Setting up an Etsy store

20 Feb

So I’ve started to setup my Etsy store.  Some of you out there are probably wondering right now “What is etsy?”.  Well Etsy.com is a play you can sell handmade goods, such as jewelry, clothes, soaps, and other handmade goodies.  I really love the community and it will allow me to make a website without the worry of how to accept payments.

In my Etsy store I’m hoping to sell handmade jewelry, crochet or knit accessories.  Eventually I’ll also make items such as purses but I don’t want to go overboard and burn myself out before I even begin lol.

I will have one thing that is consistent among all of my Etsy products, they will be at least 80% recycled materials.  What I mean by that is that each item will be made from items I “rescued” from thrift stores and other shops that sell gently used items. So if you order a hat from my Etsy store it was probably made from an old sweater or maybe a skein of yarn someone was going to toss.  Same with my jewelry and other accessories I’m working on.

Here is one of my Etsy products I’ll be selling.  This necklace was made from old hematite necklaces I was given after my grandfather passed away.

When my grandfather was still with us he would make beaded jewelry to sell at fairs.  From time to time he would also get wholesale necklaces to add a little more variety for the buyers.  After he passed away my family gave me most of the craft items and wholesale necklaces.  Originally I was going to try to sell the wholesale items through ebay or craigslist, but it just didn’t sit well with me. Seemed like I was giving up on what he had started off t0 do. I think it was about a year later that I realized I should make the wholesale necklaces into one of a kind jewelry.

It’s kinda therapeutic to take apart something that makes you sad to look at and make it into something brand new.  I really hope my Etsy store works out. It would make me feel like I’m continuing what my grandfather started.

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Pencil Skirt Made from Pants

1 Feb

Hope everyone has enjoyed their holidays through this winter season.  Mine has been pretty good, I was able to do more crafting than I did last year.  I gifted myself this year with a new sewing machine and am very happy to have done so.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my 40 year old Kenmore sewing machine, but the years of neglect it went through before my parents rescued it from a yard sale took their toll on it.

I feel very lucky to have had that as my first sewing machine.  It gave me a better understanding of a sewing machines workings then I would of had if I had a brand new sewing machine right away.  Which is why I’ve handed it down to my sister in hopes she’ll be able to use it and love sewing as much as I do.

The first project I did with my new machine was to take an old pair of office pants and turn them into a pencil skirt.  I think it turned out pretty well.

New skirt from pants

I opened up the inseam of the pants and sewed them together, then hemmed it.  Not the most intense project but the sewing took less than 30 minutes which would have taken over an hour on my old machine.

edit: Check out my new post How to Make a Pencil Skirt from Pants for instructions on making this pencil skirt.

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Yoda Ears and Mohawk Hat

6 Jul

Awhile ago I crocheted/loom knitted a couple random things.  First I made Yoda ears for a girl at the office.

Yoda Ears

It was a very simple design just a headband with two triangles on both sides. It’s not the best work I’ve ever done but it made me happy to be crocheting again.  At the time I hadn’t crocheted in months because of so much chaos going on in my life.  I never realized what a stress reliever it is to crochet.

Next I made a mohawk hat or Mr T. hat as some people call them.  The hat was made on a knitting loom then I just cut the yarn into 3 inch pieces and looped them onto the stitches.

Mohawk SideviewMohawk Frontview

If anyone knows of an easier way of making the mohawk let me know.  I have to make a unicorn hat next and I’m dreading making the mane lol

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Thanksgiving Goodies

5 Jun

For Thanksgiving and Christmas I am normally put in change of making a good portion of the desserts when it’s held at my parents house. This year for Thanksgiving was different, I made 4 different desserts; 2 pumpkin pies (1 graham cracker crust, 1 oil pie crust), 2 chocolate pudding (1 graham cracker crust, 1 oil pie crust), 1 pumpkin cheesecake and 1 chocolate pumpkin cheesecake. Also my brother’s fiancee brought this awesome apple pie.

