Deborah Carney

Where I Celebrate Life

Skill Building, Creativity and Letting Go

Why am I working on a quilt when I have a gazillion other things to be doing including 2 other quilts I started and stopped to make more sense out of this one?

This quilt started as a very orderly English Garden pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Co. I had this layer cake (precut 10″ squares of a line of fabrics) of sea themed fabrics and decided to use it and not use the solids that the pattern called for. Also during the beginning phases of this one a shipment from Michael Miller Fabrics showed up with a bolt of areally cool sea turtle batik fabric and a bolt of solid blue called Midnight that had been out of stock.

I am also doing this quilt as a “Quilt as you Go” meaning I am going to make blocks and quilt them to a backing and then sash them together instead of just making the whole quilt top first.

I had it all planned out in my head. The purple squares would be the sea turtle batik and the sashing would be the Midnight. The “solid” fabric of the pinwheels would be similar pieces of the squares that were most present in the package and a few from a second package.

I sewed the blocks together and here comes the skill building. Not just sewing skills. Apparently I can’t sew a straight line when it is pretty critical to do just that. I sew a lot of stuff that needs straight lines and do it well. Not on these. Skill built: Patience.

Cut the blocks up and cut up the corner pieces and sewed all those one. Took WAAAAAAAY longer than I expected. 120 blocks with 2 on each. And 2 I did wrong after I already trimmed extra fabric off so had to just sew two more corners on to make it kinda work. Skill built: Patience. Letting Go of expectations.

Now today I started the part that really ramped up the creativity and letting go. I started to create the blocks of four that make up the pinwheels. It was a little challenging to get 4 different fabrics on each block of four but I thought I was doing ok. I had the pinwheels in order – or so I thought. Skill built: logical creativity

Start building the blocks of four of the blocks of four that I will quilt then sash to the rest. Ut oh. All of a sudden the fabrics that were supposed to be in place of the solids were in the place of the prints. I do not rip out perfectly good seams just because something is out of place. Skill built: LETTING GO – let the creativity flow and just go with it

No one except ME knows which fabrics were substituted for the solid wedges. You might be able to figure it out if you stared long enough but really – who cares? Water is fluid. What is in the ocean moves around. So that is what happened here. Skill built: Adaptability!

What you see here is the next to last stage of this quilt. It will NOT even end up in the order seen here because the pieces and parts are still going to the ironing board and sewing machine for backing, batting and quilting. That is the “Quilt as you Go” part. It gets done in parts instead of the WHOLE thing having to go into the sewing machine and be quilted.

Skill building: Lots of practice with new sewing techniques that I will apply to the products that I sew to sell.

Creativity: I am a visual artist – photography, digital art, and now fabric. And things don’t always come out as planned. But they come out looking fabulous.

Letting go: Don’t be OCD and think just because you are following a pattern created by someone or even created by yourself that if things don’t come out as planned that it means it is a bad thing. I love the original pattern and may do it with other fabric more true to it in the future. Or I may go crazy with it again. I also LOVE how the quilt is ACTUALLY looking.

Aquarius. Ocean. The Sea.

The Sea Turtles will be the backing of the quilt so will be very present and not just the little diamonds and triangles.

This is how we are #makingitfun. This is how to adapt and grow.

I am 64 and learning new skills. And January 2020 I had no sewing machine, no fabric, nothing sewing related – not even a good pair of scissors, in the house. Nada. Skill built: Adapting to what 2020 brought to us.

2021 All About Passion

I am part of a 30 day challenge to grow my businesses over the next 30 days and I figure this is a good place to be accountable for it 🙂 We wrote a letter to ourself to detail what we would accomplish the next 30 days.

I had a plan for 2020 and had already done a LOT of groundwork for a new digital downloads business. I had to wait until after a conference in January 2020 where I had planned a large surprise celebration for founders of said conference that had sold the conference (talk about timing!!!). I detailed a lot of this in a private Facebook group so will be revisiting that group this month to reacquaint myself with the specifics I had built out.

