Big accomplishments today

So today is Friday, which doesn't really hold much meaning to me these days as everyday feels like Sunday around here. Being unemployed lets met do lots of fun things. Well at least I am enjoying the little things I get to do. Today I am forced to hang around the house and wait for the UPS to bring my freelance project. I actually do want to go out today, the weather is gorgeous, not to hot but sunny and comfortable. I need to ship some orders at the P.O. and I have the urge to go sit in the garden and read. But alas, I am home-bound. I was able to run out this morning and get my hair cut by a guy who cuts out of his apartment. That was fun. Now around my house, I am listing some things on etsy, listing to Donovan(it is such a Donovan day), and making lime-ade with my new lime juicer. Sounds downright awful right?


I received my second doll purchase from Cornflake Girl's etsy shop yesterday. The doll is named Wenyan, and is amazing. When I ordered the doll she wrote this about the doll:

"I am glad you choose a chinese themed doll, it makes me so proud,:)wenyan is inspired by Chinese women around 1920-1950,when binding foot is no longer considered a must for young girls, I also love how wenyan seemed to have a caring spirit."

In my package she also sent this little cloth tiger which she says is inspired by chinese symbolism believe to help ward off evil. The necklace she sent means love. I love Yi's craft, but I love it even more now with all the meaning behind it. . thanks Yi!

a little more time on my hands

I have suddenly found myself with with plenty of time. For example, today I started my day having a lovely breakfast at Honey's with Jorge. Came home, dorked around on the computer, packed orders, made postcard mailers, went to the post office, went to the library and got my first library card in about 10 years, now I at home sipping sweet, mint, iced tea and it is only 3:30! How does one manage to have such a wishful june summer day?

Get laid off.(budget cuts my ass)

It is really not even that hard to do. Not surprisingly, I am not upset. I am pretty stoked about it really. I haaated that job. I can't even describe the awfulness about it. But instead of dwell on old shit, I am going to just try to enjoy my unemployment before I am down in another job. I have started looking yes, but to be honest, the thought of going into another job just makes me feel ill. I have some leads, plus I have an *exciting* freelance project that I will talk about soon.

So around the house today I have been really starting to catch up. . taking pictures, finally getting around to my stack of hand-washing, fixing that necklace. . etc. I think I might have a yard sale this weekend for extra cash. .



I got my order from Stella yesterday. . what a sweet girl, she sent me extra stationary goodies because of having to do a quick reprint of her art prints. . (they were barely late at alll!) I am just soo in love with her work.




I also received my palchemy package from my sender Elaine. I already have some ideas for the supplies she sent. . I am thinking of a purse chain/key chain type accessory.




This is a totally scattered post. That is the way things go sometimes. I can't concentrate. .

kara walker/karen walker

1. I need to go to the MET to see the Kara Walker exhibit. I have always loooved her work, but have never seen it in person.

2. Should not be confused with New Zealand's Karen Walker, one of my favourite fashion designers.

hens-n-chicks

Continuing on with my mail order madness, I received these lovely chickens from Yi of Cornflake girl's etsy shop. This pair of handmade, stuffed chickens are just brillant. One is a rooster, one is a hen. Each one fits into the palm of my hand. I love that you can see all the stitching, by machine and by hand. You can tell they are hand painted, and they are stuffed with a heavier bean type granules, so they really have nice weight. These are the most dainty little chickens I have ever seen!

I am so in love with Yi's dolls. She really is a talented artisan, handmaking one of a kind dolls with such loving care. In fact, I just bought another doll yesterday from her. Maybe you should know - I am definately not a doll person, and I like stuffies ok, but I usually just make or buy them to give them away. I love the old crafts feel that the dolls have, maybe it is something like folk art, and that could be especially why I am so captured by them. Besides her dolls, Yi was very pleasant to communicate with during the transaction, and her package also included little stickers and treats. Her shop is definately one to check out - her pricing is also very reasonable.


This weekend seemed long and productive. Not productive in the way that I got anything done, because I didn't. But more productive in a way that it was filled with fun things. Friends from New York were in town, and the weekend rain forced us to the mall. I think I usually only go t o the mall when I have out of town guests. I did pretty good and only bought magazines, checked out the new adorn craft mag and of course picked up the latest issue of selvedge magazine - my guilty-expensive-pleasure, but soo inspiring, magazine. Oh yea, I also finally got a lime juicer to make my favourite lime-aid, and a much needed salad spinner(fun times I know!) Because all the rain, we also went to a movie yesterday(we go about once or twice a year). We saw Nacho Libre which was pretty f'n funny. I mean, I laughed. Then I got all into html tutorials and did some recoloring and new banners here, that was addictive. .I changed background and text color combos for about an hour until I just made myself stop!

summer warmth

You know that feeling when it is the summer and you are inside with air con- ditioning all day, and you go outside into the humid hot air, and it feels really really good and warm for like 3 minutes? I looooove that feeling.


