New Glass Art Shop on NW 23rd in Portland Oregon

There is a new shop on NW 23rd called "Portland Glassblowers" - full of local handcrafted glass creations. It just opened up a few days ago - right on NW 23rd between Kearney and Johnson - when I walked up yesterday the movie running in the window completely hypnotized me. Fire and glass, this combination is mesmerizing.

Go visit - get a present for mom or for yourself! Help support local glass artists!
The construction on 23rd is pretty full on (tearing up the road to get the old tracks out and put new sewers, and a new road on top) but the shops are still open - and they need the love during all this construction!

Box Cutting Machine

Check out these amazing boxes I made today! (big Thanks to my friend Maggie) She owns an Accu Cut System and oh my goodness it is this fun die cutting machine! I really like playing with crafting machines - and this one impressed the socks off me!

This is the machine. The first picture shows the types of boxes I cut (and yes, I stamped a bunch all ready!) Below is a picture of the die cutting pad for the small square box... you put a piece of paper on top of the foam pad and turn the crank, roll it thru and bam - you have a box cut out (complete with fold creases)

Here it is in action!

These little purse boxes made me swoon. And don't they look cute with my stamp! I am going to use these for packaging necklaces at the Portland Saturday market.

These little flat boxes are also perfect for jewelry... I stamped the bottoms of the larger box.

These little rectangular boxes are perfect for earrings or small figurines... a little bit of ribbon thru the top. Oh my goodness, I love my new packaging!!

More Online Selling Venues

Okay - I've finally started setting up shop on Artfire.com and I am impressed in many ways. I cannot even count the number of times my eyebrows have lifted as features jump out at me. Hello - its FREE to artists! FREE. seriously.

And they are not joking around - this is a seriously powerful and playful platform. There are so many features that Etsy lacks, soooo many that I have to use EtsyHacks to get the job done (oh how I love you GreaseMonkey and EtsyHacks). So as I am setting up this Artfire Studio I am amazed at all the little things - like the ability to have a sale! OMG. Seriously, one click, in fact I could have different types of sales and coupons - yes coupons! Why does Etsy deprave us of such staples of retail. Sheesh. Oooh - get this - customers can mark my work so it appears on their Amazon Wishlist - wha?! Thats awesome. They give you statistics and they let you know when your products have been submitted to Google data bases. Okay, have I mentioned it FREE. Yeah, thats the best part. You can pay $12/month flat fee if you like, and get even more options and features... but you can list and sell unlimited products for an unlimited amount of time for free. damn.

Oh and I just found a button that I could simply push and wham - all my Etsy items are imported into Artfire at the click of this button. This blows my mind and is so simple and beautiful. I hesitate to push it. I had thought I'd use this opportunity to clean up my listings and freshin' things up a bit. But I do have a lot to list, and then I saw this button,"Item Importer" and it is incredibly tempting.

So far I can't say enough good things about Artfire. Although I really have just barely gotten started and I rarely meet people who know of this platform. I just had to share - all my fellow crafty peeps out there - if you aren't already listing on Artfire - why not?! Its free!

Buy Yourself Gifts

Why not!? You know your own taste better than anyone else!

Whats that saying... The best gifts you receive you buy for yourself. :) I don't know if that is true in my life, but I certainly enjoy splurging on myself.

I thought I'd share some pictures of things I bought myself this year during all this holiday gift-giving season and encourage everyone to buy themselves a gift.
a widget kinetic toy from Kikkeland - I found this at the Seattle Art Museum. It makes sparks and I like the wind up mechanism (its the metal coil, you twist a crank and the metal coil tightens).
a scrarf with pockets in it and orange fabric with Mariachi figures from my friend Merrit. Its awesome, there is chapstick in one pocket already, the blue is very very soft. I picked up this gem at Crafty Wonderland from PDX Softgoods. Did I mention it has pockets! Awesomeness.

a hoodie from Cretin, one of my favorite artists at the Portland Saturday Market. I don't have a picture of this... I am wearing it right now, its wonderful.
a bag from Appetite - printed with parsley (I love parsley. very much) and it has a pocket perfect for my new sig waterbottle (its a HelloKitty waterbottle! Thanks Scott!). I picked up this wonderful new handmade purse at the Portland Saturday Market.
and one last goodie: stripped Cronert stockings from the cute boutique Sofia on NE Fremont.