I came home February 1st and already knew there was something brewing. Las Vegas already had cases of the “China Virus” from tourists and people that had traveled there for the major January conferences.

When I got home I had to work on my main business and had laid the groundwork to hire my grandson to upload products to Etsy and Shopify for me but got sidetracked.

Then BOOM March. I borrowed a sewing machine and got some curtains and sheets and started making masks. A friend hooked me up with a fabric manufacturer and a friend in Arizona shopped for me on Facetime and sent me fabric.
Our stores here in NYC were already shut down and online retailers were out of fabric. My daughter was also able to get me some fabric and sewing supplies in Las Vegas however by now the USPS was losing packages. A friend sent me mask making supplies from Oregon that took 2 months to get to me.

I found a manufacturer in NY that I was able to get enough fabric from to start making masks and selling them on Etsy. I hadn’t sewn in 30 years but I used to make all my own clothes.

Something to know about us is that we lost our house and all of the contents in Hurricane Sandy so I had ZERO sewing supplies, no fabric, no scraps, no old clothes, no scissors, no sewing machine, no thread. Vinny’s mom gave me some things so I could figure out if I could make masks. Then the machine she gave me broke and I ordered a machine from Singer. Fortunately a decent one was in stock. Amazon and all other online vendors were out of stock or price gouging.

The reason I am explaining this is that 2020 was a huge pivot – several of them. I work from home, I have my own businesses that are online based so didn’t suffer in that regard. But I needed to do something to help people and friends across the country rallied to buy and send me what I needed when their stores were open still and mine were not.

I now have 3 sewing machines and selling masks is a minor thing for me. Of course I donated a lot of them in the beginning and helped out getting them where they needed to go.

I have developed 3 other fabric based businesses that will continue to grow in 2021. I have the digital products business that needs to come to fruition since there are thousands of hours of work invested. And my main business needs to thrive and grow since it also helps others. I have an existing inventory of many crystal based products that need to fly to their new homes. I have combined fabric, sewing and aromatherapy into a new product that people love.

So while my letter to myself is rather vague it encompasses a lot of stuff that I will take this challenge and develop. By the end of the 30 days we will see what is going to be the biggest early winner. They will all be winners by the end of 2021.

Looking Back as I Turn 60

I turn 60 in 11 days. On my 50th birthday I sat in a restaurant in Las Vegas with a friend and his son. Friend didn’t understand why I wanted to go out for that particular birthday and then it hit him. I lived alone at the time, having moved to Las Vegas after a few tumultuous years of losing two sons and the life I knew. I had gone from being the gregarious hostess of all parties and lover of fun to living on the opposite coast of where I lived the bulk of my life. I had few local friends. I didn’t care about that. I cared about living far from where the pain was. I didn’t want to live where there were constant reminders of the lives lost. My Dad, my Sister, my sons Chris and Dan.

I wanted a fresh start with no daily reminders and driving by places we lived and loved. So when I was 49 I moved to California, then Las Vegas. But I did miss something from the East. My daughter, grandson and my cats. The cats had not come with me because at first there wasn’t really a way to get them there and I was living in a hotel. I moved rather quickly when Chris died. I got on a plane after his funeral and never went back. My daughter Liz took care of the cats.

I had moved to California for a job. My dream job. I loved it. Then the direction of the company changed, Chris died and I said enough. And I left California the week after the moving truck from New York had finally showed up with some of my stuff. I repacked and moved to Las Vegas. A beautiful home overlooking the valley where I could see both the mountains and the lights of the strip. When you live in Las Vegas area you don’t go to the strip often, but you love looking at it. It makes you feel connected to people. You know there is a whole world of people – mostly visitors passing through – but people nonetheless. You can go and be among people without having to actually interact or be around them long term. It was a nice, anonymous way to live. For awhile.

Liz and Alec came to visit. They fell in love with the area. It was time for them to move as well. They came a few months later, with my cats. The cats finally were living with me again.

