chimesblog

I don’t have a photo of my Halloween costume just yet, but let me just say it’s pretty awesome.

I spent most of my time in my costume at Market Day yesterday.  I think the costume helped my salesmanship.

Here’s a few pix from yesterday’s sale … it was a great time and sadly, the last one for me this year. I will be at Craft Saturday next weekend though.

My booth in all its glory … Check out all the wallets!

Darby of DarbyCakes

Cat Rocketship, director of Market Day and of Rocket Assembly as a lovely gypsy lady

More of my lovelies — it never occurred to me before to have a SIGN describing what my dishes are. I think that helped sales. People saw that they weren’t just plain dishes.

A twoface mask by DaniAWESOME, who’s also pictured below as Flo, the Progressive lady. I stood by her all day and not once did she try to sell me insurance.

Fabulous day! Sad it’s the last one of the season for me, but there is next year! Be sure to go to the Black Friday sale in November at the Pappajohn building in downtown Des Moines.

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This week’s Humpday Blog Love goes to an awesome local lady — the one, the only, Laura Palmer.  Her blog is called “A Love Letter to a New Year“. My favorite recent post is about her fandom of Glee — she even called herself a total GLEEk.

Her blog is dedicated to all things happening in the 27th year of her life. She’s got a list of things she wants to do and she’s out and about tackling it. Laura also makes adorable greetings and sells them on etsy amongst other places. In true diary style, each post starts out with, “Dear 27.”  She’s very entertaining and always has awesome photos and visuals to go with her tales of adventure.

Head on over and check her out. You won’t be disappointed. If you are, then you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog either.

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I remember when the word/tag cloud things were all the rage on the internets. I used one for tags a long time ago on my old blog.

I’m creating a bunch of these for a project for work, and decided to see what words I use a lot on my blog. I’m using wordle.net to do this, in case you’re wondering.

So, here ya go. Here’s words most-frequently and most-recently used on my blog. Enjoy.

Bored? You could create a wordle of your own blog  … and send it to me. I would love to do a post of your wordles and would love to see what you’re really talking about.

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I don’t paint. Other than walls anyway.

But, today one of my twitter friends saw that I was going to be painting this afternoon (for work) and said “Oooh paint me something.”  I didn’t have a chance to explain before he DMed me and asked for a commissioned piece. Soooo I couldn’t turn him down. After all, he IS one of my best twitter friends. I would only do it under one condition: that he didn’t pay for it. He’s been a good friend from afar for a while now and has done a lot for me.

Well … guys … his twitter name is @nerdboner.  Yes. NERDBONER. Because he geeks out over comics and all things nerdy. Which is actually why I started following him in the first place. He seemed like a cool guy — and is.

SO — what better than a comic book inspired painting for him?  Not to mention, I could limit the colors that way and basically draw it out and do a paint-by-numbers sort of thing.

I decided to do a triptych because I looove triptychs.  And instead of attempting cheese by doing characters, I used typography and went sort of the Lichtenstein route (but in no way am I claiming to be half that awesome).

Anyway … hope he likes it!

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This week’s Humpday Blog love goes to my friend Steph Hertel’s Turtle Soup blog.  Don’t confuse her with the yodeling sensation, Stefanie Hertel.

I don’t even know where to start! Steph is pretty much the perfected version of what I do at my blog … she makes things … creates things … designs things … bakes things … and is pretty amazing at it.  I met Stephanie through ISU’s graphic design program — and she is extremely talented.  She works for Hallmark, which is the most coveted job in our field (or at least in my eyes anyway!)

Here’s a random smattering of lovely things that Steph has created and blogged about … you should go check her out, and don’t forget to leave her some love!

Lovely tote bag Steph created a while back

Um, YUM. Peanut butter cup cookies! Oh yes — and she shares recipes as well.

Lovely Zucchini pasta

Seriously — she is a jack of all trades! Adorable felt flower pin …

Here’s a closeup of an adorable onesie she made

Here’s a little taste of some of her great design skills … an invite for her annual cookie party and what I’m guessing is the lovely packaging she created to go with it.

And … a beautiful quilt.

You must take 5 minutes and check her out! Definitely worth it, unless you don’t like looking at well-designed and yummy things. Then … um … why are you here?

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Aaand Market Day. Take 3.  Here’s me in my booth with a lovely new hairstyle and some wonderful new pieces. I was pretty well setup.  I also was the FIRST ONE THERE at quarter to 7 and got an awesome corner spot right in front of the big ol’ fan (which, as it turned out, I was so not appropriately dressed for that). So it was hot, but not in my spot. What a way to get some traffic.

Did I mention that I bucked up and got some real price tags? I had some mini-cards made and used them for price tags. Voila! Pretty and functional.

It was extra exciting this month because my friends Adria and Jen had a booth too. I saved them the spot behind them. Adria was selling tampon wallets, which cracked me up continuously all day … Plug Pouches … Curse Purses … Jillfolds … what to call them? And stopping random burly men and asking if they were looking for tampon wallets? Priceless.  This is why she’s still one of my besties from high school.

VOGUE. Check out my hot wind-blown look.  Yeah. That’s from standing in front of a fan for 5 hours.  Turns out it was really a good move for me though.  I felt like crap all weekend, and it would have been super rough at MD if I was as hot as everybody else (haha, sorry).

Check out my cool vintage earrings from my friend Tory. She got a bunch to make jewelry out of and gave me and my friend Shelly a few pieces she couldn’t use. Oh, and the lovely flower is courtesy of Bean and the Sprout.

cool prints from cicada grove

Delicious DarbyCakes

Fabulous earrings from MimiBird

aaand a completely random thing on the back of a door at the warehouse.

Super fun. Super cool. Sweet.

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I’m going to do a Market Day recap … but I scheduled this post earlier to show you what I’ve got that’s new this month. I have quite a few things!

New ceramics (posted a while back) and these guys:

Wish me luck! I’m sure it will be fun.

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wow. I don’t remember the last time I did a giveaway, but I think it’s high time I do another.

What am I giving away? Well, how about a camera case (which can also be used for phones and iPods)?

Gotta love the cute little birdies fabric. One of my favorites!

How do you win, you say? Well … it’s easy.  Sort of anyway. It really is just the luck of the draw.

TO ENTER:

1. Comment on this post with your name (be sure to leave a valid e-mail address in the comment box— don’t worry, it’s not published), and what’s currently spinning in your CD player/iPod/record player
2. For a 2nd entry, tweet about this giveaway (be sure to mention @chimes so I know you’ve entered again)
3. For a 3rd entry, blog about the giveaway — post the link to the blog post in the comments box so I know where to find it.

Thanks for playing, and I will announce a winner on August 1 by using the random integer generator.

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… I’m too tired to recap our trip right now, but here’s a little taste of the house we stayed in.

Frank Lloyd Wright windows and craftstman style interior. Yum.

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I’m getting my hairs cut … I’ve been pining over this haircut ALL week — saw it in Glamour magazine on Monday or Tuesday during my workout and decided that it’s beyond time for a haircut and I needed something new, cute and different.  Especially since I’m taking a mini-vacay this weekend to Galena, IL for the man’s b-day.

My friend Lora who is a hair genius is doing it.  Tomorrow.  Early AM.  Awesomeness.

Wish me luck! She will make it awesome. She always does.

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