Custom binders are a new item here at Winged Turtle, courtesy of Zazzle.  The binders are 3-ring Avery vinyl binders–hold 8.5×11 paper size–that come in 3 sizes, 1-inch, 1.5-inch, and 2-inch.   There are about 180 now available with my usual art and designs–sea turtle binders, animal art binders, floral binders, etc. Most are available with customizable text, but many are also available as blank art binders. With a few of my designs I’ve made general photo albums — with a framed area on front for your photos. I’m now doing some specific specialty books — baby album binders, with customizable photos and text, Christmas memory books, school memory books, and more. I am planning to work on some recipe binder designs soon.

I love these new binders, and I’m enjoying designing for them. I may buy a couple both for myself and for family gifts — making photo albums / memory books and a recipe book. They’re not cheap binders, but as a basis for making a nice personalized gift for a family member, they’re worth it to me…and hopefully to others as well.

Wall calendars are nice, but it’s also great to just have a little calendar that you can keep in your wallet, or use as a bookmark, or whatever…a calendar that’s close at hand.  Or a poster calendar that shows you the whole year at once, so you never forget to change the month.  I’ve been experimenting with using various items for 12-month 2010 calendars.

Wallet Calendar Cards First, I’ve been using Zazzle’s large “chubby” (2.5×3.5) business cards with 12-month calendars on one side.  For some, I just used art on both sides, with the back side art only.  For others, I used the front as a regular business cards, with customizable text for name/ contact/ business/ etc, with the calendar on the back.

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Calendar Cards I’ve been using the new square — I think they’re 5.25×5.25, around 5×5 inches anyway–invitation cards to make 12-month calendar cards with art or photography on one side and and a 2010 calendar on the back, with the same art / photography as a background.  Useful as small calendars just to keep on the fridge, or on your desk–just easy to keep around and nice-looking.

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Bookmark Calendars Rack cards make useful “tall” calendars, and I’ve done a few marketed as bookmarks –calendar on back, art with large “2010″ on front.  I’ve also added smaller calendars to some of my “customizable for your business” rack cards, marketed as “advertise your events” cards.

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Calendar Prints Finally, I’ve used Zazzle’s posters to make custom 12-month calendar posters.  They’re designed with the art on the whole poster, with top half art only and bottom half calendar.  Some are tall and skinny; others are more normal “poster size”.  I’ve done a few of these as “custom photo poster calendars”, with a framed area on top for your photos.

Plus, I’ve started to do a few traditional wall calendars.  So, lots of calendar options for 2010 here.

I love Halloween — it’s the holiday nearest my birthday, so it’s a bit odd that I’d never designed anything “Halloween centric” before now…although I don’t tend to do many “holiday specific” designs here (I do a lot more for my Jewish art site, particularly Chanukah).  So this year I added a few designs.

The majority of my Halloween designs are skulls, which are mostly “general skull” than really Halloween specific, but that’s OK.    Several skull and rainbow designs, some pirate-style skull-and-crossbones, and for some reason I just couldn’t resist making a few cute pink skulls, including a pink pirate skull with a heart bandana.  Some of the skulls are distressed, some are not.  The only really “Halloweeny” one is a distressed orange skull and crossbones, but it was fun making all the different skull designs.  I think I’ll do some more even after Halloween and improve my skull work, as I’d never done skulls before and these were very simple.

I also did a handful of other Halloween themed designs:  three jack-o-lanterns, one of which is just a standard creepy carved jackolantern, the second is the same creepy jackolantern licking up the remains of another pumpkin –cannibal pumpkins, anyone?–and the third is an alien pumpkin design with UFOs in the background being flown by more alien pumpkins.

I have a few cat designs as well–actually one main design with three variations–of a black cat that’s really too cute to be a “Halloween Black Cat”.  Big blue eyes, cute pink nose and tongue, etc.  My favorite has the cat flying with an orange cape–I call it Super Cat.  After Halloween I may move the cats into my Animal Art section. Lastly I did a handful of zombie designs. The first is a yellow warning sign with running stick figures with flaming heads that says “Warning: Flaming Zombies Are Still Dangerous”.  The second is just a text design that says “ZD: Zombie Defense“.  The third is a “blood spattered” design that says “Bite Me like a zombie“.

That’s my Halloween work for this year…I enjoyed doing a few Halloween designs and may do a few more although it’s a bit late for this year.  I like doing “traditional” stuff–I’ll try some more black cats –scarier ones, maybe — and maybe some ghosts and vampires.

Finally back…have been spending so much time adding new stuff and updating the site (again) that I haven’t had time to update.  Will get back into regular updates now.

First, there’s been an update to the Winged Turtle Shop…Zazzle products have been given “top billing” so to speak…all links for designs go to Zazzle items with a link at the bottom of the page for Cafepress.  (As I have time I will also add links to other PODs with that design.)  Example page here: Green Sea Turtle

The side menu has changed to one main menu for all designs, rather than the multiple separate menus for Zazzle, Cafepress, Skreened, etc.  Products menu is a list of Zazzle products, with a menu of “More Products” at the bottom that lists CP products.  At the bottom of the menu sidebar is a separate shops menu, with a menu for designs from CP, Skreened, Printfection, etc.  (Basically the old designs menu moved down the page.)