In the meantime I met a man and fell in love. He lived in NYC but loved Las Vegas and visited frequently. We were friends from an online community, we met in person at a conference, had a long distance relationship and it was totally awesome. Then the landlord visited one day with the news that he had to sell a couple of his houses and the one I lived in was the nicest with the best view so it was going to be sold first.

My time on the west coast and in the Nevada desert was about to come to an end. I moved to NYC to live with Vinny, driving cross country in August 2008 with a dozen or so cats. It made sense since he owned a house for me to move there and I wouldn’t have to worry about not having a place for my babies and have to leave a house because it was being sold. I knew someday we would move back west because he liked it out there too. But he had a home so that is where we went.

Many of my cats by now were seniors and I hadn’t gotten any “new” ones in many years. I have always had cats. Once I was divorced we always seemed to have 7 or 8. Then my son and I bred Maine Coons for a few years and we had many more. Life interrupted again in 2001 with 9/11 and I had to go live in a dorm with one of my sons for a year. Liz took care of most of our cats. We placed a number of them with other breeders and friends. Then Dan died and Chris and I moved into an apartment in Astoria Queens and we got our cats back. But then the landlords there decided they needed to rent the apartment to a family member. We moved back to Rochester to live temporarily with Chris’ dad. Chris and I got a trailer in a lovely trailer park and we had a home for ourselves and our cats where we didn’t have to worry about moving again. So I thought. That is when the job offer in California came up. I could work remotely. But I really was liking the warmth of the west coast. I started a long distance commute and decided to move there. Two weeks later Chris died. And when I got on the plane to go back to the west coast I knew I would not be back.

Moving in with Vinny I thought my days of having to rent a place and worry about having my cats with me were over. This was 2008. Over the next couple of years my seniors passed away to go over the Rainbow Bridge and be with Chris. In 2009 Chris’ birthday was coming up and was particularly hard for me. I had looked outside and seen a kitten under a chair in a rainstorm, but where we lived there were a lot of feral cats so that didn’t seem unusual. But this kitten looked at me in a way that I couldn’t forget. A few days later Vinny’s mom said she saw a tiny kitten that looked like it was in trouble around her house. So we put some food in a carrier and when the kitten ran in to eat we locked it in. Poor baby was terrified. She was undernourished and scared and sick. We took her in our house and made a special place for her in the office of our house where she could hide and be safe. Kitten formula, meds, heat and love brought her back to life. She only trusts Vinny and I, she is blind in one eye. As an adult she weighs all of 5 pounds. Her name is Snowflake because she is mostly white with a black back and a white snowflake on her back. We tried many names for her and that was the only name that she responded to. The neighbors called her the invisible cat because as soon as the front door would open she would disappear like a ghost. When we traveled to conferences whoever was house-sitting never got to see her.

In September 2010 it was nearing Dan’s birthday and a neighbor walked up to the house with her husband. She was holding 2 black kittens and he was holding 3 others. They were days old and had been abandoned in the neighbor’s yard. They brought them to us because they knew I could help since I raised cats in the past. We didn’t intend to keep any of them, the neighbor planned to take one or two and others would take them as well. Something to note is that in that neighborhood most people had indoor/outdoor cats. I have never had outdoor cats in my adult life. Watching cats get hit by cars and busses made me realize that my babies needed to be safe indoors with me. Not roaming the streets.

The kittens – known collectively as the babies – did well once they were cleaned up and medicated. Their eyes had all been infected and they were covered in fleas. Daily baths and hand feeding had all but one doing well. The littlest girl was struggling. After she would eat I would hand her to Vinny and she would sit on his shoulder with a towel or blanket to keep her warm. We almost lost her more than once but she was a fighter and she made it. To this day she demands “ups” and runs up Vinny’s arm to his shoulder. We call “Babies, babies” and they all come running.

