Whimsy from the mind of Jessica Doyle

Ceramics can be very modern and eye catching like these treasures from Jill Rosenwald.

This week, my local AIGA chapter had a workshop on all the new features in Creative Suite 4. There's tons to list and explore, but one of the coolest things she showed off is not actually in CS4 and is FREEEEEEEEE to everyone. Visit Acrobat.com to sign up for FREE video conferencing with up to yourself and two friends, free screen sharing, free multi-user word processor, free file sharing and FREE 5GB ftp space.

But wait, how does this help my crafty audience? Well.... wanna show your buyer the great in progess art you're working on? Got a web cam? Connect now for video conferencing. Need to send a hires file to the printer to have prints made for the art show next week? Share my files and FTP. Got a computer issue and your brother the genius lives in Idaho now? Screen Sharing. Need to work on rules for a giveaway with your etsy team? Buzzword lets several people share and edit the same word processing document.

Did I mention it was all free and super easy to use? If you want to collaborate with people without leaving your desk, this is as they say "the best thing since sliced bread!"

It's the last day to win a $40 gift certificate or $40 towards a custom made handbag from Sol sisters. Click the graphic at the top to enter.

I am so excited you have have chosen to enter my little giveaway and can't wait to pick a winner tomorrow!

Click the graphic above to find out how you can win a $40 gift certificate to my shop or $40 towards a custom handbag!

Shiara was mighty curious about this new bag. I've named it Tintaglia, which comes from Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders Trilogy. She was the fearsome and proud dragon, last of her kind. This bag has that kind of can't-ignore-it presence with vivid colors and the striking skull art from my friend Gina. It's big and roomy too — with lots of pockets ... including a big one that goes across the entire width of the bag. Great place to stash notebooks.

This bag is the supersize version of my Cottage Rose bag.

Drool over Tintaglia in my etsy shop.

Here's some good advice for anyone who uses a digital camera on how to balance colors by using a gray black and white card from the nice folks over at The Digipix. My photographer friends all use these and it makes a world of difference. The advice in this article might be a little techie for those new to digital photography, but you can follow it without using LightRoom. In Photoshop, create a new curves layer (always use an adjustment layer if you are in a newer version of Pshop so you can tweak it later). Then click the black eyedropper and click on the black card in teh image. Use the white and gray eyedroppers to click on the corrosponding cards — which you've placed just at the edge of your photo - where you can easily crop them out. Now watch how fast your colors will snap into true.

I just dyed my hair today, as I do about every six weeks. Natural blondes like me often have their hair darken to an when they have a baby. Mine turned a yucky non0descript alomst greyish ash blonde. I haven't seen the real color since my daughter was born, well, because it's awful.

So anyway, I was going for a very dark red, as reds don't stay well. I always do it many shades darker then the cinnamon brown I want, but I must have left the dye on quite a while longer than I should have ... because it was a deep red-ish purple. No worries about that as we know it fades quickly. So I put on bleach to highlight it and then rinsed. I left my hair flat to give it a break from styling products and allow the dye to set better and didn't pay much attention to it until tonight, when I caught sight of my incredibly amazing PURPLE and ORANGE hair in the bathroom mirror. I could be upset, but these happen to be my favorite colors. You can see that it almost perfectly matches the bag I was cutting out tonight. If only it would stay......

I owe an overdue thank you to Bloggertricks.com for the awesome new Charcoal 2 template I am using on my blog. They recoded it from wordpress and I REALLY like it.

It's a great site for free templates, but they also have a great articles . The one that caught my eye today was on getting one way back links to boost blog traffic.

Twitter is a great tool for indie artists to grow their business. Here's a few good posts I found recently on how you can use this little bird to bring flocks of customers to your store.

http://www.theartistscenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/2.png
http://www.handmadeology.biz/home/archives/214

Personally, I've set up Twitterfeed and it sends everyone of my blog posts and new etsy items out to my followers. I also use twitter to promote giveaways by sending out tweets every so often during the day while I am working. It can also be a good tool to meet other artisans. I follow a lot of other etsy sellers and got a radio interview on Blockhead Radio for my bag team because I saw someone in my network tweeting them looking for a guest.

Get to know the bird and you won't be sorry.

Sharla over at Beaded Tail has reminded me that it's National Spay Day on 2/24. PLEASE gets your pets fixed! Two unfixed breeding cats can potentially produce over 300,000 offspring in just 7 years. There is no way we can adopt our way out of overpopulation. We HAVE to start with prevention. Do the right thing and FIX YOUR PET!

Heaven Can Wait Sanctuary can direct you to a low cost option in Las Vegas and I always recommend the outstanding care and compassion at Sunrise Vet Clinic. Doc Henderson and his jolly crew are top notch .. and there's no bones about that :)

Inspired by an email I got from Albertson's on dressing up the old PB&J, I tried peanut butter and apple sandwiches. Crunchy goodness! Seriously! I always like dipping apple sin peanut butter.. combined with my favorite Sliced Omega 3 Seed bread from Fresh and Easy, it was just awesome.

