Etsy Favorites Wednesday - crocheting

Hello! I apologize for being MIA on my blog lately. I've been way too busy at work and at home I am scrambling to get all of my sewing done before my craft show in 11 days. I am completing 35 dolls to take and I'm making good progress, but I'm working four or five hours each night, so needless to say, I'm a wee bit sleepy!

For this week's Esty Favorites Wednesday, I'm featuring some crochet patterns that I have recently found on Etsy. These are all things I'd love to make after I'm done with the craft-show-craziness!

Slippers

Aren't these cute?!

Felted Square Baskets

I could really use a set of these in my bathroom!

Cupcake Potholder

How sweet! I've never made anything that has a design in it so I am curious to find out if I can do it.

Flower applique

I'd make up this little flower and wear it as a pin!

Robots & Rockets

I love this set! Especially the robot.

Etsy Favorites Wednesday - the Happy Earth Day Edition

Happy Earth Day! Goin' green with Etsy, ooooh yeah!

Glasses made from wine bottles

These glasses are made from wine bottles, cut in half and fired smooth.

Reusable snack bag

This velco-topped snack bag is too cute! And it's waterproof, how incredibly clever!

Recycled record bracelet

I love the color of this piece and the knot is sweet. The crafter heated a strip of vinyl record and molded it.

Plantable gift tags

How cool would it be if I attached these plantable tags on my dolls at my craft show?! I'm not sure how easy they'd be to write on, however.

Handmade housewares

I loooooove this! It is so cute! And you can actually use it - its head is a pot.

Thumbs up, Thumbs down

Thumbs up:

• Perhaps finding a way to reign in the girls' occasional poor behavior (they're not angels all the time, contrary to what their grandparents think). We set up an incentive chart. They do something good, they get a point. Bad, point taken away. They can earn any amount of points during the day, and vice versa about them being taken away. After 14 points, they get $5 allowance money. Count after two days: Lydia: 1. Arlene: 4. Yeah, Lydia's had some troubles. Arlene is working toward a Dairy Queen trip with Mommy.
• Patchouli incense. The scent of my carefree, kid free, mortgage free, worry free, Smashing Pumpkins-obsessed teenage self. Ahhhhhh.
• The Reds are back on TV and they're not sucking yet.
• Finding new books - I bought a new three-book series by Charlaine Harris, the author who wrote the Sookie Stackhouse novels, which I really enjoyed.
• I've been very productive lately with my crafts: birthday gifts done, wedding shower gifts, in progress.
• The catalog of new music I've been listening to lately: Thom Yorke's "Eraser" album (the song Black Swan rocks my brain), Fleet Foxes, Johnny Flynn, Bobby Long, Horse Feathers, Eddie Vedder's Into the Wild soundtrack, Phoenix, and Beyonce's epic masterpiece Single Ladies ... ooooh yeah.

Thumbs Down:

• The weather. What I wouldn't give for a sunny day! And is it too much to ask for the thermometer to go past 50 degrees?
• My office mates at work stealing the last of my delicious hazelnut creamer. I guess the taped-on, red Sharpie sign of "THIS IS WENDY'S" wasn't enough of a deterrent for them. Why?! Why work people?! Bring in your own bleeping creamer! Please don't steal mine! I am now considering the purchase of a mini fridge and my own coffee maker. To keep under my desk.
• I am starting to get freaked out that I won't be able to make my deadline of May 9 (my craft show) to get all of my dolls made. I've been getting other stuff done, just not the dolls. Yikes.
• I have been way too busy at work and I do.not.like.it. I have a whole list of to-do's to-do, but I have been going to three or four meetings each day, making it very difficult to get my to-do's done.
• People who don't Twitter talking about Twittering. They don't get it and therefore should just shut up about it. I can't tell you how many times in the last week I've heard someone describing Twittering as "telling someone in 140 characters or less what you're eating for lunch." Uh, that's not what Twittering is about. At least that's not what I Twitter about and that's not what the people I follow Twitter about.

Etsy Favorites Wednesday - booties, moss, and posters

This week's Etsy Favorites Wednesday features a darling pair of booties, some moss, and some excellent art prints. Enjoy!

