Giveaway Time!

It's giveaway time again!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck everyone!

Final Clearance Sale Jewelry

In an effort to clear out and revamp my etsy shop I am having a final clearance sale on all of my handmade jewelry! The available pieces are all in this album on my facebook page. Simple hop on over and there's something that strikes your fancy just comment/message me for buying info! All orders have a flat rate of $5 shipping within the USA. Grab some goodies now before they're gone!

What's happening in my etsy shop?

Glad you asked! I'm revamping my shop to include wedding and party favors and decor! More on that coming soon!

Giveaway Alert!

Time for a good ol' fashioned giveaway!

Head on over to my facebook page and get in on the contest!

Simply "like" the post on facebook, comment on the photo on facebook, and/or share the post on facebook and get up to 3 entries in the giveaway!

**Please note that commenting here will NOT get you entries into this contest (although you're welcome to comment here, too!). Please head over to my facebook page to enter the contest.

Best of luck to you!

Mintbooks - Wedding favors

Oh hello there, my blog-lovin' friends! It's been a wee while since I've posted but there's very good reason... in April I got engaged and then on September 22nd we just got hitched! So I've been in wedding la-la land for ages, it seems like, but I'm back and ready to craft! And post more!

The good news is that with the wedding came a lot of new crafts... many of which I've been eager to share with you on my blog! So stay tuned for more posts!

Today's post is all about a very special project that was one of the first we created for our wedding. Mint Matchbooks or Mintbooks, as I like to call them. We made these way back in May and kept them right up until our wedding at the end of September. They were a huge hit at the reception. We also created some mini cake stands (which will be featured in another blog post coming up soon) that were part of the table decorations. We had these mintbooks on the stands at each table as an extra favor for each of our guests.

I'm now offering these mintbooks for special order in my Etsy shop! Customers can customize their mintbooks with their own names (and wedding date if they like!). Simply visit my shop listing and contact me if you'd like your own order (or leave a comment here).

Wedding crafting may have become an addiction for me...

Etsy On Sale Starts Now

I've seen a lot of people trying Etsy On Sale lately and I thought I'd give it a whirl! I have posted my entire 

Paper, Arts, and Cards section on sale for 30% OFF!

Have a look around:

Give Etsy On Sale a whirl by clicking this link!

Vintage Finds

I've been having way too much find scouting out fabulous vintage finds for my etsy shop and even more fun photographing the finds. The most difficult thing is parting with them! But knowing they're going to a good home helps! Here are some recent finds:

Hobnail Milk Glass Tumblers

Black Lotus Bowls

Stacking Teapot Cream and Sugar Set

Mother of Pearl Buttons

Teal Kitchen Utility Scale

Hope you've had as much looking as I've had hunting!

Click the links to visit my etsy shop to see more.

Check out my twin sister's etsy shop to see her paintings featured in most of these backgrounds.

Take a Look at my Jewelry Box

 If there's anything that I love to collect it's jewelry. A second is pottery and we'll get to that in a later blog post, I'm sure. For today, I wanted to start a series with a little show-and-tell about my favorite jewelry pieces. Each piece of jewelry that I own has a story connected to them. We'll take a look at some special pieces in this on-going series. I hope you enjoy!

1) These earrings were a creation of mine under the guidance of Lisa Salsbury from Willow and Me Jewelry. Lisa taught a Precious Metal Clay (PMC) workshop at my former arts & crafts school Sweetland Retreat. Lisa is a wonderful instructor and taught me how to use this amazing technique to preserve my favorite tree's leaves. A friend of mine sent me some leaves from a magnolia tree in South Carolina. I was able to use them to imprint onto the PMC and fire the clay to form these silver beads. I love wearing these earrings and they always remind me of my time living in the South.

2) This is a ring that I wear every single day. Well, let me take a step back here. My boyfriend Bryan bought me this ring from Monkitree in Gardiner, Maine. They had listed a few photos of new pieces they had just gotten in from jeweler JudyB Designs from Portland, Maine. I "liked" the image on their facebook page and commented on how gorgeous it was. A couple weeks later Bryan gave it to me after he'd saved enough money to purchase it. He said it was our "going steady" ring (!!!). I wore it all the time and only took it off to wash my hands. One afternoon I took it off at a local restaurant bathroom to wash my hands and had left it on the sink by accident. I went in not ten minutes later and it had been stolen! I was inconsolable. I felt naked. I was beyond upset. Bryan ended up contacting Judy and had her create a new ring in the same design with an equally gorgeous piece of labradorite. Somehow it was even better than the first one. I wear it non-stop and now don't take it off when I wash my hands. Ever. Lesson learned. 

