RIP alchemy...

I am so bummed about etsy's decision to get rid of alchemy. They've said that it will be replaced with a 'new and improved' alchemy, but I really can't understand why it wasn't possible to leave the 'old' alchemy up in the meantime. I have gotten quite a bit of business through custom requests on etsy, and that will end, effective tomorrow.

To make matters worse, the etsy admins don't seem to have any interest in responding to the hundreds (literally) of upset responses to their announcement. This just seems like poor customer service to me, and not in keeping with etsy's general philosophy and business model. I'm a huge fan of etsy (well, obviously, with 9 shops and counting!!) and always recommend it to people, but now I'm starting to look more closely at some of the other venues out there. I haven't had any luck with Artfire but I do have a shop there, and I may start to tend it a little more carefully now. I think the people threatening to just leave etsy permanently are overreacting, but I am pretty annoyed. And disappointed.

For anyone reading this who liked to use etsy to request custom items, there is a new group etsy specifically for custom requests. Obviously it's not going to be as streamlined or simple as alchemy, but better than nothing, I suppose! It's here: Custom Requests Team

resolutions...

I rarely make New Year's resolutions. That's because I end up keeping them even more rarely. But every few years, I decide that I'm going to do something a little different, or change something about myself that I'm not too crazy about, or try to accomplish something that I haven't managed to do in the past.

This year, I made a resolution. And, setting a new record, I broke it within 24 hours.

The resolution? To blog every single day of 2011. That's right - I intended to post here on my poor, sad, neglected little pseudo-blog every single day. In case you don't get the joke, peek down to the entry before this one. That's right...I didn't even blog on January 1st.

But, you know, I decided today that this was a setback, not a failure. Who says that a year of blogging daily has to start on January 1st? MY year of blogging daily will start today, February 1st.

I'm not going to pretend that every single blog entry will be a scintillating, fact-filled journey through creative wonderland, complete with gorgeous photos and fabulous tips. In fact, there's a very real possibility that on most days, the blog entry will be even more boring and rambling than this one (and quite possibly shorter as well). But there will be a post. Every. Single. Day.

At least, that's the idea. Now let's see if I can actually do it...

gah...

okay, well, I don't really have time to blog right now, but I NEVER have time and I am really annoyed with myself for never blogging, so just a couple of random notes.

I've been making felted acorns! They're really fun to make (and easy). We don't have an oak tree nearby so I bought some acorn caps off of Etsy. I've made a few sales, and also added a needle felted acorn kit to my newest shop, and it's going to be featured on a DIY Gift Guide on a blog (a real blog, not a pretend blog like mine, ha ha) on Monday. Yippeee! The blog is Obsessions of a Renaissance Woman

Here are my little white acorns; aren't they cute?



I have also started making little rings. These are quite addictive because they're so simple to make, and even though I'm probably too old to wear stuff like this, they're totally my style and I love looking at them.



they're in my EclecticGarden etsy shop.

Treasury

I've been having fun making 'Treasuries' on Etsy...this is probably a big time-waster, since there's not really any practical purpose that I can see. I don't include any of my own items in my treasuries, so it's not like there's any promotional benefit. But it sure is fun. This is my latest, inspired by the song 'I Can see Clearly Now':

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4ca0b43591c78eef982534fd/i-can-see-clearly-now?index=0

ArtFIre

So, a real post soon, I promise, oh invisible readers...but for now, a plug for ArtFire, which I would probably plug even if I weren't trying to win an iPad in their new contest.

Right now ArtFire is offering upgraded accounts at a discounted price, but 20,000 people have to opt-in for the pricing to become live. So, if you're a crafty seller like me, check them out...http://www.artfire.com/groupdeal

My ArtFire shop is here: http://www.artfire.com/users/eclecticgarden

farm sampler

Just a quick note, because I really am trying to be better about posting (it occurred to me that if I actually posted on a semi-regular basis, people might be more willing to read my blog!), with an update on the custom farm sampler. I am REALLY going to try to get my behind in gear and finish this up over the holiday weekend. It's been fun to stitch, and I really hope my customer will be happy with it.

Just a few more things to add...some more vines, a couple of critters, and maybe a pumpkin or three...



By the way, I don't know if I mentioned before that this is done on one of my fabrics. It's a new color, but I want to try it on linen too before posting it to the Faery Fire site.

food

Every now and then I get a wild urge to be creative in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the things I like to cook rarely fall into the 'healthy and slimming' category, so unless I've been able to successfully avoid mirrors for a couple of days, the urge is usually suppressed due to my fat ass fluffy curves. But alas, I recently stumbled across the awesome site foodgawker.com (actually, I didn't stumble across it; my oldest daughter forced me to look at it knowing full well that a foodie like me would be helpless before its siren call), and I HAD to try out some of the recipes I found therein.

The weirdest compulsion thus far: homemade marshmallows. I blame the photo (the source of all evil on foodgawker.com is the photos), which made the marshmallows look like confectionery heaven. The thing is, I don't like marshmallows. Toasted, sure, they're okay, but I'd rather have just about anything else, and plain marshmallows make me gag. Literally. But I couldn't stop thinking about the challenge of making homemade marshmallows, so I finally caved, ran to the store for corn syrup and gelatin (ugh! two nasty ingredients! honestly, it's like I was possessed) and set about following the instructions. I am, at best, a competent cook, so I was more than a little surprised when my marshmallows turned out like, well, marshmallows. They tasted bleh to me, but hubby - a true marshmallow aficionado - says they're "awesome" and much, much better than the store-bought kind.

Dunno if I'll ever make them again, but it was a fun experiment. I even choked down three or four of them, in the vain hope that just because I'd made them they would suddenly taste yummy. Actually, they tasted fine; it's the consistency I hate. But hey, if I've just got to cook fattening, gooey sweet things, better that they should be things I won't eat, yes?

Here are the darling little things. Mine aren't nearly as pretty as the ones on foodgawker. But I made them all by my little self. Go me.