Sometimes I think about how different my habits are since I don't live and work in New York anymore. I usually think about if I don't bringe my lunch and have to go out. In new york I would walk down the block until I found a good deli to eat at. I could browse is shoe stores and crappy discount stores. Just walk around the garment district and do whatever. Now, if I go out for lunch I have to get in my car and usually have a destination. I go to WAWA a lot for lunch. I love their brand of green tea iced tea. I also go to Target probably once a week or Home Depot or Michael's. . .whatever big suburban chain store I feel like that day. As a former Brooklyner, I only ever went to Target when I went home to Virginia, or if wanted to drive out to Long Island, or brave the location down at Atlantic Center. I also have been noticing that Target is the only place I buy clothes anymore. I used to go to H&M sometimes during lunch or run down to soho. But now it's all Target. . hey they have a lot of cute stuff! Plus the new designer they highlight every few months. The funny thing is I feel so suburban now even though I DO live pretty close to center city Philadelphia, I just happen to unfortunately work out in the 'burbs. I am not neccessarily bummed about my new lunch breaks. . just making an observation is all.

It's Friday and I am stoked

Here are some things I am totally stoked on this week:

1. Love the sereneness of this blog hoping for happy accidents, of course I also love it's design resources as well. This blog makes me feel calm and clean. Is that weird to say?

2. I have always loved mollie dash's jewelry since I bought a piece about a year ago. .I hadn't been to her site in a while and I am once again in love with pretty much every piece. I have watched her design style grow and mature since first discovering her, I feel like her jewelry is the kind of jewelry I didn't even know I wanted. Like she read my mind, before I even decided it! It is that good.

3. I am really really really tempted to buy this item of the week from fred flare. I mean this is what I have been waiting for. Gotta save up!

4. I am considering buying a shirt from Papaya etsy shop. I love this retro-esque jersey tops. They are soo cute! The designer said she even does custom shirts to fit your measurements! Awesome!

5. This super cute diner scene is from last weekend when I went to Brooklyn and ate lunch at Union Picnic in Williamsburg. I just love this place.

chinatown finds

This week I have received my first cds from la la. I am pretty stoked about it. . so far I have gotten a woody guthrie/leadbelly cd, odetta, and a smashing pumpkins cd. I just got my shipping envelopes yesterday so that I can now send my cds to other people. I think I half love this cd trading just so that I get something fun in the mail.



Yesterday for work I had to run down to Chinatown. As close I live to chinatown, I rarely actually go there. I found this little store called Asia Crafts, Inc over on 10th street. It was all sanrio type stuff. The prices weren't all like super cheap. . but I did get some cheapy wrapping paper rolls, envelopes and cool computer-like icon stickers of food and beverages. What I am really stoked about are all the little origami kits they carried. They are different than regular origami though. The paper is tiny squares or tiny colored strips of paper. In each kit you make one type of origami. So you end up making lots of tiny little whatever. I got the strawberry paper pack, the paper is red with black spots on one side, and green on the other. That way when you fold it a certain way the red is on the berry part, and the green side shows as the top of the strawberry. Super cute right? I also picked up a rose kit, and these pastel paper strips that make "good luck stars." The strips were tempting because they carried so many different colorways, hologram, neon, bold, pastels. I went with the pastels. There were also kits were the paper was no more that 2 inches square to make lots of mini paper cranes! How sweet would that be to make lots of little paper cranes to hang all over the place? And the kits were only priced around $1 - $2 each. I got the strawberries since it is strawberry season. mmmmm. Which reminds me I am out of strawberries. . .

roaches, palchemy, and aphids, oh my!

Since living in New York, starting my first office job 3 years ago, and thus going through a mail order junky phase, I have really put a stop on all internet ordering of late.(save for the random amazon book order here and there) I am not sure what the occasion last week, but I went into a mail order craze and order a nice assortment of goodies. Most of them are from etsy, as I have been browsing the shops more, in turn discovering some really great handmade items! On the other hand, some of the things I have purchased, were just things I always have my eye on. . the mood was right and I finally placed my order!(such as these lovelies from Mav of port2port press, these are her month of June peony cards) These are the kind of cards you think really hard about who is special enough, and will appreciate them enough, before you send them out. Definately the kind of cards that you keep one for yourself just to look at.

