New Tweet

 

A new bird for local delivery, “Diva Tweet”.

Getting in a Better Mood

I wasn’t in a good mood.

500+ emails.  Missed Twitter for days because I was avoiding procrastinating on the pc.  Trying to plan Friends of the Library book sale on the lawn of the library in a couple of weeks – need to worry about rain and volunteers for 6:30am (our indoor site fell through).  Mass amounts of unfinished projects.  Gained a pound.  Need I say more?

Well, something about the shop of the week, A Cagey Bee, cheered me up.  I love this pendant below, and all of her art, really.

There’s a great interview with the artist, Kris, here… and a special: “As a special thank you to her Twitter pals, all prints in her shop are 2 for the price of 1 this week. Buy one print and simply enter the name of the second print you'd like in the notes to seller box. Double the cuteness!”  Check her out, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed, add some cheer to your day, too!

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The disaster I’ve been looking at:  Unfinished projects galore.  Unorganized beads and supplies.  Headless birds (down near the center front of picture).  And this isn’t even my desk, this is the extra card-table I brought in to work on. Ugh.

Thanks!!!

I had tons of support this week and appreciate all the tweets and blog posts that I got for being the Etsy Twitter Team Shop of the Week. 

Here are some of the new creations I managed to eek out – more are at tamdoll.etsy.com – and I plan on adding more on a regular basis:

Thanks to these bloggers for their posts, hope I didn’t miss any! (Please!  Leave me a message if I did):

 

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& special thanks to the whole team!! There were lots of tweets and Treasuries throughout the week, it was great.

Shop of the Week – It’s Me!

Shop updates, I’m “Shop of the Week”! Interview here.  Shop here.  More new items each day, I’m going to keep working and working and see what I come up with.

 

 

 

 

What’s a Sidewalk SALE doing online you ask?  For one week Etsy Twitter Team artists are offering specials for shoppers – view the entire list of shops and offers here.  If there’s something you like at my etsy shop, domestic shipping is free (non-ribbons), and I’ll refund the shipping via PayPal.

 

 

 

 

Sidewalk Sale

Click the picture to take you to a list of shops participating in the Sidewalk Sale – isn’t that the most adorable link, too?  As part of it, at tamdoll.etsy.com I’ll be offering “Free domestic shipping on non-ribbon items. Will automatically give a PayPal refund.”

My newest pins will be included in this promotion – and I’ll be putting up at least one new one each day this week, too – so come back and visit often!

Finally

This week, I’m going to be the Shop of the Week over at the Etsy Twitter blog… and panic finally set in.  I have dozens of crochet flowers waiting to be made into pins, bracelets, necklaces.  Unfinished projects and more birds to complete this weekend.  I’ve simply got to get off the computer this weekend and work, work, work.  One update at my etsy shop today:

 

I’m going to make a local delivery of new pins today, too, and update my jewelry display to this one – more light and airy I think for the spring and summer.  Also more versatile than the scrabble board, I can combine the scrabble necklaces and new jewelry on this one.

In it’s first life, it was a “paint on glass” display.  I took out the glass inserts and used E6000 glue to add in some screening from the hardware store.  Since I wanted to make sure the screens were secure, I went back around the edges with clear nylon thread and secured it all around.  Necklaces will hang from the top, and now I have to figure out how to hang the pins.  Will probably add some wire across the middle piece and put the pins on card-backs to hang there.  Off to work!

Springtime Colors

 

I put the question out in Twitter & in the last post and here’s what we came up with:

“What color accessories will you wear/buy this spring & summer?”

 

Seems like the winners are pink, turquoise, purple accented with some silver.

I’ve been making some crochet/beaded/fabric brooches and was wondering what colors folks were thinking of this season.  My intention isn’t to work with colors on request, I was just curious.  Here’s a few I’m going to deliver to a local shop later today:

 

They’re each about 2” wide with a pin on the back.  I’ve been having so much fun making these – crocheting the flowers, finding fabric to match and adding the beads to them. 

I also have one more, similar to the blue one above, that I’ll add to my etsy shop early Saturday.

A Quick Poll

What color accessories will you wear/buy this spring & summer?  If none of these fit, just leave a comment here.

Online Surveys & Market Research

On Twitter I got the following answers so far: purple; turquoise; lapis lazuli; hill tribe silver; pink; browns/green; red/white.  Testing out this poll idea here. 

Update: More Twitter input: purple, blue, pink, monochromatic tans and ivory, coral, silver.

