Hippo iPod Nano Case Purchase

I thought I'd share about an Etsy purchase I made recently. I wanted an iPod case for my iPod nano and I loved the cute animal felt cases from sewinmachine. Hippos are one of my favorite animal so I decided to get that. This was the photo on the shop page:



I took some photos when I got the package in the mail. It was packaged in this cute paper:





And here's the hippo. I think it's even cuter in real life and fits my Nano perfectly. It also has a space to hold my earphones.



It has a cute little tail too:



I've been using it every time I use my iPod. The only thing I don't like is I have to take my iPod out to change songs or use controls, but it's still a really cute way to hold my iPod. I recommend this shop for cute and creative iPod cases. Have you made any good purchases on Etsy lately?

Brooklyn Botantic Garden

A few weeks ago I went to the Botantic Gardens right by the Brooklyn Museum (after I went to the Etsy fashion show). I've been meaning to post these photos. You can see more on my Flickr.







Has anybody else been here? Or have you been gardening this summer? I don't have a garden (living in an apartment/college), but seeing how beautiful the gardens were made me want to garden.

Food in New York City

While I was living in New York this summer, I tried out a lot of new restaurants. This is some of the food I tried.

I have been trying to go vegan and I have been looking for a good vegan cupcake shop. BabyCakes was one of my favorite vegan cupcake places I found. You couldn't even tell they were vegan. I also found this shop with mini versions of cupcakes.

I found this place in Brooklyn called the Chocolate Room. I got chocolate mint tea and an ice cream sundae.

I got the sushi on the upper photo from a grocery shop near my apartment. The sushi on the bottom is Mexican sushi from a Mexican restaurant.

These are some of the pizzas I tried while in New York. The first one is from a grocery shop. The bottom left is from the Brooklyn Botantic Gardens. I found the slice of pizza from a vendor while walking around. 

The fries are from Coney Island. There was an African restaurant near where I lived in Brooklyn. This veggie burger pictured on the bottom was one of my favorite meals I had.

These breadsticks with marinara sauce were really good.

What are your favorite restaurants in New York City?

Christmas in July!

I am participating in Etsy's Christmas in July sale. There is free shipping on all items. Also, all the holiday items in my Christmas in July section are half off. I usually don't put my holiday items up until fall so this is a good chance to buy them for a reduced price. The sale runs from July 15th - July 25th. I'm including a couple Thanksgiving/Halloween themed cards too. Here are some of the items:

Holiday Penguins Greeting Card



Holiday Reindeer Greeting Card



Pumpkin Carriage Shimmer Greeting Card



Dark Blue Paisley Hanukkah Star Greeting Card



Snowflake Shaped Journal



Anybody else doing the Christmas in July sale? Also, remember my giveaway (two posts down) is still going on until tomorrow so you have a chance to get any greeting card in my shop for free!

Day of Fashion

I went to the “Day of Fashion” event at the Brooklyn Museum a few weeks ago. It was partly run by Etsy so I was excited to go. I didn't stay the whole day, but I saw the fashion show. I really liked some of the clothes and there were some really creative ideas. I got some photos. You can see more on my Flickr:















Here are some links to some of the designers:

iheartfink
naKiMuli
Collecthernews
Olek
The Brooklyn Circus
Kasia Wisniewski

Did anybody else go? Or have you been to any similar fashion events?

Etsy Labs

Etsy has these craft night events in their labs in Brooklyn, NY. Since I stayed in Brooklyn for the summer, I went to a couple of them. They were a lot of fun and it was nice to try different crafts. I think I'll make a series of post where I post photos from each of the the events. Here's just some general photos of the Etsy Labs.

The labs are located right by the Brooklyn Bridge:

At the Etsy Labs events, they usually had a sign pointing where the Etsy offices are located.



I got excited when I saw the big Etsy sign and doorway.





The Etsy Labs are really cute and look very Etsy-ish. They have cute crafty things everywhere and I even recognized a few of their spots from their video blog posts. I loved this stuffed typewriter:



At the events, they usually had Etsy merchandise for free to help promote Etsy. I love all the cute things they had.



It's not really related to Etsy, but when I was trying to find the Etsy labs, I saw this sign for a restaurant which I thought was cute:



Look out for my upcoming posts about the events I went to and what crafts I made. If you're in the Brooklyn area, you can hear about Etsy events on their blog.



EMBROIDERED CARDS AT ETSY LABS



The second Etsy lab event I went to was on July 19th. It was cupcake night (they had free cupcakes) and they had two crafts going on - needle felted pinback buttons and embroidered cards. I made an embroidered card.

The embroidered cards was kind of inspiring to me because it was a different way to make greeting cards than I usually do. You basically get a design (Etsy had a cupcake template out, but I used this cute drawing of a bird someone else made and added a heart) and punch holes that outline the design on to a card. Then you just sew through the holes with whatever color thread(s) you want. I used a gold/yellow color for the bird and purple for the details.

