Art Kit GiveAway Galore!

Aren't those Beautiful?!

I made 8 new small art kits containing 2 small pencils and a 6"X4" hand bound notebook with one of my inspiration cards on the cover, all fit snugly in a quilted case made of colorful cool fabrics.

I'm giving them away to anyone who buy something from my Etsy store and send me the code "artkitgalore" in the "massage for seller".

There only are 8 of those so get them before they are all gone!

Project Renewal

I was reading some tread on the etsy forum today where people recommended different things to jump start sells and told what they did to make their store work better. One of the things many people mentioned how renewing and listing often helps a lot! I usually list something every day or two, but I'm going to try and do better now.

I've decided to check this theory by spending a 1$ each day on renewing and listing, meaning, about 5 items either new or renewed per day. I'm going to try two things. In the first week of the experiment, I'm going to list or renew 5 items in different hours of the day, while at the second week of renewing, I'm going to renew all of them at once.

I'm going to put in some numbers in my blog everyday to see if this works in any way to make my sells get a little better.

So here's today's numbers:

Items renewed:
past present future - a set of 3 drawings for 40$
opossum sewing kit - 20$
a cups set of tarot cards - 40$
a fox - 25$

New items:
a painting called strange summer, which I did today at a coffee shop while ned was at the gym escaping the heat of the apartment - 15$

Number of hearts - 1042

Salvation Army

The Salvation Army on Bedford avenue and N7th street is one of my favorite shops in the world! really, it's so awesome.

First of all, they have great cloths in really cheap prices, which I like!

Second of all, they have really cheap cloths that though I might not be able to wear, like an extra extra extra large red sweater from Moreno wool for 3.99$, I can still buy and use as material to work with and make stuff from.

Third, I really love wearing second hand cloths, not only someone else did all the work and wore and washed them till they got all soft and nice and not too clean and crisp to wear, it's also better for the environment cause cloths gets to go around and last longer in the world.

Forth and probably the nicest thing - I love the way that this is contributing to the community, people who wants to get rid of cloths, have an easy way of doing it, people who wants to buy cloths have a good place to do just that. Stuff get reused and people with no money get to have great stuff if they want to.
Also, for some of the people that work there this is an opportunity to have a real serious job for the first time in their life and gain confidence and work abilities on the way of rejoining to working community. I love to see the same faces there every time and how much better they become in working there.

So today, with an idea about a pink fox in mind I went shopping, I intended to just get a pink sweater and get back to the house, but then some other stuff caught my eyes and this is a result:


1) a pink sweater size Large, as planned....

2) An Ann Taylor Loft Stripy skirt, probably to wear, it's really nice and I can't wait till it's warm enough to actually wear skirts.

3) Another skirt with a brown and pink Paisley motif. I thought of using the fabric as material, but now I think I like it too much as a skirt and don't want to destroy it.

4) A Gap sweater. This was on their posters last fall, and I saw a lot of people wearing it for a while so I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to wear something so recognizable, however, it'll make a cute elephant or something if I decide to cut it up.

5) a Red and blue star Tshirt, bought mostly for the stars and for the fact it was 0.99$

So, good day of shopping, 16$ spend on 5 items and spending time in my favorite business in the neighborhood...

Above you can see Henzel the Fox which is made of a half of a salvation Army sweater I got last week at half price of a 3.99$.

Our Wedding

This was such an amazing experience, right before I left for Israel, I got contacted by Etsy's video article expert Tara Young who wanted to do a video article about us. I send her a written story a couple of months before when they asked for stories about handmade weddings. We manage to schedule the shoot a couple of days before my trip and so it was a wonderful surprise to be able to see this movie all edited and made on the day I returned. It's hard for me to not think I look stupid on camera, but I really love the way it came out. with the trip to Israel and all, and this feeling like such an important time in our relationship and life in general, it's really wonderful to have this beautiful overview of the beginning of our love.

Trade Up!

2 new books arrived in the mail in the past couple of days and I wanted to show them off! I approached two book artist a couple of weeks ago and offered to trade, it's a nice way to move stocks about and also to get wonderful stuff from people that i don't know how to make myself.

I'm so glad I offered the trades, I really couldn't be happier with what I get, also, seeing how other etsy seller wrap their stuff and what they send the package with is very inspiring and educational.

So, without farther a due, my new books!

AnneClarkDesigns




This books comes from a beautiful jewelery makes and a book artist called Anne, this book is made of beautiful marbled paper that i love, I've never seen this binding before, it's a cross between long stitched and regular European style binding with the stitches exposed. I really love it, it's inspiring me to learn more binding method and already gave me a cool idea for a book.

