Thank You Mr. Love.

It’s the day of the big test…you have prepared for weeks. You have butterflies in your stomach but it’s okay because you are ready to go. You even have two nicely sharpened pencils sitting on your desk. You begin the test and …SNAP…your pencil point breaks. Not to worry you have a back-up. As you reach for it, it begins to roll off your desk and hits the floor point down..ugh another pencil broken. What shall you do? You could pull out your penknife and whittle the tip to a nice point, but alas, you can’t have a pen knife in school are you crazy! ANd what would you do with the shavings? Suddenly it dawns on you, raise your hand and ask to use the classroom pencil sharpener. Crisis averted. You can now get back to that test.

We’ve all been there, and until recently I never knew who to thank. On this day in 1897 the first mechanical pencil sharpener was invented by John Lee Love, an African American inventor from Fall River, MA. John Lee Love designed the "Love Sharpener." Love's invention was the very simple, portable pencil sharpener that many artists still use. The pencil is put into the opening of the sharpener and rotated by hand, and the shavings stay inside the sharpener. Love's sharpener was patented on November 23, 1897 (U.S. Patent # 594,114). Prior to that invention pencils had to be sharpened with the ever handy pen knife. Similar to the way carpenter pencils (you know those funny rectangular ones) still are.

I don't know about you but I love a nice sharp No.2 pencil. In fact I hate to write with one when it gets even the slightest worn down. I still sketch card ideas with a pencil and even write out my grocery list with one. I know that I personally am glad I don't need to pick up all those shavings as well.

Since we are a group that promotes the lost art of the personal greeting I thought we should take a moment and thank Mr. Love for his brilliant invention. If you are really curious about the timeline of the pencil sharpener you can find a complete history of the mechanical pencil sharpener at the Early Office Museum website. While you are waiting for that site to load, sharpen your pencils to take some notes and smile at how easy it is!



by: aplusastudio

Scarlett Design

by: Scarlett Design

Ryan McGurl is the owner of Scarlett Design, which features her artwork, photography, and stationery, and Scarlett Made, which features her hand knit and crocheted items.
She grew up in New England and attended both the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Boston University, for graphic design and art history. She began selling on Etsy two years ago, after moving to Virginia with her boyfriend dogs.
Mostly she is inspired by nature, love hiking and walking on the beach.


"Silent Night"




"Star Light"


The sale: Free shipping on most items, excluding single cards, to the US and Canada. Starting 11/11- 11/15, enter code ETSY GREETINGS in "Message from Buyer" and I will send you an updated invoice.

Texture Technique

by: HappyElephantDesigns

I wanted to share with you a technique I like to use sometimes that is quick and easy, and that anyone can do. It's a great way to add texture to your cards or any project. Here is what I used:



A punch (any kind, I used 1 3/4 circle punch)
Files (I used a 3M file for the bigger circles and a small file for the half circles)

You also need textured cardstock with a white core. The white core is important because when you sand the punch, the white core comes through. This is what gives the card it's dimension.



I then punched some circles out of the textured cardstock. I cut some of the circles in half to use on the edge of the card. Then I sanded the circles and half circles with my files.






After all the circles are sanded, I rearrange them on the card until I get a pattern that feels right to me. The card consists of a white card with sage green cardstock cut slightly smaller, and then the purple textured cardstock cut slightly smaller than that. When I have a pattern that feels right with the circles, I place the cirlces in my Xyron machine. A Xyron machine can make anything you place into it a sticker. You can use any form of adhesive you feel comfortable with though.

Take the circles off the Xyron sheet and adhere to the card. I chose to put a polka-dot ribbon with a metal buckle at the bottom of the card.

Here's the finished product! This is a great technique to use for the up coming Holidays. All you need to do is use a Holiday punch and you can make your own pattern paper.

I hope you enjoyed learning this technique as much as I enjoy doing it.

