Giveaway Contest!

I decided to have a giveaway for Valentine's Day. It's pretty simple. All you have to do is heart an item from my shop and post a comment saying which item you hearted. The prize is any card from my Valentine's Day section.




To get additional entries, you can:
- Subscribe to my mailing list.
- Post about the contest on Twitter, your blog, the Etsy forums, etc. To tweet about the contest, just copy and paste this in to Twitter:
"Win a free Valentines's Day card from @movetheneedle! http://tinyurl.com/vdaygiveaway"
- Follow this blog.

You'll have to let me know in the comments section of this post if you do any additional entries. That means you can get 4 entries altogether. The giveaway ends next Monday the 8th (so I have time to send the card out to the winner before Valentine's Day). Winners are chosen randomly.

Good luck! Feel free to comment if you have any questions.

Multicolored Hearts

I got these new cards up that use a multicolored heart paper. I think the multicolored heart paper is fun and makes it so you can give it to anyone.

Multicolored Hearts Valentine's Day Card



Multicolored Hearts Sweetheart Card



Multicolored Hearts Anniversary Greeting Card



I also have this card I listed a while ago that uses the same paper:

I Love Hearts Greeting Card



Which one is your favorite?

I'm so glad it's the weekend. I needed a break from classes. I'm going to be featured on a few different sites soon. I'll let you know about them when they get posted. :)

New Cards and Updates

I meant to blog every day this week, but I've been really busy with school. I got these new Valentine's Day cards up though. These are both made with this handmade paper I bought that has dried flowers in it:

Valentine's Day Rose Paper Greeting Card



Valentine's Day Rose Paper Greeting Card (Version II)



The flowers in this one are recycled from an old vintage card I bought. I have some more vintage greeting cards coming soon too:

Vintage Rose Valentine's Day Card



Since I said I'd feature an older card each day too, here's an anniversary card. It's not exactly for Valentine's Day, but fits with the love theme:

Red and Gold Glitter Hearts Anniversary Greeting Card



I'm thinking of sending one of my handmade cards for this Special Delivery event where Etsy sellers are sending handmade Valentine cards to Citymeals-on-Wheels. I just have to decide which card to send. Which card do you think would be the best to send?

New Valetine's Day Journal and Card

I'm trying to list Valentine's Day items all this week. Here's a card and journal I recently listed that both use the same decorative paper.

Tan Heart Ribbon Journal



Rounded Heart Valentine's Day Greeting Card



I wanted to showcase some older items from my Valentine's Day section every blog entry I talk about new Valentine's Day items. This card isn't necessarily just for Valentine's Day, but it would be good to give out to a friend on Valentine's Day or someone who loves animals:

Heart Shaped Zebra Print Card



Here's another item I listed a while ago. It has an inspiring quote on it:

Love Deeply Inspiring Quote Greeting Card (Pink Version)



You can see all my items in my Valentine's Day section. Do you shop/buy gifts for Valentine's Day? Do you still give out cards?

Valentine's Day Section, 365 Project and Updates

I started a Valentine's Day section in my shop. I got these new items up that are in the section:

Pink Heart Greeting Card



I love this fabric. I've had it for years and had a little bit extra that I made this card out of.

Red and Gold Ribbon Journal



I made this journal a while ago, but I never listed it and put it at The Market House that sells some of my items. I decided to list it on Etsy anyway for Valentine's Day. If someone buys it, I'll have to take it out of the shop or make a new one.

I'm going to try to list a new item every day this week and have all my Valentine's Day items up by February. If I can keep it up, I'll blog every day with the item I listed and talk about some of the other items that are Valentine's Day related.

I got featured in this treasury. I think this treasury is neat because it uses items from members of EtsyU, which are Etsians that are also in college. My card is in the top center:



I decided to start a 365 photo project where you post a photo every day for a year. I've wanted to do this for a while, but never started it because I didn't know if I could keep up. I decided to do a theme of food so every day it will be a photo of something food related. You can see the set here and add me as a Flickr friend if you'd like. Here are my first 2 photos:





I sent my e-mail list update out for January. It's like my blog in e-mail form, but monthly. I only have a couple subscribers so if you want to get e-mail updates, be sure to sign up on the right hand column. You can see my January update here.

New Journals, Classes and Dog Shelter

I started classes today. It's exciting to be in a new semester. The two classes I had today are continuations from last semester - art history and figure skating. It's nice that I get to take figure skating more and it's fun that I get to take it at the same time as the winter olympics. I'm excited for the Olympics. Any ideas for Olympic themed items I can make? I got these new journals listed:

Mini Math Journal



When I was making another journal, I had extra strips of folded paper that were this long shape. Instead of throwing them out, I decided to make a journal with that shape. I used math paper for the cover so it'd be good for doing math equations or for people who love math.

