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.