Shannen

Article: A Day in the Life

A Day in the life: RandomScraps

One of the best things about being in business for yourself is that your days are filled with the things that are most important to you. I am a stay at home mom of three- Scott is 7, Sierra is almost 6, and Venice is 7 months- so for me, that includes time for my kids, my husband and myself. Each day is different, but this is one example of my day that happened recently.

7:00 My husband wakes me up so he can leave for work. Usually, the kids are already up and getting ready, and by this time the baby has been fed and wants to play. I usually can’t resist running to the computer first thing in the morning to check my shop sales and my emails. After that, I get ready for my day and finish getting the kids ready for the bus.

7:45 The baby and I walk the kids down to the bus stop and wait with them. Once they’re gone we either walk around the block if the weather is nice, or we just head back home. Today we have errands to run so it’s back to the house for now.

8:30 We’ve finished getting the diaper bag restocked and eaten our breakfasts, so now it’s time to make sure all my orders are packaged up with everything they need. Once I run through my task list and make sure I’ve got everything, I load up the baby and head out.

9:00 First stop: Postnet. I have a mailbox at the local Postnet, which is my business mailing address and also one of my wholesale accounts. I check my mail, drop off my orders for shipping, and check on their inventory levels to see what kinds of things are selling there as well.

9:45 Next up, a trip to Office Max to restock some business and shipping supplies, followed by a stop next door at Kinko’s where I have my packaging printed.

10:45 Time to head home and put Venice down for a nap. She refuses to sleep anywhere, including the car, so I have to go put her in her crib. Her nap time is usually my computer time. I catch up on email, the Etsy forums, Twitter, and pretty much anything else I’ve left up on my screen to read. I follow a lot of blogs, and I get tons of inspiration from looking at what other people have done, so this takes me a while.

Noon Right around now Sierra gets home from school. Today she has gymnastics, so I have lunch waiting for her. (She’s gluten intolerant, so drive-thrus don’t work for us.) She changes into her gymnastics clothes and we head out.

1:15 Gymnastics. I get to sit for an hour and chat with the other moms. Okay, well not quite. This is when Venice is normally ready for her lunch, so I feed her while we are out.

2:30 Home from gymnastics. This is when I usually try to get things done around the house, like laundry and dishes. Not my favorite time of day.

4:00 Scott gets home from school, and the kids start taking care of their chores while I start to prep dinner. Mark gets home from work sometime between now and 6, and I try to time dinner accordingly.

6 or 7ish… Venice goes to bed and it’s dinner time. We always eat at the table together. After we’re done the kids head to the playroom for about an hour before bed and Mark and I sit on the couch. Tonight we have TV time, but that only happens a few times a week. There are 3 nights we watch TV, and 2 of those are only an hour each.

9:30 or 10ish Mark heads to bed and I head into my scraproom to work. I usually do my best work at night, so I try to take advantage of the quiet time. I am usually in bed by midnight, so I can start all over in the morning!

Article: Slow Down and Enjoy The Message

Slow Down and Enjoy The Message
by Kathyy of Kathyy's Krafts

It used to take more than a week to send someone a simple message. You'd write your message and a horse would take it across the country for you. As resources and technology has improved, so has the speed of communication. Today you can send a message within a few seconds to someone across the world. While this lightening fast communication has it's benefits, there are also times when you want to slow things down

Email, text messages, and instant message are all great ways to communicate but they a usually unidimensional (sometimes two dimensional). You can see them, sometimes hear them, but that's about it. Greeting cards and note cards, on the other hand, are multidimensional, can entice every sense and do more than just send a message. Today's greeting cards can include sounds and scents in addition to texture and text. There is something special about being able to touch, smell, see, and hear a dynamic message. It's something that you can't get in lightening fast communications. So take a moment to slow things down and enjoy the message. Etsy Greetings members off more than 3100 dymanic cards for sale at Etsy.com. Below are just a few examples. Go ahead . . . buy a greeting card that entices your senses and captures your mind.