What's the coolest thing you've cooked up lately?

My boyfriend sent over this vividly written, horrendously terrifying (to the author, anyway) yet side-splittingly funny, account of one man's encounter with a blimp in the night.

Made this hat from the written instructions for Corinne's hat on the Threadbanger forum. Scarf was made from a free pattern from You Can Make This.com. The hat is a gift for my ex-husband's mother, who has recently started chemo therapy. The scarf can be found in my etsy store. Cute model is not included.

I'm a little late on this today, but it is still Sunday here, so I 'd like to introduce you to Leslee of Tropical Crush Bags. She lives in Kailua, Hawaii. I know, I'm jealous, too! Leslee tends to make very modern bags with a POP! of unexpected color or a very unusal fabric. I love her photo style as well, crisp and clean with the clothe sto give you a good idea how the bag carries.

She is also a big fan of my friend Mollie from Monkey Shine Design and uses a lot of Mollie's fabrics in her bags.

Aside from bags, Lesleee also makes jewelry, pottery and prints from her other etsy shop.

Lenox Knits is pretty excited to be part of my giveaway. She's twittered about it and blogged about it. Thanks! Visit her etsy shop for some lovely knitted goodies.

They're chattering away about my giveaway! Thanks to the Lucky Ladybug for her shameless promo post! Check out her blog for more great contests.

Huge love for my friend over at Storybeader. Check out this shameless plug for my $40 gift certificate giveaway that she put on her blog. Now that's a lady that is SERIOUS about winning!

She is having a contest as well to win a beautiful artisan beaded bracelet on memory wire. Drop by and enter.

Last night, I had to make an emergency trip over to the Apple Store for a new keyboard. Yet again, my darling cats had spilled a glass of water on my desk, thus ruining my keyboard by rendering the "i" and "delete" keys non-functional. Last week, in the exact same fashion, they toasted my wireless mouse ($35) thus sending me to two stores to get the one I wanted.

So, I swore a lot of colorful words and pulled out my spare keyboard. I placed bids on a new Apple one on Ebay. Perhaps I can save myself some cash, as the one they ruined is $49 to replace. (Nasty comments about how expensive Apple keyboards are can be sent right to Apple, please and thank you.) This seems like a good idea and I feel I can deal with the annoyance for a few days, but the spare is missing the left shift key and the space bar is prone to getting stuck. Do you have ANY idea how much you use the left shift key or how visciously annoying it is to have more spaces than you wanted? I do now and realized it was really affecting my productivity to be constantly thrown off by that key missing or going back to delete extra spaces. So still trying to go for fiscal responsibility, I called my buddy Nate to borrow one of his. Then I remembered, he was off shooting some snowboard guy at Lee Canyon with his new Nikon D5 and probably having huge amounts of fun.

So it came down to it, do I wait to win the auction and for it to ship to me while being constantly annoyed and losing productivity or do I just go get the damn thing? What made all this worse, of course, is that IT'S MY FAULT. Cats do not have hands and they did not leave the water on my desk and I didn't learn better after the whole mouse thing. I know how much they like to drink the water out of my glass and how much the kitten likes to jump all over the desk, but yet here I've forgotten AGAIN to take the water off the desk.

I am now $54 poorer, but far less annoyed and will be investing in a cup with a lid for my desk.

My Flip and Sew Patchwork tutorial is featured in today's ThreadBanger Newsletter. I posted it in the TB forums and got a lot of great comments. Thanks to all the threadheads for their support.

I just completed a trade with etsy seller MonAmiga. I sent her off a few "personal item" zip pouches in her favorite colors and recived two 4 ounce bags of chai and a container of this great Green Goddess All-Over Balm. (The listing sold as I was typing this, but I am sure she will relist it in a few minutes)

I am enjoying a cup of this superior roots chai right now. It's a wonderful balance of flavors. I didn't have a tea ball handy , so in a burst of recycling genius I remembered I had one of those small silk mesh bags people send jewelry in. It makes a wonderful reuseable tea bag. Just spoon in 1-2 heaping spoons and add boiling water and steep.

From her listing:
This delicious blend of roots and spices is a perfect mix of taste and function. Full of flavor, this tisane has detoxifying, adaptogenic and gentle stimulating herbs and roots as well as traditional chai ingredients. It's spicy and naturally sweet! Caffeine free.
The tea is nearly organic, with only the Sarsaparilla being conventional

Ingredients in no particular order: Star anise, Burdock root, Carob, Chicory root, Astragalus root, Cinnamon, Cloves, Cardamom, Dandelion root, Ginger, Orange Peel, Black peppercorn, Red root, Angelica, Birch bark, Wild Cherry bark, Liorice root, Pau D’arco, Fo-ti root, Eleuthero, Ashwaganda, Indian Sarsaparilla, Sassafrass, Shatavari, Stevia, Nutmeg, Honeybush


The green balm is rich and wonderful on your skin, but not at all greasy. Just the thing for winter dry skin.

