Blog Giveaway! Blog Giveaway! Blog Giveaway!

No, I'm not giving away my blog. But I AM giving away a flower brooch, in celebration of the new flower brooch line soon to be introduced to my Etsy shop. I'm having so much fun making these little flowers!

This one is a combination of bright bubble gum pink, golden yellow, and bright green. The flower is about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. The center of the flower is accented with white sequins and pink seed beads. It's all stitched together with gold thread. I'm so proud of this little guy, I took three pictures!




To enter into the drawing, just post a comment on this post by midnight Friday, February 1. And since it's true that you don't ever get something for nothing, I'm going to ask that you tell me something you like about my blog, or something you'd like to see in my blog. This will help me plan content that you want to read.

I'll choose one comment at random and that person will recieve this brooch. Yaaaayyyy!!!

Etsy Word Results: Callow

I know I'm a little late with this, but here are the results from the "callow" search.

Denise offered up items that a callow youth might want:

Marshmallow Shooter, Flame Thrower by Neverland Toys

GoldenChild Mohawk Hat by Infantile

Skull Cufflinks by Baubles N Bows

..while I thought about hatchlings and bald little babies:

Bald is Beautiful onesie by Shirts for Shortys

Bows for Bald Baby Girls by BaldBabyGirls


Hatchling Future Child Pin by CollageArtist

PeepPeeps Little Girl Ponytail Holders by The Magpie's Nest

So that's it for last week's word. This week's word? Its.... *drumroll please*.....

sylvan \SIL-vuhn\

adjective:

1. Of or pertaining to woods or forest regions.

2. Living or located in a wood or forest.

3. Abounding in forests or trees; wooded.

noun:

1. A fabled deity or spirit of the woods.

2. One that lives in or frequents the woods or forest; a rustic.

As always, anyone is welcome to play along! Just post your suggestions in a comment to this post. Have fun!

This one's for you, Denise

So my friend Denise is known for her recycling and upcycling of random would-be-trash into beautiful works of art. She is the laundry lint goddess, and we all pay homage to her with our dryer lint. Whether it's dryer lint, old CDs, or leftover packing material, she collects it and calls it all "art supplies!"(always with the exclamation point).

Tonight I was in my studio punching shapes out of felt and Olivia is digging through the scraps in the trashcan. "There's a whole lot of this in here," she says. "Yes," I respond. Then she asks me, "Why don't we save it and give it to Aunt Denise?"

The child knows you well, Denise!

yucky, cold day

It's a yucky, yucky cold day here in Arkansas! It's hovering at 32 degrees and the sky is overcast and it keeps spitting sleet and freezing rain. Blech. Guess it's a good day to stay in an create!

Make your own stamps - an update

A couple of weeks ago I subscribed to a thread on Splitcoast about a little contraption called the Stamp Critter that apparently lets you make your own photopolymer clear stamps. Well, someone on the thread bought one of these puppies and posted a photo tutorial on their blog, showing how it all works.

From what I can tell, it looks like this machine has two basic conveniences over the more labor intensive DIY process that I linked to in my previous post on this subject. First, it provides a light source that sits directly above the polymer & image and provides even distribution of that light. Second, it looks like the polymer stuff comes in a little baggie, which takes the place of having to build little dams out of craft sticks and pouring the polymer in.

Woohoo!!! I was famous for 3 minutes!!

Yesterday I was browsing through the treasuries on Etsy and was pleasantly surprised to see a little yellow star next to one of the treasury links. This meant that an item from my shop was featured in the treasury! It happened to be one of my new paisley brooches. Woohoo!!!

Fast forward to this morning. As usual, I crawled out of bed and stumbled to my computer. As the crust lifted from my eyes, I checked my views on Etsy. Sure enough, I had gotten a lot of views over the night, thanks to the treasury. The item that had been featured went from having 39 views to 53. AND, I noticed that three people had hearted me. What an awesome morning! What the heck, I thought, and I checked to see if anyone had hearted the paisley. (I know, I know, I'm totally vain...)

No hearts for the paisley, but when I reloaded my shop I noticed that the views had jumped from 53 to 109! 56 views in the space of 1 minute!! Seriously. My foggy morning brain realized that something as definitely up, so I loaded the Etsy home page. And there it was.

There, on the Etsy home page, MY PAISLEY BROOCH WAS THE FIRST ITEM PICTURED ON THE TREASURY. ON THE FLIPPIN' ETSY HOME PAGE!!!!!!! OMG, OMG, OMG. Inhale, exhale....

It took a second to sink in, then my first thought was, "OMG, send Denise a convo!!!!" I clicked the convo button, and my second (more rational) thought, was "Take a screenshot, you moron!" And it was at that exact second that I got the notification from Etsy that my paisley had been purchased! So while I was super-excited that I had sold the first of my paisleys, I also realized that this meant that the little guy was no longer on the home page.

It all happened so fast, like in the space of about 3 minutes. If I didn't have the evidence of the sale, I would think it was all in my imagination. It's like the final scene in a movie where the main character wakes up and realizes that all the surreal stuff they had experienced as all just a dream, and then.... they look over on the nighstand and see some tangible piece of evidence that it had actually all occurred.

Etsy word: Callow

Here's the Etsy word for this week:

callow \KAL-oh\, adjective:
Immature; lacking adult perception, experience, or judgment.

I can't wait to see what people come up with for this one!

PS - sorry for the short post - I've been crafting all day and my brain is not much into forming thoughts right now. Will post a pic tomorrow of what I made today.