Saving Handmade

I'm not sure how many people are aware of the new law that goes into effect on February 10, 2009. It's the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which will require anyone/company that produces any items for children to spend tens of thousands of dollars for third party testing to prove their product has no toxic chemicals. Please click on the cute little bear to the left on my blog to help save handmade. I appreciate laws that want to keep children safe, I have two of my own; but this law will wipe out small business owners or crafters who make anything that could be for children; the testing is just too expensive. 

My studio

Also known as my computer room. Thought I'd share with everyone my area, the room where I go to be creative. It's a mess, I'm not gonna lie about it. I try to clean it and it will stay that way for a day or so but it eventually ends up with piles everywhere, so I just try to do the best I can in my mess. I have two desks side by side, one is for my printer and computer - you'll notice I have another printer underneath, some day I'll put that on the desk and get rid of the older one. The other desk has my scanner, and my quilling projects in progress, scrapbook paper and my Cricut. I'm trying to keep track of projects this year by using my wipe erase/corkboard to the left of everything, so far so good. I have a 3 drawer plastic shelf for paints, books and painting supplies. Now, inside the closet is insane, I have so many items to add quilling too and not enough time. I have paper mache, wood, paper - just everywhere. I purchased this lovely heavy duty shelf unit a couple years back from Sam's Club and I love it. Next to that I have a tall 5 drawer shelf which has ribbon, felt, pom pom's and a drawer for my son's crafty items. On the top shelf of the closet I have more paper mache and wood items, I also have polyfil and fleece in there too, left over from the days of sewing. My coworker knows to ask me if I have something before going out and buying it, most likely I have it if it involves crafts. Makes me laugh to look at all my stuff, and I'm sure one day I'll actually get to creating with half the stuff I have. 

Lovebirds

I love holiday's and Valentine's Day is one of my favorites. This year I decided I wasn't going to get behind on creating stuff for the occasion and I've already gotten cards and frames done so I'm happy about that. This is a an image of the first two frames I've completed and I must say I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I painted them and added some scrapbook paper and ric rac and my little quilled lovebirds, I'm definitely going to make more - might even make one for me - something I never do. I have no quilled creations in my house, weird huh? The frame with the xoxo lovebirds is available through my etsy shop, the other one is going into my shop here in town and as mentioned there will be more on the way. 

Welcome 2009!

So far this year has started out pretty good. I received a request through etsy for Christmas and Thanksgiving table name cards, I've submitted a quote so keeping my fingers crossed that it will be accepted and I'll be creating 25 Christmas name cards and 10 Thanksgiving name cards. I signed up for the Candy Crop tomorrow night at Eclectica so I'm looking forward to that. I need a break from the rascals and I enjoy going to the crop's; plus I need to start creating new stuff for all my shops. Speaking of that, I just finished setting up and activating my Lollishops shop; I don't have any items in it yet but it's activated so it's ready for me to add some. I'm not sure about that one yet so I'm just putting a few things in to see what happens. I've also activated my Shop Handmade shop and added a card, I'm just trying to get my stuff out there as much as possible.

Happy New Year!

Well I've been trying to update all my web sites, my blog, my flickr account, etsy, and facebook - it's taking forever but I'm getting it done. I'm not going to get enough sleep but I'm getting it done. I still don't know if I totally understand how to use a blog to promote myself, that is going to be one of my goals for 2009, figure out the blog. I've also started one for our papertwirlies team but I haven't done much but set it up slightly, must finish that soon too.

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year, good luck with everything you want to do and be safe. As mentioned I've been updating my flickr account, and added some older items I created like the one seen here; Wedding Keepsake Box (lid is showing). It is so pretty, so simple and so different then my usual bright stuff - I really liked the way it turned out.

Merry Christmas

Well this week has been long and tiring, my daughter has had a dreadful cold so I've not been getting any sleep and barely any quilling done - I've fallen behind on stuff so I now have just a few days to play catch up. Due to this, I will make this short and sweet - I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! From now till the end of the year everything in my etsy shop (http://www.quillynilly.etsy.com) is 20% off - I'm looking forward to creating new and fresh quilled delights to fill up my shop in the new year so I need to make room by selling what's in there now. Take care.

Flurries

We had some flurries today, for some that may not sound exciting; but I'm now living in Tennessee and we rarely get snow so when it flurries it makes me happy. I'm originally from Connecticut so I know what it's like to get snow, and thankfully we rarely get that much here - and if we do it melts away in a day or two and it's like we never had any.

I also want to comment on a sealant I tried - tried and was not successful with. It's called Stiffen Stuff Super Quick Stiffening Spray, which I purchased online at www.whimsiquills.com - Pat is very nice and has been quite helpful with information on how to use it properly which I will share with everyone else. I've been making snowflakes and thought it would be nice to use the spray on them - well I sprayed one lightly (or so I thought) and the coils started opening up - ahhhhhhh! I had to go back using my tweezers and roll some of them back up. I emailed Pat from Whimsiquills this evening and this is what she wrote:

"I just spray very light coats of the stiffen stuff and let it dry between coats. I even use it on my snowflakes and a lot of them are done with open coils. Be sure to make the first coat very light and once it dries it will keep the open coils in place for the next spraying. You just don't want to soak the paper or the coils will open. (I usually rinse off the spray thingy with warm water after I use it so it doesn't clog.) You might want to try it on a couple of coils just for practice until you get the feel of using the right amount."

Good advice and I will definitely be practicing on some spare coils. Just wanted to share it for anyone interested in using it on their quilled pieces.

I also want to mention we finished our Paper Twirlies Scavenger Hunt and I think it was fun - I had 3 people find the prize photo in my shop - I'm not sure how many were found total, that would be interesting to find out though.