Shopping trip over at the Etsy store: Amyliz dish cloths and gift tags

Somewhere in central Minnesota lives AmyLiz, an artisan with an Etsy shop. Last week, a set of her sage and jute dish cloths popped up in a photo, and I set off in hot pursuit. I bought the ones below, as well as two irresistible sets of chalk-weathered gift tags: the ladies here, and Thank You tags.

Amyliz also makes handmade wool felt items, and creates special orders. I'll let her speak for herself: 

**A special THANK YOU to Etsy for featuring my sage and jute dish cloth set on the Storque over the weekend! Check it out here, scroll down to the Spring Cleaning section:

http://www.etsy.com/storque/spotlight/etsy-finds-traveling-down-the-greenway-7214/

Update: I am knitting as fast as I can, and will be getting your dish cloths out as quickly as possible! Thank you everyone for your support, I TRULY appreciate it all!

You can check out our other store, HTTP://WWW.AMarketCollection.ETSY.COM
for lots of fun wool felt embellishments, wool felt sheets and moreover....
We would GLADLY combine shipping costs if purchasing from both stores!
Convo me and let me know before purchasing!

I am a proud member of the SSODS (Secret Society of Dirty Sisters) Street Team and CSSTEAM (Cottage Style Street Team)

So, I paid for these with Paypal, bypassing the heftier fees taken from the seller by Visa or Mastercard (see my earlier post on that topic), and today received what always feels like a little gift in the mail.

It's fun to purchase something this way: a bit subversive, more personal, and with the special kick that comes from knowing that in some small way you are supporting a real person and her passion for creation. In this case, hot damn! – a member of the Secret Society of Dirty Sisters, helping me clean up that sink full of dishes. (These dish cloths, which come in many other colors, would also make great face cloths.) That's my consumer advisory for the day, with this disclaimer: No catalogs were created in the marketing of these items.

elenabella Fabric Bowls

A couple of weeks ago I spent a day making fabric bowls, using the pattern link posted last June as inspiration. It was kind of a whirlwind production process, requiring the use of my more modern sewing machine, for the zigzagging. Mostly I use a vintage machine from 1951, housed in a wooden case: a piece of furniture with the names of previous owners written in pencil on the outside of a notions drawer. The zig-zag attachment, in its own intact box, is formidable and intimidating, so I switched to my plastic dial-a-zag Kenmore.

I used fabric from the quilt show held here last March, where I found a few little fat quarters in 40s era prints. The fabric reminds me of that used by my Grandmother Mary for the quilts she made way back then, with scraps from house dresses, childrens' clothes, and aprons. The shape reminds me of pumpkins, so they could be called pumpkin bowls. It was really fun to see these bowls begin to multiply as a set, during one intense day of sewing immersion.

Happy Mothers' Day...to Lisa of Sweetbeets, and other Crafty Moms

Happy Mothers' Day to all the mothers and mother-wannabes...May their nurturing energies Mom-up the world!

One of the ways this is happening these days is that mothers in many places are starting their own businesses on-line and in their households, crafting ingenious home items, clothing, toys, and paper products. They tend to communicate with each other, and with their customers, via facebook, flickr, blogs, and twitter, and they are changing the ways we can shop.

These moms are humanizing the marketplace, sharing ideas, tutorials, and tips about running a business while caring for kids. I am frequently impressed by their honesty, openness, friendliness, entrepreneurial savvy, and bountiful creativity. One of the things they do best is repurpose old items, transforming used goods into upcycled materials that find new life as objects of art.

On Etsy, I recently found the work of letterpress artist Lisa Zuraw, author of the blog ModEcoKids and creator of Sweetbeets products. Lisa makes letterpress cards and gift tags from her own drawings, created with Adobe Illustrator and printed in Canada using a Heidelberg Windmill vintage printing press. Her work is eco-friendly: Sweetbeets cards are letterpress printed using rubber-based inks; the cards and envelopes are made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper. The clear sleeve that protects each card is biodegradable or can be recycled.

I love the cards and the illustrations, some of which I've posted here. Lisa also shares photos of her workspace and home on flickr, where you can see an image of her son on a rocking horse that was the inspiration for the cowboy card above. At her workspace are colorful message boards, made from felted wool sweaters shaped into circles with embroidery hoops found at a thrift shop. Beautiful work – and Happy Mothers' Day to Lisa and the deep network of clever, crafty moms!

Happy Easter with Peeps and Tiny Creatures

Time for a holiday. We have a yard full of blooms now, and the kids are asking for one more Easter egg hunt, Jack's last year in high school. I'll be sending the kids over to Daughter Number Three to see a couple of highlights from the St. Paul Pioneer Press Peeps Video Contest, too. Here are the 302 entries to their Peeps Diorama contest, which you can view as a slideshow. Check those Peeps out (and watch out if you eat them)!

The little butter cream bunny here is from Etsy (of course) – fresh from the shores of Lake Michigan, where it was created by Liz, áká Two Left Hands. An interesting detail: somewhere on TLH's blog she mentions wishing that she could knit or crochet, like her Mom (who also has a shop, ohruthie), but couldn't, so she turned to making unique small sculptures. These include the fairy tale creatures pictured here, and some wonderful monsters. Terrific eye-hand coordination and original design for someone who has "two left hands" – I find her work to be very playful and endearing, with exceptional craftsmanship.

TLH's daughter, Humblebea, has a shop, too, selling handmade children's clothes, and HER son has joined in the fun, selling pocket books from an Etsy address called darksiderules. You can buy his original children's book about a little hamster named Ruby and her best friend Lily.

