chimesblog

My friend Adria, who got me into quilting, is having a reallllllly awesome sale right now on her quilts. She makes the most gorgeous modern quilts and has the BEST taste in fabric (I learned from the best!)  She just finished a custom robot quilt for a little boy named Jack.  She taught me most of my skills, so I thought I’d show some love.

Anyway, check the sale out. Tell her chimes sent you and she MIGHT give you an even better deal!

<3

Calee

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I’ll preface this with: I need to learn another craft like I need a hole in my head. My apartment is literally a craft store.

In the past week I’ve started to become two things I’ve always said I’d never become: a swimmer and a quilter *(see the bottom of the page for the swimming back story).

That being said, I posted a craft on the craftster.org quilting board, thanks to one of my BFFs, Adria. The whole thing started out honest enough… I asked Adria if she’d want to help me donate some crafts to our high school friend’s mom’s silent auction to help fundraise for her cancer treatment. Of course she said yes, and when I asked for some scraps for my friend Danielle to have to make a tea wallet, she said “of course!”

I got her scraps (1-inch wide Hello Betty fabrics leftover from a quilt she just completed) and today I started to think about which fabrics I wanted to use for the tea wallet because I’m making a matching tea cup and saucer for the auction.

I started to pin together the fabrics and was going to sew them by hand because my sewing machine had been broken for a year (it broke while I was making this beast). For whatever reason, I figured I could get the sewing machine down and fiddle with it and maybe it would work.

By God, it’s an Easter miracle! My sewing machine has been resurrected!

(okay, sorry. that was cheesy and kind of sacrilegious…admit it, you giggled)

I was ecstatic that it worked. I got right to work piecing these 1-inch strips together to make a chunk of fabric big enough for my friend Danielle to make a tea wallet out of. Halfway into it I realized something…. I was QUILTING! Kind of anyway. Was I? I don’t know.

Here’s my “block”. I’ll post the tea wallet when it’s done and the tea cup and saucer (which are definitely vintage fiestaware, might I add — obsessed!).

What’s next? Well I’ve had blocks cut for 2 t-shirt quilts ever since I found out  Adria was a quilter…so I guess that is next! I want to make an über-metal bedspread for the boyfriend since his shirts shrank (tallwise — they’re too short for him now, he’s a tall guy) and he’s rather attached to most of his shirts. I would love to make some reconned t-shirts out of them for ME to wear…but I think I’ll be a nice girlfriend for once and make him something useful out of HIS shirts.

*For those of you ambitious readers who’ve missed my previous posts about swimming, running, being injured, etc., here’s my short segue into how I got to be a swimmer. I’m a runner. Period. I haven’t ever stretched, crosstrained, or done anything relatively smart when it comes to training. I ran a marathon and didn’t bother stretching afterwards because the Bears vs Vikings game was on and I was busy watching that. I got a bad case of ITBS and continued to run on it…long story short, I was up to 15 miles again and decided that the pain in my left hip was too much. Now I go to physical therapy and am forbidden from running until further notice. Thus, I’ve been banished to the pool for swimming and aquajogging. Here’s a gratuitous photo of me in my swimming gear to burn your retinas.

cuz I'm that badass.

Also, I have really dry skin now and it sucks. I hate swimming. </end rant>

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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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