rar!

My little sister is in New York right now! That's where she snapped the awesome photo you see above. I'm so jealous. But hey, even though I'm not there, I can shop like I am! So here are some picks I found using Etsy's shop local tool.

This purse from pesky cat designs is so cute! And the color is gorgeous.

Squee! The cuteness of this little owl family from ManiMina is too too!

I feel like maybe I've shared this fern leaf bangle from EmilyEJewelry before, but I can't help it, I think it's great.

This sweet sweater from theAnecdotes looks so warm and cuddly...I wish they had it in an adult size!

I'm loving the warm colors in Gwen Meyerson's work.

mel

Summer = Presents for You

First, I have to share the present I bought for myself.

I bought it in the Modish shop's big closing sale and it arrived in the mail yesterday! Isn't it cute! I can't wait to wear it, I almost did today but I don't really want to wear it to work. You can get one too, or loads of other really adorable brooches, at the allira.com shop.

Okay, on to the present for you! I decided, since today is the first day of July, and July is my birthday month and all and I will be getting loads of beautiful sandals and other nice presents, it's only fair that I should give a gift to someone else. So, I am having my first blog giveaway. One of you lovely commenters on this post will receive your choice of one of my spirograph notebooks, like this one:

That's right, dudes, you get to choose! So, just leave a comment on this post, say something nice, and at the end of this patriotic week, I will randomly choose a winner!

Good luck!

mel

Occurrences of Note

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I have put a few new items up in my shop, including my very first original drawing! Well, the first one to be sold in my shop I mean. Not the first original drawing I've ever done. Anyhow. Yay!
Also, I am really really excited that this weekend I am getting my very own little desk! I can't wait to set up my new workspace. I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as possible (if it isn't a total disaster). I'm so excited! Also.....I love dinosaurs. Ok, thanks for tuning in for these updates.
mel

Fuzzy Notebooks

Friday night I ended up home all alone, which is the perfect set up for one of two things to happen; either I order takeout, burrow into the couch and watch degrassi and eat donuts all night, or I am super-productive superwoman. Luckily, this time the latter situation was the winner, and I tucked into a feast of bookmaking. I'd bought a bunch of felt rectangles a couple years ago with grand ideas to make a stuffed book about dinosaurs, but that never came to fruition, so I've been trying to come up with ways I can use all of it, and I came up with the idea of using them for notebook covers. I am pretty happy with my first attempts, so happy in fact, that they ended up in my etsy shop! Here are some pictures

Aren't they cute? I used some buttons that I had leftover from another project (knit ipod covers for my sisters a couple Christmases ago) because I know how to sew buttons. You should be able to see in the pictures that the stitches are far from even; I did all the sewing by hand and I don't sew, that's why it looks like that. I like it though, I think it works with the materials to give it a kind of "I made this in my kindergarten craft corner" look. Which is kind of what I was going for. I wish I could have used some of that gigantic yarn they always have in kindergarten classes. Remember that stuff? You probably have to buy it from teacher supply stores. I should get some, it would be fun to make necklaces with. Anyway, I'm rambling again. Right, the books are in the shop, check 'em out when you get a chance. A bunch more books will be popping up in there in the next few days, along with the drawings that I shared in the last post (plus more drawings that haven't been seen yet). Very exciting! I'm also hoping to have some more etsy artist interviews soon, there are a couple shops that I've been crushing on hard, I just need to get around to contacting the folks behind them, so look for those within the next couple weeks.

Oh, and I just realized that I haven't talked about my mom's shop on here yet! My mom is a real hand at the knitting needles and the crochet hook. She's been selling her gorgeous scarves at the elementary school she works at for a while now and I finally convinced her to get on etsy, and now she is! Check out some of the pictures (taken by me, featuring my mom and my sisters)

Totes cute, right?!? If you need a scarf, this is the place for you to go, I promise. The shop name is JillRoska and she has 11 scarves up in the shop now, including the ones pictured here, but she is a crazy prolific knitter, and I know she has baskets and baskets full of yarn just waiting to be made into something perfect for you. She does custom orders too! Seriously, you need to peep it right now!