Sporting a much different feel is this collage necklace I bought from SquidLicks. This was actually a hard purchase to make. I loved the color combinations, but I am scarred for life from my Brooklyn cockroach experiences. The rubber roach in the center was so funny but also so gross at the same time. I don't know, could I pull it off? Well, the price was too right, so I ordered it. I have to find just the right outfit and occasion to wear this.


The etsy website has a pretty complete forums section. There are message boards and posts covering every topic pertaining to etsy. Some bit ago, someone started a kind of swap called palchemy. The idea is you send craft supplies to someone else, and someone sends supplies to you. Then you make something with the new supplies and list the item in your shop. In your listing you much cross reference the supply-sender. Well palchemy has been reincarnated and I am participating in this second round. This is the package of goodies I am sending to Laura in London. The swap is really set up like a chain, so that each person forwards their supplies to the next person. The "swap" is scheduled to continue for as long as etsy sellers are interested.

So anyways, about aphids. . yea, could you little buggers just leave my tomato plants along? PLEASE? I mean come on. . .I sprayed a month ago with NEEM, which is an organic pest control oil. I definately should have done my research first, but who does that? This oil should only really be used as a last ditch effort, I read. It works, but in a way that it kills all insects, including the ones that are good for you plants, like pollenators. Well, of course not knowing this I sprayed my plants gung-ho with the stuff. It is a citrusy weird smell. After the oil spilled all inside my gardening tote I can't stand the smell anymore! You should not spray this oil onto your plants while they are flowering, that is the biggest thing. So despite my post-spray research, the aphids went away and I have had lots of green roma tomatoes sprouting throughout the plant. Now they are back. The little white bugs and the green ones too. . these guys give me the creepy-crawlies. You can see them all over the stems of the plants, and on the leaves too. My next method of attack is going to be what I should have tried first, before the oil spray. A mixture of insect or Dr. Bronner's soap and water is what I am going to try next. I have been putting it off though, because I don't have an empty spray bottle. That is so lazy.

I am excited to have a little green pepper starting to grow. Now I should have noted that the plants I am talking of today are not in my community garden space. . these are only the few plants I have in my city-sidewalk container garden.(note the brick wall of my apartment) I have so much basil out there I just had to harvest some of it before it starts to get bitter. I have never frozen fresh herbs before. I chopped up all the basil leaves, put them in an ice cube tray, and poured water over to make 'basil cubes.' This way when I am cooking I can just throw in a cube and know that I have about a tablespoon of fresh chopped basil going into the pot. I am pretty excited about it. My cilantro has gone to seed, but still smells lovely. I love cilantro's fresh fresh scent and flavor.


I do have more mail order on the way, plus later on I want to give an update on my community garden space. Did you know that my community garden is called "Seedy Acres"? Nice.

hair lovelies on etsy

New in the shoppy shop, hair clips and combs. I make these using vintage millenary flowers and sometimes feathers. Clip them behind your cute little ear, or pin it in your bun!

p.s. This is my 100th post!

renegade report

Yesterday I drove up to Brooklyn to the Renegade Craft Fair. Last summer I participated, but this time I just passed out promo packages, shopped, and hung out. I had fun last year as a vendor, but I had a relaxing, fun time this year as a shopper. I was in the mood to shop, but I was also going to be selective! There were so many awesome things, being a shopper this year versus a vendor, I wasn't oversaturated with craft. I was actually stoked on most things. As soon as I got to the fair I went straight to the etsy booth where my friend stops and starts had her table, with the cutey toothy totes.



For shopping, my strategy was this; first I quickly walked around the whole park just looking at what craftsers were there. All the usual all-stars, and some awesome new labels I had never seen before. I was super stoked on everything I saw, and took mental notes, but I wasn't buying anything in this first round. My second round I made a few purchases. I was totally stoked on stationary this year. I have just started buying card sets, as they are so useful and so many cool options out now, with silk screened, letterpress, and other printed cards. My first purchase was from Poppycock Design, some cool bike cards for Jorge. I really like all the items they had, including their coaster sets. My next stop was at Foxy and Winston's stationary table. I love the hand silk screened cards. Simple one color designs of cute animals. Besides a bunch of cards, I also bought these goat gift tags.

