Thoughtful Thursday – Crafting Blues

I am not going to lie – the end of last year was rough. Lots of sickness, we lost my dad, my uncle, and our family dog, and an all-around transitional period of life kind of melded together to create a big ball of sadness and stress. So, as we make our way into the new year, we’re trying to focus on the business and just being creative again. It’s hard to be inspired when you feel blue, but sometimes just making something, not related to gift giving, or putting up on Etsy, but just about making something that you like for fun, can sometimes lead to more creativity.

Today, it’s eyeball earrings. I’ve been wondering what to do with these round, white, retro, blank canvas earrings since I got them (a couple of years ago …?) They’ve been sitting in one of my many jewelry supply boxes, and I’d pick them up occasionally, turn them over, then put them back. It dawned on me today that they’d make perfect eyeballs, so I decoupaged some pupil/iris printouts on them today just for fun, and I like the way they turned out so much that I think I’ll keep this pair for myself, and list the rest in JuJu Eyeball!

Reason number 4,231 why working from home is awesome is that you don’t have to put on makeup or style your hair all the time. 🙂

So, today I’m wishing you happiness and creativity – get a little messy, and nourish your soul at the same time!

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Chels

Make It Monday – Martha’s American Made Awards

If you look to the right of this post, below the photo of me looking very colorful, you’ll see a new button that looks like this:

Yesterday, a friend from our local Etsy team, Etsy Fort Worth, shared the link for our team members to nominate themselves for Martha Stewart’s Made In America Awards. The finalists from the six categories will receive an AM gift basket, and will be featured on the site and on Sirius radio. The first prize winner receives $10,000 to use toward their business, and a trip to NYC!

All you have to do to enter is click the green button on the right (or the picture below,) check out our profile, of course, and click the “nominate  yourself” button at the top right of the page. You’ll select your category, add any photos, videos, and links you’d like to share, then write a short bio about yourself/your business, and answer a couple of questions. You can save a copy of your profile before publishing it, and once you publish, you can edit your profile if you notice any mistakes or something you may have left out.

A sneak peek of our profile!

 

Voting starts August 26, so be sure to add our profile to your favorites list for later! Mom is looking for a house right now, and we’ve been planning out our studio space (who cares about the rest of the house, right?) So, if we win the grand prize, part of the money will go toward renovating one or two of the rooms to create a space where we can make and market together, and where we can invite customers to talk about custom orders, and host fittings for models. We are in serious need of a collective, designated space for our work, so that we can collaborate on projects, and store our supplies in one space. I’m especially excited to designate an area for taking photos, with different backdrops and a light box, without having to take it all down and reassemble it to save space in our current, small apartments.  

Of course, if we don’t win, we’re just excited about the opportunity for free exposure. By creating our profile, we’ll reach potential customers that haven’t heard of us before, who’ll visit our Etsy shops and other links, and get to know us better. If you or anyone you know has a handmade business, take the opportunity to put yourself out there! It could be craft, design, food, gardening, or style related. Nominate yourself (or make them nominate themselves,) because you never know who’ll fall in love with your product.

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Chelsea

Weird Wednesday – Morticia & More

This Halloween may be the first one in years that I won’t have an excuse to dress in costume. Will that stop me? The answer is a resounding NO, my friends.

I will, at the very least, work on my costume for next year – Morticia Addams:

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I tend to go old school with the Addamses, as in the original comic strip or TV show, and I fully intend to craft Morticia’s man-eating plant, Cleopatra (pictured,) to wear around my neck like a boa. The basic costume is simple, though – v-neck black dress (I found a velvet one at a thrift store,) which you may or may not want to add “tentacles” to, or extra fabric to the sleeves, a black wig (or your actual hair, if you’re lucky!) and a few minimal accessories. Add some winged black eyeliner and a dark red lip, and you’re Tish! You just need to find a pinstriped suit and a mustache for your Gomez.

This year, Tom is running a race on the day of our church’s Trunk or Treat, so we’ll miss our chance to deck out ourselves and our trunk. Then Halloween day will be full of a family-friendly-but-creepy movie marathon at the Tri C, complete with popcorn and candy, and scary movies and dinner with my best friend and her boyfriend that night. I can’t wait to decorate her house this Saturday! We’re going with a zombie crime scene theme which will include us outlining each other in chalk and splattering fake blood, and real crime scene tape from the police station where she works.

If you’re getting in the Halloween spirit, take a look at my Every Day Is Halloween pinterest board! It’s filled with lots of unique costume ideas, props and decorations, freaky food, and other bits of spooky inspiration I’ve found. Don’t forget our weird shop, JuJu Eyeball, for fun accessories and decor. Hurry – it’s not too late to put in a custom order for your costume accessories!

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Chelsea

Handmade Holidays 2012 & What I’m Making

So excited to be a part of Etsy817’s Handmade Holidays again this year! Last year we had the show in one of the gyms in the UTA activity center, but this year it’s in Arlington’s Lincoln Square, which is a large shopping center on the north side of the city. The team leaders were able to find a couple of spaces available for rent, and are currently hoping to upgrade to the larger space due to the massive amounts of vendor applications sent in this year. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the bigger space comes through, because it’s going to be an awesome show already. If you’re in the area and interested in more info, check out the Etsy817 blog here.

