Back in Action

Looks like I took a longer break from my blog than I did from my shop! I took the summer off, but now I'm back. It was a nice break to relax with the kids and get some work done around the house.

I'm slowly adding back items that I had listed before, as well as working on getting pictures taken of new items and, of course, making more new items.

Last night, I ordered some supplies to be able to make some brooches/pins and key chains, both of which will be completely new products in my store. I'm looking forward to getting those in and being able to play. :)

Please check out my shop today and in the coming weeks as I keep adding more items!

What did you do this summer?

Getting ready for a craft fair

I'm going to be going to a craft fair on Saturday. This will be the first time I am selling buttons, magnets and perler bead decorations at a craft fair, and I am a little concerned about making too much/too little. My most popular button is popular because it is a costume piece, and Halloween is over, so I'm not sure it's a good idea to bring lots of those right now. Christmas-themed items are probably a good bet, of course, but picking which non-Christmas items to make enough of for the craft fair is tricky. I'm going into this one looking at it as market research more than a money-making opportunity (although getting a lot of sales would be nice!)

I've made a lot more snowflakes with Perler beads for the craft fair. I figure if they don't sell, I can use them for package decorations. ;) Here is one pile of them that I made:



I also made some more patchwork elephants out of perler beads. :) I really like the extra color that using the striped beads adds to them.

I'm also adding more sets of buttons to my shop, at a discount from buying the buttons individually. Here is a listing for three of the funny animal buttons (the two I posted in my last entry, plus a new one of two rhino butts). I have also posted some other new buttons since I last wrote here. You are welcome to check my shop to see what else is new!

It's going to snow overnight here. The weather is usually much warmer this time of year, but everything seems to be pointing to a really cold and long winter. The snowflakes will certainly match the weather tomorrow.

New items

I have added two new buttons to my shop, buttons with a tiger on one and an orangutan on the other. They were photos my husband took at the zoo sometime in the past year. I thought they were fun pictures. Here are the buttons:



I have another zoo photo I plan to make into a button, but this is one I took many years ago. I have a fourth I want to use, but the subject, an elephant, is too dark. So, I need to edit the photo to try to lighten the elephant without washing out the background too much. If you want to take a closer look, you can find the tiger button here and the orangutan button here.

I did an informal poll of some of my Facebook friends to see if they would prefer buttons or magnets, if they were in the market for such things. The response was overwhelmingly for magnets, so I am adding magnets to the shop. The buttons will stay too, of course, but soon there will be the option to have a button or a magnet in all the designs offered.

I am also working to make some new items with Perler beads. I've made snowflakes, penguins, and another patchwork elephant. I also plan on making some 8-bit look/vintage video game look items in the near future. I haven't had a chance to take good pictures for listing yet, but here are the snowflakes I've made so far:



You can check my Instagram account at 42PurpleElephants to see the penguins, elephant and other creations I've made. :)

The snowflakes, penguins and elephant will be listed soon. How soon the video game items up depends on how quickly I can make them. Tomorrow I will be spending the day crafting, so new listings will probably not be posted before Monday. I hope the anticipation isn't going to be too much to bear. ;)

Busy week

The Rosie the Riveter button was quite the hit for Halloween. That button easily became my best seller so far.

This week, I decided to finally try out a new project for possible items to make for my shop. I've decided to experiment with resin pendants. I'm pretty sure that none of the pendants are going to be fit for sale, but it's a good learning set. I think. I made them at my parents' house during my regular crafting time with my mom, so they are still over there curing. I will check on them this evening when we take the kiddos over there for trick or treating.

My big disappointment with the first experiment is that I had about an ounce of mixed resin I couldn't use because I only had one mold. I didn't want to go crazy buying tons of molds and find out I hated the process, but I probably should have mixed for one and had a second for overflow so I didn't have to waste so much. But, this is part of why this is called a "learning process". I'll know better for next time.

I have also made a few new buttons for the shop. This is one I made using a picture of a Perler bead creation I also made:



I like that I was able to incorporate something I made into a button I designed. I'd originally tried to put the words over the block, but it just wasn't working right, so this is what the final product ended up being. I'm pretty pleased with it overall. Here is a link to the listing if you're interested in taking a closer look.

Have a safe and happy Halloween/Samhain. I am taking a gerbil and an Enderman trick or treating this evening. What costume are you and/or your kids wearing, if any?

