My New Year's Resolution

This may sound like a pretty pathetic resolution, but I have made a commitment to not buy any more purses. Lame - yes, but necessary. Last year I only bought four purses (maybe five) but I have so many fabulous ones that I neglect by simply throwing them aside to replace them with a bright, shiny new one. I have at least three HOBOs, a pretty leather one I bought in Italy on my honeymoon, a gold deer purse from Patch NYC that only comes out on special occasions, two from Charm Design including this fabulous one:


and one from A03 Designs that I love and get so many complements on:
The sad thing is, I'm already tempted. Just look at this one from Becky OH!:


She's using some of my favorite fabrics, and I just love the gathered structure of the bag. Speaking of gathering, this one by Aubrey Hyde is really nice, too, and is very tempting. I love the way it is a little bit sloppy and casual but still very chic.


The best thing I can do is just not click on any image of a purse I like online, and to avoid shopping altogether in the coming year, which is basically impossible. I guess I could always just try to focus on the age old resolution of losing weight instead, which I'll begin with eating Special K every day instead of granola...

Christmas!

My sister and Zero get closer at Christmas

Yay! Christmas!!! So, first things first - my sweet sweet husband gave me a ring that I wanted so badly but did not expect to actually receive. It's handmade of rose gold and morganite and it's so pretty! I was totally surprised when I opened it, so it made his Christmas just as much as it did mine. I also got a sweet new camera from my parents for taking better jewelry photos, so look out for some fancy new pics on my website soon (plus a lot of new styles, too!).

I gave my husband a new road bike (it's bike #3 for him) but it hasn't come in yet, so he got a lot of bike-related items to open up, like this very cool bike parts t-shirt from a shop called Quiet Doing on etsy, plus some Walz caps, a Chrome bag, and Guitar Hero III which isn't bike related but fun nonetheless.

I gave quite a bit of handmade this year, including a handmade notepad (a "bookie" and a zipper pouch from Beth Howard:

I gave my BFF a beautiful pale aqua blue textured platter by Olaria - hopefully she will post up new photos of her beautiful serve ware on her website soon! I gave my mom a glass vase hand painted with modern flowers that I got at Art & Invention Gallery here in Nashville, a bizarre "Tranny" Barbie that is so hilarious, I can't believe I don't have a picture of him/her from Dolled Up Dolls. I also got some adorable little t-shirts by So Silly for my little niece and nephew in Virginia, but hopefully they don't read my blog because we're not visiting for a couple of weeks:
Plus, speaking of gifting indie, I want to thank everyone who gifted Freshie & Zero this holiday season, including the husbands of the ladies behind Harrilu, Supermaggie, and the lady behind Indie Fixx! I had a very busy and merry Christmas - definitely one of my best ever - and I can't wait for next year!

Merry Christmas

Christmas is tomorrow, and for the first year in a long time, I don't know what I'm getting! I'm so excited! The best part is watching other people open the presents you got the, though. I also like watching my 12 year old sister open her presents, because Christmas is still super exciting to her. Here's a silly picture of me taken with a free program called Santa Snaps on my mac for your Christmas viewing pleasure:

She's Crafty Secret Santa Gift Exchange Part Deux

Yay!!! I received my Secret Santa gift in the mail yesterday, and I was so excited to receive this awesome pair of earrings from Honeydoux! Due to a prior conversation via etsy where I was telling her how great her jewelry looked in a shop in Atlanta that I had just visited, she knew exactly what I wanted. What a fabulous surprise! To all you other ladies who participated in the exchange, email me your gifts and I'll post them up here, too!


I drew Angie Montgomery of My Olivette and made her a shadowbox diorama, which she had on her wish list. It was so fun to craft outside of my box! Even though I was technically crafting within a box...


Cindy Tomczyk, a fabulous illustrator from Chicago who participated, blogged about her gift here.

The office is organized

Oh yeah - Freshie & Zero World headquarters is officially organized AND the insane Christmas shipping season is officially over. Thank goodness - I feel like I haven't slept in days! Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. I shipped a record amount of jewelry in just a couple of weeks and am so excited that so many people chose to give my jewelry as gifts this year (there were a lot of gentlemen buyers!) I just think that next year I may need a little elf to help me in the workshop, which is exciting and scary, (especially if it's a mean elf).