A Few Etsy Greetings cards with visual appeal




Wishing Shoe A Sundae from Stampingsinger



Traditional Sympathy from Posh Doodles

A Few Etsy Greetings cards with texture



Anytime from Lucky Duck Designs



Tank Ewe Berry Match from Jill Hannah

A Few Etsy Greetings cards with scent



A Beautiful Ride from Kathyy's Krafts



Polka Dot Happy Birthday from SimpleXpressions

Article: Take your Blog to the Next Level

By now, most everyone is familiar with blogs. Either you are browsing the content you are interested in or you are now publishing your own content. If you have taken that second step and are using a blog as a promotional tool, there are some key tips that can take your blog to the next level.

Establish Your Brand: You know your product better than anyone. You know the time, materials, and effort that have been put into your work. For that reason, you are the expert on your brand. Building your blog around that brand is very important. Customize your header and template to reflect that brand. For instance, if you are a jewelry maker make sure that is reflected in the background of your blog in a manner that is tasteful and professional. Make sure those templates are consistent with the site you sell on and business materials you produce. Keep your content relevant to that brand. This is your professional marketing tool so stay away from over-posting about your family or drunken nights with your friends. Make it clear that visitors to your blog are going to learn about your business every time they visit.

Develop a Base: The best way to develop a readership and establish credibility is to post often. The easiest way to manage this is create a posting schedule. Not only will it make your life easier, your visitors will know when to drop by for new content. There is a great feature in most blog service providers that allow you to create posts and schedule a posting date. You can stockpile a lot of postings for a month and not have to worry about finding time to write. Along with regular content comes a huge responsibility to provide credible content. Be truthful, efficient and respectful. This is probably the most important aspect of blogging. You are not a journalist but you should subscribe to the same ethical standards. Only then will people learn to respect you and come to you for quality products and information. Another great way to develop a base is to visit and comment on other blogs. Get to know those next to you in cyberspace. Also, please remember, this is not your stomping ground to air your dirty laundry.

Be Clear and Concise: The majority of time, the headline is the first piece of material a visitor will see when clicking through to your blog. Make sure that your post headlines are descriptive and interesting. Keep them short and concise, around 60 characters. USE SPELL CHECK! You would be surprised how many people do not proofread their material. Do you think journalists get to skip that step? You shouldn’t either. Read your post once from start to finish and then again from the finish to the start. In other words, read it backwards, word by word. You are more likely to catch spelling and grammatical mistakes that way. Make sure you depict your brand as a competent one.


Minimize and Prioritize: A great deal of advertisements, widgets, and intricate background material will cause your site to load slowly. This is a sure-fire way to make people leave before they even read your content. Minimize and Prioritize. There is no problem with using your blog as an income, however, keep your advertisements to a minimum and be sure they are relevant. Be very picky about what or whom you allow to advertise because as soon as they are listed on your blog they are considered a sponsor of your work. This means they have become a part of your brand and your professional identity. The same goes for your widgets. Keep those consistent with your brand. Also, remember different types of people will be reading your blog. For that reason you should adhere to the ADA’s guidelines for making your site disability-friendly.

By: Crystal Ware at Crystal's Creations

Article: True Hollywood Story... JillHannah

Admit it. You're nosy. You watched the THS:Britney when it aired and you're going to watch her new documentary on MTV before the release of her new album. Here's where you get to know JillHannah

My desk. Really.

Etsysaved my life.

That's an exaggeration, but my little Etsy universe is certainly responsible for some huge positives over the last year. Maybe not my mortality, but some days it feels like it.