Rosie the Riveter

A friend asked me to make a Rosie the Riveter button for her. Not a button with the iconic "We Can Do It!" image, but the actual button Rosie is wearing in the poster so she could wear it for a costume. I decided to also make one for my shop. This is what I came up with:



Not exactly what she was wearing on her collar, but I think it's pretty close. I decided to go ahead and list it in my Etsy shop and see if anyone else would buy it. It's already my highest selling button.

Now, my shop has only been open a few weeks, so none of the other buttons have had much time on the market, so to speak, but I've only sold one other design so far, and while it has sold multiple times as well, Rosie beat it with less time in my shop. Apparently, Rosie is a popular Halloween costume this year.

Halloween is almost here, so I expect the sales to slow down soon, at least for the two buttons that have been selling (the other is also a good costume accessory, but has good general use as well). I have designed two more buttons, which I plan to list tomorrow. One is Rosie related, one is not. The other is the first in what I hope will be a series. We'll see how it goes.

A fun fact about Rosie the Riveter, in closing, that I didn't know until I did the research on the button on her collar. As it turns out, the iconic "We Can Do It!" poster is not really Rosie the Riveter. That poster was a motivational poster that was used briefly in Westinghouse to boost the morale of female employees so they would be more productive. I find its origins interesting in light of what it has become today. The REAL Rosie the Riveter, who was first named in a song, is also a Norman Rockwell painting that is copyrighted. The motivational poster is not copyrighted, which is why it became the iconic symbol of Rosie the Riveter when she was revived in the 1980s.

So, thanks to lack of copyright, she is now the Rosie the Riveter we all know and love, regardless of her origins.

Legendary Day

Well, it was a day when my husband and I bought two more expansions to the card/board game Legendary. ;) It's a deck building game (meaning you all start with the same 12 cards and then build up your deck by "buying" cards available on the board, which you can then use to do more stuff). The premise is Marvel superheroes and supervillains. It's a cooperative/competitive game meaning there is a point where no one wins if the villains win, but when the players win, only one is really the winner. So you have to balance helping the others to make sure the villains don't overtake the heroes, but still make sure you get the most points.

We got out late enough that we didn't get a chance to actually play though. Fortunately, we are going to a gaming group tomorrow afternoon, where we should be able to play Legendary and some other games (I'm especially looking forward to Betrayal at House on the Hill ).

In other news, I have a new button in my shop. This is homage to the show Archer, but also Kenny Loggins since it is his song:



Get it? ;)

Perler beads and Minecraft

Perler beads seem perfectly made for the pixelated games of the 1980s. But they're also great for the deliberately blocky, pixelated Minecraft. Both my daughters play Minecraft, and my 9 year old requested a Minecraft-themed birthday party when she turned 9 this past spring.

I wanted to buy some themed party favors, but found that none exist, aside from homemade ones. I thought it would be fun to try my hand at making them myself, so I bought a huge container of assorted Perler beads, figuring that way I'd have what I'd need (and not thinking much about how much SORTING that would take).

Long story short, I did end up making the party favors for her party out of Perler beads (and had to get some single color packs from the craft store because I didn't have enough of some). Each attendee got a creeper, Enderman, pig, Steve, Herobrine, Creeper pick axe and sword (I also mixed up the colors on the swords and made some in several different colors, including colors that don't exist in Minecraft, and then let the kids pick which they wanted).

They were a big hit, but they didn't *do* anything. I had intended to make necklaces out of some, but the way the beads melted, there wasn't room to put cord of any kind through most of them. So later, I decided that if I were to make them again, I would remove a bead from the middle and string cord through there for the necklace.

After a few months, I decided to try again. I put together the first one, just like I had for the party favors, and realized a problem. I made them 8x8 squares, which means if I removed just one bead, the hole would not be centered. And, I didn't like the idea of removing two beads because I thought the hole would end up being too big.

So, I modified what I did before and made them 9x9 squares. I could then remove a bead from the middle and they would still hang straight. Overall, I'm happy with how they look with the modifications.

Here is a picture of the four faces:



For the sword, I didn't have to modify anything. I could just take a bead out of the bottom of the hilt and it worked out pretty well. Here is the sword:



Overall, I am happy with them. I did make necklaces of my girls' favorite ones for them. For the record, that's an Enderman for the 12 year old and a pig for the 9 year old.

What is your favorite video game of all time?

Haiku

I have always enjoyed Haiku. It can be difficult to fit what you want to say in such a rigid structure, but I find that, when done well, Haiku can be quite powerful in its briefness and simplicity.

