Christmas in July

Many Etsians are preparing to launch an unofficial site-wide Christmas in July event. It's time to take that Handmade Pledge once again, and start stuffing those stockings early!
Itsy Bitsy Industries will be offering 50% off the entire shop for the month of July...Merry Christmas! Follow me...
Please be sure to check out my good friend Anniepoo's shop, Annie's Powder Room, too. She's a swell gal who makes the yummiest, most adorable soap you've ever seen (Little birds! Peas in a pod!) You'll find everything 30% off July 5th through the end of the month when you mention Christmas in July. Enjoy!
Are you hosting a Christmas in July? Visit the thread here and post away!

Dresses and Camera Cozies!

Here are two of my latest adventures in the studio. The dressform is just a mock-up. I've discovered that the white fabric at the skirt is entirely too shear to wear, and I'm to lazy to make a liner, so I'll have to come up with something else! The camera case was made for my good friend Charley's new Nikon...which I am so jealous of! He is letting me use it to reshoot half of my shop, though.

Things are turning around

I just got featured twice, and joined the Etsy Beagle team, made bank at the Big Art Show, had three sales in three days, and then I got a potential retail offer at a local shop. Sweet! You can find me on the Etsy Love blog and the oh-so-adorable Cupcake Bath Shoppe site. So exciting! Thanks to all for the features and success. Itsy Bitsy is going places!

Etsy is on the air!

Wow, today I got on the forums bright and early (6:30...and I wasn't even up for the baby!), and saw this thread....etsy commercial. What?! So I get my tail over to YouTube, and see this.

So exciting! I once pined for the chance to make it to the front page, but how I wish I were one of the thumbnails in that sweet Time Machine clip

BIG ART SHOW No. 3!

I'm going to be at the third ever Big Art Show in Baltimore! It's the biggest one in Big Art Show history...three stories of art at the Load of Fun Warehouse....24-HOUR ART PARTY! Whoa! Luckily, we have an excellent family babysitter. Wish me luck! If you're in the area, please do come out. This show is going to be huge. Bands, music, art, and all the MICA students you care to shake a stick at.

Adorn is gone!

I was just alerted by a myspace buddy that Adorn has folded!

Well, it's more like she asked me (one of those random buds that you aren't too entirely sure if you actually know them or if they are just a myspace contact...so it was strange getting a random question like that). Anyway, it appears that their site is gone, their doors are closed, and there will be no more Adorn. So sad!

Sharing resources...linkage!

I've now instituted a section of handy links. See "Linkage." There's Besty, We Love Etsy, the fee calculator, and Buried Treasury. There's also EtsyBitch if you're looking for entertainment or to gripe, as well as What the Craft, Craftster, and Indiepublic if you're looking for tuts or socializing. Enjoy!
PS - If anybody has any links I should be posting here, feel free to ge in touch, and I'll add right away. Thanks!

Featured Shop!

My latest favorite shop is Maked. Not the the verb/adjective so much as rhymes with naked, their tagline: "Where we expose our handmade crafts." Sweet! Maked is Lisa, Kalin, Rhiannon, and Megan (don't they all have some wicked names??) It all started when Kalin was organizing Vancouver local get-togethers for the folks on craftster, and the four of them were the steadfast regulars. They took their love of craft and developing techniques, started doing shows, and grew into the Maked we all know and love today.
For future plans, I think Lisa said it best: "Future plans fall just shy of world domination. Actually - we just love to craft. We love to get together and get excited about someone's idea and go to town with it. And then sell the result so we can buy supplies to go to town on another project. We've got so many ideas brewing our biggest problem is figuring out what to do next and stopping ourselves from trying to do it all at once. We'd like to get a regular income from our etsy shop so the pressure is off the craft fairs a bit, other than that the goal is to have fun and CRAFT!"
The four are contemplating digging their toes into some animal rescue organizations. They create beautiful, elaborate custom sock monkey creatures (and all kinds of goodies!), and were thinking of donating a portion of proceeds to a worthy monkey-rescue group. Research is in the works!
The Vancouver scene for fairs and shows seems pretty sleepy this season, but plans are brewing for the holiday season already. You can find dates on their website and blog. Among shop favorites...Kalin likes the vintage flower button ring, Megan likes the novel notebooks, and Lisa likes the Delica necklace. Rhiannon was out of town, so we have no idea what her fave is! Short of listing 57 other shops, their favorite Etsy shop is Colleen Baran's. They met when they were next to each other at a craft show, and her work is to die for.
Maked is a wonderful shop with alot of variety. Keep an eye on them, guys!

Baby pictures!

Clickable for bigger versions!

