now that i'm having a "k"

now that i have found out i'm having a baby girl whose name is going to begin with a 'k' i'm seeing all kinds of really cool things all over the place with that letter! now in addition to all the adorable handmade baby stuff i'm going to want to buy her, i'm finding lots of cool handmade things to buy, all with the letter k! i like the idea of hanging a bunch of different types and sizes of the letter k all in one place on the wall in her room.

bracelet by kapcity

wire letter k by kristinemays

alphabet revisited by 8mmideas

little mary janes by babybugdesigns

and maybe a little something for momma to wear until baby k gets old enough to enjoy it!

silver letter k pendant by silvergarden

hot market.

i'm happy to say i survived the wicked july-in-north-carolina heat (although it will be nothing like lazy days in august!) at designer's downtown market last weekend. there was an awesome turnout of shoppers, my husband toughed it out with me all day, and i was sandwiched between two adorable and very nice fellow vendors, tina and amanda... two lovely ladies who are the proprietresses of scatterbox and oh sew cute designs, respectively. my checkbook succumbed to a ridiculously cute and made-to-order with my choice of fabrics nursing pillow cover, which is extra exciting considering the sad lack in the ones available through mass retail. even target has let me down on that one!

and there i am, in all my pink-cheeked, sweating, 100 degree heat glory, concentrating hard on something or other and oblivious to m's picture-taking... surrounded by my fat quarters and carefully avoiding the tiny river flowing out of that pipe right beside my head! with a name tag and everything.

i think by far the most exciting part of this craft show for me was at about 11am when we had been set up and open for business for a little over two hours already, and m decided he couldn't stand the heat of the full mid-day sun (with little to no shade), much less make his 5 months pregnant wife sit through it, so he disappeared for about 30 minutes and returned with a tent. i am now an official crafter and not the one sad little table with no tent (as i was the first time i did this show! chalk it up to beginner's inexperience!). the truth is, you honestly just can't sit for 6 hours in the blazing july heat with no tent, no shade, and no relief.

and he brought me a popsicle too. i have the best husband ever.

i'm waiting to hear if i'll get accepted to do this great show again in september, which i am really excited about. i have lots of new ideas i hope to have ready by then! also, i think the heat won't be nearly as bad by then, which will be great since i'll be quite a bit more pregnant!

found it!

i wrote a few posts back about plans for super-organization of my craft room in the new house after we move, and i can't remember if i actually referenced the magazine or not (probably not, since i couldn't remember even the name at the time) but, as luck would have it, in a waste-a-few-minutes-before-dinner-out-with-the-family trip to books a million last night, i discovered it! it was a special issue from cloth paper scissors magazine called "studios" and the picture on the front was what i was remembering... wire baskets full of beautifully arranged folded fabrics, sorted by color. exactly my goal for my supplies!

(photo thanks to quiltingarts.com!)

in the end, i decided it wasn't worth the $10 to read about other people's craft rooms- i'd be much better off spending that on a basket or something for mine- but the makeover from the front cover was definitely inspiring!

:::summer sale:::

in anticipation of getting new things posted in my shop before i'm forced to take a little maternity leave around mid-november (hopefully that is, if this baby is on time!) i decided to host a little summer sale in the little shop of lovelies! these are all sample sale products- items i only made 1 or 2 of, or made several but only have 1 or 2 lonely little ones left. also, there's some jewelry that needs to make room for several new styles and designs i have in mind for the fall! it will almost be like a brand new shop, and i am so excited about it! they are priced to move and make way for the new!

::: summer sale :::

petite fille!

i guess i will have to put this in the back of the closet for now:

since the ultrasound yesterday morning says i'll be needing this:

that's right, i'm having a little girl!

i've been trying to keep myself from buying too many gender-specific things until we found out for sure, but to be honest, i was so convinced it was a boy that i have a couple more boy things than i do girl! i didn't really have any basis for thinking it was a boy, or maybe i just didn't want to get my hopes up too high about a girl, but now it is just so nice to finally know one way or the other!

as you can tell, not much crafting has gone on around here recently, mostly because i am still swimming in a sea of fat quarters in preparation for my show this weekend (finally!). we also close on our house this friday, which means everything has to be out (and cleaned!) by then, so that is causing no small amount of stress. add those two things together with a half-packed-up and completely chaotic craft desk, and yeah... not much crafting getting done at all.

my day in favorites.

