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Love goes to Des Moines local Cara Hall this week and her ironically titled blog, Failed Feminist.

I met Cara last year through Craft Saturday in Des Moines. In her own words, Cara “is a writer in Des Moines, Iowa (which is cooler than you think). And as much as she never expected to, she loves all things Martha. Just try to pry the knitting needles out of her hands. She’s always trying new recipes and DIY projects, and she hopes you’ll try them too. She’s also always working on herself, and there is oh so much work to do.”

I read Cara’s blog for her crafty updates, her dog photos and commentary, but mostly for her recipes. One of my favorites is inside out egg rolls, which is pictured in the screenshot above.

So, check her out. She’s also a fellow Des Moines Register Featured Blogger.

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It’s been so long since I had a weekend of hermiting and crafting.  The cat’s away so the mouse will … be lame and stay indoors on a Saturday night?

This used to be my typical Saturday night: run, shower, laundry, movies, crafting, sleep.

Lately I’ve been doing things.  Like a lot of things. I went to a concert last night with Shelly (I will blog about this later once she gets pix/video up), I’ve been going out with friends to Welch Ave., Fong’s, The Lift, etc., we had prom last weekend … eeeeep! This is entirely too much stuff for me — it’s been fun — but I need a break!

So, I’m hermiting.

Tonight is going to be a craft-a-thon. I’ve had a request for 2 tea wallets and 2 market bags since posting on facebook that I was going to have a craft-a-thon.  I’ve got a Ziggy Stardust tea cup I want to finish, some potholders, a zip pouch and I have a couple of new hot projects that I’d like to crank out quickly to stash bust my scrap fabric.

Anywho — as I finish things, I’ll be posting pix here of what I accomplish tonight. Let’s hope I do a few more things so I don’t look like I spent the night thinking about crafting and not actually crafting.

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1. Two Bags for my niece

My mom requested that I make Emee a couple of bags for some of her toy sets.  These need handles, but I haven’t come across anything that I’d like to use for handles just yet.  I made these bags out of a skirt I had in high school that I never wear anymore.  It’s really cute purple fabric that shifts to blue in the right light and has a metallic silver brocade on the edges.

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2. Potholders

I started making a string quilt a while back with a bunch of random scraps, but I wasn’t pleased with what I was getting. So I decided to make the blocks into ugly potholders. The potholders have been lying around for a while awaiting the binding edge, so I’m sewing the binding on tonight.

Here’s what my potholders look like …

As you can see … I’m pretty excited that I finally finished these.

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3.  Lil Zipper Bag

Over the summer I’d made some little zipper bags with some fuschia and gold Heather Ross mendocino fabric that was given to me by my friend Adria.  I love this fabric sooo much, might I add. Definitely one of my all-time favorites. Anyway, for whatever reason I’ve had one little zipper bag sitting around unfinished. So I finished that off tonight as well.

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4. Ziggy Stardust Tea Cup

I made Mark a cute tea cup for our 2-month anniversary with the lyrics to our song on it … and I decided I wanted one that’s similar for myself. Yes — I said — FOR MYSELF. I never craft for myself. I wrote out the lyrics to Ziggy on a teacup last week … but decided that it needed to have a bit more pizazz, considering it *is* Bowie. So, I painted it up. I’m not too happy with the results, but maybe it will grow on me after I bake it. I like the one side, but I think if I would have left it a bit simpler it would be nicer … oh well. This can end up on craftastrophe I guess.

As you can tell by my face, this is the side I’m not too happy with. I dunno what to do with it just yet … Probably just bake it and hide it away in my apartment.

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I think that’s all I’m going to get to tonight, but I’m going to continue tomorrow and get 4-6 tea wallets done, possibly some dis-cards (Denyse Schmidt style) and maybe another craft for myself — heating pad cover.

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Sooooo I finally got an awesome package from my craftster.org metal swap partner. I sent my package in the beginning of July so I could participate in the MJ swap.  My metal swap package from my partner was almost a month late (minus one day!), but it was pretty rockin’ so, whatever!