I get migraine headaches. I've had them my entire life. They suck. People who say "it's just a headache" need to be punched a lot. A "migraine" is actually a type of headache as opposed to just a really bad headache. You can have a really bad headache that isn't a migraine. You can have a migraine that isn't so bad. (Good info from the National Headache Foundation here

Migraines involve much more than just head pain. Mine start with the volume on my senses getting turned up - I notice smells and light and sound all brighter and more intrusive. I can smell static and saran wrap and sometimes scents that aren't even there start crawling up my nose and poking me in the back of the throat. I hear anything high pitched or sudden well above the level of my surroundings and have trouble following conversations. Then my vision goes wacky. I see things flashing in my peripheral vision that aren't there. Sometimes I lose my peripheral vision completely. Everything starts to feel like I've been staring into the sun and the splotches cloud my sight. Then light starts turning into pain. It pierces into my eyes. At that point, I have to lay down somewhere dark, even if the real pain hasn't begun.
Then there's the pain. It throbs and pushes and gags and takes over every bit of my consciousness. It scrambles my thoughts and the whole universe is sharp and hurt and I try to sleep and my dreams are scrambled and I have the migraine in my dreams and I want to drill holes in my head.

My dog in my bed, with whom and where I spend my migraines

At different points in my life they’ve varied in frequency from one every few months to months at a time with no relief. Mostly, they’ve gotten worse as I’ve gotten older.

At age 22 and without having finished college, I got my dream job: a humor writer at American Greetings. It was amazing. Go into an office and produce about eight card ideas a day. When they hired me, they said not to expect to have anything published for the first six months as I learned the tone and style and everything about card writing.
It was my first real job and I moved into a new city while my friends all graduated college and went other places. The migraines got worse. I'd have them every day for a month. I had to take all kinds of sick days. I started having to inject myself with DHE to break the migraine cycles. It helped, but the more work I missed, the more stressed I got and the more migraines came. I tried to work some from home, but it's hard to be funny when you hurt all the time. My boss kept telling me my ideas were "too clever" and "too weird" and "not WalMart enough." My American Greetings mentor thought I was great and funny and working hard and a long-term asset to the company, especially if I could figure out my health. He stood up to my boss for me time after time.
Even with all the missed work, I still managed to have about two dozen of my ideas get published into real cards.

Five months after I started at American Greetings, I was "dismissed," the official reason being I didn't produce enough publishable cards. I'm sure it had more to do with my migraines than my actual card-writing abilities, but I was devastated.

I eventually moved back to Chicago (I grew up in the city and a bordering suburb). The migraines were less constant. They still showed up from time to time, but I could hold down a job or two. I missed writing, so I went back to school to get my BFA in creative nonfiction. I loved the program, loved most of my classes, and loved writing all the time.

The summer of 2007, the migraines crept back up. They held on stronger and longer again, like when I was in Cleveland. I started the fall semester with spotty attendance, then even on the days the headaches weren't all-encompassing, I couldn't deal with the train or the bus. Too many bad noises and flashing lights. By October, I had the headache full-blown all the time. I had to take a medical leave from school. I saw a new neurologist and got more pills, tried acupuncture, was willing to do anything I hadn't tried before, but I was completely useless.

I found Etsy. My hair stylist told me about it. Then a friend of mine had some of her photographs up on the site. Staring at the pretty pictures of things people made was something enjoyable I could do. It would distract me from the pain until I couldn't stand the brightness of the screen anymore and had to lay back down.
One full month of constant blinding pain forced me to rethink my life. I couldn't keep lying there, doing nothing. My parents were supporting me both financially and emotionally, but I go crazy if I'm not doing something day after day.
Instead of just staring at other people's pretty things, I made some of my own. Knitting was something I'd been doing a lot of in my migraineyness, since it felt somewhat productive and required very little light or sound. I started making cards again, and even opened my box of my rejected ideas from American Greetings to find things that were just "too clever" or "not WalMart enough," thinking they'd be good for Etsy. I opened a shop in November.

I found the chat rooms and suddenly had some form of human contact when I was vertical late at night. I'd spend hours talking to other sellers and staring at more pretty things and learning all things Etsy. My cards started to sell. I got a better idea of what worked and what sold. Chatroom people put me in their treasuries. I put them in mine, which tended to have elaborate themes (the 12 Monopoly tokens, Pink Floyd songs, Dr. Seuss books) and be more clever than gorgeous. I joined EtsyGreetings and the Chicago Style Crafters teams. I figured out how to print directly on the 5.5" x 4.25" blank cards I bought at JoAnn Crafts. I came up with new card ideas and designs. I can't draw to save my life, so I enlisted the help of my close friend who lived far away to draw me a tank, sheep, berries, and a match for "Tank Ewe Berry Match." She emailed me a whole sheet with variations to choose from, and after a long time perfecting things on PhotoShop,I had a new most popular card. I wasn't selling much, but I was selling, and it felt good.