The end paper is beautiful red pattern and the pages inside are nice and soft. I knew it was going to be a nice book but really, I never expected it to be so awesome! This is going to be my Trip-to-Israel sketchbook, I hope I can fill the whole thing in the 2 weeks I'm going to be there next month.

Really, I can't stress enough how awesome this book is, you should all get one at Anne's store

Painted Fish Studio


This is the second book I got, the price on it was really really low, and I couldn't understand why, I thought I might be reading the measurement wrong or something, however, it turned out that i didn't, this is amazingly made, the materials are really top quality and the whole thing is so awesome I still don't understand why she doesn't charge 5 times more at least for it.

This is a beautiful old fashion style album made from black paper and bound in beautiful mustered. the end paper is cool yellow on mustered dots. I'm especially excited about how amazing this is because Ned's going ot use it for a small version of his portfolio to take for meetings with Model, so I'm glad it's going to look great (well, unless I decide I'm taking over).

Jen's store have beautiful books, albums, art prints and other paper craft, her pictures are beautiful and the whole store have a beautiful clean look. Visit painted fish studio!

Stab stitching tutorial

This is a tutorial for my currently favorite book making method. A Japanese style stab stitching cook, it's perfect for making small notebooks, sketchbooks and albums, as well as bigger hard cover books (though I personally haven't tried those.

The benefits of stab stitching books are - since all the pages are stitched together, there are no signatures and so you can bind any number of pages together. Also, there is no glue involve which make this craft a lot less messy (though you won't be able to judge that by how the studio looks right now.


Materials
A rubber ballet or a hammer, paper cut to size, I used about 25 pages for this one, nice paper for the cover and pack cover, also cut to the same size at the pages inside, an awl, a ruler, craft knife, pencil, floss, needle, 2 clips.

Step 1. Attach all the pages together using the clips, put the clips in about a third from the top, leave at least 1"-2" clear to work on.
Step 2. with the ruler and the pencil, mark a straight line on the top part of the book (where the stitching will go). Mark 5 points in equal intervals.


Step 3. Using the awl and mallet, puncture 5 holes where you made the marking. make sure the awl made it all the way through all layers of paper and that the holes are nice and even. If you down have an awl, this can also be done with a nail.

Step 4. make a knot at the end of your floss and thread it through a needle. Start by passing the needle through the center hole from the back of the book to the front, then loop around the top part of the book and insert the needle again through the same hole.

Step 5. Then, pass the needle through the hole to the right of the center hole, and loop around the top part again. turn the book to the back part and move to the next hole to the right (the last one) and loop around it as well. Loop around the side of the book and insert the needle through the first hole to the right again. Then stiched back to the center.
Step 6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to the left side of the book, then tie a knot at the end and trim the floss.

Ta-Da! the book is done, you can decorate it with rubber stamps, bits of paper, beads, drawings or whatever you like. Or, if you are too lazy, you can hop on to my store and buy one. Writing the instruction is honestly more complicated then actually making one, there are very few options to where the needle can go and it's really really easy to make.

More book binding information
Book binding glossary
The how to make books book
Japanese book binding
Center of book art
The Arm - a wonderful gallery and letter press shop, that offer classes and is just a great place to visit.

Productive Night

Ned's back was hurting and he was feeling sick yesterday, he spend the day in bed in a colossal sleep of 27 hours (well with a few breaks for food). It was weird to spend a whole day with barely a conversation with a living soul...

So, I listened to Israeli podcast, that I like, a show called "making history" by Ran Levi, which is about the history of scientific discoveries and invention, and i made Tarot for the store. the 3 decks I made before was gone, so it was time to make some new ones. The fabrics that I bought on Friday were great for color inspiration and I enjoyed the podcasts and painting, cutting and sewing.

Ned took pictures of them today, so now there's a new Cups Deck and a new Major Deck in the store.

Tonight, I was working on a gift for my sister, however, it came out so nice, I just had to keep it for the shop, I'll make her something else tomorrow...

Good night!

Sales today: 3
Items posted: 3
packages send out: 1
Main source of inspiration: A fabric shopping spree at PurlSoho made me think about colors.
Best thing to eat: jambon de bayon Sandwich at Blackbird Parlor and Baklava for dessert.
Listening to: The deathgate cycle audio book.

We were sick all week, however, during the night I feel better and then - I work! and so tonight, Ned took photos of a cups Tarot deck I finished last night. And I manage to make another 2. It was a very good night.

The cool thing was this - I listed the deck, then, I posted a photo in flickr, then I opened the new Exel work file I downloaded from the Etsy site to try and keep better track on thing and, well tried to figure it out since I've never worked with it before (I'm still not sure it's working...) and then I went back to my etsy page to check the view - and the deck was gone! it was already sold!

It's the best feeling in the world.