There is one issue with them. They don’t know they are cats. They don’t fall like cats, you can’t even put them down on the floor without them landing wrong. They imprinted on us. They could not go to the neighbors that would have them be indoor/outdoor cats because they did not know how to act outside. They have no cat instincts. The neighbor that brought them to us took one to her house for a visit and when it came back a couple hours later it was so happy to be home and was terrified over being there.

But it is ok since we have our own house and no one cares if I have 5 more babies. Right?

Until October 2012. Hurricane Sandy. We expected a couple of feet of water in the house. We put everything up on desks and tables. We put the cats in carriers and were going to leave them in our office on a desk. We were going to be upstairs at a neighbors house. Our house was one story. I had taken some important things up to the neighbors, computer hard drives, cameras, a little food and some jackets. The water started coming. We made the decision the cats needed to not stay in our office. We quickly moved them across to the neighbor’s house. As I handed the last carrier to Vinny to take upstairs I turned to close the door and the wind rushed in and fought me and the water started flooding hard. I barely got the door closed. It was a surreal “movie moment” where you see the actors battling the elements. Only it was real. And we watched from the neighbor’s windows as our house went under water.

I’m writing this all today because it is the anniversary of me arriving in Arizona after a cross country drive to a rental home. Four years ago we lost everything. We lost everything in our home. We lost the home itself. Me and my cats, we had done this before. Except for Snowflake and the Kittens. But they trusted me completely and knew that all would be ok. Even sitting in a car in carriers for 5 days they knew it would be ok.

Since November 19, 2012 we have had to move 4 times. Not because of the cats. Because each time the landlords decided to sell the house we were in. I have begun to wonder what I did to the Universe to not be able to stay in a house for more than a couple of years. I lived in NYC for 4 years and 3 months. That was the longest I lived anywhere since 2001 and 9/11.

And now I thought I found a beautiful home to rent in an area I love with a landlord that loves animals. Alas that is not to be. I moved in, I bought new furniture while Vinny was in NYC dealing with more house stuff back there. If I wanted to we can’t move back to NYC yet. Probably not for at least another 8 to 12 months. I went to pay the landlord additional pet deposits and she decided that I have too many cats and cannot stay. Or I can stay here and give my babies away.

I am almost 60 and I do not have a home, and if I want a home I cannot have the animals that have kept me sane and that love me unconditionally. I will not break their trust. I won’t get any more animals but those that I have need to stay.

This is not a choice I should have to make at this age. At this point in my life. I am good to people. I don’t abandon people or animals. I love deeply and appreciate the life I have.

So on November 19, 2016 I again need to look for a place to live because I will not compromise and allow someone to dictate if I am allowed to love my babies and keep them with me. I will compromise for a couple of months and have “the babies” live with someone while I hunt for a new place to be. And that is all I want. A place to just be. And a landlord that won’t sell the house out from under me while I get things together to buy my own or until we have a house to move back to in NYC.

For those of you that have followed my journey from the days after losing Dan until now, you know how much the west has healed me, how much moving to Arizona has been good for me. And you know my love for animals and nature.

I have to trust that this is where I need to be and that at some point the Universe will let me be and stop tossing me from place to place. I’m going to be 60. I want to “be”.

In 45 years I lived in 4 homes. In the last 14 I have lived in more than I care to count. I don’t mind being a nomad, I do mind being told how to live when my life doesn’t harm anyone.

The Why of it All

I just read a post about being kind no matter what. And it triggered something in me, not sure why. But I am compelled to share this.

I started Affiliate Marketing so I could make money and stay home and care for my sons.

I started selling designs via CafePress back in the day for the same reason.

I started Affiliate Managing to help people make money. Both the merchants AND the affiliates.

I started NightFire Publications to honor my son Daniel and his writing – it was actually NightFire Productions first because we were going to make movies from his scripts.

I started BookGoodies to help authors get their books discovered AND to help authors navigate the waters of becoming self published.

My goal in life is to help people. The ways may have changed but the goal is still the same. Part of helping is through education.