Etsy taught me to use my digital camera. I went to Wednesday night critiques with HeyMichelle in the virtual labs and had even more human contact. She'd talk for hours straight on her webcam and I felt like there was another person (besides my family and my best friend) who came into my apartment. It became clear how important the photos of my products were, shooting things at angles and in better light.I learned how to build a lightbox, learned how to use "curves" in PhotoShop, and the importance of backgrounds.

My dad found me yet another neurologist, but this one was different. He spent three hours with me at my first appointment, asking questions about my history and understanding things that I never knew were related to my migraines. My ability to smell static is apparently not insane (as most people tend to think), but an ability to smell ozone. It made perfect sense to him as he wrote it down. Before then, I thought I'd exhausted all the currently available drug classes, tests, and diets, but he gave me a number of different possibilities for treatment paths, all of which were new and untried. He wanted me to call him every week with updates so we could tweak things, and have a new round of hefty tests (my last MRI was 10 years ago, plus he wanted extensive bloodwork done) as soon as I could get my health insurance straightened out. (My health insurance fiasco could be a book in itself, but basically I thought I'd gotten a year on the plan at my school, they thought I'd gotten six months, so I was uninsured and then became uninsurable because of my "pre-existing conditions." Months and months later, I managed to get on the ICHIP program through the state of Illinois that exists for the otherwise uninsurable.)

I started getting better. I went back to acupuncture and kept going weekly. I finally called the therapist my internist recommended (chronic pain is demoralizing). I started the EtsyChai team (the Jewish Etsy team that I've been neglecting lately) and I made it to my first Chicago Style Crafters in-person meeting.

I finally had an answer to the "so, how've you been" question that didn't involve me breaking down into tears: “I started my own business.” I got a tax ID# and saved receipts and felt very official. It may not have been paying my rent, but at least it was something to do and it paid for itself. As I had more and more good days, I signed up to be a part of CircaCeramics' open house/trunk show. It was my very first show and I sold all of two cards, but I felt like a real, normal human being and that was a triumph in itself.

I signed up to be a part of a rotating group of crafters (all from the Chicago team) selling Saturday mornings at a local farmer's market. If I had to back out of one of my weeks last-minute, there were still others in the tent for a two-vendor presence.
I got more involved in EtsyGreetings, too, and started a data pooling spreadsheet for the team.

I wish I could give a more conclusive happily-ever-after to all this. I now have good days about 3/4 of the time with the occasional day where I feel completely fine with no migraine-related anything. Etsy shop still isn't paying the rent or booming or anything, but with the addition of the farmers markets and other craft fairs (when I can make it), it's more than covering costs. I now work from home for my aunt and uncle's nonprofit, which gives me less crafting/Etsy time but I feel more like a functioning member of society. I just started making and selling mini-cards with recycled wallpaper envelopes, and I'm hoping to sell gift card-sized ones to local coffee shops and boutiques for the holiday season.Etsy truly has been my shiny happy thing over the past year, and as I function more and more like a normal human being, things can only get better.

Etsy love.

Article: Organizing your Craft Space

Whether you make stationery or jewelry or quilts, keeping your supplies organized means you can create efficiently and with ease. After several months of planning, nearly a dozen trips to IKEA and weekends spent stacking shelves, I’ve completed the renovation of my own humble studio. Here’s a few simple tips, using samples within my space, on how to rethink your storage and maintain a pleasant place for crafting.

