New in my Etsy Shop

I was so ashamed when I went to my etsy shop and found it EMPTY! Ack! How is that possible?! Well, I've been really focusing on my wholesale business lately, which is a good thing - but - etsy had taken a back burner for me and all my listings expired! Yikes! So, my etsy team - EtsyNJ, which is an etsy location based team for New Jersey has decided to run a weekend long sale during Thanksgiving Weekend, November 25-30. I of course want to participate, and nothing gets me moving like a deadline to get me motivated - so, I signed up.

Being the nit picker than I am, I needed to re-do my pictures since I haven't done that since I got my new camera, so I took all new pics of my Art Blocks before listing them.

Along my path of listing things and thinking OMG WHY WHY WHY isn't there a "c

opy" option on Etsy like there is on my wholesale site?! It would make things SO much faster! I started a search and found this site - etsyhacks - where, so long as you run firefox as a browser, you can install something that lets you copy your existing listings, and also I installed a feature that lets me add 5 photo's at once rather than select, upload, loading......... repeatx5. It's super handy, I listed pretty much everything in my shop today from scratch..woot!

So, now I am all set for the Thanksgiving Weekend Sale that EtsyNJ is hosting! Of course I still have other things I should / will / might list.... but, I'm happy my Art blocks are up!

In other, less interesting but odd news, as I'm typing this I'm sitting in the waiting room at my son's therapy doctor..... he's in therapy and I sit and wait, as usual... well, there's a dad in here waiting that was sitting a few seats over and ever since I brought out my laptop he started pacing around the room, now he's standing about 10 feet behind me to my left side, just.... standing there rocking back and forth on his feet... uh, wtf? If you're THAT interested in what I'm doing, maybe ask me, it's not all that magical and secretive! WHACKO! Hahaha... maybe the caps are big enough he can read them from across the room ahhahaha.

Halloween

I haven't been blogging much lately, I've just been busy with some new projects, and, then I just plain did't feel like it. I've been in a bit of a funk lately, I'll post about all that later...... Anyway, my hubby couldn't decide on a halloween costume, so we went to Spirit Halloween. Yeah.... he found a costume there he liked - opened it and it was cheesy and polyester, nasty fabric. I could not have him dress up in that and pretend to be scary. So, we talked about sewing a costume, though, Halloween was less than a week away. I said I'd sew it.... now.. I can sew, but, I am quite novice at it. This was my first time following a pattern, and I altered it slightly because they wanted me to use a gauze-ish material and Sean wanted a heavier material so I used felt, which, I didn't realize would be an issue until they were telling me to hem, fold, sew, hem again bla bla... got a little bulky and I had to improvise a tad, but, it ended up coming out really nicely. I was quite proud of myself!

Here's some pics from Halloween, showing off my cute little "Woody" cowboy, and, of course my sewing handiwork on hubby's costume!

Must be the Season of the Witch

Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. I do love Christmas and all that good stuff but there is just nothing better than the weather and colors of fall.

I got inspired last week, as usual, when I have 10,000 other things to do I get inspired to do something that would be considered "wasting time" haha. It's always when my time is crunched that I get motivated to do other things, guess it's my stubborn inner child! Well, I listened this time and I created this "Season of the Witch" sign. It's about 5' long and it sparkles in black, which is another big kick for me, glitter, I just love it haha. The sign reads "Season of the Witch" in letters cut from different Halloween cardstock. Here I am holding my sign, in my custom handmade Witches had on my way to the Witches Ball, which was an awesome event, btw!

Sean and I also celebrated 10 years of being together on October 11th. We decided to celebrate the day doing one of our favorite past times, exploring the pines. Sean wrote this in the dirt on his car while I was out catching pics, it says "I Heart Abbie 10/11/99 10 years together!" He's such a sweety. I caught some pics, on my sweet new camera (thank you MIL & Sean!), of some of the fall foliage of the pines. Check out a few of my fav's, I think you should be able to click for a bigger view...

Big Steps!

