Holiday Sale!

Happy Cyber Monday! I hope you all had a restful long weekend with lots of friends, family, and food! I spent Thanksgiving with my family, then broke all of my personal rules and found myself in the middle of the black Friday line at Target at Midnight. After a mild panic attack and a near squishing incident in the electronics section, I walked out of there 15 minutes later with a new Dyson vacuum, and Mad Men Season 4 on DVD. Not bad for a totally unplanned trip.

As for the rest of my Christmas shopping, I’ve barely put a dent in it. I’m planning on making a few gifts myself, but will be buying the rest on Etsy. I encourage you to do the same, and support small, handmade businesses. So, to get the online shopping ball rolling on this Cyber Monday, I’m offering a 10% discount on all of the items in my shop! Simply enter MINIHOLIDAY2011 in the coupon code box on the Etsy checkout page and the discount will automatically be deducted from your total! This offer will end on Sunday, December 4^th, so get your shopping done early! I’ve got lots of items, from tea towels, to pillow covers, coasters, to cards. Head on over to my shop and check it out. Happy shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is almost here! The shopping season is also in full swing, and I've been busy trying to prepare myself and my little biz for the (hopeful) rush. In the midst of all of this, I have plenty of ideas for handmade gifts for my friends and family this year, so I'm excited to carve out sometime for some crafting and sewing of new projects, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of my projects here on the blog as well. But in the meantime, I'm going to take a couple of days to hang out with my family in Monterey and appreciate all of the things I'm thankful for. Wishing you a stuffed-full Thanksgiving and some productive shopping (if that's what you're into). From the looks of this illustration, it looks like Black Friday was even a "thing" back in 1960!

I love that little dachshund on the run!

New items in the shop!

I've been keeping busy trying to get my inventory up to snuff for the impending holiday rush. With the effort to stock all of my usual items, I've been creating a few new items as well! Here are a few:

I've got new moving announcement postcards featuring my Mini Caravan design screenprinted on sturdy recycled kraft cardstock. These come in sets of 4 and in red or white ink.

New "let it snow" cards in deep blue and black! This design is a variation of a design I've had in the shop in previous seasons, new and improved for 2011! It features a MINI Cooper on a wooded hillside, watching the snow fall, with a Christmas tree on the roof!

Check out these retro ornament cards with a Classic Mini Cooper! I printed these with hand-mixed deep teal and lime green inks. Check out the card section of my shop to see all of these new cards and my usual designs. I've got a few new products in the works as well, so keep an eye out for those.

Dia de los Muertos.

I whipped up this little Dia de los Muertos hair accessory this weekend to wear for Halloween. I know, I know, I was a couple days early. But I was dressed up as a "dead head" for Halloween so it fit. I used 4 colors of felt (black, white, pink, teal, and yellow), a couple different colors of embroidery thread, and some multi-colored sequins. I used a snap barrette I already had to attach it to my hair. Here are a few process photos.

 

I started getting the rough shapes laid out - the skull, the eyes, and various flower shapes. I started getting the embroidery laid out as well. I sewed the sequins to the felt flowers, but you could easily glue them on instead. 

After I had the flowers, leaves and skull arranged the way I wanted, I put everything on a big piece of black felt to use as a backer. I did a quick baste stitch to secure everything, then cut the black felt backer to size.

 

Here it is all finished. I embroidered the rest of the skull with linear and swirly stitches. I also added a few green leaves and some more sequins to the flowers. 

Here's an inspiration sugar skull! My sister made this one a few years ago and it's held up very well. Those are lots of fun to make, too. And here's a photo of me wearing my handiwork on Halloween. It was so much fun to make - I hope you like it! What did you wear for Halloween??

Fall decor.

Happy November! I hope your Halloween was filled with lots of treats and not so many tricks. I spent the evening with friends and family passing out candy, listening to spooky Halloween music, and watching The Lost Boys on DVD (yay for crazy Santa Cruz!). Now that it's November, Christmas is fast approaching but I refuse to let the Fall/Thanksgiving season pass me by. I wanted to share this pumpkin painting project I did after my trip to the pumpkin patch. I'm glad that once I put away the bats and skeletons around my house I can still enjoy my pretty pumpkins until Thanksgiving.

Inspired by this photo from Martha Stewart Living, I was determined to find a light-colored pumpkin to paint a wood grain texture. The beetle and spider web ones are pretty cool, too but I was really attracted to the graphic nature of the wood grain.

Photo from MS Living

So I picked out a pumpkin that was dying to be painted. Here's a progress shot.

I used black craft paint. I just started at the stem and made my way down to the underside, painting wiggly, irregular lines and knotholes.

And here it is all finished, paired with some of the pumpkins from the patch! You may be able to see a little bit of shimmer in there because I added gold stripe accents to the black design. I also painted the stem gold! I'm hoping this pumpkin lasts until Thanksgiving.

Today is also Dia de los Muertos! I have a fun little project to share with you later.