First the booties. I know a little man who could use these darling ORANGE elephant booties. I do believe his mother should buy them for him. And stat.

This mossy letter is just plain cool. It would be really simple DIY too.

And now onto the prints. I told you last week about my desire to start collecting prints. Well I have been pressing the 'favorite' button on a ton of letterpress prints on Etsy. These six are at the top of my list:

A bike diagram. I like the bike's red color. This would look smashing in a red frame!

Listen to your heart print. Mike and I have undergone a sort of music renaissance lately. I don't know how or why it happened but all of a sudden we have completely immersed ourselves with music again. We have very similar tastes in music, in fact that's one of the things that drew us together. I told Mike I liked Hayden and he told me he liked Hayden, and this May we'll be married 8 years. True story. Anyway, we have been buying up new bands and my wonderful cousin Corey (who has his own Etsy shop!) just sent us a bunch of new music.

Beer is good for you print. teehee. I think it would be random and funny to hang this next to a serious painting.

How cute is this kissing booth print? Precious.

This alphabet poster makes me feel a little woozy, but I like it.

Bring it on print. I'd frame this and put it in my office.

Hoppity hop hop hop

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter! We went up to Cleveland for the weekend to spend Easter with Mike's parents. I snapped some cute pictures of the girls this morning - isn't that one hilarious? Mike was making them laugh. The dresses are Cute with a capital C! My mom made them! I have more pics on my Flickr account.

Happy Birthday Amber!

Happy Happy Birthday to Amber-loo! I hope you have a fantastic day with your three boys! (Devo included, of course!) Let's eat ice cream together to celebrate both of our birthdays when I'm in town in a couple weeks, okay? And you're going to get your super awesome birthday presents then too! (plural, more than one!) For now, awww, look, David got a present for you! So sweet of him! Enjoy your day my friend!

Two print purchases

I just purchased two prints from Etsy and I'm very delighted with them. My goal is to buy a variety of prints to decorate with; to have at least one print in each room. This purchase brings my print total to three, so I have a ways to go yet. Prints are cheaper than originals, and you get to personalize it with your own frame. Yay!

I got this one because the saying is cute and also relates to my Etsy shop name, Two Stars. I'm not sure where I'll hang this - most likely in my craft room although it would look cute anywhere.

This one cracks me up. It's big (17X23) and oh so cool. If you know Mike and I you know that this is just us. Hah! Not sure where I will hang it, but I'll find a good place.

My fail is on the Craft Fail blog!

A new blog called "Craft Fail" was introduced at the beginning of April! And what a clever idea: it's a platform for crafters to showcase their crafting failures. I submitted my epic fail of the embroidered resin pendants and it's on the blog today! Check it out here! It's nice to see other people's crafting failures because then I don't feel so badly about my own!

Wow, I've had over 100 sales on Etsy!

I realized last night that something monumental happened, and I sorta missed it! I was playing around in my Etsy shop, and discovered that I have surpassed the 100 sales mark! When did that happen! I must not have been paying attention. I have actually had 109 sales total! WOW!

Never in my wildest dreams when I started my Etsy shop back in the fall of 2007 did I think I would still be a viable "hobby" a year and a half later. In looking through my sold items, I was reminiscing at how my crafts (and my photo skills!) have developed in that time.

This was my first sold item, on November 27, 2007 - the Curly Girl Pendant. I had used that image of the girl as my avatar on Etsy for awhile. I don't know what I was thinking using the yellow background, eww! But hey, it sold!

The "Crafty Defined" pendant. I loved this pendant and should have made one for myself! It was one of my favorites. I used a page out of a 1970's dictionary; I used the actual page, so I can't duplicate it without finding another book. Drat! This was my "decorative paper background" phase - it works though, right? At least it was better than the yellow!

This pendant was also a favorite - green seed beads. I took a series of photos in front of that silver swirly thing, which was actually part of a curtain rod. I am sad that sterling silver is so expensive now - this pendant and the Crafty Defined pendant were made using sterling silver bezels. They just look nice. But sterling is so expensive now, and people aren't buying up jewelry like they were before, so it's not cost effective to use it.

