Reason #6272 to love Etsy treasuries.

While taking a break from my Crafty Bastards application yesterday afternoon, I browsed a lovely teal and red treasury, finding a collage print by Michele Maule that features a twin of Bianca, my bicycle. I explored her work a little more and found what appears to be the parent of the collage print. Dan played for me the song that inspired the title of the work, and I was sold. Then, it was.

Depending on how much space we have left on the walls once we decorate, there may be more purchases from Ms. Maule in the future. In the meantime, enjoy her beautiful work!

Success at the Handmade Mart!

The view from the stage of happy little vendor tents under the Handmade Mart banner.

Well, it was a week ago, but I figured I may as well post some tips and lessons learned from participating in the Handmade Mart in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend. Sort of a wrap-up, if you will.

Lesson #1: Take better pictures of the booth BEFORE people trek in. It's awfully hard at a busy show to get a picture of the space without someone in it. (Not that I'm complaining about the constant foot traffic, by any means.)

There's me! Totally oblivious to the camera, as ushe.

Lesson #2: Bring watermelon. Luckily, one of my booth neighbors, Meghan of Oh Ginger, had this one down pat and was willing to share.

Lesson #3: A tent is a damn good idea. I was able to borrow one from a friend, but if that can't be an option all the time, it'd be worth it to invest in one. No sunburn OR heatstroke. Sweet.

Lesson #4: Bring change. I know this sounds obvious, but I woke up at 5:15 that morning in a cold sweat, realizing I had totally neglected to get any change. I sent Dan (who took all these lovely photos) to Starbucks to buy something with a $20 and get me through the early-early morning, and then again to get more ones and fives. (Maybe lesson #4 should really be, "Write a checklist now for supplies to bring with me because checklists written the day before are going to forget something.")

Lesson #5: Position the goods in their natural environment. This one comes from the lovely Sara at Girls Can Tell, who put up a post last month about booth displays, wondering why we put things on tabletops when everyone else is putting things on tabletops. (Obviously this does not apply to everyone, but for the sake of generality, bear with me.) I really wanted a small rolltop desk that I could file all the lovely stationery-y stuff in, but what found me was this table from my old housemate when we were vacating the premises in early May. The conversation went something like this:

Him: [shoves desk to curbside trash pick up]
Me: OMG, you're not tossing that, are you?
Him: Why, you want it?
Me: YES. [saves]

It looks much nicer here than in my old alley, doesn't it? It's also got handy drawers for hiding things -- when they're not open to showcase stuff, like the top one. Future incarnations of this desk may be painted the same blue as the interior of my new apartment, but time was a factor.

The desk area of the booth display. See also: lesson #1.

Lesson #6: Wander more. Dan very kindly kept offering to let me look around and visit with fellow crafty folks, but I felt guilty leaving my booth for longer than it took to dash to a bathroom. I need to get over that; I only got to chat with Becky of thischickadee (or Miss Chickadee, as we call her in my house) and tina seamonster very briefly while on my way to check in; the only reason I got to talk to Meghan and Pang (of Pretty Little Fings) as much as I did was because they were my booth neighbors.

Lesson #7: Sell some of the better vintage maps that are still in good condition. (Want one? Email me or comment and I'll see what I can do on any requests for specific areas. I have lots of Asia, for sure.) They were definitely a hit and a nice draw to get people over to the booth. Next time we'll think it through a bit better and use some clothesline to hold 'em up. (Another nice draw was the vintage, sadly-not-working typewriter on the desk. "Look kids! A mouseless, monitorless computer!")

This was actually my first outdoor show, and I think I definitely got lucky weather-wise and location-wise for my first such experience. Thanks to all the friends and new faces who came out and chatted me up about my little shop!

Find me at the Handmade Mart on Sunday!

Things have been crazybusy with work and moving; I'm finally in (if not settled) my new apartment, finally finished with a massive work event, and about to star with 49 of my friends at the Handmade Mart, tomorrow in Silver Spring, Maryland. If you're in the greater DC area, you should stop by and see the fabulosity!

