10 Minute Mugs

The following post is a guest post by Elizabeth, the Author, and Creator of the 10-Minute Mugs course.

Raise your hand if you like coffee? How about tea? Hot chocolate? Me, I’m a hot chocolate girl. In contrast, my husband can down a pot of coffee and 9:00 at night and go to bed shortly after. If you took a poll of your city, your state, or even your country, odds are good that a vast majority of the people would report that they drink some kind of beverage from a mug.

Not only am I a hot chocolate fan, I’m also obsessed with crafts. These two interests led me to one of my favorite kinds of projects: mug-making. It started with dotted Sharpie mugs. I made a mug for my sister-in-law and she loved it.

 

It turns out other people like mug crafts, too. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a consensus for how to make Sharpie mugs and thus was born The Ultimate Guide to Sharpie Mugs, a guide for others who wanted to create these mugs but didn’t know how.

 

And then came Marbled Nail Polish Mugs and How to Transfer a Design to Mugs. It was mug madness!

 

Out of this mug madness was born 10-Minute Mugs, an eBook devoted to quick and easy mugs that you can make yourself. I know, you’ve got to be thinking, “Can there even be any more ways to make mugs?”. Why yes, yes there can be. 10-Minute Mugs includes tutorials, tips, tricks, and designs to help you create beautiful mugs in a flash. While some of the mugs have been featured on my blog, there are three mugs that are exclusive to the eBook (and honestly, out of all the mugs I have made, I think these  are my favorites.)

Glitter Mugs

Metallic Spray Painted Mugs

 

 

And if you’re not a designer or don’t have perfect penmanship? Never fear! 10-Minute Mugs has 18 downloadable patterns for your next DIY mug.

 

If you want to become a mug-making master, make sure to check out 10-Minute Mugs.

About The Author:

Elizabeth is the author of Destination Decoration, a crafting blog devoted to providing tutorials that make crafting accessible to all. Destination Decoration is a home to all things crafty, from woodworking to watercolor, from canvas art to Dollar Store crafts. Elizabeth is also a self-taught calligrapher and an eager and willing learner of all things hand-lettering.

Apart from crafting, Elizabeth enjoys spending time with her husband and cats (though admittedly, she’s more of a dog person). She is an avid reader and to be honest, drinks more soda than she probably (definitely) should.

The Beginning Of An Experiment

I am volunteering myself for an experiment.

No, not what you are thinking, there are no taking weird pills, or sacrificing some part of my dignity (okay, that might not be entirely possible to avoid). I am talking about reading some books, doing what they say, and giving you the results.

To be more specific, I am speaking about inexpensive ebooks specifically written to increase blog traffic. I am not doing this out of entirely selfish and obvious reasons – what blogger does not want more traffic, right? – but I am also doing this because I want to dissect the following:

1. Do those quickly written Kindle e-books actually provide real information (more about that subject, and the people that are trying to sell us writer’s, bloggers and internet marketers write about as possible and profitable)?

2. Can they translate to real valuable information for the  marketing purposes of writers, artists, print on demand/product on demand designers, and other creatives ( so basically YOU)?

3. Are they all saying the same thing, or do they differentiate in content, so that it makes sense to purchase more than one of them?

4. Should you disregard them completely as humbug?

 

The 5 books that I am going working through – one a month, beginning Oct. 1st, are:

1. Traffic Building Basics; 50 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic and Explode Your Business Today! (web design, web marketing, marketing) –  by Online Business Buddy

2. BLOG TRAFFIC: How to Double Your Blogging Traffic in a Month by Susan Beth

3. BLOG MARKETING: 26 Top Marketing Ideas for Your Blog (Business Blogging Series Book 5) by Kaye Dennan

4. Pinterest for Food Bloggers: How to Grow Your Following and Increase Blog Traffic (markets itself to be useful for any blogger) by Mary Loudermilk

5. How To Promote Your Blog – 101 Free Ways To Increase Your Website Traffic Today by Richard Adams

In that exact order.

How this will work:

I will read through the book during the assigned month, putting in practice the advice given, unless it sounds like something I do not agree with, and I will tell you the results. Of course, I can not give you all of the details of the advice that each book gives – you got to buy (or rent for free) the book for that, that would not be fair to the Author, but I can and will give you the answers to the 4 questions I stated above. All reviews and thoughts will be posted no later than the 2nd of the following month, so the review dates are:

Book one: review posted on Nov. 2nd
Book two: review posted on Dec. 2nd
Book three…. well you get the idea.

I hope you will join me, and we will all learn something from this experiment. I sure hope that they do what they promise. Looking forward to sharing that with you.

Blessings!

Claudia

Warmth – A Haiku

your touch warms the soul
my heart sings in your presence
every day a gift

Copyright Claudia H. Blanton 2015

I recently wrote about the Royal Holiday collection, a set of four romance novels from publisher Tule Publishing, but not about the last three books of the series. A sense of warmth is the overall emotion one should take from this series, books that feature strong women, and caring men. If you are looking to lose yourself in short romance novels, you should read the entire series, they are really worth it.

The titles in the series are:
The Cinderella Princess (Royal Holiday Book 1)

Her Secret Prince (Royal Holiday Book 2)

His Defiant Princess (Royal Holiday Book 3)

His Forbidden Princess (Royal Holiday Book 4)

A must have series for the fan of contemporary romance

7 Sites To Promote Your Book Cheaply Or Free

We all want our books to get good reviews, rank higher on Amazon and get the buzz going, no matter if we write non-fiction e-book or the next epic novel. Having a limited time free book promotion can help you raise your ranking on Amazon, and you can utilize the following book promotion sites to help you even further along. Exposure and traffic to your book will bring future sales, so take advantage of this type of book promotion.
Some of these require you to register, some offer premium services while others are a little selective and limited to a specific range of genre.

Check them out:

Awesome Gang 
Book Goodies
Free Book Dude 
Pixel of Ink
E-Book Hunter 
FK Books And Tips
Published.com 

 

 

Looking for some more info on the subject of cheap or free book promotion? Check out this book, available on Amazon right now: