A great day...

Today while at PT I happened to pick up the newspaper and I thought I died and gone to heaven when I read that we will be getting a Hobby Lobby!!!!!! Right in the same plaza where I do my grocery shopping - I first experienced a Hobby Lobby in Atlanta when we were visiting my in laws and then again in Kentucky visiting my in laws. We are getting the first one in the North East - wahooooooooo! (OK now I really need to beef up my Etsy sales so I can go shopping at the Hobby Lobby!!!)

In celebration of my 100th post I am offering a giveaway to the first person that purchases something from my Etsy shop, I will include a free salt and pepper set covered in Polymer Clay that you can then keep for yourself or give as a gift! This will be one of the sets from my stash (not the blue one with hearts because that one is up for sale). However, you could buy the blue set and you would be getting a buy one get one free deal. I will also offer free shipping for the salt and pepper that I am including. I will not charge you extra shipping to ship the freebe. I will also be adding more stuff to the Etsy shop soon. My Etsy shop address is http://www.laurasgiftboutique.etsy.com/ Have fun and I can't wait to see whom the lucky winner is, I will EVEN profile the winner on my blog if they would like.

All for sale on ETSY...

As you know I have been playing around with my digital camera and I have made two light boxes in the effort to take better pictures of my artwork and it is finally coming together, thanks to DH helping. It is ALL about the lighting folks and your camera settings. All of the above are for sale on ETSY... I haven't even uploaded these pictures to Etsy yet as I wanted to share with you first, Don't you feel special!? (You should!!! :-) I also noticed that this is my 99th or 98th post, SO I think it just MIGHT be time for another GIVEAWAY, don't you think maybe so????? I think I need to have a giveaway in conjunction with my Etsy shop too. So let me sleep on it and stay tuned for the 100th post, it will be in the info. on that post. I am sooooo excited! Also if you are a local reader of my blog and you are interested in buying something from my Etsy store, I wouldn't charge you shipping, especially if I see you frequently, ie book club, you live on my street etc. Hint, hint. Please consider me for all of your gift giving needs!!!! :-) Stay tuned because I have LOTS that needs to be uploaded to Etsy and lots of goodies coming your way!

Whole week gone by....

Has it really been since last Sunday for my last blog post? Where has the week gone? Well let me share a little with you...
My Nights:
Mon - Taught Jewelry 2 at JoAnns
Tues. - One free night I had, spent with A. and put her to bed
Wed. - We had our MOPS meeting and we painted glass plates and they turned out AWESOME!
Thurs. - Tonight A. had her dance recital, what a trip and a half to watch three year olds dancing on a stage with real lights and curtains too.
Fri. - I am having a Tastefully Simple party. I have about 12 people coming to my house tomorrow night for a taste testing party.
Sat. Am - I am going to Make and Take and we are making meals for and with a pregnant friend. Should be fun.
So yah it has been a busy week albeit a fun one.

What have I been doing craft wise? Well the painting a plate was VERY fun. In fact it was so much fun that I think I might want to start a new craft endeavor! haha. However I have been working on a serious side of my business this week, in all of my spare time, literally. I have been trying to figure out how to take REALLY good pictures of my crafts so that I can start an ETSY.com shop. And so I can have better photos on my blog as well. I have a new found respect for people with blogs that have awesome photos. The whole photo taking is an art in and of itself. I found a great blog tutorial which has been helping me a lot. Plus I LOVE the sense of humor this person has. It's been slow, I want the results right away, but it is coming along.

What has Dear Hubby been doing? Well he in literally all of his spare time, finished building his second guitar!!! I have an affinity for this one. I love the all wood look and he now has a name plate that a guy at work made for him - very cool I might add! That is GOLD POLYMER CLAY inlay FOLKS, DH and I figured out how to do that!!!!

Scissors Dress...

Today we have Easter activities going on at our household. First A. went on her VERY first Easter Egg Hunt this morning put on for our town by the Kiwanis Club. It was really well done and very nice. It was FREEZING though. I brought a hat and DH was getting cold and didn't dress for the weather so I gave him my hat. We got to see the Easter Bunny. DD didn't want her picture with EB though, she is still a bit afraid of characters whom are dressed up.