~favorite $10 purse from target (except for my black polka dot one, which is my other favorite $10 purse from target!):

~new favorite handmade earrings! (potentially coming soon to a shop near you):

~and of course, one of my very favorite surprises to wake up to! (and one yesterday, too! they always seem to come in twos).

~and lastly but not leastly, my new favorite tool that i cannot wait to test out! i'll be so glad for this move to be over so that i can get my new little space organized and dive right in to fun new creating. i've been absolutely overflowing with new ideas for the shop, and here's a little hint, most of them involve this new tool! i'm getting ready to launch some totally new lines in the fall!

first show of the year.

i always try not to make the craft shows i participate in into big productions that stress me out. they are, in and of themselves, a bit stressful just because, as an event, there is so much preparation for them... packing up, loading, unloading, unpacking, displaying, pricing, selling, loading up to bring home... and it seems to take quite a bit of work no matter how laid back and low-key you try to make your display.

well, not this weekend but next weekend, i'm going to be in a show that i've done before, but this time i'll be selling almost exclusively supplies. i'm trying to sell some of the bounty that i so unexpectedly inherited from my mom when she passed away in january. because she had so many, i'm only selling about a third of what i saved (what wasn't given to charities and craft ministries) and it's all things that i felt like could be packaged neatly as supplies, a project kit (where most of the pieces are there, you just have to put them together and maybe add some of your own embellishment), and of course, fabric. getting it all packaged (even simply) and priced in time for the show has been an incredibly big project! i'd say even at this point, i'm probably only roughly halfway finished.

the craft packs and project kits awaiting their labels:

scrap packs from cutting all the fat quarters:

and, of course, more fat quarters than have ever been cut at once ever:

in fact, i had never cut a fat quarter at all before, so it took me a little while of avoiding the project to finally get started and find out that it's really not that hard. very tedious to do this many at once, but not at all hard. what is still hard is not wanting to keep all of my mom's fabrics, even though as i cut up this whole tub of them, i remember that i have two more in the garage that i do get to keep. it's hard to go through because it all smells like her. i'll definitely be happy to be done measuring, cutting, rolling up, and tying!

i am excited about the show, though. this will be the second time i've been in it, the first being back when it's lowly name was the crafter's flea market. now it's called the designer's downtown market, and it's a really good show, relatively inexpensive with an almost guaranteed turnout. if you visit the link, you can see me on the vendor list to the right with a link to my etsy shop! call me a novice, but that's still really exciting to me! i'm also excited because they posted their show schedule for the rest of the year, and i think i may try to do the september one with my product instead of supplies. what's one more craft show at 7 months pregnant right? i'll probably skip the november 29th one, since, although on my birthday, it's also the day before my due date. probably not the best idea!

so if you're local to the raleigh/triangle area, be sure to stop by! it's a really great show with lots of variety. i promise you'll see something new there. and hey, if you're in need of any fat quarters, i'll be there!

a new craft.

i've shied away from pmc (precious metal clay) in the past, but this just seems too cool to not at least try! pmc is like clay that you can stamp, sculpt, and squish back together if you mess up and to keep from wasting the scraps. after you fire it (like pottery), the binders that make it clay-like burn off, and you're left with something like 99.9% fine silver, better than sterling!

i found a great tutorial video to walk me through it, and i can't wait to try this when i get everything organized in the new studio! i've got lots of new ideas for ellebee studio, and will probably end up completely revamping the jewelry selection by september or so (at least that's my hope!). i'd also like to extend the "nesting" section to include more coasters and other fun stuff, and hopefully to really get petite bee going and possibly even extend that into it's own etsy shop! additionally, if i can get enough money saved up, there's the potential to purchase a space in a marketplace co-op here in wake forest, which is definitely my long term goal! that one may have to wait until after i get settled with the baby, though. i've got lots of ambitious plans in the works, now all i need is the time and organization skills to pull them off!