I took some pix because that’s part of the deal with swaps — you have to post pix of what you receive. I decided to go all drama queen on the photos to show my appreciation. I took the pix w/ my mac, so some are flipped and some are not (didn’t flip the ones that didn’t need it b/c of words). Anywho. yeah. 

Alexi Laiho towel based on (I’m guessing!) this pic:

what I’ve deemed a Dethpouch (zippy pouch with the Dethklok logo x-stitched on) — so very timely because I JUST bought Dethklok (w/Mastadon/Converge/High on Fire) tix on Friday! They are coming to Des Moines, IA! We hardly ever get anything good (metal-wise). 

Inside the dethpouch. No, there wasn’t any cocaine in there … or Duncan Hills Coffee beans … or BBQ sauce. Just a cool kick-ass pouch. 

Nathan Explosion plushie head.  I’ve got a few ideas where this guy is going to go…. Might have to figure out a way to get him strapped on to my iPod for when I’m running (motivation people!).  We shall see.

Some additional cool stuffs (patch and some beaded safety pins)

AND THE CREME DE LA CREME!

Okay — so I told my partner that I recently had to quit running (I’m nearly a 10-year distance runner… every day… 5-7 miles, this time last year 7-10… marathon last year). Anywho, the only thing that got me through any of my runs when I was able to start running again — and starting from square one again is HARD — was “Are You Dead Yet?” by Children of Bodom.  At one point I was only able to run the duration of the song, which was a feat for me when I hadn’t been able to run for 3 months.  Now I’m back (kind of) — still injured, but working on it, but back up to 3-5 miles a day, which is okay, but COB is what gets me through.

Coolest thing evar — x-stitched Are You Dead Yet? triptych lyrics!

These are getting put right above my desk so I can see them every day when I get done with my workouts (I always plug in the iPod to download my runs to nikeplus.com) … and when I’m sitting here not wanting to work out or run, I’ll be able to see them. YAY MOTIVATION!

All in all, what a great swap!

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I realized that I’ve kind of taken on a lot of projects this month…

Just to keep myself sane and to have some ppl hold me accountable (ie. my oh-so-loyal blog readers), I’m listing them and will hopefully remember I have this list so I can add to it and cross stuff off as things are completed.

1. INK Tattoo Studios Website: Change out logo, change up colors, add a flickr widget and make some more themes… most importantly — get Mark to add content (it’s naked now, and the website is on the business cards I just had printed for him!)
2. Kim’s Website/Blog: Get a gallery of some sort up and running (flickr is ideal) DONE!
3. Half Hearts Album: Get final files to the band or vendor for printing (waiting to hear back as to where we’re at)
4. Bras For the Cause: Collaborate with Kim to make a very unique and artistic bra for the event in September
5. Craftster.org’s heavy metal swap: not sure what I’m doing yet since I don’t have a partner, but will know tomorrow who my partner is so I can get ideas of what to do. I’m doing 4 crafts.  I got my partner on 6.10.09!  I’m sooo excited. Got lots of ideas!
   • I have 2 of the 4 done as of 6.12.09!
6. Personal swap of a charm pack on craftster.org: cut fabric, waiting to hear from other person..
7. Yellow dish set from @shanereiser: come up with a design for a set and paint it up
8. craft swap with Tim from work — I know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m not going to blog about it just in case he’s reading it — I don’t want to spoil the surprise! It’s going to be super cool! I just have to get the supplies rounded up for it yet.
9. Lava Flowers mug for Adria, as per her request a LONG time ago
10. Jolly Jabber Quilt Block Lottery: create a block and mail it in. DONE!
11. Father’s day mug and/or baked stuff for my dad and grandpa (need to do this very soon)
12. Baby shower gift for my friend Lindsay: I’ve got booties I need to add buttons to and I’d like to make a couple of other things as well as pick her up something to enjoy since she’s been a mommy for about a month now and probably hasn’t had much time for fun non-mommy things.
13. Wedding gift for my friends Ryan and Steph. I think I might do something similar to the Rocketship Mugs (as in a Mr. and Mrs. mug — not the same design!).  I have no idea what their wedding colors were since their invites/save the dates didn’t coordinate at all.  I’ll have to figure that out. I’m going to do a fleur de lis pattern on it for sure since that was on all their materials (probably has nothing to do with their wedding/tastes…I’m sure their “designer” just randomly picked it — either way… I like it and I’ll go with that). I might just pick colors based on the colors that are in their kitchen items they picked in their registry.
14. Several possible alchemy things…I bid on a LOT of stuff today and am hoping to get a couple of things — especially one that has a cute little teacup logo that she’d like elaborated upon.
15. Finish my mom’s quilt top (add a 4-inch cream/oatmeal border to it), get it quilted (September)
16. Emee’s 1st birthday quilt — coin stack pattern — cut blocks, sew, figure out backing/binding (October) — get it quilted!
17. Finish my mermaid bags (I have 2 of them left)

