Dude! Craft

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Sometimes I find a art and craft bog that embodies all that I want to be in a blog. You know, great content, great writing and way cool shite scoured from all over the internet. It's rare that  I find such a super cool blog. But I have, and via Twitter no less. It was through twitter that I stumbled upon DudeCraft. Sure the name might scare some shy chicks out there, worried (esp coming from me) that it's all about greasy motors and industrial design. But I swear DudeCraft is all about really cool crafts, I've yet to see any greasy motors (I know I know I love my greaasy motors and I'm all female) and lots of really cool links. So head over to dudecraft it's got my stamp of approval and follow the site on twitter.

Random Thoughts by twinstargirl on flickr

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Random Thoughts
Originally uploaded by twinstargirl

I used to do this when I was in college. I was terrified my roommate would read my rambling adolescent drivel so I wrote first in green in one direction, Then in red in another, blue in another and finally in black. I'd end up with a terrifically cool but totally illegible page of my thoughts. ONce I got my own room I stopped doing it. I can't find that journal though, it's got to be boxed up in my Dad's barn somewhere. I've got to get some of my crap out of there.

I think it would be cool to do this in various colors of sharpie then go over it with gesso or white acrylic to see what would lift into the paint… Could be cool

Celebrate Freedom for Handmade

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Anyone who has a facebook and/ or a twitter account and/ or an etsy or artfire account, login and tweet or facebook one item not your own today. Find a cool new item or an old favorite and tell everyone.

Etsy's new facebook link is subtle, you need to heart an item to be able to facebook it from within the page. On Artfire all you need to do is click the tweet this link on the left hand side of the items page. Super easy either way. Show some love for your fellow etsy and artfire people.

Celebrate the freedom to make and buy Handmade items!

Tweet and Facebook the call to Celebrate the freedom for handmade!

Facebook Me

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I've set up a page on Facebook, you can find it here. I link to my new items and put up some pictures. All good stuff. I also have been experimenting with some online contests. Follow me on Facebook to find out more.

What I really want to write about today is Etsy's new Facebook feature in which when you heart an item a link pops up under the "heart this link" that says "facebook this item." Very, very cool.You have a chance at link an item for your friends to see, it could be a neat way of telling friends "hint hint I'd like this in large for my birthday" or it could just be a fantastic way of linking to an item so lots of people can see it.

I read on the forum (I know I know, I hate taht plce but can't resist  a link to it from twitter) that a lot of people were looking at this as spam for their facebook account. In a way I suppose if you abuse it, it is, BUT I look at it form a customer's perspective and not a seller's perspective, as in "How cool is it that I can link to all these awesome items?" Etsy should have rolled this out to  buyers and not so much sellers. It hink that etsy sellers are an easy sold to target. Let's face it the buyers spend less time on the site than we do, they might spend hours browsing the items but they aren't listing items and don't have the same involvement on a day to day basis that sellers do.

What I'm saying is this: wicked cool feature but not so much for sellers, email that stuff out to the buyers etsy and yo've got something cool on your hands. It would b nice if you set it up so we could send a link to Twitter in the same breath. I tweet way more than I facebook.*

SO if you are a buyer on etsy or even a seller, go on there and heart a few items today and put them up on your facebook for the world to see. Sellers get your friends to SIGN UP for etsy today and start linking to items!

*artfire has a tweet this item link on the left side of each items page, pops up with a micro url and some text already in it, I'd love it if they did a facebook link too. It's super easy to use.

Book blocks, glue and leather

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Whew. In addition to mowing the lawn* I managed to finish that fat stack of 7 hedgehog/ moleskin notebooks I've been sitting on for close to 2 weeks. The elastics and envelopes went in in no time and pressed for a few hours. In that time I glued 6 more blocks into leather covers.

I pulled the finished books out of the press, signed and dated them, stuffed business cards in the pockets and then shot pictures. Edited said pictures and then listed all the items to my artfire shop. It went smoothly and everything looks good.

Thursday I visited my friend in Swampscott and she had been hoarding some paper and advertising posters for me. I walked away with 20 or so posters and about 2 reams of paper. I'll be able to use the guillotine to chop them up into nice matchbook notebooks. The posters are already chopped to size and will be stored until the next time I make a big batch of jotters. I also got some plastic posters that I use for jigs. I set up a jig to make covers with some of the left over scraps as the spine with some great backer board as the cover. I picked up some 30×40 sheets of backer board at the Charette clearance sale in Woburn.So I'm going to try out some new books and stitches. Fun stuff planned.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Western Mass to help a friend set up an ArtFire and an Etsy shop. I"ll spend the afternoon testing out my skillz.

*no small feat considering that it's rained every weekend for the last 3 weeks and I've not been able to mow for that whole time. The grass was halfway to my knees and I"ve got an electric lawn mower… It wasn't pretty.