I don't claim to be able to write great Haiku, but I have written a few that I thought were okay. I have featured the first (of possibly many) on a button. Here's a picture:



This Haiku says:

Money is okay,
But Lucy van Pelt was Right,
I want Real Estate.

This was written during a small online Haiku competition I was participating in a few years ago. I believe the topic we had to write on was "money". I don't remember how I placed with this particular Haiku that week, but I do know I placed second overall in the competition. Not too bad.

Another Haiku I wrote more recently:

To write haiku well,
One must be concise in words.
An ancient Twitter?


Do you have a Haiku you'd like to share?

Holidays

I decided to make some buttons for the holidays. More Christmas ideas are coming, but I'm not focusing on Christmas right now as we haven't even had Halloween yet. I am really enjoying designing buttons. I have even designed one with a Haiku I wrote, but I haven't made the button or listed it yet.

I made a new Halloween button for people who don't like to wear costumes, but still like to participate in Halloween activities. Or, it can be for people who don't like costumes, don't like Halloween, but for whatever reason have to go to a costume party. ;)

This is the link to the Halloween Costume Button and here is a picture:




What is your favorite holiday?

I'm back!

And...I'm back! I took a few years off from selling on Etsy. I thought I was done with it, so I even threw away my business cards about a year ago. I went back to school and finally finished my degree! After that, I was still unable to find a job and I realized I missed making things. So, I decided to reopen my Etsy shop and I am slowly rebuilding stock for it. I also just reordered new business cards. ;)

In the meantime, I am also doing some more scrapbooking, which is taking some of my crafting time. I've also decided to experiment with some new crafts, and it's taking time to buy all the supplies I need to really get started. I have more button parts on the way so I can add more buttons to my shop.

I am also going to start experimenting with making things using resin. I'm not entirely sure if I will be making pendants, keychains, and/or something else. I guess it depends on how successful I am with the resin. I still need to get a few things to have everything I need to start working with it, so resin items will still be a little ways down the road.

Anyway, I will leave you now with a link to my favorite button I have made so far:

Love or Oxygen Button

Here is a picture:

New Listing

I recently sold two bracelets from my Etsy shop and found myself completely unprepared for sending a thank you note with the item. I pulled out some random cardstock, stamps and set to work. I ended up making this:

I liked it and decided I should make some to also sell in my Etsy store because I'm sure I'm not the first one who has wished for a thank you note and not had it. And, even though I make cards myself, sometimes I wish I could just pick one up instead of having to stop everything and make them.





So, I took the same design and switched out the elephant for some flowers and made these:

Right now, I have a set of 6 for sale for $3, two of each of the three designs. I will likely be expanding my thank you note card selection and also include "love you" and "thinking of you" cards as well. I'm looking forward to creating and adding more new items to my store. :)

Treasury

I took a much longer hiatus from Etsy than I was intending to, but I am back!  After being back less than a week, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my bracelets was already being featured in a treasury!  Here is the link for the gettin' ready for the party treasury that features a black and orange bracelet I made.

I am going to be expanding my non-jewelry offerings more in the coming months, so please keep checking back for new items!  :)

Item of the Day

I've started a new (to me) feature for my Etsy shop...an Item of the Day.  I don't do these daily, but on a whim.  So I could have just one a week, 3 a week or if I'm feeling really saucy, 7 in a week. ;)  Today I do have an item of the day:

Fancy Jasper and Copper Bracelet

In addition to being a really great bracelet that is perfect for fall and could be for a man or a woman, I really like the pictures I took of this one.  Not so much because I think they're stellar art, but because the rocks came out of my daughter's rock collection.  I really like that she's gladly let me borrow her rocks (and shells in some of my other listings) for my pictures, so every time I look at this or the other pictures with her rocks and shells, I think of her. :)

Another Self-Portrait Project and Creativity

I've decided to start a 365 Days self-portrait project, again.  It's funny, I managed to stick with it and do the whole thing the first time I tried it out, but every time I've started it again, I've always stopped within the first couple of weeks (or, in some cases, days).  I'm up to day 18 (today will be day 19 once I take it), so maybe this time it'll stick.  At the very least, I've made it longer than past attempts. 

As I go, I'm hoping to take some more creative shots, not necessarily showing my face, or even most of my body.  My hand as been featured in two already, and today's will likely be my foot.  The last time I did this, I also did various themes for the week and I'd like to do some of that again to keep it interesting, both for me and anyone who looks at the set.

