Etsy Day

Happy Etsy Day! :) Etsy Day is a day started by members to help promote Etsy.com. I think it's a great idea and I wish I had some way to promote Etsy offline. Since I've been really busy with school lately, I haven't had as much time to be on etsy as much, so I've been trying to do more etsy stuff today. I joined some new groups on flickr and I just noticed #etsyday is the number 1 trending topic on twitter which is great. What ways are you planning on promoting Etsy or celebrating Etsy Day? Since today is about Etsy in general, I thought I'd post some items I have in my favorites:

Etsy Addict Bird Sign

This sign is perfect to celebrate Etsy Day. I love all the little decorations and that it says "etsy addict". :)

Hand Screen Printed Camera Zipper Pouch



I'm sure I've posted this before on my blog, but I really like this shop. It's simple, but cute pouch. Now that I've been more in to photography (taking a photography course), it'd be nice to have a pouch for my more expensive, non digital camera.

Music is My Life Letterpress



This piece of art is simple, but perfect for music lovers. I would love to have something like this up in my room (maybe by where my CDs are).

Sweet Tweet Bird Soaps



This shop has lots of cute soaps that you can't even tell are soaps at first, like popcorn shaped soap, french fries, donuts, etc. I saw one of her items on the front page the other idea. The one picture is a bird soap. I think I'm just sort of in a bird mood because of springtime. :) I think these could make great Mother's Day gifts.

Original Travel Sketch - Italy



Since I've going to traveling to Italy, sometimes I'll search for Italy themes on etsy to see what will show up. I like this artwork which looks sort of like a journal entry or something out of somebody's sketch book. I like the use of one color and the simplicity of it. She also has some cool sketches of other places, like London.

I've been also thinking of new ways to promote my own shop in new ways. I use social networking sites, linkreferral, business cards and this blog. I guess that seems like more than I thought. Any other ideas? What do people use? I was thinking of doing some paid advertising. I would just start off with something cheap since I'm not making a lot of money right now. I don't know if paid advertising is worth it or if it really works more than just using free ways.

My laptop has been broken for a while. Since my hard drive crashed, when I got a new one, I just got one with 320GB because I have so many music and picture files and figured it would be nice to get a bigger drive anyway. Except now that I got my laptop to work, it's saying there's only 20GB when there should be 320GB so I can't add any of my files yet. Does anybody have any idea why it would do this?

I only have a couple days left and this week is Springfest at my college which is exciting. I'm so excited for this summer. :)

Earth Day Sale Tomorrow!

Did you know Earth Day is tomorrow? I think it's a great day to remind people to take care of the environment around them. I'm having a 10% sale off items in my new springtime section. There's no code to enter. Here's a few items that are in the spring section:

Bird Travel Greeting Card

This is great if you know somebody that's going on vacation and want to give them a nice card.

Spring Garden Journal



This is one my older journals. The decorative paper it uses is great for springtime.

Tree of Life Box



I originally made this box for a custom order, but I love how it came out with this fabric, so it's made to order for anybody who buys it. The green swirl fabric reminds me of spring colors.

Coptic Bound Postal Bird Journal


I love bird themes and I love the paper I found for this. The cover is collaged with ripped decorative paper and is sewn using the coptic stitch method. It's also a little larger than most journals so it might be good for scrapbooking or sketching in.

Gold Sequins and Flower Congratulations Greeting Card



I used a fake flower I had for this one and had fun with adding gold sequins. It's a card to wish somebody Congratulations. It's also a little 3D and has some fun textures.

Also, I just noticed my I Am a Little Animal Recycled Journal is featured on the EtsyVeg blog today. One of those books was the first item I sold on etsy. I wrote up a little thing about it. I chose that item to be featured on Earth Day because it's one of my items that reused old books I already had.

Does anybody else use an RSS feed to read this blogs? I usually just use blogspot, but I was thinking of using something like Google Reader or My Yahoo because you can add blog updates from different sites. It'd also be nice if I could get my livejournal updates on there. Speaking of websites, I've been addicted to twitter lately, come follow me if you aren't already.