Anti- Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday's seem popular & I’m not against them ... but I just can't keep the words out … and this one is so blatantly wordy….

annals badge banana bellflower blast blogger bunnies catching creepy crochet designs doll earrings emmakat etsy facebook featured flick fusion green ii impawsibletoresist lemons letter life love makeup making mess nora originals packed page rhodes round shop showing south springtime tales tamaragarvey tamdoll team textiles thanks tiny treasury twitter week yarn

created at TagCrowd.comvia Torley Lives

Playing with this tag generator – I inserted my blog address and got the above results… looking and looking at it… this is what I needed – a wake-up to do more crafting and to blog more about it! (and figure out what that ii and banana links are all about?!?)

Here’s a link that includes my post about Fairy Tale inspiration and other blogger’s answer to the same question - at the Pumpkin Haus blog.  I’ve been enjoying reading everyone’s posts.

Do you have an etsy or seller’s group that you cross-promote with? I was wondering how much participation others get involved in.  Do you do it just for business or do you enjoy it, too?

Did you know?

Did you know that you can get updates as soon as your favorite Etsy seller’s update their shops?  Why should you even consider this?  Keep in mind the handmade nature of the items for sale on Etsy.  If you love a seller’s items, but they only make something new every other month (& it sells quickly, before you’ve even had a chance to check it out) – you’d want to know about things as soon as they are available.  What about one-of-a-kind yarns, or vintage supplies?  Whatever it is, you can keep on top of it.  Here’s an easy way to do that:  “Subscribe to shop feed” – see arrows I’ve drawn on bottom-right of this screen shot:

If you click that link, you’ll get a page similar to this:

Now, what is all this about?  This is the RSS for the page you’ve chosen – a Rich Site Summary.  There are lots of programs that can read RSS “feeds” to keep you up to date without you having to remember all the websites and shops that you love.  The nice thing is, they’ll only show up in your reader when something new has been posted.  Your internet browser probably has a built-in reader, too – see this  little logo anywhere?  That could be a built-in reader, check it out.  Now, you can look in the address bar of your browser to see the location of the feed – my etsy shop feed looks like this - http://www.etsy.com/rss_shop.php?user_id=29378 – notice the “rss_shop”? – You don’t really need to know that, but just to point out to you, that’s the line you can cut and paste into a feed-reader if not using an option from your drop-down menu. 

How you want to organize your feeds is up to you.  I like to run a stand-alone program on my computer to keep track of the 100’s of blog feeds I read each week – Feed Reader. 

Etsy has a handy article “All About RSS” that you can read, too.   If you’ve never subscribed to an etsy shop feed, but are going to now, I’d love to hear about it.  Or if you already have, how does that make life easy for you?

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Greeted with a nice surprise this morning – my Linen & Velvet Bird Cuff is in a Treasury:

Click, go & visit before it expires Thursday, 8:57am EST, May 14th!

Etsy Twitter Team Shop of the Week: South Paw Studios

Etsy Twitter Team: Shop of the Week: South Paw Studios

South Paw Studios has some magnificent jewelry – this necklace definitely caught my eye right away:

I liked reading the interview with the artist Katy Mims, she puts so much effort into giving her customers the highest quality product that she can and keeps things fresh and trendy by challenging herself.  From the Etsy Twitter blog: "Special for the Week: 15% off your TOTAL order plus free worldwide shipping. Enter code "EtsyTwitter" in Message to Seller and all discounts will be refunded promptly via Paypal."  Enjoy!

Is something about this favorite of mine – Twilight-ish? Or is it me?

Do Fairy Tales Inspire You?

CreatAThought – is this month’s Featured Etsy Blogger’s blogger!  I love the quote from her etsy shop banner: “Life is too short to have boring things in your life, welcome to my shop full of color and things for you to enjoy, and make your life bright!”  Well, right away I spotted this ring and thought it was so precious.  Why?  Because I love trees. (It sold before I even got this post finished!)

Here’s where we segue into the Fairy Tale part of this post.  Every two weeks the Etsy Bloggers team puts up a blog post suggestion and for the May 8th deadline the question was: “What is your favorite fairy tale? Any parallels to real life?” Now, another thing I love are fairy tales.  As I looked at the ring, I realized that if it’s not a castle, then fairy tales are usually revolving around trees, forests… there’s usually the mystery of nature.

As far as parallels to real life – I’m thinking as I write this – maybe it’s the allure of nature that a Brooklyn girl might have growing up surrounded by concrete.  Or maybe it’s the fantasy of magic and handsome princes.  I like to think there’s magic everywhere if you look close enough.  Or don’t look…. you might just see it in the corner of your eye.

I’m not 100% sure I have a favorite fairy tale.  What I do love are to read the original translated stories instead of the watered-down animated versions.  I love modern re-tellings of fairy tales, with a twist.  Yesterday I was talking about the beans in my garden and naturally, Jack & The Beanstalk came to mind.  One of the best movies I’ve seen – and enjoyed again and again is Jack and the Beanstalk - The Real Story, a 2001 movie, starring Matthew Modine as Jack’s descendant.  Over 3 hours long & worth every minute.

