Tag Archives: storyblox

Venting a little frustration…

Lately I just want to scream, as I watch my competitors and friends continue to prosper, selling products for kids that aren’t properly tested/documented (under the new CPSIA laws), or items with someone else’s trademarked or copy-written images and logos, while my business continues to suffer as I fight to do things legally.

I don’t know whether these people are oblivious to the laws, or just breaking them on purpose… part of me wants to yell at them "what you’re doing is NOT legal", another part of me is envious that they can ignore these laws with a clean conscience, and still another part of me is happy to let them live in their ignorance, just glad to see they aren’t suffering yet from this nightmare that is the CPSIA.

I shut down my business because I couldn’t see a way to meet the ridiculous CPSIA testing laws (even though all of my products were safe).  I’ve since re-opened, but I’m unable to list my most profitable products (which also happen to be the best ones, and one is the item the entire business was named after) — because I can’t afford the insane testing fees.  The customers that have come back are annoyed to find the products they want unavailable, and are more than happy to go to competitors — who are still selling similar items, either oblivious to, or in defiance of the new laws.  

The copyright/trademark infringement issue is a new one on me.  I used to have no problem pointing out trademark infringements, most people I ever saw doing this were strangers, online.  These laws have been in place longer than I’ve been alive, and everyone should know about them!  

Lately, however, I’ve had the opportunity to converse with more local crafters, and trademark infringement is apparently running rampant around here!  It’s much harder to confront a law-breaker in person, especially when you’re trying to make new friends, and you’re not entirely sure they KNOW they’re breaking the law.  It’s also hard to confront a shop owner who may be considering placing your items, with the fact that their store is carrying illegal items from other vendors…

Paint me frustrated.

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Breaks & Blocks

I feel like I’ve been absent from most everywhere for weeks.  I think I forgot to check into Flickr for something like 2 weeks straight.  I only go to Etsy once in a while to convo a customer or relist expired items items, and I haven’t posted on here forever.  The only thing I’ve kept up with is PoshPoints, because dang, I’m getting some awesome stuff through there :P

I had my brother’s youngest girl (13) for a week the week of the fourth, and started a new part time telecommuting job.  Once my niece left, I think I slept for almost a week straight.  I finally made a phone call to a friend:

Me: “I’ve been tired for a week straight, I can’t get ANYTHING done, and I can’t figure out why!  I’ve been taking my pills regularly (I got that new daily pill box thing and have been using it) any ideas?”
Him: “Uhm, how many muscle relaxants have you been taking?”

So yeah, I felt like an idiot, because even though I’ve been taking muscle relaxants for years, and even though I’ve been measuring out my pills into my daily pill organizer, and even though I have been actually remembering to take the pills I put out for a change… I somehow managed to FORGET to put out ANY muscle relaxants for an entire week! 

My muscles stay spasmed if I don’t take the relaxants, which uses way more energy and zaps my strength, so that’s why I’ve been sleeping all day,  and been more sore than usual.  Sheesh!  So I’m finally back taking ALL of the pills I’m supposed to, and I feel much better.  I’ve started getting stuff done again, and my brother’s middle girl (15) is staying here this week.

Today we painted.  All day.  I think we used every paint brush I had out, and something like 20 different paint colors.  I finished some NameBlox™, a couple of Birth Announcement Blocks that were ordered for twins, painted 4 sets of 8 1″ colored cubes, a pair of 1″ color dice, a set of “painted yahtzee” dice, 4 pairs of standard dice (stained, not painted), a set of dice with 18kt gold pips that look awesome!, and uhm… oh yeah about 6 NameBlox™ benches.  Whew. 

Elizabeth painted animals and designs on every little piece of wood she could find, I’m not quite sure what’s she’s doing with them all, but I’ll try to upload a pic to flickr of her creations sometime in the next few days.

I also found time to fix an awesome dinner of Zataran’s Herb Rice (with pieces of chicken breast instead of the hamburger it called for), sauteed zucchini and homemade cole slaw.  And we spent about an hour trying to get Elizabeth into a maple tree with a hand saw so she could help get a couple of limbs down that’d been hit by lightning (she got up there, but dropped the saw, and by the time we got it back up to her she was too tired to fight with the limb that refused to come down lol).  We’ll probably try again tomorrow because she really liked the idea of being that high up in a tree.  The limbs have been dead for a year or so, but they twisted funny and are hanging on by a bit, and refuse to want to come down the rest of the way.

How’s that for an update? lol

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StoryBlox(tm) LJ Account Added

I just finished setting up a separate StoryBlox™ account on LJ.

http://storyblox.livejournal.com/

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