I can't believe the school year is almost over. I only have a week and a half of classes yet and one final. I'm counting down the days. :)

Record Store Day

Happy Record Store Day! Record Store Day is a day to celebrate the culture of record stores and music. There's a bunch of special vinyl and CD releases from bands just for this day. You can find out more on their website. Personally, I never grew up during the era of records and I only own one (because it's autographed), but I think the idea is nice and I like that people are still trying to support record stores. My first treasury I made on etsy was actually called "Vinyl Love" and themed around records. I thought it was a great theme and found a lot of nice items. Here's a screen capture of it:

I also have this set of vinyl records from the 1920s up in my shop. They are thicker and smaller than the kind of records most people have. I originally put it up on ebay, but when it didn't sell, I put them on here. I thought somebody might find them useful to collect or make a craft out of them (such as record bowls). It's actually going to expire pretty soon and I think I'll just let it expire if it doesn't sell:



If you want to do something crafty to celebrate Record Store Day, record bowls are really easy to make. You can keep little things in them or even put a plant in them.

1) Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
2) Place an oven safe bowl upside down on a cookie sheet. Place the record on top of the bowl.
3) Leave it in the oven for 8-10 minutes.
4) Take it out of the oven. Turn the bowl right side up and put the record (which is now soft) inside of the bowl. It should make a funky shape and you can mold it how you want.

Let me know if you make one. :)

Italy: Bologna and Verona

This is part of a series of posts of my trip to Italy. See past posts here:

Rome   Montefalco   Florence   Verona   Venice

Our next stop was to Bologna. It wasn’t so tour-isty which was nice, but it kind of felt like we were in a bad neighborhood and we were warned not to go out alone. There was graffiti everywhere. We didn’t see as many sights there as in the other places except on the first day where we broke up in teams and went on a “scanvenger hunt” for different places.

 Verona was our next stop which is famous for Juliet’s balcony from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Even though the story is fictional, the story makes references to the balcony in Verona. It is the most famous balcony in the world. I thought it was really fun to see. Somebody was blowing kisses while I took a photo. Romeo’s house was also there, we couldn’t go inside because it is privately own.



I went to a garden in Verona. It was really pretty and I loved the lemon trees.

Have you ever been to Bologna or Verona?

Easter Weekend

Happy Easter Weekend / Passover. To celebrate the holidays, there's a 10% off everything sale going in my shop this weekend. Just enter the code "EASTER" at checkout. Some good items for Easter:

Spring Garden Journal



Cupcake Desserts Cookbook (Sale)



Green Bird Journal



Purple Donut Altered Journal (Sale)



I got my fixed camera in the mail today. It's a little upgraded version from my old one which is nice. It also takes photos in "high definition" which I think my old one did too, but it's cool to think about. I also needed it for my Photography class. The only project I have left is my final and I want to do something with springtime and showing nature blooming. I want to have some photos in black and white and some in color (and maybe some in between) so I needed my digital for color. It's too bad I left some of my journals at home I needed to take photos of.

There's not a whole lot of new stuff in ym shop. I haven't been able to work on items, but I also haven't been selling a lot, so I don't feel a need to go out and make a bunch of items right now. I'm going to send some of my business cards out because I have a bunch I haven't really been using so hopefully that will attract some customers. I've also been using my twitter a little more to mini blog (or just respond to people). There's also a little box on the right side of this blog that shows my most recent tweets. That site's been getting a lot bigger lately it seems. I remember finding it on the etsy forums last year and thinking it was probably something no one else had heard of it.

I also made a thread on etsy about PETA attacking Etsy for selling items with fur and how they should not allow shops to have it. The petition is here. I'm in to animal rights so it's kind of an important topic for me. Even though I agree that fur shouldn't be sold in shops and it's morally wrong, I don't know how I feel about Etsy telling shop owners they can't sell something. It's funny I got a lot of really negative responses towards PETA on the etsy forum, but when I posted on the EtsyVeg team message board, everybody seemed to agree with them. What do you think?

Hope everyone has a good Easter!

World Autism Awareness Day

I just noticed today is World Autism Awareness Day. I'm part of the Etsy for Autism team because my brother, Teddy, has autism. I also have a few items in my shop that use the official autism awareness fabric.

Autism Awareness Journal


This uses a really pretty blue paper on the inside. 50% of your payment for this item will be given to a charity that helps promote artists with autism.