A story about a skirt

A while ago, Ned and I were shooting for a fashion designer, her Name's Emily and she's an artist and a designer. She designed 2 beautiful Jackets, one very natural looking and the other, metallic and shiny. She said she'll bring some jumpsuits for the bottom, but we wanted to get some stuff, and the day before the shoot, I went to the Salvation Army store and bought a really nice mid length suede skirt, which I thought would look nice with the natural looking jacket.

Coming home and putting the skirt on the rack, I saw found a really wonderful find, It turned out it was an Isaac Mizrahi Leather skirt.

We never got to used it in the shoot, but I decided to keep the skirt for myself. Somehow, though it was beautifully made and very nice to touch, I only wore it once, it was a little too big and didn't look that great on me. So it set in the closet for a while, and seem would go on doing so until spring cleaning when I'll take it back to the Salvation army store.

However, a couple of day's ago I got an e-mail through Etsy, someone asked is I can make a traveler art kit from leather, and later that day, I remembered the skirt, so 2 days later, and the skirt is reincarnated as a nice folder for sketchbooks and pencils.

I have a bit of a problem using animal products for crafts, like leather, I love working with it, but feels it's immoral, using reclaim leather makes me feel a little better about it.

Treasury West is Back!

And with it, the awesome possibility to get one right as you want it like I did last night when I heard the good news. The main problem was that I had nothing ready to go so it's a bit theme less, however I think I manage ot build a pretty respectable one out of my favorite store list, It manage to get a strange color look which I'm not even sure that I like.

Still - no sales this week, it sucks. I haven't put much in the store since the fox, but renewed a couple of items, even with the slow week and a half, I'm still really happy about January, I had to pay 55$ in etsy free for January and half of February Which 'm really impressed with. Also, I finally started illustrating the new Minor arcana tarot deck, I'm half way into finishing the "cups" element. I'm still not sure whether I should sell each element on it's own or wait till the whole set is done and sell the 56 together, or wait till the whole set is done and sell the whole 78 together including the major arcana.

It's very strange to find myself thinking in terms of marketing and cost effectiveness. I know that waiting till the whole set is done probably make more sense but I'm still probably going to try and sell each element on it's own because I can't bring myself to commit to finish the entire project, for now I'm saying "I'll do 14 and see what happens..."

OK, breakfast and back to work. I made another Tarot deck last night that need to be shot and listing, and I have every intention in the world of finishing those illustrations today and perhaps, make the first "cup" deck and put it in the shop.

Thursday

Sales today: 1
Items posted: 1
packages send out: 1
Main source of inspiration: a shopping mistake
Best thing to eat: Eggs Benedict in Pastis (it was so decadent, but so worth it...)

I just realized that for the past week or so I've been managing 2 blogs that are basically the same, both were made to share the experiences I have through running the Etsy store, one on we-love-etsy and one on indipublic and that on top of the not very used personal blog Homeworld and a couple of website and a flickr account.

It felt really strange to have to split the store blog info into 2, so I decided that what I need is yet another blog to have all that info in (plus I really hate NING's graphics - it's too overpowering and sell I say - ugly).

So here it is, in all it's glory - new blog weepee!

And without farther a due, today's Etsy news:

A Sad Story of Shopping and Returning
One of the things that I really like about the store is that it pushes me to do stuff that's really hard for me, like being assertive. So this is what happened - a while ago I went to Staplers and got 3 packs of cover stock paper in green, gray and cream, I thought I'd use them for pages in books I made, but they were too heavy and so they were left aside. Then, when I started prining out the Tarot cards I remembered them and the cream was just perfect for this.
So, eventually, the paper was over, after about 15 tarot decks and I needed new one. I went to the store and got some new one, but, coming home, it turned out that the different brand doesn't work well at all with the printer and I can't use it.

If this was just for a personal project I would toss the paper away and forget about the whole thing, however, because this was for the store, I felt more responsible and assertive and me and Ned went into the city today, and though the package was open, they were still able to refund the money.

This story is boring, but it has 2 important morals - the first is that it's good to be assertive, cause I feel much better about myself after I returned the paper. The second is that necessity is the mother of invention, because, having no cream paper, I tried the gray and it came out really really great.



A Happy Story About a Weasel

We both woke up early and in a really bad mood this morning. We didn't feel like eating anywhere in the area and eventually took the train to Ned's old neighborhood just to have breakfast in a really fancy place he loved going to when he was living there. It was a really nice breakfast. On the way back I asked "do you think something sold in the store?" and he said "yes" and then I asked "what" and he said "Everything!" and I said "I wish the weasel would sell, it's really cute and it makes me sad when animals that I make don't sale.

I got home and what do I see?! It did sell! that was really cool. I send the package out right away.

Also, a tutorial I made in the morning about making weasels got published on Cut Out + Keep.