Who Knew!?!

This summer has been a series of "Who Knew?" situations.

1. Who knew that German-Short Hair Pointer could get a sunburn? That 3 types of dogs are susceptable to sunburns: German-Short Hair Pointers, Dalmations, and Pit Bulls apparently. We have always had labradors (Black, Chocolate and Yellow) and now that we have a German-Short Hair Pointer, we never even realized that he could get a sunburn. The poor little dog!
2. Who knew that there was such a thing as a limit on the amount of uploads and downloads you can have when using WildBlue Satellite Internet Access.
   
3. Who knew that when letting your 10 year old son go online onto Nick.com, he would decide to stream tv shows? Hmmm, apparently that takes a lot of download power!
   

When I went online tonight, it was as slow as molasses. I checked our router....ok. Then I went into my account and yeap, the download information was in the red. We are allowed 7500 MB on a rolling 30 day period and we're up to 7669MB in the last 30 day period.

No more blog jumping tonight, no more cruising the etsy forums, no more entrecard dropping, no more multiple windows, no more photos on the blog tonight, (hold on, gotta wipe my tears) hmm, I might actually get some more things made for my etsy shop.

So everyone else, have fun on the internet tonight, I'll miss it all. I'm off to make some things!!

Etsy Overview Part 2

So yesterday I talked about what an Etsy Treasury is and why a person would make a Treasury. Today I want to show just a bit more about Etsy.com and what it has to offer for the buyer and seller. Here is a picture of the main page at etsy.com.

Today I'm going to focus on the left hand side of the main page. On the left hand side, the first section is called "Colors".

Once you open the colors page you have a blank palette to start picking colors. Move your mouse over the blank page. When you find a color you like, click and etsy will find items that are that color. You can continue clicking until you find something you like. If you want more information about the photo that comes up, click on the item. Click on more to open up that item or Add to cart to purchase that item. If you need more room on the palette you can click on "clean up" or click on some photos and throw them across the screen. That's more fun then pushing the clean up button!

Now if you are partial to purples, greens or oranges check out my shop. Green has always been my favorite color, but lately I seem to be focusing on purples and oranges also. Just wanted to give you that little tid-bit about myself. ;-) Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed your visit here today.

An Etsy Overview

My last post I talked about my Etsy Treasury. Let me explain a little more about what it is. If you don't know, Etsy.com is a website that promotes itself as "Your Place to Buy and Sell All Things Handmade." (No it is not related to Ebay.;-) There are many good parts to etsy.com and I will go into some other good things later.

 

Today I will tell you about Treasuries. A treasury is a place where buyers and sellers have the chance to promote other sellers. Self promotion is "frowned" upon when building a treasury. The hope is that if people like your treasury, they will check out your shop. Each Treasury tracks the number of visitors and allows people to comment about the Treasury.

There are tricks to getting a treasury. When the number of treasuries go below 333 then a box will open up at the bottom of your page, you place a title in the box and click create. How ever many people are waiting at that time may get a new treasury.

 

Getting a treasury is fun and provides a good opportunity to see other sellers you may not normally look at. Click on the links to go to Etsy.com and Etsy.com Treasuries.

My Best Treasury Yet!

So on Saturday, I'm sitting on Etsywaiting on the Treasury Page waiting for the little number to go below 333. Waiting, Waiting! Yeah-hoo the little box opened up. I got a treasury. Put my title in and Bang! my hubby pops up and says "let's go over to my parents!" Ok, Ok, do I risk losing the treasury by not putting anything in it, or do I fill it quick. Why of course fill it quick! And this is the result! I think it's one of my better treasury's yet!

 

 

Deer and Raccoon hard to see

In the following photos, the deer and raccoon are a little hard to see but click on the photo and it will get bigger. The are down in the front by the date stamp. Read the following post for info on the pictures.

 
 
 
 

Game Camera: How Cool!

So we have 17 acres of land. Our land used to be a former apple orchard. The last owner took out a lot of the apple trees, but quite a few remain. Our land also has a creek running through it and a lot of wildlife. My husband has a game camera set up to see the different animals we have down there. He got the memory cards today, and we have a really cool set of photos.

I guess I always thought out in the wild all the animals got along. I grew up when Bambi first came out, so I apparently thought that they all went around whistling and such. Here is a doe who was eating when a raccoon came along. Apparently she wasn't finished eating and didn't want company the first time OR the second time the raccoon tried. Keep an eye on the time stamp for how long this took. I will post the photos right now from Picasa.

I needed a new avatar!

As part of my refocusing on my Etsy shop: www.rockcreekcreations.etsy.com, I've been signing up for a variety of different websites. Most of these sites require placing the scrip on your webpage and then allows others to advertise on your blog. Up until now, I've been using one of my brooches. Not always the same one, just anyone that I choose at the time.