Easter Egg hunt next to a snow bank, hmmm, is Spring in the air???? Yes she has her snow pants on too!

It took 2 min. for the kids to get all the eggs and 3 minutes for everyone to get back in their cars.

Every single egg had a bag of jelly beans in it, I was kinda disappointed as I am not a jelly bean fan :-)
I turned around and just thought "OH MY!"
I made the Apple Pie Pastries for Easter dinner dessert. It is the recipe in the current Taste of Home magazine, which my MIL got me a subscription to. I also made the coleslaw for the second time for Easter dinner as well, it is sooooo yummy, it is a non mayo recipe. This time I also used a mix of Splenda/sugar blend, so it is not too much calories and sugar etc. It tastes just as good, I love the toasted sesame seeds in it too. Now the baking of the Apple Pie Pastries took me a LONG time! Although the magazine says it will take 40 minutes. Maybe it was because a three year old helped me with the first part of the process. I will say that it was worth the time and effort they came out great and very very tasty!!!!! Can't wait to serve them for dessert tomorrow night. DD was off playing and WAIT till you see the results of Mom not paying much attention to what she was doing! She made herself a scissors dress (with all of my scrapbook scissors, I might add) on the clothing she was wearing.
Apple Pie Pastries, worth the work and fun to make.
Parchment paper, my new best friend! Saves my already downhill baking sheets from more agony. :-)

What are my scrapbooking scissors doing within her reach? Well I am reorganizing my craft room, remember Whoa Nellie, well it was time. So I pulled out all of my scrapbooking stuff and it came up to the dining room. You see the problem with my craft room is that it needs to serve many purposes not just one, such as scrapbooking, hey if I only had to fill one craft that would be EASY, oh no I can't do that though, I need to have Polymer Clay, Jewelry Making, Rubber Stamping, Paper crafting, and scrapbooking, and sewing. But I pulled out sewing for now too. I am really happy with the results so far, I am organizing and I am going to be getting rid of storage bins etc that I don't need anymore. I would post a pic, but you may not see the progress since some parts still look messy even though that is just my interim way of organizing. I LOVE organizing it helps me remember what I have, what I need etc. Also my scrapbooking was infiltrating all parts of the room, somehow! Now I am working on clay stuff. I've decided that I want to open an ETSY shop too, so that has been on my mind as well. The organized craft room should help me in that endeavor.

Update: Upon further inspection of the 'scissors dress' shirt there are holes in it, they are minor, however guess where I got the shirt? Goodwill! It was worth the moment :-)

Polymer Clay Business...

I had a first for my Polymer Clay Business today. A lady I had met at a craft show back in November, whom sells beaded jewelry and some sewn stuff too - came to my house to buy some beads from me for her jewelry. I have a ton of polymer clay beads and stuff that is not yet finished for many reasons, one I have a two year old, two I like to try new techniques all the time and I just keep trying the clay techniques and don't always take the time to finish my bead work into necklaces and jewelry etc. Let me back up and tell you that we were supposed to trade because at the craft sale I got my daughter a fleece red riding hood type jacket, with hood, pink and very cute, so I told her to see what she wanted off of my table and she said she would like some beads. So I OWED her! And she liked my work so much that she ended up buying from me!!!!

A note on price point for wholesaling your work, she asked me how much and since I have NEVER done this type of selling before, I didn't really know. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, some pieces have more work than others but I just gave her a flat rate for all. She said she had a friend that may be interested in my work too - yahoo. Its great to have new stuff happening for my business, and taking it in a direction that I hadn't really thought of too. I like the idea that my work will not be sitting around any longer and that someone else can create nice pieces with it. However there is also that loss of control of what will happen to my work as well. But it is all good, I am very happy with what happened today and look forward to selling this way more.

By the way anyone interested in more information on this topic, I have been enjoying another blog by another Polymer Clay artist called Artreprenuer; The Collison of Art and Business. She sells beautiful polymer clay cranes that she makes, however she also offers her thoughts on being an artist and running a business. Check out the link by clicking on the highlighted title I made for you above, you will love her cranes!