One of the things I like about craft fairs is picking up business cards. Most of the artisans really take pride in their business cards as well, and I love to look through my collection when I get home. There are always your regular 2" X 3 1/2" shape, but I really like the creative ways crafters use nontraditional materials to make their calling cards. Some of them are truly little pieces of work!

Later in the day I stopped by the Make Workshop booth. Make workshop is a craft studio in Manhattan's Lower East Side. The studio holds classes for many different kinds of crafting, and they always have the most interesting or newest crafts to learn. They also get special guest teachers, such as Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching. Diane, who runs the studio is an awesome, kind lady. I got a pincushion kit from her to try out, and she also informed me she is working with Workman Publishing to put out a sewing book. The book will have actual fold out patterns, and will teach you how to sew everything from clothing to household items. The date is unknown, but keep an eye out!

It was a fun to day to catch up with my old Brooklyn friends. I also got to meet new friends! MyMy made the greta&lux buttons for my promo packs. I recently found out Taryn of mymy lives on a farm not far from where I live in Philadelphia. Since we are practically neighbors, I had been emailing her and met her in person at the fair. She is awesome, and her online shop is super cute and a great resource for custom buttons. I hope I get to go visit her on the farm some day.

After a day of running into friends in the park, passing out my freebies, having a gooood lunch, I made my final walk through and made my last purchase. I had been eyeing these letter tote bags from BANG. I love the simple elegance of the big letters. Of course I got a 'J'(excuse the wrinkles, I had just pulled it out of my overnight bag!)






In wrap up, I also wanted to list some of my favourite things that I didn't buy, but think they are great!
-1 Girl 1 Boy, hand dyed & block printed kid's t-shirts
-Never Twice, I love their cardboard address and recipe books
-Twigs and Heather, gorgeous handcrafted silver jewelry with twig and other natural shapes
-loved the silk screened t-shirts from moonblood (and from looking at their card, they are based a couple blocks from me!) I didn't buy one of their shirts, but I think I am going to email them and get one soon.
-Mogo: modern goods I was really tempted to buy one of the ingenious cell phone cleaner attachments


It was an beautiful day for a outdoor craft fair, not so blaring sun like last summer. I hope all the crafters had a good sales weekend!

momomoogie

I have seen Stella Im Hultberg's work before as Momomoogie. I loved her stuff then, but I am completely in love with her new art site(the stella one). I just bought one of her sketchbook prints and I am so excited about it. Very Egon Schile-esque. Makes me want to pull out my watercolors and start drawing. Very inspiring!

I love that there are so many awesome artists selling their art as prints. Of course, I would love to be able to spring for an original, but the prints are great too and I love being able to support the artist - even in a small way.

patch-es on etsy

I have some odds and end type craft supplies going up in the shop. Of them, some really pretty embroidered patches. These are so dainty and delicate, I hope someone picks them up and embellishes something nice with them!

la la

Has anyone else heard about this huge CD trading website called La La? You sign up for free(you also get a free t-shirt), start listing the CDs you have to trade, and then you make a list of CDs you want. La La sends you shipping envelopes that look kinda like netflix shippers. Once you send someone a CD from your list, then you have a trade credit and you can pick a CD from your list. The more CDS you ship, the more CDs you can get. Sounds really interesting. It cost $1 for each CD traded, plus $.49 shipping fee. Part of the profits goes to support recording artists. The idea is to trade CDs instead of downloading free music, which does not support musicians. I am excited to go home and start weeding out my CD collection. . .I already have a list of wants!

Strawberry Attack! Or what to do with 10 1/2 lbs of hand picked strawberries

1. picking is fun



2. wash them all and let them dry


3. bake an amazon chocolate cake, so you can cover it with strawberries


4. make strawberry bread


5. have a grand plan to make strawberry jelly, but never make it because you eat all the strawberries first!

how charming

I have been busy uploading tons of vintage charms, tchotchkes, and craft supplies over at the shop. This has been a productive weekend!