3) A gorgeous necklace by my friend Jennifer Lisa of Quench Metalworks. I've wanted it for so long {along with many other things from her amazing shop} and it came up for auction at two different fundraisers and I bought it both times! The first time I gave it to my friend Laurie O'Neil and the second time I finally got one for myself. I'm on a mission to "learn" to wear necklaces because #1 I'm really fidgety and play with them way too much and #2 I still don't know how to pair them with earrings which I have to wear all of the time. I'm learning...see the next item.

4) I won these gorgeous silver earrings from a giveaway on Sometimes Sweet's blog. These lotus  earrings are from Chrissy Gemmill Jewelry and they are simply wonderful. They're the perfect earrings to wear with necklaces and I couldn't be happier to have found them... or I guess they kind of found me! These are super new to my collection and I adore them!

5) These are a pair of earrings that I made a few years back as a collaboration with my friend Bob Matus. Bob is a woodworker, lobsterman, photographer, and I'm sure he has many more tricks up his sleeve. He made the wooden hoops and I simply added the dazzle beads. His etsy shop, Heron Cove Wood Carving, has some wonderful items: hair forks (I have the whale tale!), spoons (yep, got some of them, too), and some more earrings! I wear these at least once a week. A personal favorite and I remember the beautiful day when we had our little crafty afternoon and made them.

Isn't it funny how these items, no matter how small, can hold such memories?

Big Giveaway Feature

My birch bark earrings are among the many GREAT giveaways this week over at

Freckled Nest

Be sure to head over there and check out the many items being given away by November's sponsors. Just think of all of the goodies you can get for FREE... I see a thrifty Christmas in your future!

A sneak peak at some special pieces...

 I've been really getting into making necklaces lately. I am an earring girl, through and through. I've started purchasing some necklaces for myself and I'm "learning" how to wear them regularly. It's started a resurgence of me making necklaces, which have been so popular that they don't make it to my etsy shop... my friends have been purchasing them so fast! So today my goal is to make several necklaces to post to my shop so everyone can share in my new passion!

Asymetrical necklaces are a treat. This piece was made with a found resin and floral charm. Found in the sense that they were originally a pair of earrings and I lost one of the earrings. I've been holding onto this charm for several years waiting for it to tell me what it wanted to be. Now a friend owns it and it has a brand new journey to enjoy:

Another magical piece that I've enjoyed creating for special requests: Bracelets. If there's anything I'm less apt to wear than a necklace it's a bracelet. Again, earring girl here. But a couple of my friends have been asking me for bracelets so I answer the call. And what a pleasure it has been to make them! I even specially bought some nice rainbow agate and fire agate focal beads to make more bracelets for my etsy shop. 

This first bracelet is made of enamel covered penny beads that I get from a local bead shop (who gets them from a local bead maker) here in Maine. These four penny beads represent my friend Alisha's four children (3 boys and 1 girl). 

Here are a couple examples of some earrings I've created with these same penny beads:

More necklaces, bracelets, and Constant Galore coming soon!

Teacup Pincushions

A couple of years ago I grabbed some great vintage teacups and my sewing needle and whipped up this idea for pincushions. I was collecting teacups with no real purpose in mind. Here and there I would pot a plant in this one and use that one as a catch-all on my desk. Then I thought: pincushions. Sturdy, classy, and those little saucers would hold all of your odds and ends!

This yellow vintage one was the first of them all (already sold!) : 

And a fun collection of colorful teacups and even more colorful fabrics and I suddenly had a collection of these things. You can find many of these and more still available in my etsy shop:

1) This rad yellow milk pitcher is fitted with a bright purple floral fabric 2) This pastoral scene is complimented with the red floral fabric, no saucer 3) That dahlia fabric is just stunning 4) Gold rimmed with pansy fabric 5) vintage Japanese pottery with floral cushion 6) bright red cushion with black and white checkered saucer.

A gorgeous frosted Pfaltzgraff cup and saucer with the dahlia fabric cushion: 

So fun to create and super colorful to dress up your sewing room!

Visit the pincushion section of my Etsy Shop for more details and other styles.

You can find my entire shop here. 

And BINGO! ... Then there was a journal!

It all started with some seemingly innocent vintage bingo cards from my etsy shop. I'd sold about 80 of these gems by this point and I had one full set left. A nice new customer from California convoed me to ask if I could send these to her pronto-style since she was teaching a workshop the following week and really wanted to make sure she had them in time. I can pop these into a Priority Mail envelope like nobody's business so of course I said that I could accommodate that request. I also offered the couple extra bingo cards that I had that didn't fit the set of 13 I was offering in my shop. She was so excited and we started talking about what this workshop was all about. When she told me the future existence of these bingo cards were going to be some fun journals I was pretty excited. She offered to send me a sample journal after the workshop and I was just about over the moon with excitement. What a treat!

