Another great item from BuildASign! :)

I received the last of my promotional items in the mail from BuildASign.com! It's a fully customized aluminum license plate!

You can go on BuildASign's website and create a fully customized license plate, or personalize one of the many templates they have available. Way cool!

While I can't legally put this on my car and drive around in the state of Virginia (a REAL plate is required on both the front and back of the car here), it's going to be a wonderful item to have with me for people to touch and feel when I'm out promoting the plates. I was squeeing with delight when it arrived in the mail and I pulled it out of the packaging! It's so cool to see it in person, to get a real feel for how it's going to look when I finally get these things passed into legislation, and BuildASign did a great job with the print. The plate is sturdy and feels like if I have to it around to a lot of events, it won't get scratched up in the process; the ink most certainly does not feel like it's going to easily start rubbing off or anything like that.

(Oh, one thing my husband pointed out- he asked why Virginia wasn't centered. That was definitely not Build-A-Sign's fault, that was all me- when I was building the template I just tried to make sure everything that I wanted to fit on the plate was within the bleed area, I didn't even really look at where things were centered. My fault, not theirs!)

I haven't mentioned the plates much since I created their own special website, www.PollinatorPlates.com . Right now the goings-on focus only on the state of Virginia, and I know I have readers from other places :)  But if you're in a state that you think would enjoy showing its love of pollinators via fancy-pants vehicular accessory, by all means let me know. We can research how to get one passed in your state and I'd love to work on another new and unique design!

Banner from BuildASign.com is here :)

I just got my Pollinator Plates custom banner from BuildASign.com!

I am so happy with it!

Here it is!

What's great about this banner:

• The banner material itself feels super strong and durable. Honestly, for the prices online (this one is a 24" x 48"- that's 2'x4'- and only $23 and I'm not even kidding), I was expecting something flimsier that might tear easily and probably not last for very many uses. I was very pleasantly surprised!
• The colors came out very true-to-life. Colors usually vary from monitor to monitor, and a slight variation wouldn't have disappointed me. Again, another pleasant surprise! It looks exactly the same as the image that I sent to them! The colors are so bright and vivid!
• It also came with 4 grommets, one in each corner. Again, for something so inexpensive, I expected maybe one grommet in each top corner for hanging. 

I am so pleased with this!

It will be the perfect size for a 6-foot table or a 10-foot booth spot, the sizes I've seen most commonly at various events. My little table is 5-feet long, so it will work with that as well. Once I can start the official process of collecting license plate applications, I plan to go "out in the field" as much as I can, to as many events as I can, to obtain as much interest as possible. I will even dress up in my bee costume if that is what it takes... (But hopefully with an eye-catching banner like THIS, the bee costume won't BEE necessary.)

So if you're in need of a banner, I highly recommend BuildASign.com! You can order from their templates, or use their online design software (VERY easy), or create your own custom design (like I did here with this one).They have lots of other fun stuff besides banners, such as personalized street signs and license plates, stickers, signs, magnetics. Playing around on their website made me miss my days of working back at the sign shop.... Le sigh.....

Please Vote :)

(Or as Puff Daddy (P. Diddy? Diddy?) would say, Vote or Die!)

I'm running a 24 hour poll on the Pollinator Plates blog regarding the design of the plate. Virginia has a lot of plates with a lot of blue in the background, but none (or at least very few) that are pimarily green. I posted two designs and want to choose the final one by tomorrow so I can send my legislator another letter with the new design.

If you have a moment, could you stop by the Pollinator Plates site and vote? The poll is in the upper right corner:
http://pollinatorplates.blogspot.com/

Thanks!! :)

A Productive Sunday?

Not sure how productive it will be since I slept in til 9:30; it's already 10:30 and I'm sitting here in pajamas and drinking coffee.

Nevertheless on a day like this I tend to get up and look outside and imagine a whole day of possibilities. That's what weekends are for, right? Pretty soon my weekends will become even more meaningful since I'm going back to work full-time as of November 1st. The longer hours will definitely not be fun, but I can't argue with having twice the paycheck... especially in time for the holidays.

So what's on the agenda for a day like this?

The first thing I'll do this morning while I finish my coffee is work on letters to my two representatives in the Virginia General Assembly. Remember my post about a new project I'm working on? That project is: I'm designing a new license plate for the state of Virginia. It will be a revenue sharing plate and the shared fees ($15 per plate after the first 1,000 are sold) will go to the Pollinator Partnership.

The theme for the plates is "Protect Pollinators" and I think I've got the design just about finished, but I need to get it approved by the Pollinator Partnership and get one of my representatives to agree to sponsor it.

BUT
Even if I have to change some of it, I can't help but want to share a sneak peak:

If either of my representatives approves it, then I can start collecting signatures of people who would be interested in having this plate, or better yet, actually collect the official license plate applications AND fees from folks. I need 350 by January 1st to get it approved. If I don't get enough, I'll probably have to work on it all next year and try again in 2012.

Wish me luck and please comment or contact me if you're a Virginia resident who would like a plate! And of course, I'll be posting more about this on my blog very soon.


Also for today....
I'll definitely be going for a run- I was going to go yesterday but my husband surprised me with a birthday trip to the Smithsonian to see butterflies! We even got to meet up with a couple of friends of ours who were in town for a race today. I'll upload some pictures when I find the cables that connect the camera to the computer.

I'm also hoping to get my desk finished today. I need to go buy some legs for it, and was planning just to use sawed off 2x4's but my husband wants something sturdier. And a sturdy way to attach it to the desk (which is 2 doors in an L shape). Makes sense, but will I be able to get him motivated to go out and look at hardware with me when some football game is on at 1 that he wants to watch? If not, I don't totally suck at building things and don't mind making an attempt at it!