My Favorite Colors

This weeks Etsy Bloggers Carnival asks "What is your favorite color combination and what do you amke with it?" Well, I LOVE color in general, so I love making bright things, but my top four favorite colors are PURPLE, BLACK, SILVER, and BLUE. You'll see all of these colors show up in my work, but you also see a wide variety of other colors. I've worked hard to expand my color pallette so that I will appeal to more customers hopefully :)

Falling Stars Dangle Earrings

Despite purple being my all time favorite color - I think my love of silver is actually what influences my work the most. I've never been much of a girl for gold, and while I do use gold tones and gold colored findings on occasion, I'd estimate that 90% of my work is done in silver colored findings and accents. I try to diversefy like I mentioned earlier, which is while you'll occasionally see other metals used, but working with silver colors is much more natural for me.

Color Explodes Bead Woven Bracelet

I think my color explodes bracelet best shows off my love of the colors purple, blue, and black. I had a lot of fun working with this piece! It's a free form peyote stitch bracelet that was inspired by the center cabochon. This is one I've been very tempted to keep for myself - and one of the pieces I get the most comments on at the craft fairs!

So what about you? What are your favorite colors to use when creating?

Etsy Bloggers Carnival - Talking about OHM

The current Etsy Bloggers Carnival topics are:

1)Sept. 11 is the anniversary of a very tragic event. To make the world better what do you do? Charity donations or support, volunteering, living green or ?
2) Brag on yourself. What are you most proud of in your life?

I'm going to kind of combine the two. There are many things I'm proud of in my life, but my almost two years working at Open House Ministries (OHM) are high on that list! I was day care teacher, but that title doesn't really cover what I did.

(yes, that's me, younger and skinnier)

OHM is a long term homeless shelter. They provide a place to stay while people are getting back on their feet, not to mention lots of services to help them get back on their feet! Residents might stay for three months, or a lot longer, depending on what help they need.

As a day care teacher I not only took care of the kids while the parents were working to get back on their feet, I also ended up doing a lot of impromptu counseling, some chauffeuring, data entry, working in the donations center, and even cooking a spaghetti dinner for 50+ people! Pretty much, I just pitched in where ever I was needed!

That's what I did, what am I doing now? I'm not strong enough to even go volunteer down there any more, so I've decided to start donating a percentage of my sales! Starting this month I'll be donating 10% of all my proceeds to OHM. Each month I'll post up how much the previous month's donation came too! Right now...that comes to $0.20! ok, so that's not much, but I do have a custom order lined up so that will bring the total up :) And I haven't checked in with my consignment store yet for the month.

Etsy Bloggers Blog Carnival - August 3rd Edition

This is my first time hosting the teams blog carnival - and I'm so excited! Have fun reading :)

Welcome to the August 3, 2009 edition of etsybloggers.

Quirky presents How to Beat the Heat posted at Sew Simply Handmade

agoodwitchtoo presents Summer and Sun posted at The Copper Cauldron.

dizzydragonflies presents Somewhere in a cabin in the woods, a knitter knits posted at dizzydragonflies.

Vanessa presents Summer Lovin' posted at Designs by Vanessa.

Kathy and Carrie presents EtsyBlogger's Blog Carnival - July posted at CalKat The Jewelry Junkie.

Jessica presents Hot Fun In The Summer posted at Cut Your Heart Out.

Amy presents Blog Carnival posted at Motley Boutique - a handmade mixture.

Sykin presents hopespantry.etsy.com - etsybloggers.com Carnival Post posted at Sykin's One Stop Etsy Shopping Guide.

MagdaleneJewels presents Carnival: Hot Summer Shops posted at MagdaleneJewels's Blogs.

Margaret Freije presents hot fun in the summertime! posted at Splendid Little Stars

Mary Ann presents Great Summer shop posted at Morning Sky Jewelry and Creations.

Linda Turner presents How to Beat the North Georgia Heat..Go Further North posted at HeadTurner Jewelry by Linda Turner.

Sandi Myers presents Beat the heat? Remember the old days… posted at The T-Shirt Lady

Erika presents It's a Hot Summer posted at NICO* Designs.

miesmama presents a shop for summer - posted at miesmama.

PurrPrints presents Fun-find Friday: Beat the heat with batik posted at PurrPrints: Art, Cats, and Randomness

Rose Works Jewelry presents Rose Works Jewelry: EtsyBloggers Are HOT posted at Rose Works Jewelry.

Jamie presents Fresh Peaches & Frozen Concoctions posted at A Forest Frolic.

Now let's go visit our teammates blogs and read this edition of the EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival!

Technorati tags: etsybloggers, blog carnival.

EtsyBloggers Are HOT

Here's some awesome HOT summer items by my AWESOME Etsy Bloggers!

Summer Equals Smoothies!