I scavenged these bingo cards about a year before. They belonged to a grange hall and were lovingly used by the ladies of the Wayne, Maine grange (say that ten times fast with a mouth full of Ritz crackers!). I tried to convince myself that I would make journals with them. I dreamed of having a large collection of journals to write my every thought in. To capture moments in scrapbook style. To fill craft fair tables. Something. But no. Nothing. So I decided to sell them all.

And a couple short weeks later here it was. A gorgeous package in the mail addressed to me. Now I also have a HUGE fascination with getting mail. Not like normal people, I'm pretty sure. I mean that I have a little process in going to mailbox. I walk out the back door (which is really our front door but located in the back of the house. The actual front never rarely gets used. I think it's a Maine thing that I'm still getting used to) I gaze at this large tree we have in our yard and check if it's autumn yet, then I check on my garden and see if anything's ripe, then a little stroll across the street to the mailbox, which is constantly broken, and then a hopeful tug on the cover to see if there are any treasures inside (this whole process is shot to hell if it's snowing out, in which case I usually just pull up at the driveway on my way home from work and jet across the street as quickly as possible to grab the mail). 

So this one day it was there. I quickly opened the package to find a gorgeously packed gift:

The tag, the handmade gift wrap. I mean, seriously. This woman was after some sort of prize. And she won it. I almost didn't want to open it so I took pictures of it to enjoy forever:

So I forced myself to open the package and found inside a gem of a journal made with the almost famous vintage bingo cards:

With some gorgeous details to boot, this is going to be a treasure for me always:

It reminds me of my grandmother, who loved to play bingo. We used to play at the kitchen table when she came on a rare visit. The maps reflect my love of travel... This very well may become my travel journal. Or my sister and I have talked about making this our journal of the whacky things that have happened in our house. Or maybe it'll be a bird watching journal. Who knows. I'm just happy to have it.

*Learn this craft and others in Jeannine Stein's books: 

Adventures in Bookbinding: Handcrafting Mixed-Media Books

and  Re-Bound: Creating Handmade Books from Recycled and Repurposed Materials

Visit Jeannine's blog to keep up to date with her great projects: Ink-Stained Book Arts

New things from old things

So it all began about a year or so ago when I started an album on facebook asking my friends to "Mail Me A Letter or Something" -- and did they ever! One of my my intriguing things that I received, other than the coconut with my address taped to it (see below) was this old earring and necklace set sent from my dear old friend Sarah. Sarah and I have known each other since she was skipping around the playground pretending to be a horse and I was selling little handcrafted trinkets below the jungle gym (some things never change). This little collection she mailed me had the most wonderful story:

The original pieces along with Sarah's letter.

So I waited. And waited. Stared at this set. I didn't want to take it apart for fear of cursing the mojo attached to each little iridescent dangle.  Would a pack of flapper ghosts suddenly find me in my faraway Maine farmhouse and force me to do the Charleston? Would I really mind that kind of punishment? Probably not. I'd even film it and show everyone I encountered.

The time finally came. People kept asking me, "What did you make from that flapper set?" or "What the hell are you waiting for?" So one day I stopped waiting and just started taking it apart. I created three pairs of earrings the first night (with another night of crafting yet to come) and created these beauties that I'm quite proud of:

This is the pair that Sarah and her mother selected to love up.

These chalcedony earrings already sold on Etsy!

This floral set is still for sale on Etsy.

And this is the coconut that I found in my mailbox:

Something new I've gotten into

Recently I've started working on a special little project for my boyfriend. Initially it was for a Valentine's Day gift but that holiday's come and gone. Then it was for his birthday (April was a few months ago...). Then I just figured it'd be an on-going project that one day I would present to him.

The project is a digital scrapbook. I'm a computer geek. I love the digital idea -- less mess to clean up, more nerding-on-the-computer time.

This is one of the page that I came up with. My saving grace was finding Oscraps.com - they have a HUGE collection of beautiful digital scrapbooking supplies and tons of free options, too.

For those of you that like to get your fingers covered in glue and your scissors sharpened, I have some delights for you:

This is a collection of ephemera from my own Etsy shop: Constant Galore.

I look forward to my new venture in digital scrapbooking... as well as the good old fashioned paper style! Last year I participated in a scrapbook creation for my friend Carla's wedding. I was so pleased with my design and now I'm faced with the project of doing a new scrapbook page for our friend Brienne's wedding book! I'd better get to that...

21 Day Yoga Challenge!

Who's with me for this 21 day yoga challenge from Yoga Journal?

Let's get fit and centered together!

"Intention" by homeshanti on Etsy