Monday, November 26, 2012

The days dwindle down to a precious few

Yes, they do and if you are planning on getting anything ready before you run out of year, now is the time.

I know I’ve harped and harped about getting calendars made up for your clients and vendors so that when you send out your Christmas cards you can slip one in like a good marketer, but have I mentioned wall calendars?

No, probably not, not since this time last year when I cried out in vain for you to make up your own calendars and you did not. Sure I know what it is like this time of the year, you have too much to do, for too many people and too little time and too many demands on your time and then there’s the usual stuff, getting the house decorated and the packages wrapped. (Yeah, you let the other guys do it that one year and people thought you’d wadded up the wrapping paper and missed the trash can so you won’t do that again.) You could really use some super powers about now.

But even with all of that stuff to do you have to think about what you are going to do for yourself.

Remember, yesterday I urged you to say, “Gift card”, when someone asks The Question? This is one of the times when it can sure come in handy. Instead of slipping cash out of the household account or nicking a coin or two from the old hound’s Powerball money, you have that nifty, neat and cool gift card and can just go down to Staples and order your calendars and no one can say squat.

Now there are there places where you can get this job done and I have no stock in nor love for Staples, but it is local, fast and relatively cheap.

Right now you can do a photo calendar with twelve unique images for just $15.99. That’s right less than the cost of four Starbucks for the office guys and you have something which can last the whole year.

Now tell me you can’t afford that.

And yes, I know I advocate doing this yourself and I still think that is the best way to do it, but there are people, artist type people who think anything less than the best just isn’t best enough. Now it is true that you’ll have this hanging around all year so you do want it to look like you actually wanted people to see it and you thought enough of the work to get the best printing possible done and you wanted it to hold up for the whole twelve months so you got it bound professionally and that’s the truth.

Sure, you can do all of this yourself with a comb binder and a good inkjet printer but there is the time element. Maybe getting someone else to do all of the hard work is the right idea. That way you will have time to re-wrap all of the presents the ole Couch slug and the kids do and you won’t have to claim that you were hit by a rabid UPS truck on the way to the Christmas party or Uncle Bubba’s and you’ll be able to show your face at all of the family gatherings between now and the end of graduation season.

You don’t have twelve images to use?

Why not? Haven’t you been doing what I told you? You take pictures of everything you paint, sculpt, weave, or bake and you keep them in a file so that you can drag them out for just such an occasion.

There are so many advertising calendars going out right now, full of plumbing parts and half-nekkid girls draped over auto parts and kittens, kittens, kittens doing the silliest things and shouldn’t you be trying to lift the bar a bit by using really good art?

You know Klee and Picasso and even Andy Warhol all have calendars and while I am sure that part of it is the merchandisers can print the images cause most of these guys are dead and can’t scream about copyright violations, part of it is people like to have something on their wall that they don’t have to cover up when the pastor comes by for coffee or when those nice folks knock at your door to let you in on the special secret that there are only so many spots open in heaven and maybe you’d like to get in on the inside track and you don’t really want them to see a Victoria’s Secret calendar, cause you know how easily they can be frightened and then there’s the relatives who think that you spend all of your time reading good books and watching PBS and they shouldn’t be disillusioned, so why not have a calendar full of your own art so that even if you do have images of nekkid girls who actually look like girls and not like ten year old boys in lacy underwear like the models in Victoria’s not so Secrets?

Here’s a better deal, right now you can do two for the price of one, get two calendars for the price of one $15.99 payment and no shipping charge. That’s a Cyber Monday deal if I ever saw one.

So don’t waste anymore time, the shows don’t start until eight tonight so you can get on right now and place your order and the when you see how good they look you’ll want more and even if you don’t when you give that second calendar to your long lost second cousin by your married older half sister from Duluth, so that you can cover up the fact that you didn’t know they were coming and have absolutely nothing to give them you can get off the hook and feel really, really good about yourself cause you gave them art.

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