Upcycled Swan Flyaway Journal



I made this journal out of an old children's book about a year ago. I had a problem with the inside, but I was able to fix it up. I remember reading it growing up and it was one of my favorites.

I still have a lot of new items I have to list including some Valentine's Day journals and cards (I'm going to try to get those up by next week). I'm almost at 150 items in my shop.

I got 3 craft show applications for this summer in the mail today. The craft shows are all juried and they cost money, but I'm going to try to do at least 1. I've never done a juried show so it should be an interesting experience. I was looking at another site about craft shows in Pennsylvania and noticed it cost over $700 to be in one show. I can't believe a craft show could cost that much! I don't even know if I'd make that much money if I sold all my items.

This isn't related to crafting, but I went to the dog shelter a few days ago before I came back to school and I thought I'd share some photos that are on my Flickr. There was this dog named Monday I really liked (the puppies were named after days of the week):







My family might get a puppy. I had a couple dogs growing up, but I haven't had one for a while. Feel free to leave any recommendation for good dog breeds. :)

2010 Planners

I finally got my camera to work and got my 2010 planners up. The reason it wouldn't work is because I needed a new USB plug to upload photos. It was a simple solution, but it took me a while to figure out what was wrong. Here are the planners.



The reason I did altered Moleskines instead of completely handmade is because it would be a lot of work to make all the inside pages myself (even though I did do all my pages in my calendars myself, it took longer than I thought and would be even harder for a planner). I like Moleskine journals and wanted to try using their planner this year. They're just black on the cover so I decided to decorate mine myself and figured I would make a couple to sell too. Here they are individually:

Leopard Print Altered 2010 Moleskine Planner



I love leopard print and I had to buy this leopard print paper that is textured (it feels soft when you touch it).

Newspaper Altered 2010 Moleskine Planner



I love this newspaper decorative paper and I thought it fit with the theme of a planner.

Orange and Pink Bird Altered 2010 Moleskine Planner



This is the one I made for myself, but it's still listed on Etsy. I just have to make it to order instead of it already being made. I'm already using the planner and I like it a lot. I wanted to use a fun, vibrant paper for one of them.

I'm going back to school tomorrow. Break always seems to go by really fast. My classes should be interesting. I'm going to be pretty busy so my planner should help keep me organized. :)

Light Speed, Shops and Craftster Challenge

The results for Craftster's gingerbread house craft challenge were posted. I only got 2 votes which sort of surprised me because I've been posting on Twitter, my blog, Facebook and other places to try to get votes. There were a lot of good entries though and so many to choose from. It was fun to enter anyway and allowed me to try something new. If you make crafts, do you ever enter craft challenges? You can still vote for my Reindeer card on the EtsyVeg team blog though for another challenge I'm doing (if I just got 10 percent of my blog followers to vote, I could win).

I went to Light Speed today to pick up the items I put there. The shop closed down and it's now a thrift store so I took all my items out. It was nice to get my items back since I haven't seen them in a year. Everything's relisted in my shop:

Green Bird Journal



Black and Gold Marbled Journal



Blue and Purple Sketch Book



Light Pink Rose Journal



Chinese Lady Yang Sketchbook



Red Indian Print Photo Frame (Altered)



Mini Autism Awareness Journal



I also went to two shops in Chicago with my items. One is called Lillstreet and they teach classes (such as screenprinting) and also have a little shop with crafty items. They said they had enough paper craft items right now, but they would keep it in mind. There's also a new shop opening in Chicago that I learned about from the Etsy forums and I'm planning to take my stuff down there.

Little Red Riding Hood and Updates

I made some Little Red Riding Hood themed greeting cards. One's a reading card and the second one is a sympathy one:

Little Red Riding Hood Reading Greeting Card



Little Red Riding Hood Get Well Card



I also made a baby book with the same decorative paper, but I haven't listed it yet. It didn't come out perfectly, but I might list it at a sale price anyway. I really like the design of it.

I went to a paper store today and got some new paper that I'm excited to use. Some of it is Valentine's Day themed so I can make some Valentine's Day related items. I have a good collection of decorative paper now.

I've been organizing photos lately. I went through my Etsy photos and organized a lot of my item photos. There's still a lot of things I haven't listed yet that I'm going to put up gradually. I'm also going through old family photos offline, scanning them and saving them to my computer. I'm also making backup disk with all my photos. It's a smart idea to do this so you have backups of photographs on film in case you lose/misplace them.

