A Couple of Nice Surprises

There are a few blogs that I read regularly. Quite a few, actually. I read quickly (one of my friends says I do everything at warp speed), so I don't really mind that my list of blogs to read is growing. One of my favorite blogs is one that doesn't even have words: The Art Zoo. It hasn't been around for all that long, but it's a nice bit of eye candy. Every day there's a featured item from an Etsy shop. So today I popped over there to see what was featured, and look what it was!

Yep, that's the newest version of my Damask beadwoven cuff featured there. It's kind of nice, too, that they didn't just pull the first picture from the listing, but instead chose one that shows off the bracelet next to the scrapbooking paper I carefully chose as the background.

Another blog I read is The Copper Cauldron. Casandra frequently posts pictures of goodies she finds while internet surfing, and it's fun to see what she finds. Early in February, I saw a post called The 2 Dollar Grab Bag. Wouldn't you want to read a post to see what you're going to get for just $2? Well, I can tell you that it was a WONDERFUL bargain!!! Casandra was selling more than ONE POUND of her handmade soaps for just $2 plus the cost of shipping. So for the ridiculously low price of $6.80, I received some delicious smelling soaps. For some reason I expected that I was going to wind up with little bits and pieces of soap, but these are all HUGE pieces. They're soooooo nice. I'm going to have to keep an eye on her Etsy shop to see if she offers these up again. (Right now Casandra's away, and her Etsy shop is in vacation mode; but you can click a little button to be notified of her return.)

If you're a regular reader of my blog (thanks!), you may have read my earlier post about my receiving a $10 gift certificate from Flawful Fibers. Well, I couldn't stand it any longer. Julie had listed a few new things on the site, and I just couldn't resist! I spent my $10 and then some and received the most luscious handspun yarn and roving!!! I'm not a spinner. Not really much of a knitter (although I'm in the middle of a knitting project right now). But I love yarn and fiber. I wound up choosing a beautiful roving, similar to this one:
and a handspun yarn similar to this:

Mine are slightly different than the ones pictured here, and they're both too beautiful for words. I'd never seen roving with bamboo in it, and the texture is just not to be believed. Now it makes me want to learn to spin. But then I'd need a spindle... or a wheel... Oh no! I feel another hobby coming on! Ack.

Lest you think all I've been doing is reading blogs and buying things, here are two of the newest listings in my Etsy shop. I made Obama Christmas and Valentine cards, and since I always include a little extra something as thanks to my customers, I made up some smaller notecards with Mr. Obama's image and an empty caption bubble to send along with the larger greeting cards. I decided to list a set of these in my Etsy shop. I tried to think of a clever acronym for them, but I settled on being alliterative - these are the Presidential Prelection mini notecards.


I even created little handmade envelopes for the cards, featuring one of Barack's speeches printed in red and blue. Cool, eh? :-)

The other recent listing in my Etsy shop is a beadwoven bracelet. This one features my patchwork design, all done in shades of green and blue. In all, there are 20 different beads used in this! Every time I do one of these patchwork bracelets, I'm soooooooo careful not to spill the beads. Since my "bead board" is an old cutting board with a piece of beading cloth (some fuzzy stuff that holds the beads still but doesn't get caught by the needle as I pick them up), there's always the risk that I'll tip it, or knock the edge of it, or something disastrous - and the beads will go flying all over the place.


With any luck, I'll soon be posting pictures of my newest beadwoven creation... I had a brainstorm just today on how I want to use these lovely Carnival Beads, made by Dee of Malodora. You might think they're beautiful here in this photo, but I can tell you that they're about a hundred times more beautiful in person.

But you're just going to have to wait to see what I make...
:-)