I applied to a website that is going to help me wholesale my art across the country. It's not an easy site to get into, and not cheap but I think it' s going to take my business to a new level. The site is wholesalecrafts.com, you can't see much w/o a membership but it is a really awesome website.

Because I am a new seller, I am being featured on the home page all week! I hope it leads to a sale! Here's a screen cap... you can see my art block down there! This is the artblock that is being featured on teh front page!

Apple Juice

In the eyes of Neil, my 3 year old, every drinkable liquid is apple juice, or, as he says "apbull jews"

This AM I was doing a few chores around the house and I have the ultimate lazy method of filling the dogs dish. It's directly behind the sink on the kitchen island, so, I can spin the faucet around, put it on a slow stream and it fills the bowl up. It's a bonus because usually Fiona, our dog, loves to drink the stream of water so she usually comes and drinks as it's filling.

Being the ultimate multi-tasker, I was also swiffering the other end of the kitchen where Fiona had made a mess (gotta love little dogs). So I finish up, get her some dog food and I called her "Fionnnnaaaaa" and Neil, who is always only 2 steps behind me yells "Nona.... apbull jews!". He was calling her to come get her apple juice haha.

I thought it was too funny that he thinks that not only is whatever I'm drinking "apple juice" but - apparently the dog drinks it as well. Just a little glimpse of perspective that reminds me how little he really is, and how adorable that is!


P.S. I finally cut his hair yesterday! He can see again! See the Before & After shot of the little guy!

Memories of My Life

My friend Kecia, from Lemoncholy's Studio here in NJ made me an amazing bracelet. I had helped her w/ some techie stuff, getting her website setup, etc and she had said she would make me a piece of jewelry for my help, which, of course was not necessary but, saying no to a beautiful piece of her work is nearly impossible! So, a few months went by and she asked for pics, etc, and I felt badly about asking for something, so I hemmed and hawed over pics to use, couldn't find the right one, one that was "perfect" haha.

So, in July @ an art show, Om Baby - Kecia stopped by to say hello and she had this awesome bracelet on, I fell in love! So, she created one special for me. It's called "Souvenirs de ma Vie" (Memories of my life). She asked me for a few words that I wanted on the bracelet, I chose Neil, Sean, Peace, Pray, Create (I think I chose Create? I can't remember hah!) And I gave her a few little things I'd had laying around in the jewelry box - broken pieces of jewelry, little doo-dads, etc that she encorporated into it. She created an amazing bracelet from these items. I had a sneak preview of it about a week before it was finished, and was in love as it was but she took it 10,000x better than I could have imagined!

I can't wait to wear it! If you are interested, she does these bracelets as a custom order as well! You can pick a few words, Send a few things you would want included and let her at it! The way to get the best work out of Kecia is to let her run wild with it rather than asking for specifics - so that is my suggestion - I have been a happy customer that way before!

You can contact Kecia @ keeshagirl@aol.com - or - here's her blog!
or check out her blog post here for more info about ordering! These bracelets take 3-5 weeks so order early for Christmas. Wouldn't this be a fab idea for a mom/grandmom? You could have the kid's names on the charms! Or, a bracelet for your wife - use your wedding date or the date you met, the city you honeymooned/married in, a nickname - you could really score brownie points with something like that!

Paper Source

My little sister, Neil & I decided to take a little trip into Princeton today. We stopped by Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and said hi to Sean, he was working today and we got the "10cent tour" then we headed over to downtown Princeton for some shopping.

I was dying to check out the new Paper Source store, I always drool over their website/catalog, so their store was like the holy grail! I bought some goodies, would have bought more if it wasn't raining so hard - I was worried about the paper getting ruined on the way home.

One of my favorite things I got was these stickers called INANIMATE they're all eye balls and mouths - and you put them on inanimate objects to bring them to life hehehe. I have them on my cell phone, my sketch pad, my car stereo..... and probably more as I find more hehehe. I love them!

I am dying to go back. This time, I will check the weather so I don't have a 5 block walk in torrential downpour/flash flood to the car, and, I will bring lots of quarters to feed the meter!