I'm planning to go to Light Speed, a shop where some of my items are located tomorrow. I haven't been there in a year and I contacted the owner to see if some of my items sold, but he never responded back. I don't know if the place closed down or my stuff isn't selling there (or it sold and he hasn't contacted me), but I'm going to go down and probably take most of my items out of there. I'll probably put them back on Etsy or put them in another shop.

Don't forget to vote for me on EtsyVeg (Reindeer card) and Craftster (Gingerbread City). Thanks so much for voting! I really appreciate it.

New Items & Challenges

I reached 200 posts, yay! It's exciting to see how much I've used my blog since I first started it.

There's this feature on Flickr called Galleries where you can showcase some of your favorite photos from the site. It's a lot like Treasuries feature on Etsy. I don't see it used a lot, but my photos got featured in 2 galleries in the past and I decided to make a craft related one. I went through my favorites and just added my craft related stuff. You can see it here.

I listed this photo frame. It's an old photo frame I had that's covered with leopard print paper. I don't have a lot of photo frames up so it's nice to list a new one. It's a lot easier to make altered ones than ones from scratch (though I'm going to try to make more of those soon):

Leopard Print Photo Frame



I ordered some new business cards from Moo.com. I think they'll turn out really nicely. They have a photo of one of my items on one side and my logo on the other. This makes it so each card is unique.

My Reindeer card is in the EtsyVeg Team challenge.



You can do me a favor and vote for my card here. I enter every month, but I haven't won an EtsyVeg challenge yet. I'm hoping I'll win one time and maybe it will be this week. I need your help though. :) My card is the last one in the voting poll. I'm doing pretty well sofar so I think I have a chance.

I'm also doing a craft challenge on Craftster.org, which I mentioned before. You can vote for my Gingerbread City here (you can see photos a few posts below). Thanks so much for your votes! It'd also be helpful if you could post on your Twitter about this.

New Items, Birthdays and Craft Challenge

I listed some new items:

Sunflower Collage Journal



I made this journal this summer, but I didn't list it right away because I wanted to fix some things about it. I love the paper I used.

Pet Sympathy Greeting Card (Blue Version)



Pet Sympathy Greeting Card (Gold Version)



These pet sympathy cards are variations on this pet sympathy card I made that was actually one of my first sales on Etsy. They're good to give out for somebody who just lost a pet.

Vacation Bird Wavy Greeting Card



Yellow Flower Birthday Greeting Card



I also listed this vacation and birthday card. The bright colors remind me of springtime.

I made a new Calendars and Planners section. I still haven't put my new planners up because my camera's still not working, but hopefully they'll be up soon (at least sometime in January). They're really nice, I'm using one of the planners I made.

I won 50% off this shop for being the 200th person to heart it. I'm not sure if I'm going to take advantage of the offer yet.

I celebrated my Dad/sister's birthday the other day. I got my Dad some handmade envelopes. I'm going to be listing envelopes in my shop soon. I'm just not sure how to list them. Do I list them by color or size? Should I do it one at a time or in sets?

I got my sister this cute moose stuffed animal from this shop in my town that sells crafty things. It's the same one pictured here (without the Mariners logo). I love how round it is. The shop had a lot of unique, inspiring things. They also had a couple sheets of decorative paper for sale and I picked up a few sheets of paper.

I also saw these cute food penquins on Craftster and had to try them myself. They look pretty much the same as the picture below except I didn't do feet. You can see how to make them here.



By the way, you can vote for my Gingerbread City on Craftster right here. I don't expect to win, but it was fun to enter. I think I'll try to do more craft challenges in the future.

Gingerbread City

I'm entering a craft challenge for a gingerbread house on Craftster.org. It's not related to paper crafts, but I just wanted to do it for fun. I did one challenge on Craftster.org before where I made a set of playing cards. You can see them here. I ended up selling them later on Etsy for $40!

I wanted to do something creative so I decided to do a city instead of the traditional Gingerbread house. It's based on the Chicago skyline because I'm from Chicago, but it can be any city. The blue part is the lake. Everything is edible.





I started with gingerbread dough and cut it to different shapes that made up the sides of the building. I tried to make real buildings in Chicago, but it was hard to get them right. The building on the left is based on the Sears Tower/Willis Tower (even though in real life, it's taller than the other buildings).





I dyed white frosting a yellow/orange color and used it to make dots that represent city lights. I had to do each side of the building which made it hard to get everything accurate.



I made white frosting and dyed it blue to make the lake. I used white frosting to glue everything together.





I used coconut flakes to represent snow on the ground near the buildings.



I'll post again when the poll is up and you can vote. If the pictures get cut off on my blog, you can see my entry post here.