mel

the internet hates me

i was listening to my pandora internet radio again today and lately i have been really into merle haggard. it's been i guess over the last couple of months. there is this one hag song that comes on sometimes called I'm Always On a Mountain When I Fall, and oftentimes i will skip it without even letting it start because i can't remember what it is and, by the title alone, it sounds super lame. but today i let it play and it is awesome. so that set me wondering, why did i think this song sucked? what is it about the title that is so offputting? all i could think of was maybe it sounds a little like a gospel song. i am not averse to gospel music, i don't go out of my way to listen to it but i like it well enough, but i usually am especially apathetic when it is done by white people.

i have lately become addicted to this blog, ReadySteadyGo. i feel a kinship to the writer because she is my age and we seem to have very similar opinions on most things, except that she is mildly in love with bill buford and i hate him with all my being. she seems to be much more successful than i am in that her blog is nicer looking and i assume more popular and she has a job that sounds awesome that she loves. and she lives in new york city, which i kind of think of as the big sister of san francisco, in that san francisco is always trying on it's make up and stealing it's coolest shoes and wants to be JUST LIKE HER when it grows up.
in other news today i registered for the jeopardy online test. it is january 31st. it is my life goal to be on jeopardy. i need to be on jeopardy. i am so nervous just thinking about this test though. and i feel i have a right to be, it could be the impetus to the most important event of my entire life. and i think i will totally rock it out. i hope. this is helping me. and it is fun and totally addicting.
oh and i am sososososososo in love with this:

it comes in black and gold and white too, but i think i love orange the best. i wish someone would buy it for me, but it is 96pounds. a lot of money. sigh. it reminds me of a time when i told steve that he smells like dinosaurs.

mel

i'm a Cutter

Well, the digital camera is still broken in that it will not take pictures, but not broken in that I was able to upload all the pictures that were on it! I was so relieved. I was already thinking about getting a new digital camera, and now I guess my mind has been made up for me. All suggestions are welcome, since I have little to no experience or know how. Let me know what has worked for you.

I went to IKEA today (I don't know why exactly I'm writing IKEA in all caps), and I got the cute little red cart drawer thingee, and I also got this which is really cool (and cheap!), you buy little bins to put in it (it holds 12), I think it will be perfect for storing paints and brushes and other supplies. Now though I'm tired from driving around in the East Bay heat (Steve's car doesn't have air conditioning) so I am blogging instead of putting my new stuff together. Organization may have to wait 'til next weekend.


Anyway, like I said last night, I was crafting all night long, so I wanted to share some pictures of that with you. Here is one notebook I made:

Note the clutter. I really like how this book turned out, I used all the same lined paper, it's about 100 pages. The paper is really thin, I was writing on it last night and it's really nice, especially for pencil. It's really smooth.

Also last night I tried out my Crayola Cutter that I got for my birthday. As soon as I saw the Cutter I knew I had to have one, my craft knife skills are so mentally challenged. With this you use it like a pen or pencil, it feels very natural. Here is a picture of me working on a cute little tag I made, and a picture of the completed tag:

The picture doesn't really do justice to how cute it is. Finally, I made another book as well, I don't have any pictures of the final product because it was completed after the camera was broken, but here is a picture of it in process:


There were a couple neat things about this notebook, one was that I used my corner rounder on it, which I've had for ever but hadn't tried until last night. At first I was having some trouble with it, but I got the hang of it after a while and it really made for a neat look. Secondly I used this vintage Laura Ashley wall paper as the binding (the pattern is the first picture at the beginning of this post). I am really excited about that wallpaper because I saw it at SCRAP (more about SCRAP later) a week or two ago and wanted to get it but I already had soooo much stuff that I passed, but I when I went yesterday and it was still there I had to snatch it up. It was only four dollars for the whole roll! I can't wait to use it more, it's so pretty.
The last thing from last night, I tried making a felt magnet because I had a bunch of felt and a bunch of magnets, so ... why not?



I'm not sure how I feel about it...it's kind of nice, but I'm not in love with it. I'm not really that into flowers, but I wanted to do something quick and easy while I was still experimenting. Maybe dinosaurs would be better...

Well, I feel pretty refreshed now so I think I'm going to go work on putting my IKEA stuff together. I have to hurry though because I'm seeing Superbad tonight! I am so excited. Oh, speaking of Michael Cera, if you haven't already seen this, seriously, you have to. It is genius.
mel