The "Hope" pendants! I absolutely loved these pendants. An old friend from high school had asked me to make her a pendant for her struggle with infertility. She suggested the pomegranate, since it is used as a symbol for infertility. I was so proud of how her pendant turned out. I also made different versions of them.

The women buying them were so sweet and I was so touched to maybe, in some way, offer them some sort of glimmer of hope in their journey to motherhood. This was also around the time when I started photographing my items outside on our back deck. I'm still using that backdrop today - the pairing of the natural light and the aged look of our wood compliments the pendants nicely, I think.

My first doll sale - was a whopper! I had only had my dolls listed in my shop for a week and I had someone buy up nine of them at once, to sell in her boutique. I was so pleased! I was nervous about taking such a big leap from resin pendants to fabric dolls, but the dolls have proven to be popular. I had fun selling them at my craft shows last fall too. I'm making up 40 dolls for the show I'm doing in May.

I had another store owner buy up 17 dolls.

Look at that face, so sweet!

This was my 109th sale - these white bobby pins.

I have so much fun with my Etsy shop and with Etsy in general! I hope to be able to have continued success to keep my shop open. I am running an inventory reduction sale to sell the resin items that are in my shop. I have just one pendant left and a couple of bobby pins. I plan to sell just dolls in my shop in the future. Whatever I don't sell at my craft show May 9 will go in my shop.

Thank you to everyone who has supported my Etsy shop! Especially to friends and family, it means sooo much more when someone you know buys something from you!

Etsy Favorites Wednesday - the clean edition

This week's Etsy Favorite picks are all soap! I have a soft spot for handmade soaps. And the more delicious they look, the better. Check out my picks:

Patchouli Soap

I have always been a fan of the patchouli scent. I used to burn patchouli incense in high school and it drove my mother crazy. (sorry mom!) In college I wore a patchouli-scented perfume oil. Well now I have graduated to patchouli-scented soap. And it must be handmade. I love handmade patchouli soap. The very first time we used our new camper was the same weekend as a Celtic Festival at the state park we were staying. There was a "Celtic, Old World" craft show and we picked up two bars of patchouli soap. We decided to leave one bar in the camper and take one home with us. Every time we used our camper that summer it had the pleasing aroma of patchouli, ahhh, I loved it. Two years later and I can still catch a whiff of it in the camper.

Cinnamon Soap

I think this soap is sort of ugly, but it also intrigues me. The colors aren't what I would have used for cinnamon-scented soap, yet they sort of work. The striking black color gets me. From my days of soap-making way back when, I know it's hard to make solid colors and harder still to make a solid black color. I love the scent of cinnamon. During Christmas Method had cinnamon hand soap and I bought three bottles just so I'd have extra after the holiday was over. And I have just discovered that I can't spell it - I was spelling it 'cinammon'. Anycrap, I can't use cinnamon as a body soap, only as a hand soap. Cinnamon scented body soap just ends up smelling like I'm washing up with a cup of coffee. Ew.

Cucumber Soap

Cucumber scented and shaped soap? Yes please! This soap maker, LoveLee, is a genius with the suds. Check out her shop. She has popcorn soap and Lifesavers soap and peanut soap. How much fun is that?! And, you know, if that sort of punishment was still okay and PC and all, I'd totally say the F word to my mother if she were to punish me by sticking a cucumber scented and shaped piece of soap in my mouth.

Facial Trio of Soap

This soap trio comes with crocheted scrubbies! Double the crafty goodness! I have been having issues with my choices face soap ... ug, it's like an ongoing battle. I am currently using Proactive because, I admit, I was drawn in with their commercials. I have oily skin and get a few breakouts, even though I'm 31! Hello, face skin, I'm 31, stop acting like I'm still in high school! It's so annoying. I wanted to try Proactive because I thought it would clear up my skin and it's tendancy to get oily, but it really hasn't. The people in the commercial go from pizza skin to clear, radiant skin! I'm still getting the occasional breakout. And I will tell you this, the bottles that you see on TV are NOT what you end up getting in the mail, and it took forever for them to come in the mail - they arrived two weeks after I ordered! The bottles that I got fit in the palm of my hand. too. They are tiny; like travel size. Anyyyywaaay ... I have been switching up my facial soap for a long as I can remember and I can't seem to find one that I like. I've never used handmade facial soap though, with a handmade crocheted scrubbie. Maybe that is the answer! I'm going to buy this right now. Ug, well, I guess I better use up the $28 Proactive stuff first!