Office, kitchen & even garden storage containers often make great craft supplies storage:

Use plastic magazine and brochure racks for paper (including hard-to-store 12x12 size), rub-ons, stickers…




Glass cookie jars for ribbon scraps…



and mini flower pots for adhesives.



Create a space that sparks your creativity and keeps you motivated:

Why not use a map to keep track of your Etsy sales? I still have to put mine on the wall, but once it’s there, I’ll place a pin on the map for every time I get a sale in a new state. :)



Buy a motivating print, or design your own! My custom print came from SunAndPenny.



Show off your projects! I put my favorite cards of the moment in these little wall cubes.



---post written by: Steph from P.S. Pearl Stationery

Article: A Day in the Life... Stelie Designs

Admit it. You're always curious what the people behind the shops REALLY do all day. Is she a neurosurgeon that knits in her spare time? Is he an accountant that secretly enjoys making jewelry? Here's where we give you a glimpse into what REALLY goes on in these shops. First up- StelieDesigns

I’m Stephanie Giesen-Kath and this is an average day in my fabulous life as a WAHM with 3 ½ year old boy/girl twins.

5:45am- 6:15 - My two sweet children happily knock on our door ready to start their day. (They slept in from their usual 5:00 or 5:15) They climb in bed and we all snuggle as a family. Today they are arguing over which side of mommy they get to lay, we settle that I have two sides and I continue to doze on and off for 15 minutes.

6:15 – 6:45 - We all get up, my husband gets ready for work, the kids play together, I head to the kitchen get myself tea, the kids milk, open the blinds & a few windows on this usually chilly morning, feed and let the dog out. Glance at our calendar and realize we don’t have anywhere to be today.

6:45 - 7:45 - Kiss & hug bye to Daddy. Then it’s storytime with lots of books while intermittently playing with the cat & tickling.

7:45 – 8:30 – I make breakfast, set the table, we sit down and eat, chat about our day, kids put their plates in the sink, I load the dishwasher, clean up the counters and table.

8:30 – 9:30 – It’s playtime! The kids decide on games, we play Dora Candyland (work on the “it’s okay not to win” Paxton always wants to get to the party first) after a few games and lots more tickling, we play memory game, and some dancing to the Backyardigans CD.

9:30 – 10:00 – snack time and clean up.

10:00-11:00 – We head to the basement, the kids are engaging in their imaginations and playing nicely together. I start laundry, go in my office to check email, attach the trailer to their pick-up, respond to email, break up an argument, list a new card, get them a toy, relist an item, update photos, fix another toy, start to list another new card but after another argument ensues I realize, my office time is done.

11:00 – 11:30 – Upstairs to finger paint, I cover the table, get their smocks, paper, paint, and let the fun begin! Today they each made 5 works of art. I wash their paint-filled hands and leave their art to dry.



11:30-12:10pm – Make lunch, we have a picnic in the living room since the kitchen table is full of 10 wet pictures, and our dining room is a playroom. Clean up again.

12:10-1:40 – I let the kids watch tv, I shower, dry my hair, put on some makeup, get dressed, get the kids dressed (yes we were in our pj’s until now) do more laundry and gather their library books. They are now playing dress up, Avery is the pirate (She refuses to wear fairy/princess dresses), Paxton is the fireman, and I get to be the policeman, then we switch. Now they insist we add the fairy wings to them.

1:40-3:15 – Naptime! I sit in their room & read a parenting magazine. (Yes, I confess, I sit in their room sometimes because they ask but mostly because I need them to nap so I can work) Once asleep I head down to the office to finish a listing from earlier, work on client projects, email, touch up photos, format b-day invites. Kids wake up and must sit on my lap making it hard to type, time to quit until later.



3:15 – 4:00 – Snuggle time on the couch until my sweet babes are fully awake, I chat on the phone, gather our things, we get our shoes on and head out to the library.

4:10 – On our short trip to the library we see a large bird, Avery comments “Mommy, there’s the bird that took my fish!” (Her dead fish from the lake 3 weeks ago.) We arrive, return our books, and look for more. I suggest to both kids, we need to save some books for next time. Check out and head home

4:50 – 5:00 – I take photos of some new cards. My fabulous husband arrives home.

