Inspiration: where it comes from, what it influences, where it goes

I recently purchased 52 weeks of blogging your passion by Tara Gentile (editor of Scoutie Girl) and the very first project is to figure out your mission statement. She asks a couple of questions to get you started:

What fuels your passion for craft, art, or design? What’s your inspiration?
How does that passion manifest? What do you create?

I'm inspired by the wonders of nature, strong women accomplishing their dreams, the arts & performing arts... But rarely, do these things inform my creations. Yes, it makes sense that I want to equip warrior women and it makes sense that I want to protect the environment by working with Earth friendly ingredients that are straight from nature and good for people. I almost never think: that Amelia Earhart was one amazing chick, maybe I should make some aviation inspired chain maille. Huh... maybe I should think things like that. That would certainly solve the problem I was just about to discuss.

In the past, I would have moments of inspiration, but felt like it would never manifest itself in a creative way. Inspiration would come, make me all warm and fuzzy, and then go away. The areas that I like to work in make sense based on what inspires me, but shouldn't inspiration also inform what I'm making in these areas?

What inspires you? How do you find it being made manifest in your own work?

March is Women's History Month

Women's History Month traces its beginnings to the first International Women's Day in 1911. IWD, as designated by the United Nations, is an event where the political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

As recent at the 1970's, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978. The week of March 8 was chosen to make International Women's Day the focal point of the observance. Word spread like wildfire, and event started springing up across the nation. Responding to the growing popularity of the event, in 1981 Congress passed a resolution making Women's History Week a national holiday. Within a few years, thousands of schools, communities, and organizations began participating in events, educating people, as well as celebrating Women's History Week. In 1987, National Women's History Month Resolution was approved with bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate legally expanding the focus to the whole month of March.

*The theme of National Women's History Month for the year 2008 is visionary female artists. See the honorees.*

In honor of Women's History Month, throughout the course of the month I plan on highlighting some extraordinary women who have made an impact in our world. I look forward to sharing sharing the stories and contributions of some amazing women, both past and present, and hope they inspire you as much as they do me.

More Dice Bag Options Coming Soon!

So, Dice Bags have been quite the belle of the ball in my shop. This past week, I got orders for all three different varieties that I currently have available! In the future, I look forward to being able to offer more color and metal options to meet this growing market!

Traditionally, Dice Bags have been used by gamer geeks who play Dungeons and Dragons. A comment made by Krummenacker (a fellow Fantasy Artists of Etsy Street Team member) made me start thinking about the characters in D&D and tailoring these bags specifically to them. Keep your eyes out for dice bags with inlays.

Hey all of you bloggers: check out these great tips from Timothy Adams Designs for getting some traffic to your blog. I've been really horrible about updating, so I need to work on that one. BlogRush sounds like a fun idea: I'll have to check it out! Also, I keep thinking about find more groups through Ring Surf for armourers, so that is on my list now, too!

I've Been MIA: Here's What I've Been Up To

I've been horrible about updating lately!! The last few weeks have been insane. I'm not sure how it happened, but I was still rushing to wrap and ship Christmas presents even though I started shopping in October.

I finally finished up my custom orders. I had one order for two Dice Bags, one of my standard and the second with copper cinch rings:

I was spotted working on a Dice Bag while at work and got a custom order on the spot for a Crown Royal size bag:

I don't have any in shop at the moment, but if you want a Dice Bag just drop me a Convo through my Etsy shop and I will get back to you with an estimate of how soon one can be ready (usually 3-4 days).

I got to go to the Atomic Holiday Bazaar in Sarasota recently and walked away with all kinds of awesome booty. You can see some it in my flickr Customer Appreciation Set. Also, I finally upgraded to a Pro flickr account! Ooooh, the organization possibilities!

I recently hit 150 Hearts! THANK YOU!


The folks over at Real Simple gave Etsy an awesome shoutout in their December issue:


Need a last minute handmade gift? Check out Etsy's fantastic new feature called Shop Local. It will show you all of the Etsy shops in your neighborhood.

The Fantasy Artists of Etsy (FAE) Street Team's December Newsletter is out! You can sign up to receive our once monthly newsletter here.

You have just 11 more days to check out the FAE Christmas Exhibition. There are many wonderful items here from our members.