I'm stoked to be booth neighbors with Oh Ginger and have such fantastic crafters like This Chickadee and Tina Seamonster in attendance. (Find me at booth 3, near Fenton Street.) Click here for the official details, and click here to see my Q+A vendor profile!

Well I'll be.

I was really excited about Hello Craft's Summit of Awesome when I heard about it at the beginning of the year. People who I admired? Check. Full of useful information? Check. And IN DC (coughnotNewYork)? Check!

And then, of course, I realized it was the same weekend by which I needed to vacate my house. Dammit.

So I've sadly watched teh intarwebs get all abuzz about the Summit, about how fantastic it was going to be, about what neat people they have booked to speak to attendees. While I am excited about my big changes that are coming that weekend, I was sad that it had to coincide with such a cool event. I thought about going, but I couldn't justify spending money just to purposely neglect my moving responsibilities.

This weekend, though, I saw that a one-day pass was being given away. And, well, if I wasn't paying for the privilege of not packing... I decided to toss my ring in the hat.

And I'll be damned if that doesn't work out on occasion.

See you Saturday! I'll be the one stressing over whether I've properly cushioned my china when I ought to be paying attention to marketing and branding craftgasm.

Happy Earth Day!

I'm totally ganking and re-adapting Sara (from Girls Can Tell)'s idea for today's post. In honor of Earth Day, post your favorite eco-friendly shop in the comments. You can decide its eco-friendly-ness in whatever way you want -- using recycled materials, making a product that helps you create less waste, or making old things new again are all good definitions. You can give us a link to your own shop, but only if it meets the eco-friendly requirement AND if you link to another shop that is not yours that also is Earth-friendly. It's all about the community-building, folks. Spread the love! (To help you get started, here's a link to all tagged items from Team EcoEtsy members.)

One of my favorite shops for perusal is Chakra Pennywhistle, where you can find reclaimed fabrics made into sweet pillows like this one below. She's also a fellow Team EcoEtsy member like me, so that gives her some bonus points.

Lastly, in celebration of Earth Day, I'm offering a 20% discount on any item in the {craftgasm} Etsy shop! You have to order by the end of the day (I'm defining "end of the day" loosely -- just make sure the order is in before I wake up on Thursday morning), and in the "notes to seller" box at checkout, tell me your favorite eco-friendly tip. I may share the best tips here in the blog with a link back to whatever URL you'd like, so make 'em good!

I can't wait to see all the Earth-happy goodness you'll put in the comments!

Can I be six again?

Photo courtesy of and taken by Leanne at See the Woods and the Trees.

Following the Craftzine Twitter feed has never disappointed me, and paid off once again with this genius idea from See the Woods and the Trees, linked to this morning. Leanne helped her daughter make a four room dollhouse using reclaimed catalog pages and some cardboard. The result is so cute that it makes me want to have a toddler of my own just to have a socially-acceptable excuse to play with it.

I think it could be made even more eco-friendly by using old cereal boxes or somesuch reused material as the walls. Want a second story? Place another layer of cardboard on top of the first floor, then make another level. (This gives you the chance to paste a floor down, too.)

Best of all, since the dollhouse folds up, it doesn't have to take up a lot of room when it's put away. You could have dozens of setups ready for mixing and matching, and only use a few inches of bookshelf space to store it all.

How'd I get so lucky?

Floorplan courtesy of Dan; text, doors, and Easter-egg-looking radiator placement by me.

As I've mentioned, I'm getting ready to move in a few weeks. My boyfriend Dan and I just signed our lease yesterday for a one bedroom English basement in Dupont. It's very sweet, but as a one bedroom, it doesn't have a built in craft room, and we'll have to carve some space from the ample living room. We were trying different arrangements on the mostly-to-scale floorplan that Dan drew up last night, and I was stressing out, wondering if my extremely large, well-loved craft desk would fit and look right in the space.

Dan busied himself with the plan for a minute and before showing it to me said, "I don't know if I necessarily like or want this idea, but it's a thought."

He had drawn a bed in the living room's craft corner, leaving the entire bedroom open for crafting and office space.

Is it any wonder that I love this man?

Promos? Maybe some readers can help me.