Anyway, I've always had a hard time finding a clear space in my little office to wrap packages and prepare a box for shipping without everything toppling over, but no more! I got some great commercial shelving from U-Line, some cool bins from Crate & Barrel, some organization things from The Container Store (acrylic magazine files, anyone?) & Organize.com (who has incredibly slow shipping, by the way). It was something I had always wanted to do - buy a bunch of matching magazine files, bins, and crates and arrange them in a very cool Domino meets ReadyMade kind of way but had just never taken the initiative to make the investment. I literally measured and planned my space like a professional organizer and put it all in place on Sunday.

I am in H E A V E N. It looks so awesome! Now as soon as Greg and I are done wrapping up all of our Christmas presents, I can put away the gift wrapping supplies and we can really see the entire office floor. Check out the sweet mail sorter next to my Marie Antoinette poster...

Ahh... Gotta love an organized office. In other news, the She's Crafty Secret Santa Gift Exchange has ended, so hopefully everyone mailed out their crafty projects yesterday! I'll post up what I made after I'm sure my receiver received it so I don't spoil her surprise! I think I'm getting jewelry, which rocks my world since I feel guilty buying jewelry. When you're a jewelry maker, you can never really justify buying jewelry unless it's something so far removed from anything you would or ever could make, so for me that means big sparkly things that I can't afford...

Article in the NY Times

All about the "D.I.Y." movement, buyhandmade.org, etsy, and even mentions the Renegade Craft Fair, Austin Craft Mafia, and the Girlie Show, of which I am currently a featured participant on their fun blog! Take that, lame craft shows of whom I keep getting rejection letters!

Click here to read the article.

Office Gift Ideas

Since I know my office mates don't read my blog (okay, I don't really work in an office - I work part time in an art gallery/frame shop so I work with a bunch of crazy creative types), I'm going to post what I am giving them for Christmas. It became a mad search this week, mostly because I really like giving gifts and supporting indie businesses, so it was an excuse to do both. First - the men - five of them in all and they have COMPLETELY different personalities. I thought - how about a nifty handmade notebook? Finding a nifty & manly & inexpensive handmade notebook proved to be tough, but I found this one on Little Otsu:
I have always been under the impression that men liked graph paper, but when I shared this profound knowledge with my husband, he kind of looked at me funny, kind of like he disagreed. Oh well. I guess I don't know everything, but I think they'll like their new journals.

Next - the ladies. I work with the same two on the usual days that I work so I wanted to get them something special. I knew I wanted a cute little handmade pouch/makeup bag since there are SO many cute ones out there (especially on etsy) and since I only can have so many, I thought I would vicariously buy and give some. What I found for them was an adorable makeup pouch AND wristlet keychain gift set for only $18!

It's from a shop called Jimmy Pickles, and I like them so much, I'll have to get a set for myself now, but I'll wait until they restock after Christmas, since it seems pretty picked over at this point, but good for them! They've sold over 1,000 items on etsy! Holy crap - that's a lot!

For the other ladies, I wanted to give them handmade pouches, too, but I didn't want to spend that much so I found another great shop called LouLou Bell. Here are two of the seven that I purchased:
She had so many great fabrics to choose from, and great prices, too. I found a fabric for each of the seven ladies that I work with, which was no easy task since they range in age from 25 - 55! Unfortunately, I suck at geography and didn't realize she lives in Canada. Sooo... the shop owner was super sweet and agreed to express ship them for me in the hopes that they would arrive before Christmas. I'm crossing my fingers!

The Girlie Show Blog

The Girlie Show blog did a little write up about me in their blog. Go check it out! It was such a fun show, and I was tickled that they wanted to feature me along with some of their other fabulous artists!

I'm in an etsy treasury!

Yay! It's so exciting to see that little star next to a treasury listing... and then the next thing I know it's on the front page! Woo hoo!!! I sold 3 things while it was up - that's a lot for etsy! My etsy shop does okay but my website does much better. There are just too many distractions on etsy to draw attention away from shops. Speaking of, have you ever seen the etsy tools website? It's really interesting and shows charts of sales, listings, etc. It's down for the moment, but you should bookmark it and come back to it soon to see how much etsy sells in a day - it is amazing! Etsytools.com