Since the show is going to be here before we know it (in early December,) Mom and I are both in serious creative mode. I’ve been hanging on to some pretty crocheted pieces my grandmother made and left to us, wondering what I should do with them, when it hit me. I’ve been into the trend of body harnesses and jewelry for a long time now. In fact, one of my favorite treasures is a beaded hand harness (ring/bracelet combo) that my grandmother gave me for Christmas years and years ago. Now, of course, it’s this huge trend, and I’ve been thinking of ways I could make the trend my own to sell in the shop. Enter the crocheted squares, hearts, teardrops, flowers, and circles that have been taking up space in one of my many plastic storage containers! So, I started hand beaded each of them, adding charms and buttons, picturing how each piece would lay as jewelry. Add chain, and you have very fall & winter appropriate shoulder and body harnesses.

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So, what do you think? It takes a certain person to brave body harnesses, I think, but I’m one of those people! I hope that these pieces are distinct enough that people will want to wear them over sweaters and blazers as the weather gets cooler. If you’d like to make your own, easy and understated chain body harness, take a look at this easy to follow tutorial.

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Chelsea

Art hungry!

We have almost exactly a month to plan for our booth at Grand Prairie’s Art Hunger show on October 6. It’s a monthly collection of local artists, featured at the Grand Prairie Convention Center in downtown. We’re excited to be doing a show before/near Halloween, something we haven’t done yet. It’s a perfect fit for our other shop, JuJu Eyeball, where we list all of our weird and creepy creations. Our latest listing is Lola; she’s larger than life, and we think you’ll love her as much as we do!

So, here’s to locking ourselves in and working our weird little fingers off!

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Chelsea

Make It Monday – Embroidery Madness!

Before I delve into the world of embroidery, let me just say what an awesome time we had at the Dallas Comic-Con Sci Fi Expo on Saturday! We got to meet sweet/funny/genetically-blessed-with-amazing-bone-structure Eliza Dushku, and I got her autograph:

A classic Faith pic from the Buffy series, signed (with kisses) by Eliza Dushku.

 

She even said she liked my JuJu Eyeball fuzzy eyeball earrings! I didn’t give her a card like I did anyone else who liked them, because, well, I was starstruck and thought it might look a little sleezy: “I’m a big fan! … Oh, you like my earrings? Here’s my card (insert cheezy salesewoman smile.) No, really, I’m a big fan!” I mean, you only have so many seconds to make an impression, and, call me crazy, but taking the earrings out to give to her also seemed a little creepy.

 

So, on to today’s topic! My grandmother and great aunt used to embroider all the time when I was little, and I was fortunate enough to inherit some of their supplies. Over the past few years, I’ve picked up the needle and multicolor thread again as a hobby, but recently I’ve decided to incorporate embroidery in some of my work for the new shop. I’ve always enjoyed creating and drawing monsters and creatures, so I decided to start on my first monster embroidery project to see if I would be able to transfer some of my drawn ideas from paper to a fuzzier medium. Here are the results so far:

 

Still trying to come up with a name for this guy ...

 

Comment below if you have any monster names for this guy! The idea is that I’ve seen lots of really scary monster drawings, and a lot of adorable plushie monsters that tend to incoporate embroidery, but I wanted to create something somewhere in the middle. Still cute, but something a hardcore creature fan could appreciate.

 

If you’re looking to start embroidering, or if you’d like to try to embroider your own design, here are some links and tips:

 

Sublime Stitching has great, basic tutorials for beginners.

 

Transfers that you find at craft stores are great for practice, but there aren’t any rules that say your design has to look a certain way! If you’ve come up with a cool sketch you think would translate well to stitchery, use a transfer pen or paper, or simply pin a copy of the drawing to the back of your fabric and trace with a pencil if your fabric is thin enough.

 

You really only need a few stitches to embroider most designs. My top 3 are backstitch, split stitch, and satin stitch. Depending on what style embroidery you decide you like, your top 3 might be stem stitch, french knot, and running stitch! Build up your arsenal of stitches to find out which are your favorites. P.S. – If you’re looking for a style with less variation, try crosstitch. You stitch “x”s the whole time, and the design still turns out looking awesome.

 

Anything you can sew, you can embroider: paper, fabric (towels, clothing, curtains,) trim, canvas …

 

Two more great contemporary resources for ideas, tutorials and patterns are Mr. X Stitch and Urban Threads.

 

Finally, you may mess up. Your thread may knot, you may use the wrong stitch or wrong thread color. The cool thing is, though, that you can snip the thread, pull, start over again, and no one will ever know!

 

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Chelsea

A Break From Blogging

Happy summer everyone! My dear hubby gets a few weeks off from school before summer classes start, so we’ll be catching up on quality time together. My blogging will probably be scarce – if I have something really cool to share, I will! Meanwhile, you can always check out what’s new on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/230622362213, (we’ll also list new items soon in our etsy shop: http://buymelove.etsy.com) or read our other blog: http://patientsvoicewhocares.blogspot.com.

I hope you’re all having a safe, sunny week!

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Chelsea