post-show post

Niki and I participated in the craft and bake sale at the Immanuel Church in Elmhurst. It was such a great experience! It was the first time for me and I feel sooooo much smater about the setup and the whole organization side of the event.

It turned out that the little post-it note purses were all sold out rather quickly, which makes me happy, because creating them is a ton of fun. Here are some examples that found new owners today:

Long time, no post…

…and it’s already Christmas time in my craftroom! In fact, I’ve been working on Christmas items for the last few weeks, and also on various gifts for the family and friends I will encounter during my trip to Poland, which is going to begin next week. Yes, in a week at this time I will be most likely sitting on a plane somewhere over Europe!

All the cards are uploaded to Picasa. To spruce up this post, though, I will throw in a few pictures representing the different designs.

Patchwork card

Got up early, made a card – Rudlis blogged about this nice idea how to use up scraps, which all paper crafters probably save because we are sure one day we can use them for something.

It’s a little patchwork of coordinated papers from K&Company, plus a stamped message, which has been sitting on my table for a week or so. Gotta love using up the stash!

a beautiful Sunday

I've heard it's going to rain in the afternoon - so far, though, it's beautiful and sunny outside, and the cat is really enjoying it. That tree by our balcony is turning yellow so fast! It's always the first to sprout leaves in spring, and first to get color in the fall.

I'm looking forward to the fall colors - we already saw some in Upper Peninsula a couple weeks ago. To get there, we started the trip at around 3 am and then we saw this gorgeous sunrise on the way, with layers of fog softly wrapped around the shrubs and trees.

Purses going onto etsy

Yay, the little boxes have arrived, so I posted the first little post-it note purse on etsy! I’t soooo exciting, friends around me seem to like them a lot, so I’m hoping to spread some joy around.

A lady at the office asked me if I could make some more masculine post-its, and she suggested a snake, so I spent some time last night experimenting. A prototype was born, with shiny skin (H20 paints) and a zig-zag pattern on its back. I’m not sure if I fully like the background paper, I think I had something more jungle-like in mind. The colors on the snake would look more vibrant on a darker green background.

packaging research

I spent some time yesterday trying to figure out the best way to ship the little post-it-note purses, if someone decides to purchase one. It needs to be as inexpensive as possible, quick, easy (forget putting together a dozen parts every time), and – first of all – safe. The purses are somewhat fragile, so until I figure out some other design for the handle, a rigid box is needed and the purse should not move inside.

It looks like the audio cassette mailers may be the solution. I thought they went pretty much extinct, and yet the packaging is still available! I would need to put a few Styrofoam peanuts inside (why does Styrofoam capitalize itself when I type it in Word??) and it will be good to go.
Nice. Now – on to making more purses, photographing, etc.

to hoard or not to hoard...

I’ve been watching this show on TV about hoarders and I feel soooo sorry for those people! I don’t consider myself a hoarder, especially since my husband encourages throwing useless stuff away, but I would cry just as those people do if someone tried to organize my crafting stuff for me and toss some of it. Scraps of paper, nature findings, random pieces… It can all be used somehow!

Yesterday, for instance, I used a bunch of small pieces of paper to create business cards. While it’s definitely a very time consuming way of obtaining stationery and limits the quantities to dozens as opposed to thousands, it’s also perfect for late night when the brain isn’t into complicated processes.

I also experimented with the H20 paints, which I got last winter, when the manufacturer was going to close down the shop and offered a giant discount. Lo and behold, they got such mountains of orders that it allowed them to stay afloat despite the price cut. I was going to get those for my birthday, but oh well :)

So here is a card featuring flowers painted with blue H20s: