Article and photos by columnist Jill aka: JillysStuff

How many times have you heard the phrase, Necessity is the Mother of Invention ? I often can never find just the right colour of crochet thread for my projects. This is when I decided to try my hand at making my own natural dyes. It was great fun and a real learning experience.

Here is what I did:

1. I gathered all of my ingredients.

2 stainless steel pots, stainless steel only as others may have a chemical reaction with the dye.
table salt
1 wooden spoon.
1 coffee filter
1 measuring cup
3 sad-looking strawberries
1 small bundle of ivory crochet cotton, white cotton heart motif, a piece of synthetic lace and an ivory rose motif.

2. Buck, my rather curious beagle, supervises the whole process from the safety of the livingroom.

3. I started by putting the salt, water and items to be dyed into one of the pots. I brought everything to a boil and let it simmer for about a half hour. This is the fixative process.

4. I mashed the strawberries and added an equal amount of water. I left this mixture until the fixative was ready.

5. As it was midday and I had to wait for the fixative, I decided it was time for a coffee and cookies. Mmmmm, oatmeal raisin!

6. When the half hour was up I boiled up the strawberry mixture and let it simmer for about a half hour. I let the fixative simmer for the same amount of time. The fixative needs 1 hour to simmer and the berry mix 1/2 hour.

7. When all bubbling and simmering was done, I strained out the salt water and ran the items under cold water. I then strained out the berry mixture. Don’t you just love my little coloured clothespins? I bought them for a project that never got off the ground and use them for everything else.

8. I next dropped the items into the berry mixture and simmered them for 5 – 30 minutes. I took each piece out at different times to see how the colour turned out.

Here is the finished results. Everything came out a very pretty light peach colour, except the cotton heart motif which was more of a pale pink. When I took this picture they weren’t dry yet and are still darker than when dry. My camera didn’t do a very good job of this pic but, they are definitely very pretty.

There is no picture of my kitchen as I am a very enthusiastic cook and the mess was all over the place. I am very pleased with the results and will be trying blueberries next.
Food dying and crochet are age old crafts and arts. Another crochet artist shares some thoughts with us here.

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Slide photo courtesy of MariaKonstantin
Edited by Barbra aka: All About The Buttons

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By columnist Pam of ElectricPenguin
Photo courtesy of Gigglebot

Are you one of the world’s worst typists? Do you type words that your spell checker thinks are legit, but you don’t? Have you copied a listing description multiple times only to find that there was a very obvious typo, and now you have to edit 10 items to fix it? I plead guilty to all of the above. In fact, I recently discovered that my shop title had the word “jewelry” misspelled in it!!!! How embarrassing!

Even professional print shops can miss things. I once saw an announcement card for a doctor’s office that was relocating. It was being sent to all of their patients, suppliers, and referrals. The word “Batter” in the title had three t’s!! It had gone through multiple reviews too, so it was kind of surprising that no one saw it until after it was printed. That was a very expensive typo to miss!

Photo courtesy of DinkyDaisy

So I’m here to stress proofreading your descriptions, titles, tags, profiles, announcements, etc. Appearance is everything in the on-line world, and your photos, titles, and descriptions are what draws people into your shop and keeps them there. Let’s also realize that mistyped words may mess up Google Analytics.

The first step is to spell check – if you have access to a program that does that. Unfortunately, it can’t catch things like “tot he” for “to the” and “from” instead of “form” (my most common typos!). Oh, but I wish it could!!! Next, you should SLOWLY reread everything to be sure. Does it make sense to you? Is the grammar correct? Do you read it and wonder if maybe you typed it in your sleep because it’s so bad? If you have the Google toolbar, there is a spell check there. It comes in handy when you are writing while on-line.

After you’ve double checked it, have someone else give it a once over. You’d be amazed what other people see that you might skip over! I’m notorious for skimming over words like “not.” Sometimes that can be vital to the sentence! One seller I talked to had her 10 year old son proofread. He was really good at it too! If you’re a member of a team, you could ask them to take a look. They also might see important things that are missing, such as size or color of an item.

Hopefully this gave you a few tips to help improve your shop!

P.S I had 5 typos in this!!

