Friday Favs- Etsy sellers

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElizeNazelie

Not only is Elize the coolest person ever, she's also super extra talented. I have gotten tattooed by her a bunch of times and have tons of her prints. She also just opened up her own tattoo shop, Brilliance Tattoo, in Boston, MA. If you're a fan of Japanese style and cute things, you'll most definitely want to check her out.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/EveryBearJewel

It's not easy finding jewelry that says "I like cats" without it also saying "I probably have 15 cats and my house smells like cat pee". I got the amethyst cat ring for Christmas and it is perfect. Every Bear has tons of adorable, simple styled jewelry that's actually affordable. 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TreehuggerHoops

I just started hula hooping a couple weeks ago. It's a great workout and tons of fun, but I'm going to be honest, I got into it mainly because hula hoops are so pretty and shiny. I ordered two hula hoops, one from Tree Hugger and one from a different seller. My Tree Hugger hoop is a gorgeous custom made hoop and arrived to me in less than a week. My other hoop is plain and took 3 weeks to get to me. I would definitely recommend Tree Hugger.

What I've been up to lately

I have done a little bit of crafting lately and I'm especially happy with my cat lady deluxe pouch. For the past week I've been really wanting to make quilted pouches with pieced designs like this and I finally sat down to do it last night. I originally wanted to do a heart, but kitties are way better. I also made some cupcake earrings that have taken me forever to list because I've been too busy wearing my own pair of them. Luckily I have another pair for sale here. 

 

I also have FREE SHIPPING for this weekend only (7/9-7/11) for the Sweet Deers and Retro Patchwork pouches. Free shipping WORLD WIDE! These pouches need a home.

Crazy for ric rac

Notice a theme? I've been using ric rac in all of my pouch projects lately. I made these two last night with the fabric I bought over the weekend. The elephants are a nice linen blend Japanese import, and the foxes are printed on organic cotton. A little pricey, but too adorable to pass up.
They are listed on my Etsy shop for $7 each right here.

Coming soon

I've been working hard to replenish the pouches in my shop and have a big shop update coming soon in the next few days. I already have my one pouch available here and will get the others listed soon. I tried to add appliques and rick rack to make them more interesting. I also have one coming that includes pink UNICORNS and GLITTER. You'll just have to stay tuned to see that one!

Sweater clips

Mushroom, deer, or Russian nesting dolls

My blog hosting site was out for at least two days so I haven't been able to post! I didn't realize how often I check on my blog or others until I couldn't access it. I  put the downtime to good use and went crazy making little sweater clips for my Etsy shop. I also have more supplies coming in (like cute woodland critter vintage cabochons) coming in for even MORE sweater clips. I have been trying to find good sweater clips for a while now, but I didn't want to spend a bunch of money for it. I've priced these at what I'd consider a very reasonable price. The pearl chained ones are my favorite. I handmade the 5" chain with real freshwater pearls and it adds an extra touch of class. My fingers are sore from working with all of that wire last night, but I think it was worth it.
Also, something has happened to my facebook page for this website. It has suddenly disappeared in the past week and I have no idea why. I'm going to try to remedy it through facebook, but it looks like I might have to start all over again :( I'm pretty bummed, since it took me a while to gather up all the people who "liked" it.

Etsy favorites

Just a few of my favorites on Etsy. You can find the links to all of these, plus a few other favorites right here. I've been scouring Etsy for good priced vintage dresses, but unfortunately most of them are too small for me. If anyone reading this is a size small, definitely check out the dress and the cardigan I have added to my favorites, they're just too good to pass up!

May the Fourth be with you.

Well, I am in the thick of finals week! Ironically, when I have the most school work to do, I have been the most productive with my sewing. It's my coping method for stress, just hop on the machine for a little bit and give my brain a rest. I finished up three new small (4"x6") zippered pouches today, which are now for sale in my Etsy store.

 

cat lady pouch

mushroom pouch

kitty cat pouch

I think the cat lady pouch is one of my favorite. I'll have to make one for myself. It even has hot pink and white heart lining to go with it! It's so cute. Well, I guess I should probably get back to studying now...

The sale is still going on until May 17th! The coupon code is "summer11" for 15% your total purchase.

Summer sale!!

I'm trying to clear out some items in order to make room for a bunch more that I will be making over the summer so from now until May 17th I'll be running a sale at my Etsy shop! Use the coupon code "summer11" when checking out to get 15% off your total purchase.

EVEN MORE, check out these two other items I've marked down to clear out. You can still use the coupon code to get an additional 15% off the sale price!