My son Dan accomplished so much in his 21 years and he emphasized that age doesn’t matter. He wrote a novel when he was 10 and another when he was 14, movies and plays from age 16. Still getting them out in the world even though he died 14 years ago.

My other goal in life is to at least publish his writing, if not get a movie produced. Because his writing had a message that people need to hear.

Why I Love the Affiliate Marketing Industry – Or How I got Started

For the very beginning – go listen to this.

Today my son Chris would be 33 years old. To know how I got into affiliate marketing you need to hear some things that have gotten easier to type about and it is kismet that I am posting this in a thread where two people helped me stay in this industry and not just fade away into the woodwork. This isn’t a “be sorry for me” post, it is a how affiliate marketing and the people I met in this industry gave me support, courage and pushed me to move out of a funk I thought I would be in for the rest of my life.

My sons had a form of Muscular Dystrophy called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. That means their nervous system stopped telling new muscles what to do when they were 9 months old. So their upper body was stronger than their lower (that’s how babies develop, from the top down 🙂 ) and they were never able to stand unaided or bear weight, so no pivot turns or lifting to their feet, they needed to be carried when going to bed or bathroom etc. When they were young I was a stay at home Mom and Wedding Photographer, so I only worked “weekends” while their dad could take care of them. For years our family was involved in public speaking and advocacy for the Muscular Dystrophy Assoc and disability rights. Those of you that have met my daughter Liz can attest to her composure in public, that stems from being on the news and in the public spotlight for several years starting very young.

They got older, I got divorced from their dad and I needed to work from home. One of the first websites I built was one for the local MDA office. Then I found Amazon and started to build sites with recommended reading on topics I was interested in, plus worked with several in-house affiliate programs that are no longer around.

Long story short, Dan (my youngest son) died in a car crash on Mother’s Day (May 13, 2002). My brain and heart shattered. He was not ill, he was healthy so it was unexpected. He was 20. Chris and I lived in NYC for a few years, I had a good job but had to quit. I couldn’t tolerate office politics, couldn’t justify being away from Chris 8 – 10 hours a day so I quit. I got a job at Club Mom for a short time and that’s where I met Shawn Collins.

Chris and I needed to move back to Rochester where we were from and the affiliate checks started getting bigger and bigger. I was also getting a decent amount of money selling on CafePress.com. In November 2005 CafePress lost their affiliate manager and she recommended me for the job, even though we were 3000 miles apart. In 2005 there weren’t as many OPMs as there are now. I was excited and made plans to possibly move to the west coast, Chris was very thin and always cold and I thought it would be great for him.

Back up a little to Affiliate Summit Las Vegas in June 2005. What I forgot to say is that after Dan’s death I was very agoraphobic (short version it means you like to stay home and especially not travel across the country). Shawn had invited me to come take photos at that Affiliate Summit, and that is where I first met Billy Kay in person – we knew each other from another online forum and from frequent yahoo chatting and phone calls.

This is a little more that just how I started, but since I got this far I might as well continue. Getting to that first (for me) Affiliate Summit probably saved my life. I realized finally that I could miss my son, but could be in public without crying or having a panic attack or break down when I saw other moms with their sons. So for that I owe Shawn (and Missy – although I hadn’t met her yet) forever a debt of gratitude.

So I had gone from being Affiliate to being Affiliate Manager. Life was good. Chris didn’t want to move to the west coast because he would miss Liz’s son Alec. I figured once I got him there for a visit he would be fine and want to stay. So I went and started the job planning to get him out there eventually.

That was not to be. I loved working for CafePress, I had been a long time shopkeeper, knew most of my affiliates personally. Then I got a phone call from Liz while driving with a friend from San Fran to LA “Mom, Chris is in the hospital”. She and I were on the phone almost constantly for the next week, I wanted to go back, but I also didn’t want to be away from a phone for 6 hours while I was on the plane. Liz had questions from the drs, Chris said “I’ll be ok, stay out there”. He went home to his girlfriend’s house that Saturday and Sunday I got the call from Liz that Chris stopped breathing and was on the way back to the hospital. We all knew he was already gone. So Sunday March 5th, 2006 my life shattered again.