Slide photo courtesy of sbartist
Edited by Barbra aka All About The Buttons

By Columnist Nicole M., Sugar Shox Crafts

Slide photo courtesy of Pangea Designs

When I was expecting my son, Cameron, this spring, a nursing pillow, or “Boppy Pillow,” as they’re more commonly called, was very high on my list of things to get. When I saw that the pillow would cost about $50, I thought that there had to be a way that I could make my own for less. I then sat my 8 months pregnant belly down, and came up with a plan. Bust out that cute baby fabric; it’s time to get to work!

YOU WILL NEED:

-1.5 yards of fabric–I used fleece because it’s extra soft but tough enough to withstand lots of use.

-Body pillow– Find it in the housewares department of your favorite department store–mine was 20″ by 52″.

-Marking crayon

-Straight pins

-Thread in coordinating color

-Kraft paper or other pattern paper (optional, for drawing pattern)

LETS DO IT!

1. Get a 1.5 yard cut of fabric.

2. Fold fabric lengthwise (horizontally). You will now be working with the reverse sides of the fabric. Make sure all sides and corners meet evenly.

3. Cut off any rough or raw edges.

4. Using a bright-colored crayon, sketch out a very large “U” shape on the fabric. Take your time on this step. Have your body pillow handy so you can get a good comparison between the size of the cover that you’re making and the actual pillow that’s going inside it.

TIP: You can also use Kraft paper to draw out your shape if you don’t like the crayon markings.

5. Cut the shape out along the lines you drew.

6. Pin along the sides and curved bottom of the shape. Leave the top of the pillow unpinned.

7. Sew along the pinned edges with a coordinating thread color, making sure to avoid the unpinned top.

8. Cut any excess fabric from the sewn edges.

9. Turn shape inside out.

10. Fit body pillow into sewn shape through the unsewn top of the pillow. Your pillow should fit snugly into the cover. Straighten any lumps or bumps that come about.

TIP: If your case turns out to be too big for your pillow, just measure the pillow ends again, pin, turn the case inside out again and resew!

11. Fold over raw edges of the opening, pinch together, and pin in place.

Step 11: Fold over & pinch...

Now pin shut!

12. Double-stitch the opening closed.

ALL DONE! Now you have the perfect baby shower gift for less than half the price!

Edited by Barbra aka All About The Buttons

Photo courtesy of YoursToAdorn
Article by columnist Pam aka Electric Penguin

My name is Pam and I suffer from Organizational Envy. There, I said it!!! I recently saw a video on the blog of one of my favorite Etsy artists. She had an entire room devoted to her art, sigh. The best part was the tables set up all around the perimeter that were completely covered with open topped organizer trays (like printer’s boxes). Ahhhh, my dream set up!! She could easily find whatever bead she was looking for without having to dump anything on the kitchen counter!

I have all my supplies in three short drawers and two shelves of my dining room buffet. Not much space to be had! So for those of us who don’t have the luxury of that wonderful craft room, here’s a few things that really helped me get the beads corralled into a reasonable sense of order:

Plastic Round Carry tote with 5 (or 6?) multi chambered boxes on the outside: these work great to keep all the jump rings, crimp beads, and lobster clasps separate but still sorted. I use one of the little boxes for each metal color.

By contributing columnist Michelle aka: Little Toad

It’s late….
You have to be up early in the morning….  
You can barely keep your eyes open…. 
Why are you still up? Simple, you’re waiting for an Etsy Treasury. You have been watching the number go down slowly since you got home and you are not going to let this one get away from you. The number is 334 and you have had to go to the bathroom for the last 45 minutes but you still wait. Why do we do this do ourselves? It’s because getting an Etsy treasury has become a badge of honor.  The reason for this is because everyone wants one and it’s a test of patience to get one. Etsy is trying to remedy that with the creation of Treasury East. Treasury East is unique from the main Treasury because you can create one at anytime, the list never expires and you can make as many you want. To get the full details of this new feature visit this thread.  

I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to talk about my experience and thoughts on creating an Etsy treasury using this new tool.

What I like about Treasury East

• There is no hurry when creating your Treasury so you can really choose a title that truly represents your collection. It also takes away the pressure so you have a chance to create a treasury that really has meaning to you and contains the best items to fit your vision.

• Probably my favorite feature is that the number of comments is not limited. This is a great way to get as much feedback as possible.

• Searching through the treasury has an added feature that makes it easier to decide which treasury you want to explore and which you can skip. When searching through Treasury East you are given thumbnails of the first three items in that collection. It really adds a wonderful visual element to your searching.