I also have a mini autism journal (which is the same journal as above, but smaller), but I gave it to the shop that's selling a couple of my items (if you're in Chicago, check out a shop called Light Speed, the address is in the announcements in my etsy shop). The money from that item doesn't go to charity because it was so small and I didn't think it'd be enough of a profit to give to a charity, but it's still a good way to raise awareness.



Speaking of charity, I'm trying to find a place to volunteer while I'm in college for next year. I'm self designing my own major that I think I'm calling Art and Social Action (I haven't officially decided on the name yet - I still have to officially declare it) where I'm studying how art can be used to change the world. I think it's a good idea to do some volunteer and maybe work with some type of art in the community so I'm looking at places now. Tomorrow, I'm going to a place called America Reads where I help tutor kids. It's not exactly art, but I'm trying a bunch of places and it should be fun.

Chocolates & Photography

I was in an EtsyVeg team chat a few weeks ago. One of the leaders, Kylie, offered to send me vegan chocolates. I've been looking forward to getting them and they came in the mail today. It was also nice because I was having kind of a long Monday and it felt like getting a present in the mail. :) I was going to take photos of what I got, but my digital camera's not working. I took photos with my cell phone, but I can't figure out how to email them to myself (it looks like there's only an option to send them to someone's phone number). I got: Green & Black's Organic Chocolate, Shaman's Vision Chocolate with Coconut, Raspberries in Dark Chocolate (I haven't opened it yet, but it says there's a love poem inside, haha), and some mini sized chocolates. She also sent me a card.

Speaking of EtsyVeg, I was featured in this cupcake treasury on their blog which has cupcake items. I also noticed today I'm featured in these picks of butterfly items.

I don't have a lot of shop updates. It's hard to work on items because I'm working on a lot of final projects for my classes. I might make some items if I get inspired though. I thought I'd share some of my photograph today. :)

One of my assignments for my photography class was to take photos of my spring break. I went to Millennium Park one day. I don't live in the city of Chicago (I live nearby), but I figured it would be nice to get to Millennium Park to get photos because it's a really pretty area and I love city parks. Here are some of them (they're kind of grainy because of the negatives being dirty, but I think it kind of makes them look old fashioned):


Buildings in Chicago.


Walking in Millennium Park.


This is a piece of artwork called the Bean. You can see the skyline reflected off of it.


Reflection from the Bean. It's a great place to take photos.


Ice skating rink. I actually wrote a story in my fiction class based on this memory I had of going to the ice skating rink when Millennium Park first opened (I ended up changing it in my story so the ice skating rink is in Minnesota, and it was a little different in my memory than in real life).


This wasn't from my spring break or Millennium Park, but it's a photo I took of the inside of a piano. It was actually for an assignment for my photography class where we were supposed to take a photo representing the word "naked". I wanted to do something less obvious than a nude body and I liked the idea of the piano being "exposed" and showing it's organs.

If you have a camera, at 8:09PM eastern time (or whatever time that is for your time zone - you can check here), you should take a photo of wherever you are and submit it in to this project called Worldwide Moment. It's this idea that people take photos at the same time around the world for a moment of peace. It started last summer, but their doing "mini" moments. I just noticed that the photo I did from the first moment last summer is used as part of their logo thing on the front page of their website (it's the one with the chocolate and fork, haha, I was cooking).

I also went to a dog show this weekend. I took a lot of photos which I'm thinking of using for my final project for my photography class (and if not, I'll just have a bunch of cute photos of dogs). Some of my film got messed up though so I don't know how the photos turned out yet. We got to walk around a pet a lot of dogs (who were all so well mannered). It was a lot of fun and made me want a puppy!

Pi Day

So I just noticed this weekend was Pi Day (on 3/14 - the date is meant to match the approximate number of Pi - 3.14) I made a Pi Day card last fall. I think it's a unique item and it would be cute to give somebody who really likes math. I made it because I had a number stamp I wanted to use. It says "Happy Pi Day!" on the inside. Maybe next year somebody will buy it. :)

Pi Day Greeting Card



Spring Break has been nice sofar. I'm going to a meditation class tonight which should be relaxing. I've been watching some movies lately (it's nice to catch up on movies during break). I saw Sicko the other night, which is a Michael Moore documentary about the health care system. I had seen part of it before, but didn't see the whole thing. I really enjoyed it. I never really knew a lot about health care or how universal health care worked, so it was really informative for me and I thought it was interesting how some other countries have health care systems that seem to work a lot better than here.