This one is from Day 11 and shows two charm bracelets I recently made (along with my hand).  I have not put them into my Etsy shop yet, but plan to do so soon.  It's the first time I've made charm bracelets like this and I'm pleased with the results.  I've also started making cell phone charms and am looking into other ideas for things to make with beads and charms that are not necessarily jewelry.  Although I enjoy making jewelry, I'm itching to make new and different items as well.  I may start looking into making more stamping/scrapbooking items as well.  So many crafts, so little time. :)

A New Year

I knew that I would not be ready to start any new goals over a weekend that followed celebrating New Year's Eve, so I resolved to start working toward my goals on January 5th, which is when my older daughter goes back to school and we get back into the "normal" routine.  So far, my goals are more ideas than solid goals with action steps.  I want to eat healthier foods, work on paying down debt, keep a cleaner house, and of course continue to work on building up my Etsy shop.

One thing I'm hoping to offer more of in my shop in the coming year is more chainmail items that my husband has made.  These have been really popular, especially at the craft fair we did in December.  I have one of his chainmail keychains on my keyring, although mine is a straight line rather than a celtic star.  I asked him to make it for me to "test" to see if the rings would hold up to being taken in and out of my purse, pocket, dangled from the ignition of the car, etc.  Yeah, I was just wanting to "test" it, that's it. ;)  I've had it for several months now and it has held up quite well.  I really like it.

So, now that we are 4 days into the New Year, what kind of resolutions have you made?  Have any of them already been broken? ;)  If so, I hope you don't throw in the towel, one of the things about goals is they are something to work toward, not something you flip a switch and have perfectly.  There will likely be bumps on the way, but as long as you don't let them stop you, you can still reach your goal.

Blog Feature

I just wanted to post real quickly to bring your attention to another blog.  French Revelation wrote a post featuring two jewelry shops on Etsy, and mine is one of them. :)  You can read the post here:

http://frenchrevelation.blogspot.com/2009/11/featurama-monday_16.html

We Feel Fine

A self-portrait that I took back in 2006 as part of a 365 day portrait project is being published in a book coming out in December. Even though I'm just one of thousands who are getting their pictures published in the same book, I'm really excited. :)

Yesterday they published a an online excerpt to their website, found here. The page with my picture doesn't appear to be on one of the pages that is clickable, though. I get a free copy of the book since one of my pictures is in it, which I will get in December. Yeah, I'm one of a large number, but still, I guess this means that soon I'll be a published photographer. :)

And, in case you were curious, here is my picture that will be in the book:

The title of the picture is "grumpy", but it's in the section of the book about being sick as I wrote about how I was grumpy because I tried to do a picture challenge of taking a picture of yourself upside down and didn't come out with anything good and ended up making myself feel sick in the process.  Hehe.  I had really long hair then, but I've had it cut a couple of times since then, including recently enough that right now it's slightly shorter than shoulder length.

I really enjoyed doing that project, and I like going back and seeing all the pictures I took and what I wrote about them each day.  This one is by no means the best of the bunch (nor is it the worst), but it's the one that caught their eye for their book when they did a search of "I feel".  I have been thinking about compiling all my self-portraits from that year into a book (for myself, I don't know that there would be much interest in that beyond me and my family), but so far haven't.  I've also tried starting a second year of self-portraits several times (and part of my latest attempt is here in this blog under the tag "365days" from when I first started writing in this blog), but so far have not stayed through for another full year.  I do still take random self-portraits sometimes though, just for fun.  :)

Anyway, I can't wait to get my copy of the book.  It looks like it'll be a fun one to look through!

Where The Wild Things Are

My "Wild About You" marble magnets are in an Etsy treasury! This is the first time, that I'm aware of, that something in my shop has been included in a treasury, so this was a nice surprise. :) The treasury, called Where The Wild Things Are, can be found here. It expires in a couple of days, so after it's gone, if you still want to see the listing for the magnets, you can click here .

On a roll

I wrote not too long ago about some sewing I did, including a knitting needle roll I'd made for myself. I am happy with it, except that I wish that the top folded down more on the knitting needles. This one would be better for short knitting needles (which I don't have) or crochet hooks (although it may be a little big for those).