Thankfully, I didn’t try to leave any of the cooking till the last minute this year and made all the desserts the day before because at about 11am my parents electricity went out. In fact most of their neighborhood was out. We ended up rushing the food to my apartment to finish the cooking process. Getting the food there wasn’t an issue, I live under 5 minutes from my parents home, just the lack of space I have in my tiny kitchen.

In the end everything turned out well, the 15+ family members sat around in candle light telling stories from their childhoods and fond memories of past holidays till the power came back on around 5:30pm. Had an enjoyable meal and left with plenty of left overs.

Anyways the recipes Continue reading →

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Angel Halloween Costume with Tutu

1 Jan

Working on catching up on posts I saved from the holidays. Hopefully in the next few days I’ll be posting about the different cookies and treats I made but first I’ll start with what I did for Halloween.

For Halloween my sister asked me to make her an angel Halloween costume for a party she was going to. We ended up finding a white dress at Goodwill. It had the right silhouette for what she had in mind and was a little a couple sizes too big so we had plenty of fabric to work with too.

Jerrica's CostumeSorry this is the only picture I have of her in the tutu :(

Originally I was going to make a petticoat to go under the dress to make it more poofy but my sewing machine is old and it doesn’t like a lot of fabrics(including tulle). :( So I searched around and found a no sew video for a girls tutu on YouTube. I linked to the video below.

My sister ended up feeling the girls tutu was the best part, so the dress became more of a body suit that went under the dress. It was shorten and an elastic band was added to the bottom, also I added a fake corset to the back to make it a bit more form fitting.

The tutu had to be the easiest part of the whole costume. Since then I’ve even made two smaller ones for my little cousins.

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Pet Bed

17 Aug

Our “kitten” Hobbes has started to chew on fabric at night when he is locked up in the bathroom. So far he has destroyed 1 pillow, 2 blankets, a bathmat and a towel. We know he’s doing it mainly because he’s cranky about being locked up, but since he runs around at night which causes our neighbor to get cranky we needed to come up with something he could sleep on but not chew on. LT and I decided a pillow that was made out of a tougher material and rounded might hopefully keep Hobbes from eating it.

I had some canvas material laying around for making grocery bags so I decided to try using that. So far he’s had the pillow around a month and has bit it once but never chewed up it. Our other cat Doomy ended up getting jealous of Hobbes’s new bed so I made him one a couple weeks after that.

Since the first one was so successful with the cats I decided to take a few pictures of how I made it.

cat-pillow-1
Here’s Doomy helping me with the pattern. I made a circle out of cardboard with a 22 inch diameter then I traced it onto the fabric I had folded over so I could cut out two circles.

cat-pillow-2
After I cut out the two circles I measure a long rectangle for the center, I made it 8 inches wide and about 70 inches long. At the time I didn’t measure the length I just kinda made a circle with the fabric around my cut out circles to guess the length needed.

cat-pillow-3
After it was all cut out I just sewed the circles onto the edges of the rectangle and added stuffing. Here is Doomy modeling his new pillow.

Both pet beds turned out really well. I’ll probably make more pillows shaped like this for the couch next.

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A New Start

13 Aug

Originally I was going to just start updating my Livejournal account again but I just don’t feel like going forward with that blog anymore.  It had a good run but I just want something different for a different phase of my life. I plan to keep it open to continue to keep track of the happenings of my online friends I just won’t be posting in it other then maybe to link to a new post here.

I haven’t been crafting as much as I’d like to, I have also been letting this site sit and collect dust for way to long.  I love working on sites and learning about new things in the web design/development field so I decided to remove the old project I had up and put up a blog to encourage me to start crafting, working the sites and just keeping me motivated all around.  I think it should work out pretty well.  I’ll just have to watch that I avoid going into hiding like I did in Livejournal.  All is well over here with me, LT, our cats(Hobbes & Doomy) and Filburt the tortoise. We are working on moving to a new apartment soon, we don’t have one lined up yet but we still have a month and a half.  My job that we moved here for is still awesome and I hope it continues to be :)

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