accomplishment...

my husband went on a fishing trip this past weekend, and i went on a bit of a craft-in. my thumb on one hand is burned from my embossing gun, my finger on the other hand is burned from trying to clean a hot soldering iron with steel wool, i didn't leave the house for pretty much two days straight, and i found out that you can lose 2 pounds in 2 days if you are just too busy making little creative things to eat. but my main success from it all is that i got this little army of promotional matchbook notepads cut out, put together, embossed, decorated and logo-ed, and mailed out to ArtsyChica. she posted a call in the etsy forums for promotional items to fill 50 swag bags for the new york city craft mafia's upcoming craft show. i made 48 of the little books (in one day!) but sent out 40, plus 10 business cards with a free shipping code. i'm super excited because from what i've heard about the craft mafias, this should be a pretty well-populated show, and hopefully a great start to really promoting my shop. that's my goal now that i've gotten it all set up and running... of course there will always be new items to make and add, but now i feel like i need to do a little more to get the word out.

step number two will be to order about a metric ton of business cards (i'm looking into getting them professionally printed rather than my kinko's color-copy and individually-cut job). and in case you were wondering, no, i didn't send the cool box along with the notepads. that was one of my other cool projects from this weekend. i was given a watch in this box, and it had one of those molded cardboard innards to it... i thought the outside of the box was actually pretty, a bit of a silvery-green smooth snakeskin, so i started ripping out the innards until i had just the shell of the box. some papers, stamps, paint, a little hot glue and a little ribbon later, i have this super cool box! it's rare that i immediately adore the outcome of one of my projects, but this is definitely one.

i can't tell you how into green i am right now. my husband built a picnic table for our backyard (yep, the diy spirit runs both ways with this couple!) and he wanted to stain it a bright cedar redwood. i talked him into what i thought was going to be a medium woodsy brown, but it ended up straight-up army green. i LOVE it.

i've also gone a little crazy with the sewing on paper. it started with a few innocent experiments when i was trying to figure out pretty and unusual gift wrap for mailing out my sales, and became several sets of greeting cards, now available in the shop. these are my favorites:

ok, or maybe these:
my grannie sent me a whole load of her antique sheet music, and i've been amazed at the number of things i've found to use it in. i love that it's graphic without being too stark, and it just adds a finishing touch to so many different things. i've got gift tags in the works that i've already used bits of it on.

also in the works... there's a big, plain white shower curtain in our guest bathroom, and any big, plain white surface gives me the twitches to decorate it. i'll probably tea-dye it and sew on some ribbons longwise. the funny thing about that is i can remember my mom tea-dyeing pieces of lace in little bowls in our bathroom when i was little and i never knew why she would want to make it look dirty on purpose. how things change! i'm also going to try my luck reconstructing this awesome shirt my husband got for me... i love it but it doesn't fit very well so i'm going to cut off the logo and sew it to another shirt with some black and white ribbon around the edge. sounds a little crazy, i know, (and might end up looking crazy) but i think it will work out. pictures to come!

writing...

oh how i've missed my little blog... in this world of email, texting, and instant messaging there's something so deliciously indulgent about writing just for writing's sake, without worrying if anyone is reading or if what you're writing about is really all that important in the long run. i tend to avoid making a new entry if i don't have anything particularly crafty going on, and especially if i don't have any pictures to post because i love the little window into someone else's world they provide when reading other's blogs (some are just so well done and inspiring). i really do enjoy writing, and it is definitely a craft unto itself.

i've been wondering how well the crafter's flea market went this past weekend... i participated in the last one back in september and made a fairly decent day of it. i passed this time around because i realized i really don't like doing craft shows alone... if i had known ahead of time that my mom would still be in town after my nephew being born this month, i might have done it. the other reason i didn't is that for an outdoor show like that you really need the tent and the full-size table... i did it last time with no tent and two small square card tables and ended the day sunburned and a little mortified having looked like a small yard sale, sandwiched all day between two much more established (and tented) vendors.

from here i'm planning to be much more prepared and gear up for the holiday/pre-christmas craft shows and hope that the initial investment in the booth fees turns out profitable... i'll be applying for holly days at my old high school, sanderson, and mistletoe market at wakefield high school here in wake forest. they're both larger, well-established fundraisers for the schools... if you're local to raleigh/wake forest you should come check them out!