5:00 – 6:30 – Daddy takes the kids outside, I start dinner, clean up their now dry works of art, email design options to a client, print b-day invites, set the table, we all sit down to eat, have fun talking about our day, and more clean up.

6:30 - 7:15 – Kids and husband head back outside, I head back to my office to cut & round corners of b-day invites, email and convo’s. Everyone is now back in the house.



7:15 – 7:45 – My husband and I do bedtime routine for my precious little ones.

7:45 – 8:10 – Hubby and I take time to talk just the two of us.

8:10 – 10:00 – I package b-day invites for tomorrow’s mail. Email, make updates to wedding invites, read blogs, update my blog with future posts, check in on etsy, email updated invite to client, turn off computer much earlier than usual. Check in on the kids sleeping sweetly.

10:20 – Get in bed, watch some shows from dvr and finally fall asleep around 11:15ish.

Article: How to make an altered notebook

Physical Supplies:
Standard Spiral Notebook
Mod Podge
Paper trimmer
Patterned Paper
Brown scraper
Embellishments of choice

Shown:
Prima Say it in crystals
Ribbon
Patterned paper ~ Minds eye


1. Pry apart the Spiral notebook and remove the front and back covers from the notebook.



2. Measure the patterned paper and trim so that it is 1” larger than the covers.



3. Apply Mod Podge to both the top and bottom covers in a thin layer.



4. Let dry completely



5. Cut out little holes for the binder to go through. Take your time in this step.



6. Then Reattach the covers. (Tip: Put the two covers decorated sides together first then visualize what side is the front and attach them as one)



7. Squeeze the rings back together



8. Flip covers so they are right sides out.

9. Embellish at will. ☺






written by our very own Rachel of CapturedTimeBooks



Was this helpful? Let us know! If you have questions, feel free to convo Rachel or leave a comment!

Article: Welcome to the "New" EtsyGreetings blog

By now you've probably noticed that the EtsyGreetings blog has made a few changes. With the help and feedback from all of our members and the hardwork, planning and organizing of some volunteers- under the guidance of our fearless cooridinator ahna of LuckyDuckDesign- we're happy to bring you a new "us." It was a much- needed makeover (our facelift procedure is scheduled, so be on the look out for an even new "us" coming soon! we promise to hide any stitches) and we're pretty darn happy with ourselves.

On Tuesdays, look for HandmadeByLinda to post a treasuy. This is our little spin on the Etsy treasury. One of our fabulous members will either share a treasury they were able to snag on Etsy, or create their own.

Fridays, SouthernScraps will feature one of the EtsyGreetings members. Think of it as something similar to the Etsy featured seller, but honestly, we're a little bias and will be talking about the ones we love best- our members.

Throughout the week,PinkyCreations and myself, FiveDot, will be posting articles that other team members (and sometimes ourselves!) have written. We've decided that we would like to share a few of our secrets with you... where we draw inspiration, what we do in our spare time and tips on how to run your business successfully- just to name a few.

Once a month, PinkyCreations will also be posting a challenge. She will be throwing out a theme and asking members to create with this theme in mind. All the items that are going to be entered into the challenge will be specifically tagged and then all of you will have a chance to vote on your favorite! Look for the poll to show up in the second half of the month and then vote until your heart is content!

NYPaperCrafter will most likely be your favorite poster of all... the Giveaway lady! Sometime in between all these other lovely post, she will be posting a Giveaway hosted by one of our generous members. Just follow the giveaway directions and who knows- you just might win!

We're not sticking to a tight schedule, so be sure to subscribe to our feed (if you don't already) to make sure you don't miss a thing! We encourage you, as readers, to comment on posts and let us know how we're doing! We want this blog to be beneficial to you and we want this to inspire and encourage you to create wonderful pieces! All of us are just bubbling over the sides with ideas and information we want to share with you, so sit back and enjoy!