Living with boys

Today I made the mistake of not looking before sitting in the bathroom. My house is full of men: Matt the BabyDaddy, young Jonas, Brien the housemate, and Chester the un-castrated dog. Do I not have enough testosterone in my life? You'd think after all this time, I might learn to look before I plant my derriere, but as I sat on the toilet this afternoon, I felt my rear contact some rather *cold* and probably filthy porcelain, and almost fell through the toilet bowl. Ew! Maybe if there were another set of ovaries in the house, I might get the seat down some time, some day? I don't understand men: why do they make lids for toilets if you're supposed to leave the seat up? The world may never know...

Featured Shop

My latest Etsy shop find is Darlincrafts, a quilter's dream. Darlene learned to crochet from her mother when she was just 10 years old and picked up sewing from home ec (not her favorite, but she does it alot). She's an at-home mother of two grown sons in West Michigan, Sand Lake. An avid supporter of animal rescue for many years, she is devoted to her dog. When family needs stepped in the way, she had to take a break from working with animal rescue, but remains a constant help tothose around her. When her brother was diagnosed with follicullar lymphoma, she was there to help with a subling stem cell transplant, which has helped him to make a full recovery. Darlene's sister suffered an aneurism at age 42, and she was also there to help. She remains a lifelong supporter of cancer research and animal rescue. Her favorite saying is "don't breed if you can't rescue."

Darlene started Darlincrafts in March out of financial need, so she hasn't decided just where she would like to take her business in the future. Be sure to check out this shop, guys! She's a super-devoted. super-active lady and her stuff rocks!

Poop!

Yesterday I took young Jonas to my mother's house and was hanging out for the day while my good friend Charlie worked hard to replace the blown head in my car. Iwas going out front with the baby and leaned forward to strap him into the stroller while my mother talked to the neighbors in the next yard. I felt something large smack into my ponytail, and suffering a large phobia of bees, I instinctively (and stupidly) slapped it out of my hair. What fell on the stroller tray, rather than flying off to land in more hair, was a large, white, gelatinous glob of bird mess. Awesome.

RME

Revolution Money Exchange scares the pants off me. I did sign up, and had some trouble verifying my account because I've lived at my house for less than a year. I called customer service and they answered me very quickly the first time. The guy I spoke with was friendly and sharp. He told me to expecy an email from them by Monday (it was Friday evening), and that I could fax in some utility bills to confirm my address. The email never arrived, so I called back on Thursday, and waited for a long time. Someone finally answered. He was friendly, but not as sharp, and I stayed on hol while he brought up my account for an interminable hell of twelve minutes with the worst hold-music I have ever heard. Ever. He finally came back and told me to go ahead and fax everything even though I had not received the email, so I guess that is all straightened out. Overall, I'm going to give them a B+ for customer service, but a C for organization.

Some guy named Tripp has introduced himself on the Etsy forums as an ambassador of RME. He's getting bashed for opening a so-called "sock puppet" account in the name of promotion, but he is offering himself for questions in a thread on RME. I think it's noble that he's there, but I have no doubt that he was ultimately sent there by RME and that no matter what he does on the forums, he is definitely promoting good will for RME. Ah, well. His answers are vague or very pre-fabbed and seem drafted by a stadium full of lawyers, but I expected as much. My biggest beef is that he skirts the issue on the topic of information sharing.

When we sign up for an online service, we expect that online service to allow us to communicate with them via the internet. As a financial institution, they gather sensitive information such as your name, address, and social security number. What stinks is that they require to you to opt out of the haring of that information with third party affiliates (read: "marketers") by sending in a written statement with your name and social security number. Just long enough for them to sell that information for a buck. I don't mind all this deceptive information sales, but can't their guy be upfront about it? They don't harge any fees like Paypal, but they have to make their money somehow. I just wish they would find a better way to do it and give us an online opt-out.

I'm finally starting to arrange my free time around Etsy life and taking the business thing more seriously...but it's hard. Full-time mommy-ing and full-time student-ing and soon re-entering the workforce doesn't really help a budding entrepreneur. I don't want my shop to take away from my home life, which I barely have time for it seems, but I don't want to do a shoddy job with Itsy Bitsy. Humph....dunno what my point was exactly. Has anybody tried out Project Wonderful?

I'm thinking about jumping into the mob and bidding on ad space, as well as offering ad space on this blog, but I'm not sure. Does anybody have anything to say about them? I'm a busy lady. Should I be devoting my energy elsewhere?

Sweet!

Timothy Adams is always cooking up something for the Etsy community. The latest is Buried Treasury, and site which allows users to locate shops by pinointing with certain tags. It has had over 28,000 visitors since May 2 and is the newest hit among the handmade world. Shop owners can list their minis within five tags, and it's all free! Check it out.

Hey, look what I found!

5 oh!