There’s no way that’s the entire list. I’m so swamped with random projects right now!  I can get them all done since a lot of them don’t have deadlines or have far away deadlines…but a lot of them this month are for occasions.  It’s actually good that I have this many projects right now I think because Kasey’s back home and it will give me something to do.

eeeeee. so here I am blogging again!  I did get my Jolly Jabber block done tonight.  I shall blog about that in about 10 minutes (aka 7 minutes past my bedtime).

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After my rant yesterday and after consulting my most respected design peeps, I decided to add some REAL graphic design offerings to my etsy store.

I’ve had an etsy store for a while, but I’ve basically used it to list things I’ve made that I really don’t want lying around the place and prints of some of my favorite posters. I’ve made a few sales, but nothing too fancy.  I usually relist everything because, hey, it’s 2 bucks or so… and if I happen to make a sale, it’s at least a 10 dollar profit.

I decided to offer etsy banners, business cards, letterhead, postcards, invitations and web sites. Yes. Web sites.  I may regret that later, but I only have 3 up for sale. I think I have 5 of the rest of the items for sale.

I’ve also posted with the listing VERY explicit instructions for each of the items for sale. I’ve posted the typical timeline and what they will get. The website is a one-time-only fee of $300 for the design of a template for a CMS (wordpress, drupal or joomla) and to teach the client how to use it. I believe I included 2-3 mockups with the cost and a 3-month timeline. With the rest of my materials I’ve posted a 3-5 or 5-7 day turnaround for design and a 3-day turnaround for changes AND, most importantly, each listing comes with ONE round changes.

So with that being said, I might have to create a listing for 2 additional things: 1) an additional round of changes ($10) and 2) monthly website updates ($25-$50 per month).

I set my prices based on the amount of work I’ll put into these things and based on $10 an hour. I had to keep them halfway competitive with other people on Etsy, but even with such a low cost (to us designers) I’m still way above everybody else’s prices.  I’m hoping people will be sucked in by good design and I’ll get a few sales.  If not, it was $5 to list all these things and it was in attempt to prove a point…and possibly get some cash.

Now that I have this up though I can send some freelance clients there to purchase a “package” if they want work done.  I have a few friends that I will always do free work for and they know who they are, but friends of friends will most likely get sent to my etsy store from here on out.

here are my newest offerings..along with a new banner and avatar. woo hoo.

Here are some of my original listings as well.

Speaking of friends and freelance, my friend Adria has been a fabulous fabulous fabulous client.  I love her to death. She’s been making me all sorts of stuff in exchange for my freelance work (although I told her she totally didn’t need to!).  Either way, I’m excited to receive some of her awesome gifts.   She made me a quilt from some Amy Butler fabric, which is totally my FAVORITE fabric.

I totally swiped a picture off her craftster.. ha. Hope she doesn't mind!

It's sooo pretty!

I created some banners for her store. I don’t have them on me now, but she blogged about it (and totally plugged my etsy store!) here.  I do have screenies of her etsy store.

she sells handmade quilts and more!

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If you know me, I regularly check www.craftster.org for all sorts of crafty and design ideas.

Today I went to check quick and was startled by the new design.  I’m not a fan, but I guess I’ll get used to it.  I think it’s a design downgrade, but what do you think?

This is the old design and the screenie was taken from the way back machine…so it’s missing a lot of stuff. Ignore the giant white space block. I can’t remember what was there, but it looked good.   Also, the taped note on the new design was on the top of this design last I checked, but it was more photographic not vectorized.

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