First- the holiday work floodgates have officially opened which means I am swimming in art commissions and photography. Yay for me! And yay for all of the soon-to-be-happy people whose faces will light up when they open their happy smily custom-made dog and cat gifts of their very own pooch or kitty! Yay again!

And big yay for me as this means more time spent doing what I love: taking photos and making art!

I have some really fun art commissions I am working on for holiday gifts and can't wait to put one of them on my 'current feature' page, which still has Lilly on it (http://www.decopaw.com/feature.html). Even though we are done wih the proofs and the art is on order with my printer I have to wait until the gift is received because with my luck the recipient will stumble upon the site and the surprise will be revealed (very doubtful but I know that Murphy guy well and I swear he picks on me...). I'll come back here and put up another post once he (not Murphy- 'he' as in the dog in the art- oh whatever) is online. :-)

Now- onto the art show this weekend. Oh man, whoever wins the raffle for the Decopaw gift basket is going to SCORE!!!

Here is what it is going to contain:

3 matted 5x7 (in 8x10) decopaw art prints: one bright and colorful, one avant-garde and one pastel (they make awesome little gifts and are so incredibly cute).


1 decopaw mug of Max the bulldog



























1 magnet of Sydney 'the adorable dog'
















1 pretty tile coaster of Miko Flowers
















1 6-pack of Holiday Decopaw greeting cards, with the 'let it snow' jingle lyrics on the inside

























1 2007 Decopaw art wall calendar (I don't have one for myself yet but I hear they are really cool!)















AND

a $200 gift certificate for a custom Decopaw Canvas!!

All in all- a $300 value!

WOOHOO!!!

The rest of the party:

We will have food (no feasts here- but it'll take the edge off before your dinner or drinks out), wine, fun gift ideas, great conversation, a hip and happening environment, and of course- great art!

I will have bunches of the small matted prints for sale, as well as additional gift certificates with me. We will also have 2nd and 3rd place gift baskets for the raffle, filled with fun goodies. And if you haven't been to Urban Beast yet you are missing out big time. It is the coolest store to ever hit Washington.

I am really looking forward to this event. Katie's store opening party was a blast- there were some of the neatest people (and dogs!) there and I feel very fortunate to have my art hanging in such a cool space.

Details for the event:

Saturday 12/2 6-9pm

At:

Urban Beast
217 Yale Ave N
Seattle, WA 98109
206.324.4400

across the street from REI

free admission

bring your dog(s)

bring yourself

bring a friend

blow some steam off and have some fun!!

here is the link to the evite: feel free to add yourself!: http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?inviteId=AMHGJGYOYNGXYCXOGERY&li=iq&src=email&trk=aei4

I really hope to see any and all that are reading this, there! :-)

Jamie Cowbelly Stumble It!

I just had to share these photos because of how incredibly cute pugs are. Especially these girls! These are 4 girls who live in Brier, Wa. They are Millie, Maggie, Mushu and Maude. They are all rescued pugs and are just the sweetest things alive.

Even though we ended up in the middle of a storm the shoot turned out well because we were able to use the girls' greenhouse. They were ideal subjects! :-)












Stumble It!

So we are on for Saturday, December 2nd from 6-9 pm for our artists' reception/party at Urban Beast in the Cascade neighborhood in Seattle, across the street from the REI store.

217 Yale Ave N, Seattle, 98109. 206.324.4400. info@urbanbeast-seattle.com
http://www.urbanbeast-seattle.com

I will post more details as I know them, and will continue to plan for the event this weekend. As well as images of their new decopaw art that I designed for their logo and pictures of the canvases hanging in the store. The images aren't displaying in the blog at the moment (bad Blogger- the company who runs this site), so when I have time I'll spend the (probably) hours trying to trouobleshoot and fix the problem. Then put the images online.

What I CAN say about the event is that it is going to be a blast. Katie's (the store owner) store opening party was a super blast- tons of people, dogs, and FUN, and I expect (and plan for!) our artist's reception for yours-truly to be no different.

We will have food, refreshments (the good kind), great inexpensive gift ideas, small matted art pieces, a raffle for a gift basket including Decopaw art gifts, rides provided by Emerald Spokes, and possibly even an art contest. For the dogs. :-)

More to come later- after working all week preparing for the Washington Cash small business fair that took place last night I am overwhelmed with backlogged e-mails. Someday I will make enough money to pay my bills AND hire someone to help run the business. Love the creative part, hate the administrative. :-P Stumble It!

The Cowbelly Pet Photography tag line is "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Woofs"™. It has a 'common use' trademark dating back to the start of the business: July 2003.

The business tag line now finds itself living on a host of products that also have everybody's favorite dog, Sydney, living along with it.

Here are some examples:











Check out the "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Woofs" e-store to see all of the products: http://www.cafepress.com/cowbelly/2061011 Stumble It!

For the months of November and December I have a large display of Decopaw art canvases at a great pet supply store called Paddywack up in Mill Creek. There are a variety of sizes and designs, both cats and dogs.

They make an awesome gift for the pet lover you don't know how to buy for, and don't want to spend a ton of money but still want to see their face light up when they open their gift.

The canvases are just so cool- you have to see them in person. They come on deep wood stretcher bars and the edges are printed black for a sleek, modern look. Plus they are archival which means they are the same quality you would find in a fine art reproduction in a gallery.