Pink woodland zippered pouch- WAS $10.50, NOW $7

Owl necklace- WAS $9.50, NOW $6.50

4/19

Well, the zinnia has started to bloom, and I'm a little disappointed it only has one layer of petals! You can see the little bits of fuchsia on the yellow petals that gives it the candy stripe name. Maybe more will come up later, or the next flower will be full size. The petals haven't opened up all of the way yet, so there might still be enough time for it to develop more. Either way, I'm still pretty proud of myself for growing this from seed.
I also made a polka dot bow for myself in red and white. The polka dots are actually little hearts! It's pretty cute. This is the same fabric I use to line my sock money and hedgehog zippered pouches. I keep meaning to make more of those zippered pouches, but for some reason I can't make myself sit down and focus long enough and end up making little hair bows like this instead. But I really like my bows, especially in the red and white. It's a little retro and a little Minnie Mouse but all sorts of cute. What do you think?

New products!

I have made two pairs of hair bows for sale on my etsy shop! I made these after being dissatisfied with the bow hair accessories I had bought at the store that would kind of look saggy whenever I clipped them into my hair. These bows are hand made by me, and are thick enough and have permanent glue so they stay straight when you clip them into your hair and don't sag off the hair clip and make your hair look sad and frumpy. I'm really quite pleased with them. Right now I only have the purple and blue polka dot ones, and the pink heart polka dot, but I have some other fabric lined up to make more if these get a good reception. I have them priced at $6.50 for a pair, which I think is just about what you'd pay at a large chain store for commercial made hair accessories. I think the first line of business once I make another sale will be to invest in a new stapler for my packaging.

My current one constantly jams and drives me insane. All of those discarded staples are from trying to staple up this ONE package! I go through this every time I package things up, I don't know why I haven't gone to get a new stapler yet!

New earrings available!

Panda earrings and bird earrings

I'm really excited about these new earrings. I may not make another set because a lot of fabric hacking has to go on in order to get the right piece of fabric for these, so when they're gone they might be gone forever.

available here

I've also updated the shop with a pouch made from the animal nesting doll fabric I mentioned in my post yesterday. I ended up selling two of the three pouches I listed yesterday, so I'll have to get working on making some more. Both of the giveaways are now finished and I am mailing out the prizes today. If you're a new follower as a result of a giveaway, then welcome! I'm real glad you're here. I have a few other offers for more giveaways, and  the last ones were so successful that I will definitely be doing more.

New pouches in the store

Hedgehog love, French poodles, and spring time pouch

Just a few new items added to my Etsy shop. I'll work tomorrow to update with some new bobby pins with deers, poodles, and hedgehogs, and maybe make some mini-wallets. Mini-wallets are great to keep business cards in, and I like to use mine to store gift cards so they won't crowd my wallet but I'll always have them in my purse. There's nothing worse than getting up to the register and realizing you left your gift card at home. I still have this amazing Japanese import animal Russian nesting doll fabric that I haven't made anything for the shop with. I made a large zipper pouch that I intended to sell, but I liked it so much that I ended up keeping it for myself and it's now my makeup pouch. It's as cute as it sounds.

Giveaway!

All you have to do is go right here and enter to win by leaving a comment!

That's right, another giveaway! This time it's hosted on Puppy Love Preschool. I'm proud to be sponsoring it with this mushroom and rickrack zippered coin pouch and a pair of my popular Russian nesting doll earrings.

I'm back!

Finally did some sewing for the first time in over a month! Remember my last post where I said my anatomy exam was "not bad at all"? Well when I went to check my grade online, it said that I had failed it! I was pretty devastated for the past two days, waiting for my professor's sheduled office hours to roll around so I could go talk to her about it. It turns out someone had inputted the wrong grade, and I actually got a B, NOT an F. (thank god!) I was so relieved. Part of me knew there had to be a mistake, and the other part felt like I was totally delusional thinking that test went fine and am actually a giant idiot. Well, I'm glad I'm not an idiot. I'm also glad that I got a little motivation to sew some stuff, because check out how cute this is.

More pictures here

I've had this fabric sitting around for a year. I bought it to go with a quilt I wanted to make for my bed. Obviously that never fully came together, because I have the attention span of a pea, but I think it makes an adorable coin pouch!

Is it "grey" or "gray"?

I always spell it grey, but spell check keeps telling me that's wrong. I refuse to believe it! Anyway, I now have my popular Russian nesting doll earrings available in GREY! (or gray, whatever) As well as the larger sized earrings with two dolls on them.