I might make a journal or two while I'm home. My mom picked up this bookbinding book that might show me how to do more stitches (the book seems kind of complicated though). I also have to retake those photos I lost of two new journals I made and hopefully get those listed soon.

Music Principles Journal

Yay, I finally got a new listing up here. It's for a book with music note paper. The paper was made in Italy and I think it's really pretty. I messed up gluing down the cover (it's hard for me to get decorative paper to glue flat) so I ended up ripping pieces of the paper up and making a collage design on the inside and outside. I think it makes the book unique.

Here's some in the process photos.




Gluing the boards together and the decorative paper on the outside.


Collaging pages together on the inside. There's also gold music paper collaged together.


Letting everything dry with wax paper.

Here's how it turned out:


My computer crashed and I might have to restore it so I might lose some new photos I took for some new etsy I made. So I might have to retake those before I list new items. It's my first day on spring break though. Yay, I'm excited to be on break. :)

Art Show & Spring Break

I just finished all my classes before spring break. I'm really excited to get a week off. College gets so overwhelming sometimes and it will be nice to be home. I miss my cats.

There's an EtsyVeg team chat tonight. I went to the last one and I thought it was fun, so I'm excited to participate in it again. I also got featured in an EtsyVeg treasury. Mine's the yellow journal towards the center.

I've been playing around with my twitter lately. I found these tools (click that link if you use twitter) and I never noticed you could so much with twitter. It's really just a site that allows you to mini blog/write updates, but you can get really advanced. It doesn't have to be with my shop, but I found this one tool called Dream Tweet where you can write down what you dreamt about and see other people's dreams. I also found a site where you can set it to automatically update twitter at a time you choose. Look out sometime in the next few days for a discount code for my twitter followers. ;)

If you see posts on my twitter replying to heaptweets, that's unrelated to etsy. It's this sort of contest thing where this singer, Imogen Heap, is making a biography of herself, but instead of just writing about herself, she's letting her fans write short tweets about her. You answer questions like "Describe her music" and she's going to pick some tweets people do that answer the questions. I think it's a really creative idea and if I get chosen as part of the biography, my username will show up and it might help get a little exposure for my shop. :) I wasn't sure if it might confuse people because I'm trying to make it so my tweet focuses only on my shop. I didn't know where else to do it though. I have another twitter account that I use for my Personality Psych class and I might use that account as a personal one once the class ends.

I submitted some of my photos for the student art show in my college. Even though I've made a lot of art and taken a lot of classes, I realize I've never been in a real "art show" where they hung my art in a gallery. You get judged and not everyone makes it, but the Student Art Society (a group I'm a part) has a separate show with "rejected" artwork so everything has a chance to be displayed. You can also sell your art if you're in the show and set a price on it.

I don't know if any of my photos will make it. They're not perfect technically and my negatives had some scratches and dust marks on them. I thought it'd be fun to enter though. Who knows, maybe some of my photos will make it.

Shecky's Trade Show

My Roses are Red box got featured in this EtsyVeg treasury on their blog.



I got offered to sell at a trade show in Chicago called Shecky's. It's like this event for young woman. This what they said about it:

"Launched in 2001, Shecky’s has grown to become the largest consumer shopping party in the US ! Every spring, summer and fall–the event attracts thousands of women for a 5-hour evening of spectacular shopping, beverages, product sampling/demos, fun female activities and coveted gift bags. For the independent, hard working, fashionable females across America, this is a much needed ‘special’ night out without the boys where all women can focus on being female, catch up with their girlfriends and bond over all the things that make being a girl SO FABULOUS."

I was really excited to get this opportunity because it seems like a great way to get my name out. I've also never done a craft show before. It's also in Chicago when I happen to be home for spring break, so the timing was perfect. The only problem is I didn't realize there's a fee for going - it's $500 a day, which is a lot considering I haven't made that much with my shop yet. I don't even know if I'd make $500 if I sold all my stuff.

I was excited they considered me to go though. Hopefully, they'll be more (cheaper?) opportunities like this in the future.