making progress!

i feel like i'm finally making some progress in the studio! i've finished several new necklaces, and revamped lots and lots of new earrings that just didn't quite seem done... they needed just a little kick, some oomph, a little spirit and a little more ellebee...

...but now i'm pretty happy with them! i can't wait to get these little guys up and going in the shop. it's going to be wonderful! lots and lots of new loveliness waiting to find a happy home. and oh, the feeling of accomplishement there will be when they are all finished, photographed, described, uploaded, and posted in the shop.

take a peek above, and you may notice i've also celebrated by making these little earring friends into a new blog banner! hurray!

i've had a fire under me to get things accomplished because i've signed up for september's installment of the designer's downtown market, which i'm very excited about. it will also most likely be my last craft show until baby k is born november-ish, except for possibly a fall fair i just heard about in asheboro in october. (which, after a quick google search, i think i may have found!)

august has absolutely flown by, and i'm grasping to get everything done that i wanted to. soon there will be the added pressure of getting things done before the baby arrives and completely upheaves our lives and hearts and schedules! i can't wait! so here's another little sneak preview of what is to come in my fall shop update, which i'm shooting for having done by september first!

happiness is...

happiness is a friend who will paint your toenails for no reason! (other than maybe that you're pregnant and can no longer entirely reach them!)

oh, and a sticker maker refill. that's pretty happy too!

the never-ending battle.

it's been a bit of a rough week here craft wise, trying to get my craft room organized, which always feels like a never-ending battle. i have so many ideas and new things i want to try, and things to get ready for september's downtown market, but i feel like i can't effectively do any of it until everything is organized. so half the time i either can't find something because it's still somewhere in the stacked up piles of not yet unpacked, or i know i've unpacked it but can't find it anywhere!

one of the things i'm most excited about is my 'new' bookshelf (new to me, but re-gifted so to speak from another room in the old house!).

it's obviously still a work in progress, but it is coming together pretty well, and i can picture in my head this vision of organized loveliness, where i can find everything i need right when i need it, and have weeded out all the things that i never use. that's really hard for me, because i seem to be a bit of a hoarder of supplies anyway, and then i've inherited a ton of great stuff from my mom when she passed away in january. in that vein, i've decided to start a secondary etsy shop to help pass on some of the supplies that have piled up that are perfectly great, but that i know i won't use. right now that shop is empty, but i hope to get it going by this fall (hopefully by the end of september).

studio supplies

my (somewhat lofty) goal as of right now, is to have my new fall products (a mini-revamp of the whole shop!) available by september 1st, and then unveil a completely new etsy shop specifically for petite bee (my baby products) and the studio shop both by mid-september.

i'm very excited about the new products i have lined up for ellebee this fall, lots more notecards, a few new petite cahiers, and plenty new jewelry of course! the jewelry is really exciting to me because it's where i've done the most experimentation with new techniques and i'm really proud of how it all turned out! i feel like come september, my shop will be much more cohesive and much more representative of what i really enjoy making! i can't wait for you all to see it!

for now, the entire shop is still completely on summer sale!

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 :::