From her listing:

This balm is not quite salve, not quite cream, but all goodness. Made green by the avocado oil, and lady's mantle infusion (lady's mantle is said to speed the healing of skin), this butter has got you covered.

Whether you want to use it as a traditional hydrant, cuticle cream, gardening-hands softner, massage lotion, foot balm, hair pomade, or winter rash preventer.... it doesn't matter.... it will work for you.

In addition to being an excellent emolliant, it also smells wonderful, with a complex array of floral waters and essential oils - the dominant fragrance being cinnamon and lavender.

Containing essential oils of Lavender, Cinnamon, Vetiver, Orange, Palmarosa, Sandalwood, Rose attar, Cedarwood, Marjoram, Chamomile, Ylang Ylang, Geranium, and Patchouli. Also contains Rose Geranium Floral Water

The formula goes on thick and soaks in quick! This is an all natural product with no fragrance oils or synthetic parabens or polymers.


Aside from the lovly things I got, she also has great prints, gorgeous natural stone jewelry and other natural, herbal products. Wander on over and say HI!

Meet Mindia. A big, bucket style bag made from gorgeous earth-toned batiks. I think Mindia is the name of one of the characters in Holly's Zelda games. It's the name of the Twilight Princess she has informed me. Anyway, it was made from the Fat Quarter Skrappysak and Friends pattern by Design and Planning Concepts.

I altered the inside a bit and did a zipper pocket, rather than two flat ones. The big pockets on the outside really catch your eye and they are DEEP to hold lots of stuff. This could be a great diaper/mommy bag or a student bag. or just the perfect bag for someone who likes a LOT of stuff. It's got felt inbetween the layers, so has a lot of body.

I think next time I make it up I will probably change the bottom to be less circular and add more pockets to the inside. Maybe a tall one to hold a water bottle as the bag is plenty tall at both sides where the handles are.

I finished it off with a big lampwork bead from Trev at Geosoul Arts and two small pieces of shell. I even added copper feet to protect the bottom. They are actually scrapbooking brads. I saw this idea on craftster somewhere. To install, just punch a tiny hole with you seam ripper, insert the brads and open flat. Then put the bag together as normal.

7" across the bottom, about 9" from base to bag top and 11" from bag top to top of handle arc.

Remember my A flick of the Wrist DIY art handbag? I've been carrying it around daily since I made it and it just came out of the wash for the 3rd time. The ivory fabric shows dirt faster than my usual choices. As you can see from these pics, the paint is flaking off a bit and I probably won't do any more painted bags like this, because of that. But that's not what this post is about.

Check out the label. I've placed one of my new ones next to it for comparison. (Of course, I managed to pick up the only one in the batch that had a booboo on it!) Look how well it's washed and worn. Perfect color with no fading at all.

I get these from MomieMadeit on etsy and I'm going to be placing an order for more. They are reasonably priced, quickly shiped and as you can see, stand up to washing really well. I highly recommend her if you need bag labels.

Up visiting my friend Richard at City of LV Cultural Affairs office. Guess he REALLY liked these Vegas Valley Book Festival signs I did last year, huh?

Tangerine Ball and Swirl Earrings - a Treat in Sterling Silver, Feather-light Aluminum and Glass by Jolijoli from the Brandy Soaked Olive treasury by Alyanna

BEANBAG POUFFE No 6 pink and white retro weave by LilChrissy from the Playful Pinks treasury by Ninami

Hand-dyed waldorf-inspired playsilk, set of six silks in rainbow colors, 21 by 21 inches by The Farmhouse Boutique from the Sweet Something treasury by ANichelle Designs

Custom Silk Elizabethan or Medieval Style Fantasy Gown by RomaticThreads

Tropical Quilt Purse from KristinsQuilts from the Quilted Blessing Treasury by Kimbuktu

Today's Carried Away Sister is Beth of Lilipad Creations and it's all about GREAT photography. Look at these awesome shots of her bags. How could you not imagine yourself with these bags when you see such lively, clear shots? I like that although the shots look to be out of fashion spread, the model is not magazine, photoshop-enhanced perfect but rather an attractive lady you'd see on any street in America. To sell online, you have to have good phots and these are top-notch. Of course, the bags themselves are eyecatching and well constructed.

I wonder if this is Beth herself in the pics? If it is, how'd she find time for that? She's the mom of two energetic kids and has my dream, a studio/shop in which folks can drop by to fondle her bags in person. Stop by her shop and check out more.