I will be slashing the prices this week to make them even more reasonable for folks shopping for neat holiday gifts for their pet loving friend, boss, girlfriend, cousin, etc.

The prices range from $65- $250. Most are under $150. A great deal for a giclee art piece!

These are the pieces that are currently hanging:














And these are the additional pieces I plan to hang the first week of December:















So if you are in the market for a great gift head on up to Paddywack and check out the options in person. Plus buy some goodies while you are there- they have great products!

They are located at:

15415 Main Street Mill Creek, WA 98012
Phone: 425-357-6510 Fax: 425-357-6520
E-mail: info@paddywack.net Stumble It!

I had Fergie for 8 months before creating an art piece of her. I guess it's like the old saying: "the cobbler's children have no shoes". The poor girl has barely been photographed since I brought her home from doggie jail in February.

Wonder what a pet photographer has on the desktop of her computer?

Here ya go:

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There are exactly 5 days left on the Cowbelly Pet Photography Fall Sale. The end date has been extended to November 15th, which is next Wednesday, Nov. 15th.

Here are the details:

Reg. price photo session package price: $195

Sale price through November 19th: $169

Standard photo session package includes:

2 hour location shoot within 20 miles of Seattle (over 20 miles nominal travel fees apply)
private online photo gallery for 60 days
90-115 'cream of the crop' images to choose from
4 archival 8x10 prints (or $80 in print credit exchangeable for smaller or larger prints)
treats
a super fun time with photographer Jamie Pflughoeft

To book a shoot, please contact Jamie at 206.335.8096 or send an e-mail to info@cowbelly.com.

As of the placing of this ad several slots are still available. Weather isn't an issue!

see site for more details: http://www.cowbelly.com Stumble It!

A few of my personal faves taken over the years.

From left to right we have: Sydney, Miss Kitty, Hannah, Bruiser, and Bella, respectively.






From left to right: Henry, Knuckles, Besa, Henry, Lucy, respectively.






After doing professional pet photography for 3 years, I still feel like the conduit for the images to come through. I give most of the credit to the animals themselves, and the rest to the camera. ;-)

Jamie Cowbelly Stumble It!

So one of the biggest challenges of any new small business owner with a website is how to improve/increase their web presence. Some time ago I stumbled upon a nifty tool called the 'Keyword Selector Tool'. It's simpy a page with a box on it that you can type in certain search criteria and see how many times those search terms were, well, searched, in the previous month.

For example, I type in 'pet photography' and I get that that phrase was searched 2363 times in September, 2006.
Under that result is a long list of other similar search terms and their corresponding number of times they were used in the same month.

For example it shows that 'big make money pet photography' was searched 80 times in September. Hmm, I don't know about the 'big make money' part.

I digress.

So this tool is pretty cool. Oh, it's here by the way:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

So it's cool, but also baffling when it comes to getting my http://www.decopaw.com site placed. I use the tool to help me determine what meta tags to use and how to form descriptions of the site in directories (the tool is technically used to help determine the best keywords to bid on for cpc's).

So for the decopaw site, do I use "pet art"? Or "dog art"? Or "pet portraits"? I mean, how many people wake up one morning and decide they want a colorful custom art piece on canvas of their pooch and then go to google and type in "dog art"? Just doesn't seem likely. So what meta tags do I put in my site to help people get there who may be looking, even casually, for something like what I do? It's a mystery.

When you type "pet photography" in google, my photography site http://www.cowbelly.com is consistently in the top 10 search results (watch I just shot myself in the foot and it dropped down to page 2), and gets and average of about 750 unique IP hits per day (an IP hit is a single computer), so I try and take what I have done right with that site and apply it to the decopaw site but I'm not sure how to get the Decopaw site in the hands of 'dog art' shoppers.

I'll keep working on it. Any suggestions from people not trying to get money from me would be most appreciated. :-)

So anyway, back to the overture search tool. It can also come in handy when doing research. Lets say that you are thinking about making a new product- say carbon fiber model airplanes (try saying that 5 times fast), and you discover through the tool that that string has been searched for a bazillion times in the last month, yet there is only one other company making carbon fiber model airplanes, and they are in Timbuktoo and they don't ship. You've just discovered a ready-made market for your product. Batten down your manufacturing hatches, get those venture capitalists in line and fire up that website- you are going to be rich! How cool is that?

So there you go, use it or not. It's still cool either way. :-)

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Stumble It!

Back by popular demand- it's the latest Decopaw dog art wall calendar! I finished early for 2007. :-)

I have to toot my own horn here and say that the decopaw calendars are just about one of my favorite things ever. I have many unpleasant memories of combing the racks of calendars of Barnes & Noble year after year, trying to find something cool to hang on my wall, unhappy with the posed golden retriever, pretty landscape, sports car, Ansel Adams options. So I decided to make my own.

This calendar is currently only available through Cafepress, but I am in the market for a professional publisher. I have a short list of publishers I am interested in pitching to, but know nothing of the publishing field. If anyone has any resources they could pass my way, or knows anyone who knows anything about getting published in the gift market I'd be very grateful for any information. Anyone who helps me book a meeting with someone with experience in the 'gift' publishing field will get a free calendar!

Below are the calendar pages. There are 36 seperate decopaw art images from commissions I completed in the last 12 months.

The calendar itself can be purchased here: https://www.cafepress.com/cowbelly.84752708













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