I'm telling you, people: so much more fun than Walmart or Target. Happy Easter to you and to all of those Michigan family crafters!

Personal Service Trumps Customer Service

I recently clicked onto Etsy and found a pair of earrings I liked, from Laura at Urban Eden Designs. On Etsy you can always contact the seller and learn a bit more about their wares, or ask for customization.

Laura's profile reveals that she's an art school graduate who sometimes makes music or writes, and who also creates really nice small batch body care products (loaded with olive oil, shea butter, and no added fragrance, hurrah), upcycled kimono silk eye pillows, and other artisan goods for sale on-line and at her local farmers' market.

I ordered a couple of pairs of earrings and the package arrived yesterday, complete with a note thanking me for choosing these from among the so many options available in our super-abundant world.

Laura's earrings come mounted on little handpainted cards, which I will keep for their charm factor. They lured me in because of the rolled up words and images out of which they are made, from pages in magazines.

This made me think about how every single experience I've had on Etsy has been a happy one, involving personal service and attention to detail. I'm not a terribly high maintenance customer in any context, but there is an extra dimension to this form of commerce that makes it so much more satisfying than just snagging (for example) assembly-line earrings from a big box store.

After taking a look at elenabella, Laura sent me this message:

"You have gotten me to thinking about funding for the arts, and how it creates jobs. My husband builds harpsichords for a living. His main customers are professional musicians--who don't have venues without funding--and universities, whose endowments have all shrunk dramatically. So you just motivated me to write a letter explaining what arts funding does for us."

Personal service trumps even the best customer service. It's a little less anonymous, and reveals more about the underpinnings of our economy and our lives.

Using What You Have

There was an article yesterday in the New York Times called "Generation OMG" about young people experiencing today's recession, comparing them to kids in 1951 who were then compared with kids who lived through the Great Depression.

I tend to be wary of making too much of theoretical distinctions among Generations Silent, Boomer, X, Y, and OMG (great name for it) but thought this was a very interesting topic nonetheless. These observations, by Robert S. McElvaine, a professor at Millsaps College (who has written several histories of the Depression) seem relevant to any comparison of kids today with those of the 30s:

The difference now, Professor McElvaine said, is that the buy-it-on-credit, how-many-colors-can-I-get-it-in consumer culture runs far deeper, including in the young.

“Our definition of cutting back is not nearly what it was for people in the ’30s,” he said. “Younger people have been targeted at least since the baby-boom generation was young in the 1950s to get them into the whole consumption-oriented way of life. It may take a little longer because we’re so infinitely removed from those waste not, want not values — we’ve never really practiced them.”

I know that part of the issue now is that boomers like me have taken such pleasure in buying stuff for our kids that maybe they wouldn't have even wanted for themselves. We have a surfeit of material possessions, and are trying to convince the kids – and ourselves – to use up what we have. Can we retool and update the practice of thrift?

One thing ingenious people do is create something new while using the fewest possible resources. They make the most of what they have: materials, talents, relationships, memories. It's interesting to see things made by people adept at retooling and reusing objects, stuff that might otherwise be rejected. It becomes a game to use what you have, making the most of both material and artistic or intellectual gifts.

I remember being intrigued by my grandmother's story of making new winter coats for her daughters out of one with worn cuffs and seams that had been her husband's. She talked about this in a lighthearted tone, with no sense of deprivation – as if it had been a challenging puzzle she took pride in completing.

Here is a pillow made by the Etsy mom of Lori Looms, from the jeans once worn by her toddler Savannah: a great example of retooling, of using what you have. It's "upcycled," not recycled, and costs $16.

There was another piece in the NYT yesterday called "Cushioning the Blow: What a $30 throw pillow taught me about economic collapse." The writer, Marc Fitten, describes why he decides not to buy a pillow (40% off!) at a going-out-of-business-sale at Expo Design Center in Atlanta.

One result of the economic downturn is that I would now always choose to either make my own pillow, or buy one from an artist at Etsy (or elsewhere) rather than ever seek one out on sale at a department store. There is added value in knowing that a purchase helps support a specific person who is spending as much time as possible with her artwork and her kid, coming up with an ingenious way to upcycle a pair of toddler jeans.

Make Your Own: "Knick Knacks and Ric Rac"

I am a huge fan of Etsy, the website featuring handmade things. In fact, I've made a resolution this year to buy as much as I can directly from artists, or from fair trade sources, or from the co-op – if I can't first make my own!

Clicking over to Etsy is an invitation into many small art galleries with excellent, personable, oftentimes quirky fun service. It's like being at a great flea market filled with creatives who are exceptional renovators and innovators. They are unabashedly obsessed with their art, something I find very refreshing. And they invite you home to tour their studios!

My DIY friend Nicole sent me to this very fun site yesterday, Knick Knacks and Ric Rac, a peek behind the scenes of the Etsy site madewithlovebyhannah. This artist makes silkscreened skirts, dresses, tops, decorative objects, and she hosts crocheted items made by her grandma. While I'm not too likely to make mushrooms out of styrofoam, hers are ingenious and she offers tutorials. Here are some free downloadable knick knack gift cards.

The blue tablecloth is from Hannah's great-aunt Deda, from Germany, who embroidered it when she was about 12 or 13 years old. (The craftsmanship looks remarkable.) For a tour of delightful kitsch-en goodness, visit this site and be amazed. (Nor, the Dutch skirt above is for you, in memory of that border in your Irvine Avenue kitchen, mentioned in the comment on Lois Lenski!)