I have an entire bookshelf full of papery goodness in the form of stock photography books. These are glossy, thick, pretty books that are given to advertising firms by photography companies to entice the agencies to buy the rights to their images. This means they are perfect for collage, ATCs, and all sorts of other forms of papercrafting. A friend of mine who works for an ad agency found out his office would be throwing an entire roomful of these fabulous books in the trash, and let me and Meigh of NoPantsMcGee in after hours to cart as many away as we could carry. She had a hand-me-down SUV at the time, and we loaded that thing's cargo area and backseat FULL of these heavy books.

Unfortunately, they are not going to all fit in my new apartment. I'm moving from a large three-level Victorian rowhouse with five bedrooms, five people, and seven built-in bookshelves (three of which I took over) to a one-bedroom English basement (zero built-ins). This means I need to come up with a way to get most of them out of my house before moving to the new place.

This is where you come in.

Since they're so pretty and useful for upcycled crafting, I don't want to just recycle them -- I want them to go toward MAKING. And since I want them to go toward making, and I also make things, I want to launch some sort of viral marketing campaign about {craftgasm}, with a free book for participants, perhaps. But the cost of mailing out books individually to people would be too cost-prohibitive to manage. (Is it acceptable to ask for $3 to ship a free item to someone?)

What genius ideas have I not come up with yet? Shoot 'em to me in the comments. (Best idea gets a book!)

Little Bunny Foo-Foo

I'm taking my first tentative steps into the world of plushies. Don't worry, I don't intend to start selling them at {craftgasm} just yet; this little guy is the first of a few gifts for baby-making friends of mine.

Because I know how much everyone loves a crappy cameraphone picture.

I found what looked like an easy-to-cut, easy-to-sew pattern from the lovely Wee Wonderfuls blog. The easy-to-cut part was right on the money, though I've found the instructions to be a little frustrating when one is doing this for the first time and also is cranky because she needs to eat her dinner, posthaste. For instance, after you sew the ears wrong-side together, there is no further instruction on flipping them right side out before sewing them onto the bunny. And the skinny nature of the ears makes it incredibly hard to do that anyway. I winged it by flipping them right side out with a big pin, a pencil with eraser (for inserting the pin), and a lot of tugging and patience. I hope they're not prematurely flipped, but it doesn't look like they are. (If so, I'll deal with that later and let you know.) Also, the instructions call for embroidering after he's sewn up, but my common sense said that would be better done now.

Turns out my sewing machine doesn't like small pieces of cotton jersey fabric (or big ones either, really), and since I was lazy and haven't added interfacing to them, I'm sewing this little dude up by hand as of right now. We'll see if I get frustrated enough to iron some interfacing on later.

In keeping with the {craftgasm} mantra, the fabric pieces are all reclaimed. The solid green and blue were stained t-shirts, and the blue gingham is leftover from someone else's crafting. The little bit of white and pink on the insides of the ears was scrap fabric left over after cutting quilt squares from an old baby onesie. The whole thing will probably be stuffed with fabric scraps when he's done, too; I dislike the feel of polyfil too much, especially for a baby. And since it might be entirely hand-sewn, I don't want the polyfil leaking out the sides after its first round in the washer.

Who could be frustrated with that sleeping little face for long? Probably a good thing, then, that his face was one of the first things I did. I'll try to remember that when I'm ready to set fire to the whole project after I'm all cramped up, needle in hand.

Happy Tuesday to me!

You may remember oohing and ahhing over the lovely little Accessories of Old shop in Bethesda that I talked about. Owner and blogger Lisa recently had a contest -- and I was ever so surprised to read tonight to find out I'd won! I hadn't been keeping up on my blog reading while trying to get everything finished for the Homespun Yarn Party, so when I clicked the article today, I was just curious as to what the winning idea was. Turns out it was mine! Thanks so much, Lisa!

I'll be receiving the little sheep figures to put theory into practice as decorative knobs for yarn baskets soon. To save Lisa the trouble of mailing them, I may just have to swing up to Bethesda and stop by the store again. Oh darn!

Lisa is currently hosting a giveaway of some seriously cute Easter-colored vintage items, and though telling you about it dilutes my chance of winning, I love you enough to do it anyway.