Lychee Bubble Soap

This soap maker, Savor, is one of my all-time favs. And this soap here, oh my, what a delight. She doesn't say so, but I'm 99.9% certain she made this soap by using bubble wrap. It's called "bubble soap" but I think it's called that because of a tea drink. In my book if you can use bubble wrap in a practical way, as in to make your soap scrubbier, then you are just uber cool. Just the look of the red and black colors and the crazy bubble texture, gah, I just want to eat this soap. I'm not even sure of the scent, I've never heard of it, but Savor seems to really dig it, so I'll take her word for it. Back to the bubble wrap for a moment, if it is bubble wrap, then how did she do it? Did she pour the melted soap into bubble wrap, and if so, how did it retain its shape and not melt the wrap? And why use the undersides of the bubble wrap, not the outie-bubble texture, but the innie-bubble texture? Fascinating.

Dear Mother Nature

Dear Mother Nature,

You suck. You really do. I know that I live in Ohio and it's just your nature to suck, but you've really been sucking it up a lot lately. Suckey suck. Today, I wore a skirt to work, which is something I rarely do (I'm a pants kind of gal) and I also wore heels. I looked quite fancy. But I surely didn't feel fancy when I was freezing my arse off whenever I was outside! I didn't wear a coat! I haven't worn a coat for three weeks, just out of spite, or whatever, to will spring to come ... and I've been faring just fine, thank you very much. I could handle the 50 degree days with just a sweater on. Oh but Mother Nature, you're a sly one. Here it is, April 8, and you decide to let it snow. Thanks. Thanks a lot. And the temperature? Hovering between a measly 32 and 34 degrees? Nice. Very nice. Our high today was 40.

I'm just writing to let you know, Mother Nature, that I surely don't appreciate you deciding to pull this cold weather crap on the one day where I try to look nice. I had a very nice executive luncheon to attend today, and on a normal April day, I'd be looking the part, fitting in, feeling good in my nice skirt and heels paring, but today, oh no ... today! I skated into the luncheon with cheeks all a-flush and I was fricken freezing, and more than two people asked me, "Didn't you wear a coat?!" NO! I didn't wear a coat! It's APRIL 8! And then I cursed your name under my breath with 20 other expletives.

And one more thing, baseball has started. Which means that spring is officially here. I guess you didn't get the memo. Well here you go:

TO: Mother Nature
FROM: All of the peoples of the world
RE: Spring is here

Spring is here. It's April.
Baseball season has started.

That is all I have to say to you, you mean mother.

No XOXO's for you, fricken freezing in my skirt, thanksverymuch,
~Kay

I adore screen printed tea towels

I absolutely adore screen printed tea towels. I came across this one by accident on Etsy while looking for something else:

And then I did a search for screen printed towels and came up with an absolute treasure trove of goodness. I want all of these. But I don't really think Mike would appreciate me spending $150 on towels, do you? Yeah, probably not.

Do the Dishes
Click on the link to see the close up of the letters. So clever.

Cincinnati
Saluting home!

Shaking Hands

Not sure about the blood drops around the edges ... sort of out of place, but I like the handshake image.

Squirrel
I thought of Two Pretzels when I saw this one! The little blue fringe on the bottom is funny!

Paper Dolls

The knives freak me out a bit, but the dolls are really darling.

Pebbles

Love the purple color.

Blue Flower

Dainty!

Ice Cream
Tasty, and I love the turquoise color.

Yummy

Indeed. Yummy.

THIS is the cutest thing, ever

Arlene's drawing of a bunny!

I tell you what, nothing pleases me more than the girls' creativity!