It's time once again for the Etsy Bloggers Carnival! What's that you say? I haven't done one on here in awhile? Well...that's true. See, I'm the kinda crazy girl who runs THREE blogs. So my blog carnival entries end up on which ever one I deem most appropriate for the theme. Lately that's been my Jedi Blog because the options I've chosen have involved more personal stories than anything to do with art. Since that's part of the realm of that blog - it goes over there! I also do a lot of book reveiws over there and share some of my writing. If any of that sounds interesting to you, be sure you check it out!

One of the options for this weeks theme was your favorite summer recipe. Now it's hard for me to do a recipe because I tend to mess with recipes. I very rarely cook anything exactly according to the original recipe, and once I start cooking something regulalry I often abandon using a recipe at all. I sometimes even abandon using measuring tools. I blame my mother. Which is aweful because I used to complain to no end about her cooking like that because it made it harder for me to learn to cook! Don't worry, I've since forgiven her now that I understand ;)

My hubby and I discovered during our first year of marriage that we LOVE drinking smoothies during the summer. (I can say that! I'm on my second year! LOL) In fact I get kinda sad during the winter because it's usually just too cold to want to make smoothies. Of course then I make lots of coffee and other hot goodies... Anyway, I payed close attention when I made smoothies to go with dinner tonight (chicken burritos!), so I have a "recipe" for you!

Needed:

1 blender

Juice

Fruit

Sugar

Ice

Yes, I know that wasn't measurements. I'll give you rough one's in the recipe - be patient!

1. Set up your blender :P

2. Pull out your juice. I usually use a citrus based juice. Pineapple, Orange/strawberry/banana, Mango/orange, take your pick!

3. My blender measures liters. I usually put in just over 1/4 a liter of juice. Now here's a secret - putting in extra juice is MUCH better than putting in too little! Too little and it won't blend well. So be generous!

4. Add your fruit. What fruit? What's in your fridge? During the summer I tend to keep strawberries in the fridge and that's my mainstay. I put 6 big one's in tonight. If they are big I usually cut them once or twice to make things easier on the blender, and don't forget to cut off the stems! You can add anything you want though, bannana, mango, blackberries....be creative!

5. Sugar. I don't put much in, maybe a two and half spoons? Tends to be just a little too tart if you don't add anything though.

6. Blend breifly until smooth.

7. Add ice. How much will depend on how big your ice container is. I tend to put in about 3/4 a tray. Experiment until your happy - these are yummy experiments!

8. Blend until smooth. This could take a bit. Depending on your blender you may need to stop it at some point and kinda shake or stir the ice down towards the bottom. This is where having used extra juice can help!

9. Pour and enjoy! (Serves two large cups)

Aren't you jealous of my nice Dollar Tree cups? You know you are!

Don't like my recipe? Too imprecise for you? I found a whole web-site of smoothies called Smoothie Web! They even have a section called "Crazy Smoothies" - I may just have to experiment :D

Two Zany Zebras

This month's Etsy Blogger is Two Zany Zebras! I love her little monsters. If I ever have any kids I'd love to buy her stuff! I love monsters :) 

Etsy and Me

Hey everyone! Before I dive into this blog post - I just wanted to say that my migraines are back full force. My couple of good days seems to have been a fluke. BUT the good news is we're trying more things, and I figured out how to get my lap top set up on the couch to use when I'm stuck flat on my back. So hopefully I'll be able to get more consistent about blogging...although adding new things to my shop is still going to be hard.

This weeks etsy blogger carnival is all about why you got started on etsy and what you think about etsy.

I found etsy through a friend. This was around a year ago, and my health had been rapidly declining for a few months. This gal saw me working on my jewelry when she'd come over to hang out and told me I should try selling. Well, she wasn't the first person to tell me that, but she was the first to introduce me to etsy!

Long series of events later - I found myself opening up my shop on May 5th, 2008. I was so excited and so nervous all at the same time! It seemed like there was a never ending stream of information to learn- and you know it still feels that way sometimes. Slowly but surely I got my feet under me, and a lot of that was because I met a few awesome people who were willing to help me find my way.

Now I have two shops on etsy. The first is my jewelry shop. I haven't has as many sales as I'd like, but I love that I have made sales! I've made enough to keep me going :) Besides, I LOVE making jewelry, so what else would I do with all the stuff I create?

Etsy Buy Handmade roseworksjewelry

My second shop is one I share with my Mom. I haven't been able to do as much to develop this shop as I'd like because of the migraines - but once I can get rid of those my Mom and I have lots of ideas! We've always been close - but it's been fun to have this to talk about :)

Etsy Buy Handmade kstreasures

While I love etsy - I'm also well aware that there are limitations to it. It can be hard to get recognition on etsy because it's grown so fast and they haven't always done the best job at allowing people to get time and recognition. Also my main market, jewelry, is very saturated no matter where you go, so that's just hard to sell in general.

I do love the people I've met on etsy and the friends that I've made!

Will I stay with etsy? Yes. Will I ever open up shop on another venue? I'd like to. I need to get a little more consistency to my health first though. For now, I have enough work with two shops and two blogs :)