Here’s a fairy tale that translated into art for me – It started out when I read the book Enchantment by Orson Scott Card.  I passed it onto my mother who mentioned that she’d heard of the character Baba Yaga when she was a little girl.   That same week my kids brought home a book from the library, Vasilisa the Beautiful, where the Russian girl meets… Baba Yaga.  The icing on the cake was when I came across a pattern to make a Vasilisa/Baba Yaga topsy-turvy doll.  I bought the pattern without a second thought and it took me 6 months to complete the doll – take a look at some pictures here.

Just one more book – Sheri Tepper’s Beauty.  It was a little creepy and sad, but I love how it ties together Sleeping Beauty with other fairy tales (& I won’t say anymore about it in case you’re going to read it!)

I really, really love reading these books, do you have any to suggest or share? Leave a comment here or visit me at goodreads.com! 

Another favorite from CreatAThought’s shop – I can see a princess wearing this one:

 

Want to read all the Etsy Blogger’s response to this week’s question? Visit the blog carnival!  I have a link in the right sidebar at the bottom, or you can click here:

 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

Three mistakes.  A gardening re-do, a Facebook backtrack, and finding a missing tool.  Here’s how I fixed things so far this week:

Beans have sprouted! I usually don’t remember to plant my beans early enough, but was very ambitious this year.  I laid out 4 rows of beans and planted a different kind in each section – some saved seeds from last year, and some from half-filled packets that I didn’t plant in years past.  Some sugar-snap, some peas.  Only one row sprouted.  Do you think I wrote down which was planted in each location? Of course not! So, I went back yesterday and re-planted the 3 rows.  This time, I planted every other seed from each source, so something’s bound to come up soon.  I hope.  And, of course, I still won’t know what’s what in each section until they’re ready to pick…  How’s your garden growing? (Hey, this is giving me an idea for tomorrow’s blog post topic…)

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Anyone on Facebook? I joined to connect with friends and family that live far away.  I started to feel a little awkward when folks from the crafting world are friending me and decided not to accept anymore of those invitations (sorry!).  But… as a workaround and a place to chat with folks who love FB, I started a page for my art, SILVER Mountain Originals – if you’re on Facebook, please Become a Fan here:

 Tamdoll's SILVER Mountain Originals' Facebook Page  
 

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Found my buttonhole foot and added a button closure to this Crochet Hook Clutch.  It was right there in my accessory box all along, I just forgot that my new machine doesn’t use the slide type of foot that I was used to.  Reading the manual and looking at the pictures helps sometimes.

Bellflower Textiles - E.T. Shop of the Week

Etsy Twitter Team: Shop of the Week: Bellflower Textiles

Maybe it’s the Oilily fabric, maybe it’s the red ribbon, or maybe it’s simply cute – but I had to pick this as my favorite item from the shop of the week!  A little crayon-roll-to-go is just one of so many adorable items in BellflowerTextiles' Shop. And…. from the E.T. blog – there’s a nice interview with Megan & a special for the Week: “Free Shipping!! Mention “Twitter” in your Notes to Seller and she will send an updated invoice with free shipping or refund your shipping price if you’ve already paid.” Check it out and enjoy!

Shopping Online

Another catchy title brought to you by Tamdoll. 

Ordered beautiful crochet hooks from thefancifulfeline.  Aren’t these nice?

Last year I won a kit to make a Crochet Hook or Circular Needle Clutch from CraftLeftovers– I finally made it!!!  Was super easy and came out nice.  Will go well with the new hooks.  Here’s her awesome shop & blog!  Now I just have to find where I put my button hole foot for my sewing machine so I can complete this.  Otherwise I’m just going to stitch a ribbon to the cover so it can be tied shut.

Thanks

 

 

Magnificent flower bouquet received in thanks for doing a favor for someone.  So lovely, from the local Apotheca.

Another bouquet picture here.

 

 

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Here’s a random thanks – to VLADSTUDIO – a digital artist who offers desktop wallpapers & tutorials for free!  Subscribe to the email newsletters to see what I mean – no spam, simple updates when something new is up.  And….until May 10th, there’s a special offer if you want lifetime membership to download high quality images, Adobe Photoshop source files, or just to support this amazing, generous, artist.

5/3 update – I forgot to add a big thanks to Cynthia @ Wholesalequiltbatting.com!  I needed a bunch of Poly-fil Supreme quickly & she was able to get it to me at an amazing price.  Excellent customer service & I would recommend her business.  I hadn’t seen it online but a simple email inquiry & wala! she had it listed.  Check out her shop.

And thanks to YOU, readers, because you keep coming back!  I always love to read your comments.  What are you thankful for?