How to take a good picture, lazy dinners, and moonlight gardening

how to take a good picture
This is actually a more jokey title, because I took some amazing pictures today by chance only! It was raining today, and I all bummed out because I had planned on taking pictures today and finally getting all my vintage supplies listed in my shop. So after doing errands after work, and finally getting home I decided to try to get some shots in. The sun was out, although going down, and it was still cloudy a little, plus going on 7:30pm. I know that the bright, bright afternoon light is too much, so I thought perhaps these light conditions might give me some somewhat usable photos. . Even if I had to tweak them in photoshop! I just wanted to get this stuff online. So I took about 50 pictures, then I realized the sun was way behind the many buildings on my city block. Plus, all the people out walking around probably thought I was crazy taking pictures of little whatever set up on a chair in the middle of my sidewalk. I took down my "shoot" and went inside to see what I got. . . Only the most clear, beautiful, products pictures I have ever taken! I was bummed I didn't stay out to take more. I did get a lot taken, and hopefully will list a good amount tonight(fun Friday night ya'll!) But I seriously am so proud of myself/stoked with the way all the pictures came out. . I didn't have to fix the coloring any at all, and barely had to crop many. . .



lazy dinners
After being newly infatuation with gardening(again), I have been also been reading a lot of cooking and food blogs. I have been so inspired by all the good recipes, posts, and cooking experiments. I have been craving fresh, organic, locally grown food.(well not mine, because it is not even close to harvesting time yet) The downside/unfortunate thing - I have no food in my fridge, and no time this week to buy food. Well if you consider going to the gym, the garden, and watching movies activities that make me not able to buy groceries! So anyways, to fulfill this craving for fresh, greens and herbs, I have been eating potatoes. That sounds like the opposite of what I really want I know, but Tuesday I had rosemary potatoes, Thursday I had mint potatoes, and tonight I had basil tomatoes. All the herbs were from my garden, fulfilling 2 needs. 1. My fresh food craving. And 2. Harvesting my herb bounty! Well never-the-less, I am going grocery shopping tomorrow!



moonlight gardening
After eating a quick and simple dinner tonight, I walked over to the garden space. I had about an hour of light left to do some much needed weeding and tinkering around. It has been raining all week, which is good. But the rain has also prevented me from gardening. The moon is almost full, and after some pruning(my rosebush has blackspot!) and planting, it was pretty much dark-dusk time. Walking around the garden, looking at other plots - I was struck by how brillant the flowers and plants looked in the moonlight. I tried to capture some pictures only using the moonlight and got some pretty neat shots. It is cool because the colors of these flowers are pretty much the actual colors I was seeing, no messing around. They are a little blurry, but you can get the color ideas of these red lillies.

city mouse

This is a drive-by photo of the Somerton Tanks Farm. Looks cute enough with the big red and white checkered tanks. There are two on the property. I took this photo today during my lunch break. I work far from center city Philadelphia - the suburbs - but still technically within city limits. This farm is also within Philadelphia city limits. What is that you say? A farm in the second largest city on the East coast? Yep.

Somerton Tanks is a fairly new(a few years old) farm in Philadelphia. They have had gross sales this past year of $52,000. Ok, ok. . .they are a new farm in an old city. Wait, the absolutely amazing thing is that they do all this on a half an acre. Yes, a half acre! The farm has shown amazing levels of productivity, according to the site, that many thought was impossible. . it is pretty inspiring, and also very accessible. After finding the farm's site a couple weeks ago, I realized that it is located a short distance from my work. So today I drove by during my lunch hour. . there it was in the middle of row houses, green lawns, and street parking. Pretty awesome. I also found out through the site, that they have a farmer's market on Thursday afternoons - I am definately going to stop by this week and check it out!


In other news. . a couple new things in the shop! I am still listing more vintage charms and supplies, but I just put up some super cute vintage ribbons with little embroidered pegoda-type structures.

Community garden story #2

Today I am tired, beat, and need another weekend to rest. There are so many things I want to share, that I have just gotten behind on. . .you know how that is. These are some pictures I took in the garden last week. This is my first banana pepper! Well any pepper really. I planted 2 varieties in the garden, and 2 different ones in my containers on the sidewalk. This is the first one of them all. In my garden plot, the peppers seem to be growing as scheduled. The tomatoes just seem to be lagging. I don't know why. . they seem to be getting the same amount of sun, and food, and everything else. This is troubling since I planted 4 tomato plants in the garden!



How sad that the peonies are over. I should have cut more blooms and enjoyed them in the house. They were so pretty. I found a great nursery and found some really interesting plants and herbs. I mostly excited about a curry plant! It smells so peppery and spicey. I also got some chocolate mint that I have to figure out where to plant. I am so nervous to plant them in the ground since they spread so crazy, but I am out of pots and pot-space. I may have to do some transplanting.





This is another view of the veggie rectangle. I planted chives in between my tomatoes because they had aphids. Chives are supposed to help ward off those kinds of things, same with the marigolds on the other side.

I am in the mood now to sit and write about something. .but at the same time I am having a total mind block - so rather than ramble on about nothing good, I will just continue on later with something else.