival) and even Kwanza abound.)

In honor of expanding the cultural offerings on swap-bot, I decided to go ahead with this swap. I do not know how many (if any) takers I’ll get for the swap, but as long as I get even one other person, I am going to be thrilled. And maybe seeing the name of an Islamic holiday on swap-bot will broaden the horizons of some of the swappers, which in the words of Martha Stewart, is “a good thing.”

Click here  if you’d like to join the swap. Newbies to card making and/or swap-bot are welcome. I’ll update this post with my cards when they are finished, so check back often.

Altered Playing Card swaps

I have participated in 4 altered playing card ATC swaps through swap bot, one for each suite of cards. The last two are clubs and diamonds, which I finished up this weekend. Here are the Clubs cards:

I used  a set of Russian playing cards as my bases so that’s why they look slightly different than your average playing cards. Also they are not the standard ATC size, which this swap required, so I needed to mount them on a coordinating piece of cardstock. I used two colors of acrylic (el cheapo brand) for the swirly painted background. Then for the face cards I used a glaze of the two paints on the text pages and blotted it off with a paper towel. You can’t see in the picture, but you can actually still  read the text and it gives it this nice leather-like texture. For the other 6 cards, I just used the Tim Holtz distress inks (I think it was Tea Dye color) direct to paper. Then I misted them with water and heat set them to get that nice aged look. I don’t speak any French, so they don’t make any sense, but I loved trying to pick out sentences from the French pages. It was SOOOO much fun. Oh, once the paint was dry, I used a spray matte fixative to keep the paint from rubbing off when I painted them with ModPodge. Once that was dry, I modpodged them twice and heat set. They now have a nice smooth finish and the text isn’t trying to peel off.

And here are the diamonds:

For these, I used the same set of playing cards, just a different suite. Don’t the face cards look so exotic? I got them from Sky Blue Pink. They’re great for playing cards; they have all different kinds! Anyway, since these playing cards are naturally glossy (as are most that I’ve come across), I used alcohol inks on them. The first cards use a combination of the ginger, latte, and caramel colors. The second ones use the stream, and some others from that set. But it was the ink that was left on my blending pad from the last time I used that color combination. I didn’t add any new inks, just some new blending solution, because I wanted it to be a muted purple color. Then after I did those, I added some more greenish blue (I think it’s the stream color) to the pad to make the blue green stand out more. That’s how I did the last three.  The images are just stamps on foreign text pages. Then I cut them out and used water colors to paint them. I didn’t seal these since there isn’t much danger of the alcohol ink coming off later.

I really like how both sets of these turned out. Funny, when I was making them yesterday, I thought I liked the clubs more, but now looking at them today I think I’m more partial to the diamonds. Isn’t it interesting how a nights sleep can change our perceptions?

Skinny Book Pages for Cloth Paper Scissors

I recently signed up for my first big collaborative book project. It’s the Skinny Book Swap that was mentioned in issue 13 of Cloth Paper Scissors (July/August 2007). I signed up through the Altered Abbey which is Chrysti Hydeck’s new online store and general website. We are to make 26 original skinny book pages (as opposed to the ubiquitous fat book pages which are 4×4, these are 8×4, which makes them “skinny”–Thank goodness I didn’t need to be skinny to sign up for the project hehe) and send them to Chrysti who will swap them out and bind them. There was an option for a well-embellished copies project as well, but I’ve never made copies of my art and wasn’t about to start now. So, I bit the bullet and signed up for the all originals project. I must say, right after my name was approved for the book, I started panicking, and haven’t really stopped since then, especially when I started recognizing the names of the other participants as those altered artists that I really admire. I’m not 100% I belong in their company just yet, but I suppose I’ll never get to the point where I AM sure I belong in their company if I never participate in these types of projects. Besides, Chrysti specifically said all levels of artists are welcome, as long as we don’t just slap a sticker on a piece of paper and call it done.

 Well, I have had all 26 backgrounds finished for a while now (I did started with patterned cardstock for some of them, but I went crazy from there; I added lots of gesso, acrylic paints, Ranger color wash sprays, used Punchinella as a stencil, etc. At this point no two of the pages look anything alike, even before I started embellishing them)

 This weekend, I wrapped up the first lot of 5 pages, which you can see here:

 

[Nothing spectacular about these. Well, except for the first slightly weird dreamscape (see below for the other one). ]

and here:

 

[I think the Autumn Leaves one might be my favorite so far. When I saw the background, that phrase just popped into my mind unbidden. So I just knew I had to use it. And this Dreamscape was just too weird not to be a dream! ]

Now obviously some of the same elements are repeated throughout (the mission embellishments I made from an Urdu newspaper and a rubber stamp, for instance) but no two pages are the same. I have had a lot of fun making these, and am still looking forward to the other 21 (ask me in a few weeks whether I’m still enjoying it after I’ve made a few more sets.)  I’ll upload the rest of the pages here as I complete them.

Here are two more from today:

[The man is a bit serious. His text says "He wished...for more peacful times" I cut him out of an Urdu paper and used some Urdu text for his "torso" a la Claudine Hellmuth . Then I gave him a quick spritz of a Ranger color wash spray. (remind me to tell you later about those; I'm sorry if I'm committing sacrilige but I'm not overly pleased with them so far...). I don't speak Urdu either (you're right if you sense a pattern here; see the French playing cards above...) but he just seemed to fit this piece so well; I sure hope I didn't end up taking him from an obituary or something...sheesh that would be morbid. The other one says "Flowers are good for the soul" and has two flower transfers; they didn't transfer completely, which I really liked, cause they look all distressed and vintagey.]

In other news, I also signed up for a holiday recipe journal project, which I haven’t yet started. For this one, I need to make 22 half sized pages with a vintage picture of a winter holiday on the front and a recipe on the back. Luckily for me the creators are counting Thanksgiving as a winter holiday so I have every intention of making all of my recipes Thanksgiving themed, although I may do a few Christmas ones since I also love vintage Christmas imagery. None of these are finished yet, but I will start a new post when they are ready.

Blogging without obligation

I have seen so many posts from people who haven’t posted to their blog recently where the bloggers are worried that their readers are upset with them. They thus start their posts with “sorry I haven’t posted in a while”. Those seven little words are what almost stopped me from starting a blog in the first place, because as any of my friends know, I tend to do things sporadically (i.e. at full speed or not at all). So you can imagine my absolute pleasure when I learned about “blogging without obligation” on the Tartx blog. I absolutely love the idea behind it, since I don’t want to turn into someone who starts looking at my blog as an obligation (because I know from past experience that my posts are way more entertaining when I actually want to write them.)

I encourage everyone who is worried about their blog getting, er, bogged down (haha. a bogged down blog. I kill me!) to visit her site by clicking on the button to the right. If you like what you see, maybe you will join those who are blogging without obligation.