• The whole design and layout is completely different and really adds more appeal to the overall look of your treasury. The items have bigger thumbnails which really make your item selections pop on the page. It actually looks a like a gallery opposed to the prior contact sheet setup.

• For all of you social networkers out there, Treasury East makes it super easy to share your treasury via the most prominent social network sites (except Twitter read more in “What I don’t like”)

• The number of items you can include has increased and there is no longer a place for alternates. I always disliked the alternate option so this is a welcome added feature.

• The most convenient new change is regarding the technical aspect of the treasury. Treasury East no longer uses Flash which is great news for those of us still rockin’ the dinosaur laptops (mine actually moans if I open anything larger than a jpeg). This will mean no more installing Flash player, no more colorful loading icon and probably the best part of this technical change is that now it shouldn’t be blocked by Firewall that’s usually installed on most work computers (am I endorsing using work time for searching on Etsy?, of course not *wink, wink*)

What I don’t like about Treasury East

• When clicking on an item it does not open it up in its own window. This is really inconvenient especially if you want to further explore that shop. I worry that this will inadvertently misdirect viewers away from the Treasury.

• Another element that I really miss is that there is no way to see how many individual views a specific item has. This has 2 main downsides:  1) If you are included in a treasury created by someone else, it’s always fun to check and see how your item is doing compared to the rest of the items chosen 2) As a curator of the treasury I always like to see what items the viewers responded to the most and the least it’s very helpful in creating future collections.

• Although the unlimited comments are my favorite feature there is one thing I would really like them to include from the Main Treasury. When reading through the comments they no longer highlight the fact if the person commenting is one of the artists featured.

• As I mentioned above, this new Treasury makes it easier to share your treasury via Facebook, StumbleUpon and others. However, I would recommend not using the Twitter option because when creating a tweet, it uses the name of the treasury and the URL is so long it easily takes up more than your 140 character limit. If sharing  using Twitter I suggest doing it the old fashioned way, plus it will be more personal and encourage more clicks.

•I know this is still in its testing stage but if you didn’t know about it there is no mention of it on the front page and is impossible to find unless you have the link. This prevents  buyers from being able to view the collections which I believe can be a valuable selling method.

 Some last thoughts

Overall I really enjoy the new setup of the Treasury East. It allows everyone and anyone to create as many  Treasuries as they want however, that might also be its disadvantage. If you can create as many Treasuries as you want, will we soon be in Treasury overload?  I hope this remains a special feature and the people creating it keep treating it as such. I love sending out emails informing a shop I picked one of their items and hearing their reaction on how thankful they were and how happy they were that someone put all that time into promoting one of their items. I equally love being informed that one of my items has been included in another seller’s Treasury. I hope that this tool doesn’t change those two things.

Well, now it’s your turn to tell me what you think of Treasury East. You can visit my Treasury here:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/de85ea1da51dc94b6c043f00 and feel free to comment below on any aspect of this new feature. I look forward to your observations and opinions.

Phot courtesy of Bubbly Shnooks
Slide show photo courtesy of Twirled Treasures

Image courtesy of Zebedee

By Contributing Columnist Amy McCarthy aka Amyorangejuice

In the first part of this ‘how to’ I explained the process of single colour lino printing, now its time to move on to the next step!

To take your lino prints from simple and striking to multi layered and colourful you need to start adding different colours and the simplest way to do this is using the reduction technique.  This makes use of all the same equipment as part 1, the only addition being some different coloured paints of your choice.

Prepare your block and draw your picture onto the lino block with a permanent marker.

Now you need to make sure that you can match the paper and the printing block up exactly, so you do something called ‘registering the block’.  Using a piece of strong card (or wood) glue some strips of cardboard at right angles and slot the block into this and make corresponding markers for the paper.

Cut away all the areas you want to remain white (assuming its white paper).

Ink up the block with a thin layer of the lightest paint you are using (work from lightest to darkest colour) and print as many copies as you like. You are constantly cutting away at the block, so you can only do each stage once, so do lots of copies so you get it right (and its nice to have something to show for all the prep!). Only use a thin layer of paint/ink or you will be waiting for it to dry for ages!

Leave the print to dry and wash the lino print, pat dry with an old towel/newspaper and cut off the next stage of the design. This area will remain the lightest colour you have chosen.  Again, a thin layer of ink……………and repeat as many times as you like.