I decided to make a second one for the friend who renewed my interest in knitting a few years ago and, for hers, make it long enough to cover longer knitting needles the way I wish mine did. I made a mistake in measuring the fabric (I didn't follow the "measure twice, cut once rule) so I didn't have enough in the right size/shape to line it with the same fabric. This turned into a happy accident as I had some solid color fabric that coordinated nicely with the print and, with my 7 year old adding her expert opinion, we picked the one that would look best with the fabric.

Here are pictures of the finished result:


I was really happy with how it looked when I was finished with it. I'm going to make another one for myself making it with a longer top like this one so it folds over the needles more. I think I'll use the one I have now for my crochet hooks even if it will be a little big for them. I have more of the purple batik fabric, but I'll probably use a different purple for the next one. So many purples, so little time. ;)

I did add a ribbon to her roll and mine, but the ribbon isn't pictured. Getting the ribbons sewn on was another adventure. I originally decided to just hand-sew them so I wouldn't have to get the machine out. After experimenting with that on my roll, I decided to use my sewing machine for her ribbon so it'd be neater, but mainly because pushing a needle through all that fabric and a ribbon was...challenging, to say the least.

This should be a simple job, right? Well, for most people, it probably would be. But I ended up in a fight with my machine to get it to sew right. Turns out, when I threaded the machine, the thread fell out of one of the little nooks and crannies the thread has to go through, but this wasn't obvious to the casual observer (me), so it took me several tries to figure out why it just kept knotting up instead of sewing actual stitches.

I have to say, I'm definitely enjoying sewing. I have a bunch of strips of fabric I cut out years ago (when I was pregnant with my 7 year old) to hand quilt a table runner. Needless to say, that project didn't get very far, but now I want to sort through the strips, figure out where I was, and then machine sew the pieces together. Since it's all strips and cutting into squares, it should go really fast on a machine. :)

Halloween is over....now what?

Halloween is over, houses are full of excess Halloween candy, gathered by trick-or-treaters, leftover from handing it out to costumed kids or, in many cases, both. The jack-o-lanterns are starting to look a little less fun and a little more scary as they dry out, the ghosts, witches, spiders and orange lights are being packed away and we're looking ahead to the next holiday....Christmas, right?

Not quite. Without getting into the long list of winter holidays that happen in December, at least here in the U.S., there's still at least one more in November, Thanksgiving. It seems like Thanksgiving is getting to be less about giving thanks and more about another milestone in the seems-quicker-every-year journey to the Christmas/holiday season. After dinner is prime time for figuring out your plan of attack for Black Friday (if you aren't already out shopping), so named because that is the day of the year when all the stores books go from being in the red to in the black. I think the name conjures up feelings of dread, especially after having experienced a few Black Fridays both as a shopper and as a cashier in a large department store.

I have to admit, I'm guilty of glossing over Thanksgiving. It's never been a favorite holiday of mine. Turkey is not my favorite food in the world, I'm not a fan of football (thankfully, haha, neither is anyone else in my immediate family), and parades aren't really my thing either. I do really enjoy getting together with family, though celebrating with my family and then my husband's family in the same day does get a little exhausting (again thankfully, in the past couple of years, our families have celebrated on different days which has made the holiday last a little longer and be more pleasant because there isn't the rush from one big meal to another without really getting to spend much time with either).

I think Thanksgiving needs to make a come-back though. Not necessarily to celebrate the roots of the holiday so much as to take the time to say "Thanks" and truly feel gratitude for all the gifts and blessings in our lives. Maybe instead of celebrating with a huge meal that is generally made by only one person who is over-worked and exhausted by the time dinner is on the table, have a Thanksgiving potluck where everyone brings a dish and shares the work, and then show appreciation for everything that has been brought to the table. During dinner, express gratitude for all the good in your life (yes, I know sometimes it's harder to see than others, but there's always something, if you look). Instead of scouring ads for Black Friday after dinner, maybe have a huge "thank you card" writing party to send to people who couldn't make it to dinner but who make your life better in some way. Or, make a phone call (or ten).

Those are just ideas I thought of off the top of my head. I'm sure others can come up with even more ideas on how to take the holiday back and bring more gratitude into our lives.

I've been meaning to start (again) a gratitude journal. I think today may be the day. I've got one from when I did this a few years ago and it only lasted about a month, so the journal has plenty of blank pages in it. I think I'll use one of these tags below for a bookmark and maybe glue another to the front of the book, both as reminders for what it's for. I think my first entry for today will be that I'm thankful for sunny days, like what we have this morning. This time of year especially, those start to get pretty rare. What do you have to be thankful for today?

Purple Scalloped Oval Thanks Tags