I tried to be able to work in a corporate environment and I couldn’t do it. Schedules and meetings and office politics to me were inconsequential. They were BS that I didn’t want to put up with. I was talked into going to the Orlando Affiliate Summit, where I was greeted by people that had never talked to be before and people I barely knew with hugs and support. I told certain people ahead of time that if I started to panic I needed them to give me a hug. I had lots of hugs that Affiliate Summit, and went back to San Fran and quit my job.

After a short stint at a network, I became an OPM. Because I can’t work for other people, For years I would refuse to meet deadlines. Deadlines were meaningless.

Without this industry, which lets you work where you feel comfortable whether you are at home or at a hotel or a casino in Vegas, I don’t know what would have happened to me. This industry gave me a way to work in the type of environment I need to work in, on my schedule, and earn a living.

Chris loved Stoli, Jim Morrison and the Lord of the Rings trilogy – so have a shot then go listen to some music and watch a movie with your kids today.

Article about CafePress and How I Used it to Sell My Art

Like many other people I get Google alerts for my name. One popped up in my email box today linking to an article that I hadn’t thought about in a long time! It was published by Corel back before I became involved with CafePress as their affiliate manager, it details how I used CafePress as a shopkeeper to sell my digital art and photography. I used mainly Paint Shop Pro back then and still do for a lot of my digital art creation, when I have time! There are a few inaccuracies, but it was written in early 2005, lots has changed since then!

Here is that article:

New York Photographer Combines Power of Paint Shop Pro with the Internet to Earn a Living

Deborah Carney has been a professional photographer for 30 years. The Rochester, New York, resident’s photos chronicle her passion for the special things in her life, most notably New York and Maine Coon cats.

In 1999, Carney set up a CafePress shop and began selling her photographs on products ranging from T-shirts and mugs to framed prints, greeting cards, and custom postage. CafePress.com is an online marketplace and e-commerce solution that allows anyone with digital photos or images to create and sell products online without the risk of overstock or financial outlay.

At the time, Carney was using L View to scan and crop her photos. Back in the day, she says, L View was “the bomb,” but it had limitations.

Having had some success making her life’s interest her business in the form of her CafePress shop, Debbie was on a constant quest to find a better solution to manage her photography. In 2002 she discovered Paint Shop Pro, and suddenly her business began to take off.

CafePress allows Debbie to offer an unlimited number of her photographs for sale on more than 80 different products. The limitless capabilities of the CafePress system combined with the timesaving features of Paint Shop Pro has allowed her to create an image catalogue of 3,000 images and an online offering of 9,000 products.

By using Paint Shop Pro’s dynamic features and a watercolor plug-in, Carney can scan and process a thousand digital photos overnight.

Recently Carney mastered the Paint Shop Pro Text Tool, and now she can venture into a whole new area of the CafePress Shops — customization.

“I’d recommend that new users get comfortable with the Text Tool early on because it provides you with a lot of personalization options, which is great for your CafePress customers,” she said. Carney recently designed a custom Framed Print Anniversary keepsake for one of her buyers: “Joe and Jean’s Wedding Day, Las Vegas Oct 20, 2000.”

Carney is still discovering all that Paint Shop Pro can do. “With all the text tools, tons of plug-ins, frames and borders options, there are millions of ways to apply them to the photos I’ll use on the CafePress products,” she said.

In fact, she enjoys using the Picture Frames to turn her images into different shapes like hearts and ovals for romantic gifts.

Her best tip for new users: “Learn how to crop right away and set those timesaving defaults.”

“I can’t even imagine running my CafePress shops without Paint Shop Pro,” she said.

CafePress is a quick, easy and free way for artists and photographers like you to start an online business, simply by sharing your creativity with the world. Knowing Paint Shop Pro gives you a competitive edge on creating well-designed product and a well-stocked shop.

Who said artists have to starve?

Start your own CafePress store, sign-up today!