Available here

Available here. Also available as bobby pins.

I also have a giveaway coming up in a few days! I don't have the audience to host a giveaway on this site, so it will be on a separate blog. Stay tuned and I'll post a link. ;-)

I'm just a love machine

And I don't work for nobody but you.

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted! The weather has been crazy here in Texas. They canceled school on Friday because of the snow and I ended up going down to Houston for the weekend. Now that I'm back, I've been working on getting some stuff in my Etsy store in time for Valentine's Day. I posted two necklaces today and got my coin purse frames in today and am currently trying to figure out how they work. It is considerably more difficult to put together than I had anticipated, but I think the end result will be worth it. My pink hyacinth has started to bloom, too! It's the one that Artoo knocked down and chewed up, so I'm surprised it's not dead. I'm very excited about being able to smell it once it's all the way opened up.

brrr!!

I think just about everyone is having rotten weather this week. On Sunday it was 80 degrees here in Austin, but the past two days it's been in the 30s and so windy! I've been trying to keep toasty in my apartment, but being cooped up with Artoo Detoo has been driving me insane. He is R-O-T-T-E-N! I came home after walking 2 miles in the frigid weather and enduring 3 hours of lecture to see that he has knocked down my hyacinth and scattered soil all over my desk/floor. I was also packaging up some bobby pins today, but made the mistake of leaving the package out on the table while I went to get my camera. By the time I got back, it was gone! He stole it from my desk, brought it to his food bowl, and chewed it all up!

the surviving bobby pins, available here, here, and here

Stay warm, you guys!

What would you buy with $150?

Things you can do with $150

• eat 150 hot fudge sundaes 
• adopt 2 kittens
• buy 15 yards of designer fabric
• buy enough gas to drive ~1100 miles
• go to the movies 20 times

OR...

Buy ONE physics textbook that will only last you for one semester.

I wish I could say I bought 75 hot fudge sundaes and adopted a kitten with that money, instead.

available here and here, respectively

I put these two makeup pouches on sale for $13.75 in hopes of selling them soon to get money to buy things I actually care about (unlike physics), namely food.

I feel you, Art.

Watch his little paw rise up and stretch as he's yawning! Precious!

Wednesdays are terrible for me. So many classes, so much running around to get to them all. It's just exhausting! I'm ready to go take a little cat nap with Artoo, but I'm lucky that I have a lot of free time tomorrow to finish schoolwork and mail things out. They've finally started to sell seeds at the stores again, so I bought a little windowsill greenhouse and started a couple candy stripe zinnias to see how it goes.

So far so good!

It always makes me excited watching things grow, especially from seed. They're already starting to get a little too big for the greenhouse, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. It's still too cold to put them outside, and if I keep them inside without the cover I fear that little kitty will destroy them. I would like to get rid of my broken desk and eventually buy a simple bookshelf to keep plants on. My room gets such good light in the day, it's a shame not to take advantage of that with some houseplants. I haven't been sewing all that much, but I've been really happy with what I have been able to get done.

available here

It's definitely a little bit away from my normal super girlie with little critter type fabric, but I still really like it. It's Lizzy House fabric I found in a fat quarter bundle. I'm a huge fan of Lizzy House and I had seen this design ("pearl bracelet") on her blog, but I had never seen it available in stores or online, so I was very excited to scoop this up. Orange is my favorite color! The pearls are a very light grey, so I used a darker grey with a little bit of light blue and burnt orange on the inside, and a light grey zipper. I wish the zipper could have been a little lighter, but I think it serves as a nice middle tone between the light pearls and the darker lining and zipper end fabric.

Let's fly, let's fly away

new makeup pouch available here

Whenever I look at this fabric I always get Frank Sinatra stuck in my head. I had to listen to Come Fly With Me while taking these pictures today, and I just noticed that I opened my blinds into the living room so all of my neighbors could have seen me dancing to it, which looks something like Elaine from Seinfeld,  Snoopy, and Pee Wee Herman all combined. Oops.
I have another pouch like this all cut out and ready to be sewn up in cute Japanese fabric with little animals holding hands. I also have a few regular rectangular pouches finished, I just need to take pictures of them. I'm still trying to adjust to my school schedule. It's pretty crazy now that I've changed my classes all around, but I have Thursdays almost all clear, so I'm expecting to be able to do all of my shipping/sewing on that day to relax a bit. I'm happy I have sewing as a hobby because my head might just explode if I didn't have something to take my mind off school.