We've got another wonderful feature over at our FAE website called the Magic Door. Every single day, it is updated to take you to a different member shop. It's a little happy surprise to go through that door!

Tagged Twice in the Same Week!

I have been tagged by two fabulous Etsy artists: curlymonkey & TrueMirage. curlymonkey has got the fabulous Tiki Turtle design in her shop which I just adore plus she works with sustainable fabrics and low impact dyes. TrueMirage makes amazing jewelry inspired by dreams, symbols, stories, life and has some fantastic paintings showing at her blog.

The rules are slightly different between the two tags: one tag was for six weird things about me and the other was for 8 random facts about me. So I'm going to combine them and follow these rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules. (You can find both Etsy shop and blogs for each of my taggers above).
2. I'll take an average and share 7 facts with you: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

OK, here we go!
1. I like to eat my Snickers (on the rare occasion when I do have one) the top part with the caramel and nuts first and then the bottom part with the nougat and work my way down the candy bar like that.
2. I love the smell of garlic and onions sauteing in olive oil.
3. I don't like to wear socks to bed.
4. I would love a tattoo, but can't for the life of me figure out where or of what.
5. I call my Jeep Rosie because I have a Rosie the Riveter bobble head on my dashboard and a Rosie the Riveter license plate on the front.
6. I'm an odd dichotomy of total beach bum and city girl: I absolutely love being at the beach (any beach) and adore my old stomping ground NYC.
7. I love tools, they're like toys for me.

That was fun! I hope you enjoyed learning a little something about me and I certainly look forward to what everyone else has to say. I'm tagging Mrs Dragon, Scribble Nation, artca, Glorious Hats, Royal Jewelz, Alteredevents, and joeyandaleethea. If you have a chance stop by and visit these talented artists.

WE & Women's Equality Day

WE Etsy: Women's Empowerment Street Team

Recently, there was much discussion on the Etsy forums of starting a Women's Empowerment Street Team and I, of course, immediately jumped on board. We are not yet recognized by Etsy as being an official team yet, but there is already so much good stuff going on. You can check out our mission statement at our official blog. I am so excited about this team and look forward to all of the good that will come of it.

As a member of WE, I have volunteered to do a once monthly (probably mid-month) blog profile of a notable woman (either historical or contemporary) who has made contributions to the lives of women. You can look for the first installment mid September at the WE Blog.

Sunday, August 26 is Women's Equality Day

It took women 72 years of ceaseless campaigning to finally win the right to vote in 1920. This Sunday, August 26, Women's Equality Day, marks that anniversary.

I am forever grateful to our foremothers and suffrage leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Victoria Woodhull, Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, Lucretia Mott, Margaret Fuller, Virginia Minor, Paulina Kellog Wright Davis, and so many others. Through much hardship, these amazing women led the way to secure our right to vote and gave us our voice in our democracy today.

The WE blog will feature these women who gave so much of themselves to secure our freedoms as well as many others who have made enormous contributions to many other aspects of women's lives. I look forward to exploring these women and their lives with all of you as a source of inspiration and, of course, empowerment.

Florida Etsy Street Team is Being Organized!

I was reading through the Etsy Forums yesterday and saw a shout out to any Floridians in the Street Team Section. As we got to talking, we realized that there are currently street teams for Northern, Central, and Southern FL, but none of them really seem to be active. This led PaperScissorsArt to call for a chat last night to discuss how we would all like to go about organizing a Street Team that covers all of Florida. Check out Paper's Street Team Section post as well as her blog entry for an update on last night's chat and details if you're interested in taking part in the team. There's lots of great stuff planned already!

Personally, I'm very excited about this opportunity. I'm very much interested in being involved with the Etsy community as well as the opportunity to network, support, and get to know other Etsians around me. Plus, I'm in Clearwater, so it works out well!

I'm also a member of the fairly new Etsy Bloggers Street Team and am having a blast with that one, too. Check out the Etsy Bloggers Street Team Blog (of course we have one!) and the Etsy Bloggers Street Team Profile at Etsy if you're interested in joining that group. So far, we've had one group writing project (orange for Etsy) and are starting to do a weekly blog carnival with this week's writing project (subject: your studio/workspace).