Here's me in the process of making it:



And this is how it turned out:





Have you ever made embroidered cards or been to an Etsy event?




The last Etsy event I went to this summer was on July 28th at the South Steet Seaport where we made sea-themed appliqués. It was nice they had an event somewhere other than their Etsy labs. The Seaport area was really nice. There were a lot of cute shops around and they had free ice cream right outside where the event was being held.

I sewed a whale cut out on to this sea themed fabric. I might try to do something else with it, but I'm not sure what yet.



I get used to doing paper crafts and journals so it's fun to do different crafts like sewing, which I don't usually do. If you're ever in the New York area, stop by the Etsy Labs. They always have events going on.

YouTube & Tumblr

I was looking on the Etsy forums one day and found this girl who started a YouTube channel about crafters and Etsy. She didn't like the traditional way of blogging so she made a video blog instead. I love watching videos on YouTube. There used to be a craft channel called Indie 5 that had different Etsy artists post videos, but they stopped doing it so it was nice to see another craft related video blog. The maker was looking for shops to feature and she decided to feature me. :) It's really neat to see a video dedicated to my shop. She talked about my shop and a few items. She also mentioned my 365 photo project on Flickr. You can watch it below:



I also keep meaning to post that I started a craft related Tumblr. Tumblr is another blogging site, but it's usually short posts like one photograph or a quote. It's more photography related than Blogger. People can "reblog" your posts, sort of like retweeting on Twitter, so it's easy to spread stuff around. I've had a personal Tumblr since last summer, but I decided to create one just to show off things that inspire me that are craft related. It's mostly other people's crafts so it's kind of different from this blog, which is mostly about my stuff. Here are some examples of things I've posted so far:









If you have a Tumblr, you can follow my blog. I also take submissions, so if you have a craft you want to submit, you can contact me or use the ask feature on Tumblr.

Newspaper Moleskine and Salud Latina

I just sold an item! :) I only sell things once in a while so it's nice to get a sale because it was unexpected. My views have been down lately and I haven't had a lot of time to make new stuff so this made me happy. I sold this Newspaper Altered 2010 Moleskine Planner (which is similar to this one that I sold last month). I'll keep in mind to make more planners with this paper for next year.



I also got asked to donate some items for this event on May 2nd at Salud Latina. The organization hopes to improve the capacity of health departments, community-based and academic institutions to design and provide high quality culturally-competent HIV and chronic disease prevention and care models to residents of the State of Illinois. I decided to donate this calendar (I still have one more calendar in my shop). I don't think it will sell on my Etsy and I want someone to be able to use it:





I'm also sending some business cards so hopefully it will get the word out about my shop a little. Don't forget, you can still buy vegan sample bags with my mini cards here.

New York City!

I'm in NYC right now and I'm staying here for the rest of the summer. I thought I'd update with what I've been doing. I'm doing an internship is at an art gallery which I just started. I'm also volunteering at an animal rights organization called Mercy for Animals which should be interesting. I'll update on those once I do more stuff with them, but I thought I'd share what I've been doing just exploring New York. If you have any recommendations for things for me to see, let me know in the comments.

I signed up for this yoga event on June 22nd called Yoga at the Great Lawn. The idea was to have 10,000 people do yoga at a huge class in Central Park. It was a great idea and I was really looking forward to it, but unfortunately it rained and it got canceled. They did start the class, but I was in the back of the line and didn't have a chance to do any. I did get a free yoga mat though and I'm hoping to take a yoga class this summer. I found some photos on their Flickr: 

I met two makeup gurus from YouTube on June 23rd. Makeup gurus are girls who are usually teen/college age who post videos with makeup tips. The videos are generally informal and just done from the person's home, but a lot of makeup gurus have gotten so popular that they have been featured in magazines and on TV. I met Elle and Blair, who are sisters that each have a video channel on YouTube. One's 17 and the other's 22. I've been watching them for about a year. The event itself was really crazy because there were so many girls (even though they were only expecting 30 people, about 300 showed up). It was weird how much they were treated like celebrities just for being on YouTube. They took pictures with everyone though and they were really nice.





I also went to a concert (I'm planning to go to a bunch this summer) and did a lot of shopping around (I found this cute cupcake place right by where I intern). I went to an Etsy fashion show at the Brooklyn Museum and afterwards went to the Brooklyn Bontanic Garden. I have photos and details on it, but so this entry isn't too long, I'm going to post that another day. Etsy is located in New York so I have to visit their labs sometime.

Brooklyn Museum Day of Fashion

I went to the "Day of Fashion" event at the Brooklyn Museum. It was partly run by Etsy so I was excited to go. I didn't stay the whole day, but I saw the fashion show. I really liked some of the clothes and there were some really creative ideas. I got some photos. You can see more on my Flickr. 

These are links to some of the designers:

iheartfink
naKiMuli
Collecthernews
Olek
The Brooklyn Circus
Kasia Wisniewski

Did anybody else go? Or have you been to any similar fashion events?