So as I type, there are four squad cars, two sheriffs, a paddy wagon, and a few unmarked cruisers out front of my house. I was upstairs with Baby Daddy hanging a shelf in the nursery when we heard an enormous bang, and felt a huge thump throughout the house. Young Jonas was on the second floor, asleep in his swing, and we had snuck upstairs during this precious naptime to get some house maintenance done.
I looked out the window and saw a man in the alley crouched and holding a rifle, and immeditaely hit the deck. I told Matt to get down and said GET THE BABY and flew down the stairs as fast as I could, calling Brien,our new housemate, as I ran. Matt and I met Brien in the stairwell, and I snatched the baby from his swing, running downstairs to the kitchen andcrouching by the refrigerator with kiddo in my arms. Brien had heard it too, and had a chance to see the SWAT team outside. We all ran for the kitchen/basement, and then Brien says "take the baby and lie down in the tub." So, Matt and Jonas and I crowd into our tub (luckily, a huge jacuzzi-style) and lay low. Eventually Brien gives us the all-clear and we come out of hiding in the bathroom. Funny, because this whole thing goes down while I'm wearing this skirt that I made and a bra and flip-flops....our house is hot with no AC, so, you know, I like to hang shelves with my shirt off. Anyway, it had taken me a second the realize that the man in the alley was part of the SWAT team, not a psycho killer guy with a gun, and I had thought bullets were going to rip through our house any second.
It turns out that the renters two houses up who moved in last week were in hot water with the law. I don't exactly know what the story is, but good riddance. They were loud and obnoxious, and I don't want addicts hanging outside of the house while my kid sleeps.
We moved to Curtis Bay about seven months ago when Matt bought his first house in preperation for baby. I've lived in this area for most of my life, so it's not new to me, but this immeiate block has its...problems. Most of the people rent, and some of them are traffickers or addicts. It's only a mile or two from suburbia, but just inside the Baltimore city limits, enough to bring the bad ju-ju onto our front stoop. Rowhome life is crazy sometimes, but I think we did alright with our first real fire drill.

April Featured EtsyBlogger

It's a little late in coming, but I wanted to give dues to StormyDesigns, the featured EtsyBlogger extraordinaire! A proud member of the Polymer Clay Artists' Guild, StormyDesigns is also a very active member of the EtsyBlogger Team. She is a co-founder of the Blog Carnival and runs a wicked shop! Best of all, and this is awesome: FREE SHIPPING to the US and Canada. Be sure to check her out!

Pink and Blue

Lately, I've been thinking Spring, and I got this wonderful destash from Pink Owl Creations, so I'm making rings. They'll be in my shop just as soon as I finish catching up on this semester. Had the baby at the beginning of March, and I managed to miss a whole five weeks of class, but my professors have been pretty understanding. You know that scene in 'Juno' where she's walking down the hallway at school and all the high school kids part for her like the Red Sea, gawking at her belly. Anyway, being 24 on campus with a bunch of 18-year-olds...it was just like that. Now I'm all skinny again and finding the time between poopy diapers to make little cute things, and I'm seeing this other pregnant girl on campus. She's much younger than me, probably 17, and I know it must be miserable being that huge this time of year. I want to walk up to her and tell her it gets better. I'll be cranking out more of these little lovely things as soon as I get a better grasp on the origins of human cognition and post-Vietnam history....

I'm proud to announce my first ever featured artist is Deborah of The Gaudy Goddess. She is the industrious mastermind behind the concept of "the little diva in us all who wishes she could wear her tiara eveywhere." According to her profile and Etsy shop , she seems to be the epitomy of DIY, beginning as a young girl in her father's workshop with all the spare goodies she could get her crafty mitts on. Deborah has had her hands into a variety of creative pursuits, from candle making and jewlery, to paper arts, and even perfume mixing.

To top it off, she's a swell gal, as I personally know, since she hooked up a novice Etsian with a gorgeous shop banner without being asked at all! The Gaudy Goddess features the talents of a very creative lady, and I'm excited to see what she comes up with next.

Among my favorites were her Survivor series of pendants, her stacked vintage button rings (she takes this Etsy staple to a whole new level of cute), and her beautiful stationary and magnets. $3 from the sale of anything in the "I am a Survivor" line goes to Turning Point in Kansas City. It is a place where people with chronic illnesses can find resources, classes, counseling, and friendships to help them through their medical and emotional issues. Very cool. Be sure to visit her shop and her blog and keep tabs on this wonderful talent!

First things first

We're new! Itsy Bitsy is now blogging it big-time. Find me here:

http://www.itsybitsyindustries.etsy.com/

myspace.com/itsybitsyindustries

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1208892130

http://www.diyscene.com/forum/member.php?u=1003

http://www.whatthecraft.com/directory/dirbuysell.html#crafters

http://www.indiepublic.com/profile/ItsyBitsyIndustries

http://www.craftoodles.com/

itsybitsyindustries@yahoo.com

Yay!