Knowing your website may be your first online impression to your potential clients, why would you sacrifice the look and feel of your site? Below is a video featuring some website makeovers that I have designed and programmed for numerous small businesses. The result of the redesign has been successful for all of these clients, giving them a website they can be proud to market.

Interested in an Art Workshop? Throughout the last year, numerous people have approached me asking me if I would do an art workshop. If you are interested in an art workshop, can you please take 2 minutes and complete this 7 question survey to help me? Thanks in advance for your help!

Truckee Thursdays is a super fun outside festival that happens throughout the summer months in Truckee, CA. It's an event of all ages, featuring music, food, beer garden, play area for kids, and vendors of all sorts. This year, the Truckee Downtown Merchant Association launched a t shirt contest for Truckee Thursdays. The idea was to capture the feel of Truckee Thursdays while being appealing to both men and women.

I created a concept, sketched it out, then painted it with inks. Once dried, I scanned it, cleaned it up in Photoshop, then imported and outlined it in Illustrator. I added some features, tweaked some things, and brought in a fun font. The final design was submitted and accepted as winner of the 2011 Truckee Thursday t shirt contest. To purchase your own, look for the Truckee Downtown Merchant Association's booth during Truckee Thursdays. Then come by and see me as I will have my own booth too!

The Truckee River Watershed Council is a non-profit organization that manages numerous events and activities. Their site needed to be able to manage all of this activity while maintaining the look of a professional non-profit site. This website was a major undertaking due to the amount of actions that needed to take place on the site itself and started 6 months ago. I first met with them to give suggestions of how the site should work and after many meetings, worked with them to streamline their wireframe. Then the fun started.

WEED REPORTING: Working with local programmer SunMie Won of SW Programming, we created an interactive website on the Joomla platform. Working with iphone and Droid application developers from the invasive species site What's Invasive, we customized a weed reporting tool that would work with the iPhone and Droid AND would upload reports visually on the TRWC site using Google technology. Furthermore we added an identification section where viewers could search the site for invasive weeds.

DONATION MANAGEMENT: The needs of TRWC's donation management exceeded most donation software so we integrated the CiviCRM module and customized it from there. TRWC can now accept online payments as a one time or an ongoing pledge option through their secure website.

EVENT REGISTRATION: TRWC hosts numerous events and meetings and needed a calendar that could not only be updated for events, but could accept registration. The registration aspect notifies registrars and then sets the registrar up on a separate list on the backend so TRWC can choose to do an email to all those who signed up for a particular event.

NEWSLETTER: TRWC sends out regular newsletters so we integrated an online newsletter option for viewers. TRWC can now use their customized template to send newsletters with their look and feel, as well as track them.

CUSTOM DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION: To make the website pop and to further the education of the watershed, TRWC needed a map of the Truckee River Watershed. I hand painted a map if the watershed that I later integrated into the homepage slider and the projects maps.

SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION & eCOMMERCE: Since the TRWC website is so large, we need to help them with their system's administration and migrate them to a virtual dedicated server. Additionally, we assisted them with the integration of their eCommerce using authorize.net and their merchant account.

Overall this is a large site with a lot of customization and forms. It allows the Truckee River Watershed council to not only have one place where donors, volunteers, and residents can learn more about the watershed, but a place where they can manage it all in the back end as well. TruckeeRiverWC.org

My greeting card line is taking off! You can now purchase individually wrapped cards or card 6 packs online or from one of the 3 new places in Truckee:

• Riverside Studios at 10060 Donner Pass Road, Truckee, CA
• Bookshelf Stores (next to Safeway), 11310 Donner Pass Road, A2-3, Truckee, CA
• Gratitudes in Downtown Truckee, 10112 Donner Pass Road

I have already had great response in the few weeks that they have been at Riverside Studios so am excited to see them bring joy to the customers of these other stores. Additionally, I have recently teamed up with a wonderful sales rep to help get my cards into more stores throughout Northern California and Nevada. If you know of a store who needs some fun cards to sell, please forward me their name and contact info. In the meantime, these cards are only $4 each- that's less than many box store cards. You can buy them online at sarazimmermanart.net.

After a few years at East Bay Express as the Classified Sales Manager and at Moonshine Ink as the #2 in charge, I viewed numerous press releases. Many were sent by professional agencies and some were assembled by the starry-eyed entrepreneur. Need less to say, I learned what type of press releases would be printed.

Fast forward several years, now I have numerous clients needing a helping hand in marketing. I don't have the national marketing experience as many of the agencies nearby, but am able to help small companies get seen without the huge agency costs. This is what I did with Bluebird Designs.

After launching Bluebird Designs website and helping guide owner/jeweler Jessica Hall through some basic marketing techniques, Jessica hired me to write and send a press release to local publications. After some questions and answers, I put together a press release with camera-ready photos and sent it off. Within 2 days, the local daily newspaper, Sierra Sun, published the press release. Within 3 days of the publishing, Jessica received 6 new clients who commented that they came to her because of the article. Within 7 days, it grew to 15. Here's Jessica's testimonial:

"After Sara helped me build my website, she helped with with some marketing ideas. One of them was to write and submit press releases to local publications. In a matter of days, my press release was not only printed by the daily paper, but I received over 15 new clients in 7 days after its print. Thank you Sara."

I decided I wasn't happy with what I was thinking in the last week so I consciously chose to change my thoughts a few days ago- I noticed I was getting glum- probably a byproduct of the returning snow and dark skies- or maybe something else all together. I spoke to a few friends and returned to a favorite book, Louse Hay's You Can Heal Your Life. I love this book. Louise herself changed her thoughts enough to heal herself from cancer. You don't have to be a believer to read it though. In her prosperity section she provides some mantras as a replacement for those other thoughts we are familiar with... you know the ones I am talking about: "There's not enough", "I want money,"... you know the song. Anyways, she replaces them with positive affirmations about abundance and goodness.

So after my daughter went to bed I took it upon myself to practice a few of these new affirmations. That was two days ago. I must have repeated it about 10 times each day. So today my day began and the abundance already started rolling in. First, I had an amazing meeting with my BNI group (Business Networking International) which is the most positive group of entrepreneurs I have ever met. I felt abundance just radiating from the room during that hour and a half. After, I received the most amazing acupuncture treatment from the incredible Michelle Turley, who is responsible for me being able to drink milk again- I cannot recommend highly enough (Michelle, thank you!).

After, I visited my client, Jessica Hall from Bluebird Designs, to see her jewelry studio and workspace. After gazing at her jewelry masterpieces, she gave me a stunning necklace made from recycled metals with the word WOW stamped on it. So incredible! With my new bling bouncing around my neck, I picked up my daughter from daycare- she yelling "Mommy Mommy! I love you!" (heartwarming!). We returned home to the nicest notes pf praise from clients and friends who had received my newsletter earlier that morning. Later, I received a wonderful testimonial from an illustration client. After that, my husband made Indian food from scratch (the house smelled like heaven).

That was just one day! I felt compelled to write this all down as a note of inspiration (to you and myself!) and as a record of where the inspiration for my new painting are coming from when you start seeing artworks titled "Abundance" and "prosperity". Thank you everyone!