Crafty Wonderland 2009 Pictures Oh My!

It was a foggy morning yesterday when I went out to set up for Crafty Wonderland at the Convention. The roads were icy and it was cold!

The show was such a hit! Over 7,000 people attended - all happy people, friends and families shopping and looking for great unique gifts. I swear each year I do this show it seems to double in every way. Its bigger, its more successful, its more organized, its more fun, and the line to get in the door is incredible!

I rushed out at 10:45am to get pictures of the line (the door opens at 11 and the first 200 people get free bags of awesome goodies). People had started lining up around 9:30am. The line was so long it took me 15 minutes to travel the length of it, past the Starbucks, around the corner, up the escalator, down another hallway, up another escalator and down another hall to the doors by the MAX train. 2,000 people had lined up at the door to get it at 11am. I find that to be AMAZING. I saw many friends in line and it was so wonderful. Then I had to run back and get back to my booth as the show opened!Here is a little slide-show I put together of pictures from the day - it just takes a moment to watch and I thought that was easier than posting a zillion pictures, and this way you get to listen to Charlie Brown Christmas music while looking at the pictures :)

The show was really well organized, I can't say that enough! The ladies had us all set up with vendor badges and coupons for food and parking indoors to load in/out... the kids had their own aisle this year, which I thought was really a highlight of the show: a whole row of young artists and their artwork. I think a lot of them sold out really quickly (if they stayed in their booths!).

Oh and there was a crafting area with different projects running thru-out the day... I didn't get pictures of that cuz I was busy in my booth selling mobiles... but I heard great things about the crafting tables.

I'll end my bloggy post with a picture of the Super Crafty Surprise Machine that dispensed little balls of goodness - there was so much crafty goodness at this show, and crafty wonderful friends - it was quite simply a crafty wonderland :)

Urban Craft Uprising 2009 Here I come!

This will be my first experience with Urban Craft Uprising - and I am very excited about it! I am driving up on Friday with my dear friend Aimee and we are going to go the Art Museum to check out the Calder exhibit (I have been looking forward to this for weeks!) and then to the exhibition hall set up my little booth in the afternoon... Saturday and Sunday will be two days of vending. I do hope people in Seattle want to buy some mobiles for holiday gifts... that would be awesome. Otherwise its going to be an expensive holiday vacation! ha! I have high hopes and I'll be bringing as much of my glass art with me as humanly possible!

If you live in the Seattle area - come on out this weekend! The first hundred people in the door each day get free bags of gifts from the artists - and they are no chumpy gifts of business cards and whatnot... these bags will be filled with real goodies (there were strict rules we had to follow in our contributions, everyone had to put in real creations and coupons, not just business cards!)

Some Background info on the show (from their website):
Since its early beginnings at its first holiday show back in 2004 with just 50 crafter booths and overflow crowds, Urban Craft Uprising now holds the largest indie craft event in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest with its Winter Show. In 2008, Urban Craft Uprising's annual Winter Show saw over 8,000 attendees and over 130 crafters, artists and designers from around the world.

My Friends at Splurge

My favorite boutique store in town - Splurge - has had a facelift! Oh my goodness Naomi and Yed (and their friends and family!) have been hard at work for the last week or so. I visited tonight and took some pictures - may I say how amazing my mobiles look against the pale blue wall! I love that, its very eye catching. Makes me think I should do some display with like this sometime for a show.

Oh and check out this saweet soap display. Oh yeah baby - gotta love the ReBuilding Center!
So go check out Splurge and consider some early holiday shopping. They represent a large selection of local artists - and have a great stock of unique one of a kind gift items.