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!

busy week!

well, a very busy week this week (is march really almost over already?) means that not much crafting has been going on. my husband and i decided we would combine his study and my studio together in the third bedroom in order to make the second bedroom a more welcoming guest room (and probably eventually a nursery). so for now i write from the comfort of our newly reorganized study-o as we like to call it.aside from the changing spaces, this week my new nephew was born, my husband had a birthday, and i survived the first week of my this-time-i'm-really-going-to-do-it diet. i really don't like getting older knowing that i'm just wasting my own time by having been "on a diet" for the past ten years and never losing a significant amount of weight.

the one productive thing i did get done was to start updating new necklaces into my etsy shop. i've decided to test out the advice i keep hearing that if you post something every day (or at least spaced out instead of all in one sitting) you have the possibility to increase the traffic to your site and hopefully, as a result, increase the sales as well. i probably could be doing more to advertise, but i'm trying to get my shop really full and welcoming, which basically means getting the rest of the jewelry i have sitting around finished up for shopping, and then adding some of the "gifts & etc." part.

i've refurbished some of my older jewelry, as i tend to make things rather experimentally as i go along. when it's "finished" it still needs a bit of tweaking to get it completely presentable for selling. i did that with this black onyx necklace that has seen about 4 renovations, but i think i'm finally satisfied with the outcome.

this is what it looked like in one of its former lives...

... which i didn't love because of the scratched-looking wire wrapped bail. i think it looks much better now. that's my favorite part of creating, if you don't like how something looks you can just take it apart and alter it or start completely over. this one will be up for sale sometime later in the week.

my next move really should be to take stock of my supplies and try to get several things i need for finishing projects in one trip to the store... gold earwires, gold toggles or lobster clasps, and some chain in several different finishes to name a few. i also found out recently that my best childhood friend is getting married at the beach in about six months. she already asked me to sing at the wedding (scary!) and i'm hoping i'll also be commissioned to make bridesmaids' jewelry.

for now it's time to put this week to bed and start a new one...

current inspiration

inspiration struck this weekend to create... i had a whole weekend to myself while my husband was working, and it was a much-needed relief just not to have to be anywhere by any certain time for two days. i spent all day yesterday photographing new necklaces to go in the shop, and then worked a little bit today on an altered book i started months and months ago about paris. we just bought our tickets this weekend for our trip that we will finally be taking in october for our third anniversary! i keep getting more and more excited the more i think about it. paris again... it feels crazy to think it's only been three years since we were there last, when i moved home from studying abroad. it also feels crazy to think of all the pictures we will have between the two of us when we get home...i'm having a hard time focusing creatively of late. i have so many projects started and so many ideas it feels sometimes like there will never be enough time/energy/resources to make something of all of them. i feel like my supplies are too spread out, my working surface too small... i start working on one project and get distracted by another. it really is my goal to teach myself to be one of those people that not only buys things that are needed for a specific project (not anything and everything i like) but also that actually sits down and finishes that specific project. it seems like that would take some of the creativity out of it, but really i think it would just help me get things done.

here are some things that inspire me right now:

• deliciously wrinkly old books



• a perfectly sunny and cheerful studio



• a blue box full of treasures



• pretty much all of these photos



• but especially this one



• soldered eiffel tower earrings



• teensy weensy pumpkin cupcakes



• a fabulous article about approaching stores for wholesale inquiries (maybe i don't really want to do this)



• and summertime coming soon.

for now i'm off to sweet dreams of my favorite place...

red.

color week : day five : redred ballet flats from christmas 2006 (that i still wear!), from back in the early days of my blog.

and... time is running out, only 3 more days to enter!

launch party

after a few weeks of planning and lots of help from my super-crafty mom, it seems i've pulled off a successful launch party for ellebee studio this past weekend. i'm quickly learning that it's hard to get anything done when my perfectionist side starts battling with my let's-just-be-flexible side... for example, i thought i'd whip up some quick postcard invitations. well, forty bucks and an earring stuck in a photocopier at kinko's later, i didn't know what else to do but laugh it off and thank my husband one more time for being wonderful (he came along for moral support... aka keeping me company while cutting at least 120 business cards by hand with the big paper trimmer). i also was excited that i finally put together a display idea that i've had brewing in my head for months... one trip to the flea market for an antique window frame, one afternoon banging the glass out of it, one trip to home depot for a board for the base and some brackets to stabilize it, and one afternoon with power tools later and i had a display background that turned out just how i wanted:
as for the launch, it all came together well, and even though i had food for about 30 people and about 7 showed up (due to the invitations going out about a week later than planned)... it was still fun and nice to know i can put a decent little event together. it's also nice to see all of my handmade items all out in one place (my dining room table) and see that i really do have the makings of a nice little shop! it almost felt like a good trial run for a craft show to get it all spread out and arranged how i wanted it. because of preparations for the launch party i just missed the deadline for the next crafter's flea market that i've previously participated in, but it was nice to know that i would have had everything together and looking nice. there will always be more craft shows! here are the great pictures my husband was thoughtful enough to take while i was rushing around with last-minute details. if not for him, i likely would have completely forgotten to take any at all!

one of my mom's lovely additions to the party were hand-dipped chocolate covered strawberries (i'm telling you- superwoman!), which were definitely the hit of the party.

it's been a heinous week at work with mandatory overtime all week, but i was able to spend almost all day today with my mom while she taught a class on making a greeting card organizer in an album... a very cool finished product (anything that helps organize in my life is a plus). projects with my mom are a really fun change of pace for me because she is much more into planning, measuring and coordinating than i am. it makes for much more finished looking projects, and it's a good stretch of the brain sometimes to go from eyeballing colors and measurements to striking out with a detailed plan. i'll post some pictures of that in the works, and i have fleeting hopes of making a new address book as well... i may just end up indulging in one of these cool hand-stamped journals and writing them in there. i suddenly feel inundated with ideas i want/ have been meaning to do.

1. make cards to go in my card organizer



2. test out more sewing on paper



3. try making some little matchbook-style notepads



4. get some soldering iron tip cleaner so i can do more soldering



5. decorate a small magnetic box i got for keeping business cards intact in my purse

and of course, knowing me, it's 1:30 in the morning when i get all these ideas. i think i'd better go to bed before this list gets any longer!

green.

color week : day four : greenlooks like a tree, but it's actually the ginormous hedge between our driveway and our neighbor's... it's one of those super-proliferate kinds that the more you trim it, the more it grows back with a vengeance. i love pictures with the sun shining like this... i was sitting in my car, and had to see if it would show up at all in a picture (i also used this one for my new blog banner!.