711 miles of Adventure

I took a wonderful trip last week through out the great land of Illinois: Chicago, Yorkville, Bloomington/Normal, Springfield - we saw it all.

Highlights include: Chinatown, taste of Chicago, fantastic banana hats, hanging out in Millennium Park including a free concert we went to with Laura of Churros con Chocolate , Raging Waves water park, Grumpee's weenie wagon (at highway 71 and I-80 if you need to see for yourself) making sourdough bread with Jason of Breadnesday , (two Illinois food bloggers in one week!)

and last but not least Charlie Parker's in Springfield (our 3rd stop on the travel channels top ten places to pig out) my pancake was huge but manageable, Derek's was a 16 inch diameter monster.  I'm proud to say he finished but declined the Charlie's challenge to eat 4.


I would have made this post 5 days ago but I spent forever playing with the Big Huge Labs photo editors to make my mosaic up there.  Now that I figured it out (and now that I'm back to work in the craft studio) I'm hoping to have some new fancy product photos to share soon

Photo Props

One of the most important things a seller does to sell work online is take good photos. Photography is really not my thing, but I do try to show the best side of my work. With my new pasticcio resin earrings the photos have presented some new and interesting challenges. Yesterday I experimented with some props. Let me know what you think, what works best?


For me its time to take a break for the evening. Happily the hard work of taking and editing photos is done which means I'm all ready to list my earrings on etsy tomorrow

Craft 365 week of February 8-14

This has been a week of trying new things. I'm working on introducing some new stuff for spring and have been bouncing ideas around for what might work. Its frustrating to put in a lot of time and not end up with something usable (such as the yarn and poptop mess from Sunday) but I truly enjoy the process of invention and the steps involved in making something for the first time.


My picture of the week is my valentine from the Etsy Trashion Street Team 'My trashy valentine' collaboration. You can learn more about the project on the trashion blog.

Check out my flickr photostream to see my other Craft 365 photos.