It’s probably easier seen than explained, and I hope the changes make the shop easier to navigate and select designs/ items rather than having to choose a shop before you can see any products.  Check it out:  Winged Turtle Shop

I’ve also been busy adding lots of new designs for the upcoming holidays–starting with Halloween–which I’ll discuss in separate posts.  And Zazzle has in the last month come out with a line of paper products and custom binders which I’ve been spending much of my time working on…more on those later.

Three new environmental designs were added to the Earth Shop at Winged Turtle.  I started with a daisy-like flower design and added different text/ design elements.

First was “Floral Grow Green“, with text “Grow Green” and multiple muli-colored flowers. A bright, colorful design.  It can be found at the Earth Shop at WingedTurtle, or at Zazzle, Cafepress, Printfection, or Skreened.

The second is another “Grow Green“, this one with a yellow daisy-like flower in place of the O in Grow, and with “green” in two-toned brown and green, representing soil and green growth. “Grow Green” can also be found at the Earth Shop, or directly at Zazzle, Cafepress, Printfection, or Skreened.

The third is a slight variation on the “green with flower” theme, with a large pink / magenta daisy style flower, with a green stem and leaves, and the words “Go for the Green” in large rounded green letters. “Go for the Green” is also available at the Earth Shop page, or directly through Zazzle, Cafepress, Printfection, or Skreened.

I’ve put up a few new designs recently. The first set are new animal art designs; a fish design and two variations on a cute cartoon cat design.

The first design is “Silly Cat”, which is a cute, fun purple cartoon cat with big eyes and a pink tongue poking out.

“Silly Cat Says” is the second design, a variation on “Silly Cat”. This has two purple cartoon cats; the larger one has a thought bubble with the words “Silly Cat”.

“Silly Cat Says” was a Today’s Best at Zazzle on July 19, 2009, for the design on a women’s dark shirt.

The last animal design was a group of colorful fish, with stars and bubbles. I titled it “Happy Fish” because the fish have smiles and the design is bright and cheerful looking.

All three of the above designs may be found on the Animal Art Shop page at Winged Turtle , or directly below:

Silly Cat at: Zazzle, Cafepress, Printfection, or Skreened

Silly Cat Says at: Zazzle, Cafepress, Printfection, or Skreened

Happy Fish at: Zazzle, Cafepress, Printfection, or Skreened

I spent the weekend mostly designing more shoes at Zazzle.  I now have 280 shoes there– a few kids’ shoes, but mainly adult laceup/ mini slipon/ slipons.

My Midnight Sun shoes received a Today’s Best at Zazzle on July 3rd for the Midnight Sun Mini Slipons.

The design has a circular geometric abstract “sun” pattern in yellows, oranges, and reds against a black background.  It has a very interesting look on shoes.

Over the last two days I’ve–mostly–finished adding my new photography at Zazzle.  I still have one or two to add, but may leave that for a while.  All of the new photography is also now listed on my photography shop page, as well as on the floral photoshop and animal photoshop.

I also reworked and added a couple of new animal designs:  Wolf and Wolves. Both are a reworking of a “Wolves for Obama” design I did last year.  I thought the wolf was cute, so I redid it without the O.

Also at Zazzle, I started adding the skinny profile card templates, in addition to the “regular sized” business cards.  I’ve got about 40 or so of the skinny ones now, mostly sea turtles, photography, and abstract designs, but also a couple of cat art ones.

I’m adding some new shoes as well; I’d gotten off the shoe designing as they don’t sell well and it’s a pain waiting for approval. But I decided to do a few, as I had some “shoe-able” art.

Next up:  adding more photography to RedBubble. Also, I guess I should add some of my new designs to CP.

Yesterday I added two (well, technically three, but the third is a variation) new sea turtle designs.

The first, Cat’s Eye Turtle, is a black sea turtle design with a bright blue cat’s eye in its back. I started out wanting to do a human eye, but somehow ended up deciding on a cat eye.  Maybe I’ll do a human eye later.  It’s a change from my usual peace symbol turtle backs, anyway.  I’ve also done suns and yin-yang and random patterns.  Why not eyes? The third design I did was a variation on this one, but with 3 of the turtles, large in the middle and two smaller on the sides.

The other new turtle design I did was a “flower” with sea turtles as the petals.  I’m fairly happy with this one; it’s quite colorful and the “turtle base” is a new one that I think I will use for other turtle designs. The flower is a bit more square than I was planning on, but it’s okay. I want to redesign and add to it for the Skreened shirts, since they have such a large print area, I think I will add a stem and leaves coming down, maybe some smaller “flowers” growing. I started a new turtle design based on these turtles today, but have not completed it yet.

I put all three new designs up everywhere but Spreadshirt.

Cat’s Eye Turtle:  Cafepress, Zazzle, Printfection, Skreened.

Three Cat’s Eye Turtles: Cafepress, Zazzle, Printfection, Skreened.

Flower Turtles: Cafepress, Zazzle, Printfection, Skreened.

whew…maybe I really should start separate pages for each design.  Would make it easier to link.