The images used to illustrate this article is my a very talented Folksy artist called Zebedee and her work really shows how you can take a really simple process (we all did it at school) and turn it into something very detailed and beautiful. I have really been amazed by the standard of print making on Folksy, please take the time to have a little ‘printing’ search sometime. Its a fantastic way of bringing very affordable art into your home!

By Contributing Columnist Amy McCarthy aka AmyOrangeJuice

One of the things I have been most impressed with since joining the Folksy community is the quality of the printed items available. I don’t mean prints of original fine art paintings (though some of these are lovely) but lino cut and wood cut prints, each an individual work of art in its own right.

Printing is a very satisfying art technique and its simple to achieve striking, good quality work with few tools;  so here is my guide to Lino Printing. Why not have a go?

You will need:

Lino Cutting tool: Otherwise know as a gouge, is readily available from art supply shops and on the internet. I got a set for around £ 6 so they are not an expensive buy.  Lino cutting tools come with a handle and several different size cutting blades which fit into the handle, each one makes a different mark and depth into the lino.

Lino: Inexpensive to buy from art supply shops and on line, comes pre-cut in manageable squares.

Roller: Again, printing rollers are cheap to buy from art suppliers, but you could also use a brush.  If using a roller you need a flat, clean surface to roll the paint onto. I use an old piece of reinforced glass from an old coffee table.

Ink: You can use water or oil based printing ink or Gouache/thinned poster paint. All easy to come across and inexpensive.

Paper: Lino can be printed onto a wide range of papers. Specialist printing paper is lovely to use, but a wide range of paper can be used. Why not experiment?

Shopping done? Lets get started!

First of all you need to prepare your lino. It comes with a slightly rough surface, so with a couple of drops of water and a piece of wet and dry sand paper give it a light sanding (should only take a couple of minutes). This will give a strong printing texture. Without preparation the surface of the print could look grainy. Try not to get the hessian backing wet as it will make the lino unstable and soggy!

The next thing to do is prepare the design and cut the lino to the desired size with a craft knife. Remember that the parts you carve away will remain white (assuming you are printing onto white paper). You can draw straight onto the lino or trace a design from paper onto the lino. Remember that when printing everything will appear in reverse on the paper.

Now you are ready to start mark making! Hopefully you have tried out your tools and got a feel for what marks the different blades make: some deep and rounded, others shallow and triangular. Hold the handle of the gouge in the palm of your hand with the blade outwards between your thumb and forefinger and push the cutting edge into the lino, keeping the blade and handle close the lino surface and push along the lino; you have made your first cut!

SAFETY NOTICE: Always cut away from your body and keep your other hand clear of the cutting blade!

When you have cut away all of your design you are ready to print.  Having protected your surfaces with old newspaper, roll the paint out on the glass/slab/flat surface till you have a nice even layer of ink/paint. Now place the lino block with the design facing upwards on a clean surface and roll the ink onto it until you have a nice even layer of paint on the design (or dab the lino with a loaded brush until all of it is evenly covered).  Lay your printing paper carefully on top of the lino block and burnish the paper with a spoon or with your fingers. Peek at the paper by lifting a corner until you are satisfied with the print.  You have made your first print~well done! Lay flat to dry away from pets and kids (I have had hand and paw prints everywhere before!) and repeat as many times as you want, or until you run out of paper!

This is the first stage of lino printing, in part 2 I will show you how to use the reduction method to create prints using several colours.

Photo courtesy of A. Deegan

By Contributing Columnist Nina of Mamaslittletreasures

So remember, If you would like to receive these two appliqué designs FREE, just leave me a comment and I will send you the PDF files that you can download and print off to use on your next creative sewing project.

Picture image courtesy of
Thomas Flynn, Photographer

By contributing columnist Aubrey aka Simply Couture

9 Simple Steps to a Beautiful Hair Bow

Hair bows and clips are currently the hottest trend, but purchasing these accessories is extremely costly. So, why spend the money when you can create your own hair bows with my free hair bow patterns?
If you would rather to just purchase bows at a cheaper price than the stores you can head over to Simply Coulture and check out my latest creations.

But here is an awesome beginning so that you can be on your way to creating a perfect bow…starting with Ribbon and a clip (plus some other items).

Before you begin you will need some supplies:
-scissors
-alligator clip of your choice
-3/8″ grosgrain ribbon
-7/8″ grosgrain ribbon
- hot glue gun with glue sticks
- needle and thread

Image courtsey of hairbowswonderworld You can obtain the tutorial to her felt hearts in her shop, so be sure to visit!

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