One Year Anniversary Sale on Etsy!!

December 12 is my one year anniversary on Etsy! It's been a great year, Etsy couldn't be a better site for artists and craftspeople to sell their creations!

I'm marking my quilts down by 20% in the shop until December 22! Yay!

Open Studio & Holiday Sale at Cottage Street Studios

It's the best time of year! It's the busiest time of year. Not only was the Annual Celebration of the Arts Party & Open House on December 4th, but December 5, 6 & 7th mark the 21st anniversary Cottage Street Studios Open Studio & Holiday Sale! It's a busy weekend for me and I'm camped out in the studio for its entirety! Please come by and visit if you are in the area. It's completely worth it if you are into art and handmade fine crafts, etc. Check out the Cottage Street Studios website for directions and a list of the over 30 artisans who have their doors open this weekend.

My studio is #418 on the fourth floor just outside of the passenger elevator. Today was great (Friday, December 5), and I really wanted to count visitors to my studio but just couldn't keep count after a while. I'd say at least 80 people came through in the five hours that we were open today. Tomorrow should be even better given a lot of people were at their jobs today. I ended up selling a lot of my Etsy inventory, and now that I have internet access right in my studio, I was able to inactivate the sold things as they went out the door. Fantastic. I'll be sewing like a mad woman next week to make up for the slack!

See you soon!

Tis the Season.

I've been busy in the sweatshop getting ready for Cyber Monday, if there is such a thing. I'm hoping there is because look at these sweet place mats I'm going to post. You can't buy this kind of color combination at Target, my friends. And that's the whole point of buying handmade, is it not? To get something unique, interesting, and maybe in a way, precious.

This year my family has decided to have an All-Handmade-Christmas. Everyone is baking, sewing, crafting, knitting, and other things, like making certificates to change each other's oil and such. How cool is that?! I'm more excited about this holiday season than I've been in a long time because I just can't imagine what my family might make for me. I've got my list ready and am busy sewing and sawing away to make my gifts.

Next weekend (December 5-7th) is the Holiday Open Studios and Sale at Cottage Street Studios where I have my studio. I've been there painting like a mad woman getting ready for that as well. Don't plan on seeing me until December 8th when I can re-surface and have a social life again. Best of luck to all of my crafting friends and fine arts friends during this holiday season.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I'd love to give credit for this photo, but don't know where it came from. If anyone knows let me know!

Fantastic Etsy Seller - Cocoabeans!

Check out these cool scrubbies that I purchased from Diana at Cocoabeans! I got them yesterday and they were wrapped up, sweet as can be, with little gifty things and strings! I love them. I haven't used them yet, but I really dig the idea of not throwing them away, like the kitchen sponge. Simply throw in the washer and you've got a fresh scrubbie to use. This is great! Visit her shop, where her prices are outstanding.........she must be up all night, just like me, making her items! Go see her now!

Whoa, all praise the technology!!

This may not look like much to most viewers, but this, my friends, is my new Bernina Walking Foot. Exciting to me on so many different levels, it is unimaginable. Not to mention that I could have bought an entire sewing machine for the price of this foot. I love it though, it was worth it!

Inspiration

I've been thinking about inspiration a lot lately. It definitely comes in many forms, some far more motivating than others. A group of us climbed up Mt. Tom last night. It was a race for the top in order to see a simultaneous sunset and moonrise. Three dogs and seven people rushed from the parking area on Chapin Street to the Hawk Migration Observatory Tower on Mt. Tom in the Goat's peak area. It was fantastic, and worth all the hyperventilating to get up there in time to see it.

This photo does not do the moon justice! It was so huge and beautiful. And while the beers were being passed around, fireworks erupted in the distance, which we speculated must be from the Wilbraham Peach Festival going on over this weekend. On the way down (after dark, mind you), we were treated to a bat show and some other scary moments when the two black dogs with us would rush around in the surrounding dark forest and then jump out at us into our flashlight beams! It was pretty Blair Witch, but cool all the same.