A few shout outs

If you’ve been around here for awhile, you know I’m a big supporter of indie artists and small business owners.

Just to clarify, I’m talking about owners of small businesses, not business owners who happen to be small, although I’m fans of theirs as well.

I’m a fan of all shapes and sizes!

Just to clarify, *I* am not all shapes and sizes. Just a fan of them.

Why must the written word be so confusing? Maybe blogs should be spoken instead of written? They could be called slogs instead of blogs!

Who do I see about making that happen?

In the meantime, I wanted to give a shout out to two different small businesses because in this world of WalMarts and Targets and Kohls, it’s often very difficult for the little guy to get a piece of the action.

The world would be a much nicer, more relaxed place if everybody got a little action every now and then, don’t you think? That’s what my husband says, anyway.

First up is Liz Nonnemacher. Remember Liz? I interviewed her last year and compared her to a flatulent boat before that. She owns Wickedly Chic, the one-stop online shop for indie goods. If you are an independent artist who needs exposure or some savvy marketing, or you’re shopping for something different, something that everyone and their neighbor’s mother-in-law doesn’t already own, check out Liz’s site. Just so you know, in her spare time, she dresses up her dog in scarves and posts about it on Facebook and dispenses really good, free advice. Recently, she told me that I was awesome and should never drink from someone else’s nipples. You know how much a therapist would have charged me for that little nugget?

Right now, Liz is hosting her 4th Annual Wickedly Chic Spring Fling. Go check out all the artists and businesses she’s featuring. There’s jewelry and makeup and hair products and clothing and more. Tell her I sent you. And then tell her I said to stop putting clothes on dogs because only weird people do that. And then tell her that I’m perfectly aware that we’ve got an extra-small Buffalo Bills jersey with four leg holes floating somewhere around this house and the fact that my husband paid $25 for it, to the glee of both my kids who are old enough to know better, pretty much makes my case for me.

Next up is Claire Gutschow. Claire was born in South Africa and now lives in California and has a forty year old cousin who runs around naked while camping which is neither here (thank God) nor there (now *you* thank God) but I always find it helpful to share with my readers a little trivia about any business or artist I might feature.

Claire used to work in a top international skin care company back in the day and now? She’s running her own skin care line called Fei’d (pronounced “fade” for those of you who were wondering how to pronounce it and thinking there are entirely too many apostrophes in this world.) This skin care line is a cross between Chinese medicine and western science and is specifically formulated for uneven skin tone, dark marks and pigmentation. In other words, WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? <—- so screams all the skin residing between my scalp and my toes.

One of the aspects I like best about Claire’s work is her philosophy of giving back … money that she could be spending on big, expensive ad campaigns for Fei’d is instead being directed to help promote education and educational support through children’s organizations in third world countries.

You can have pretty skin and help out a child in need which is like a win/win with extra hot fudge and a big ass spoon.

I’d get out my soapbox but it’s hiding somewhere on the couch along with my initiative and ambition this morning so instead, I’ll just simply remind you to please support independent artists and small business owners! It’s good karma and karma is like peanut butter … it’s best when spread thick and all over the place.

Only the smooth kind of karma though! Crunchy karma is kind of gross.

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