Just for Fun
Customized Wine as a gift for all occasions.
Nov 25th
Did you know how many people are out there searching for a great wedding, birthday, anniversary, or Holiday gift? There are tons of them, and many of them are looking for the same kind of thing. Something original but not too personal, something the person can keep, but something that also has a use, something that is meaningful but is not too expensive. Here’s a product that meets all those needs: customized wine.
For a wedding gift, you purchase wine made in the same year the couple are being married. Then, as their marriage matures, their wine matures. They can keep it on display and enjoy a bottle on their major anniversaries. As a birthday gift, you purchase wine made in the year of the person’s birth and for an anniversary gift, you purchase wine made in the year of the marriage.
So how do you turn this customized wine idea into a successful business? Two ways. You can either buy the wine unlabeled and then create customized labels for it. You can also buy the wine already labeled and just add customized tags. The first option is best for a wedding wine because you can create labels with the couple’s name. You can buy unlabeled wine direct from various wineries or you can purchase it online. You can easily make simple and attractive labels from your home computer. Customize the front label with the name of the couple and the date of the marriage. The back label can have a poem or a special message to the couple. You could also add a photo of the couple. Attach the labels, gift wrap the wine, and you have a perfect wedding gift. The second option of just adding labels is best for anniversaries and birthdays. Find a wine supplier either locally or on the Internet so you can purchase wine made in any year. Then add a customized birthday or anniversary tag, gift-wrap the wine and you have a perfect gift.
A simple web site is the easiest way to sell your product. There are enough people searching the Internet for unique gifts that this can work quite well. Describe your service and then provide a form for people to make their orders. The customer fills in all the details, including what they want on the front and back labels. You take the information, create the customized wine, gift-wrap it, and deliver it. It’s that simple.
One of the best things about the business is that people will always be buying. There are always weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays to be celebrated and on every occasion, there are a large group of people searching for a unique present. Provide that unique present and you’ve got yourself a simple yet successful work-from-home business.
*Editor’s Note*
A great add-on for the anniversary wine bottles would be to include a recipe so the couple can enjoy a quiet gourmet meal at home.
Here’s some places online for Customized Wine
Personalized Wine
Custom Wine Bottles
Personalized Wine Bottles | Personalized Wine Labels
Family Thanksgiving Activities everyone can enjoy.
Nov 23rd
This year, if you’re hosting a family Thanksgiving, you want to create a fun family environment that helps children understand the importance of thankfulness and reminds the adults of this as well.
Since Thanksgiving comes just before what many refer to as the “greedy” season, activities designed to remind people of the bounty in their lives are useful. For example, you might help children understand that while they don’t have everything they want, they do have everything they need.
How can you do this? Several ways. One is to help children create a cornucopia, which will sit on the Thanksgiving table. There are a variety of ways to do this. You can make a papier-mâché cornucopia using a balloon as the base to help you get the shape started. You can simply take large piece of poster board and shape them into a cone and fill those with whatever you like. As an extra activity, you can have the children decorate the cornucopia before it gets filled.
Since the idea of the cornucopia is to celebrate a bounty and appreciate that bounty, you can fill it as is traditionally done with squash, corn and the like. You might also ask each member of the family to bring something that represents their personal bounty in life. A new mom might bring a baby blanket to put in the cornucopia while a newly retired grandpa might add a picture of his family, since that’s what’s most important to him. You can discuss the items in the cornucopia basket at the dinner table while enjoying your Thanksgiving feast.
Another family activity that kids like is the thankfulness jar. When each person arrives at dinner, they place a note with something they are thankful for in the jar. Ideally, each person will add more than one item to the jar. At dinner, someone (ideally, the matriarch of patriarch of the family) reads the notes. Everyone tries to figure out who wrote which note. The items can range from the serious (someone who struggled with an illness in the previous year might be thankful for life, quite simply) to the silly (the new mom might be thankful there’s a Starbucks within 5 minutes of her home). Kids enjoy adding their own touches to the thankfulness jar and their responses are often a surprise to the adult family members.
Some families have several tables set about at Thanksgiving. Many people buy professional floral arrangements to decorate the tables. You can make a game out of it to figure out who’s going to get to bring home the table arrangement to their home. You can do the old wedding thing and simply put a number on the bottom of the centerpiece and have someone’s chair match that number or you can make a game and perhaps create a trivia game out of Thanksgiving facts.
For example, questions might look like this:
*How many turkeys are cooked on Thanksgiving throughout the US?
*Why are turkeys called turkeys?
*Which president set aside the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving?
Be sure you research and know the answers and then quiz everyone. This is a great way to pass the time while everyone is waiting for the feast to be ready. Just tell the winners they can’t take the centerpieces until dinner is over!
You can have a similar game before dessert. Create a family trivia game and quiz family members before dessert. Only the people who get the answers right get to have their dessert. Everyone else has to keep trying until they get their trivia question right. Questions can range from the silly to the sublime. They might look something like this:
*Who got popcorn stuck in her braces at 12?
*Which man here wore boots with big holes in them until he was 20 and could buy his own?
*Whose grandparents immigrated to the US from Ireland?
*Which boy here got suspended from school for riding his bike into the classroom?
Hope this helps you with your Thanksgiving success. Have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving from CrazyGreat!
How to Sell Art: Some Rules to Follow When You’re Ready to Sell Your Art
Nov 18th
Are you like a Picasso, Monet or Pollack, eagerly looking to have your work found? If your passion is to the art you do everyday, but you just can’t seem to make a living, it can majorly stress you out. Have you considered selling your art?
There’s a lot of different places that you can go to as an artist to display your art or to just get your name out there. There’s a couple steps you need to ponder before determining which outlet is the best one for you to learn to sell art.
The first thing you need is a very clearly defined artistic identity. This is basically defining a brand based on yourself. In what medium do you hope to be known? You must have a memorable and recognizable persona before you think of selling your art.
It is also a good idea to set goals for yourself. What is the primary goal that you want to prove with your art? Do you pursue your art as a casual pastime or is it your life’s passion? Consider the following questions.
Who is the ideal customer that you want to sell your art to? What is the specific demographic they fall into? You don’t have to limit yourself to selling locally. You can even sell your art on the internet.
Putting complete dependence on the internet can be bad due to its highly impersonal nature. You need to get out into the world and network with galleries and other artist to really become a well known artist.
Patience is a requirement, and you will certainly need lots and lots of it. Never ever give up, especially if you have made a commitment to your goal, your art is just like a flower, it takes time to blossom.
After finishing your early planning in the ways described above you should set goals and build your brand, and move forward with your marketing efforts and learning about how to sell your art.