So I've decided that I need to have an avatar that I use on the etsy.com forums, on Indiego, on entrecard and any other place I decide to make my presence. BUT my old computer died so I no longer have photoshop. (I'm not the most organized so I could no longer find the disk and key code. It was a really old version, so I maybe should update someday.)

First I went into picasa, the photo editing software from google.com. I picked out 9 photos of my bookmarks and brooches that I really like. Then I made these into a 3 x 3 collage. If you have never played with the collage option from picasa it is really fun. But I wanted to put my name on the photo.

So what does a person do? I was just about to put up a post on the forums at etsy about a website to edit photos on, but someone beat me to it. That post recommended www.lunapic.com to edit your photos. So I decided to try it. Let me tell you it's no photoshop, but it's not bad for what I needed to do. I could resize my collage to the pixels I needed, and I could pick from a bunch of different fonts to type my name on the photo. I then was able to save the photo to my computer. Not Bad!

So here is the image I decided to use for my avatar and web presence.

Creatively Displaying Bookmarks at a Fair

So I've been trying to come up with a creative way to display my bookmarks. Also to ship them when I sell on etsy. I debated about:
1. wrapping them around something.
2. Send them in bubble wrap.
3. loose in an envelop
4. connected to a business card.

None of these ideas seemed right, and I decided in fact they were pretty lame. So I did some googling for box templates. One of the first sites I found was: http://www.ruthannzaroff.com/mirkwooddesigns/templates.htm

They ahve some templates you can print out and use. I first looked at an icicle treat holder, but the bottom was empty, and I didn't like the idea of a tale sticking out. Then I found a diagram for a chopstick holder. I printed the template, worked on some modifications and found it to be almost perfect.

I have some leftover 8" x 8" scrapbook pages with designs on both sides. I took these and folded up a bunch of them to use for my current bookmarks I have listed on etsy. The only thing left to do is to figure out how to label them.

I also have to think about what I will do at a show if someone wants to take it out and look at the whole bookmark. That could get tedious replacing a lot of bookmarks back into their holders. But I will have to think about that for a bit.

If you read this, let me know how you think it looks. Thanks a lot for visiting!

What a Neat Template!

I'm not sure why, but I wanted a little more creative background for my blog. I did a search and found a website called Blogger Templates



I found this template I thought that it was really neat. It's called Japanese Fleur. I think I like it because green is a favorite color and contrast between the green and the white really adds something to my blog. But when I changed the template, I lost all my additional settings on the side of the blog. So now I have to go to www.entrecard.com, www.google.com/analytics and www.indiego.com and get the scrips. I didn't realize that I would have to do that, but that's only because I'm a quick clicker and I didn't read everything the message said. So that's all my fault.

Take a look at Blogger Templates if you want a new background.

My quilt Designing

Seven years ago I worked in manufacturing on a weekend nights job. I worked from 6pm - 6am Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was probably one of the best jobs I ever had. I like to socialize with people, but I also like my alone time. At this job I worked alone in a big room with approximately 30 laser cutters. The programs would run from 10 minutes to some as long as several hours. There would be a variety of times, when I was real busy to times when I had to occupy myself. While working these long hours, I would take paper and draw out quilt patterns. One of my first patterns I did was a "Which Way is Up" I-Spy Mystery Quilt. A mystery quilt is where the designer tells you what to cut and what to sew together without showing you the final project.

During this time, I also got very involved in creating my own website. Did you know that even if you never sign into a www.geocities.com website, it is still out there? I was looking for my old website and it is still there. www.geocities.com/mbeebe1968

If you go, please remember this was a long time ago, when creating your own website was just getting into fashion. So it is very rough. It is interesting for me to see the quality of my photographs back then compared to now. Boy has times changed!!

Thank you for stopping by. I will probably spend a few more days looking at and talking about my old quilts and designs.

The whirlwind!!

I'm not sure how I get everything done that I do. This is my little girl "rocking" herself; not to sleep. She is in constant motion. I've learned to type one handed, while grabbing a 14 mo who's about to launch herself off the end of the couch.

P.S. That is not my arm, that's my hubby's.

Implosion Lampwork Beads Etsy Search

Boy I wish I could do that! But it even sounds dangerous.

Implosion Lampwork Beads

Now I know what an explosion is - and normally I know what an implosion is, but when connected to doing lampwork beads, the thought of either one is a little scary.

Now I know that any lampworker could come on here and say that it isn't dangerous, and I'm sure it isn't, but it still sounds dangerous.

Click here for an etsy search for Implosion Lampwork Beads.

What I'm working on this week

I would like to get some more bookmarks done this week. I'm going to look into having a booth at the Farmer's Market at Festival Foods on Sunday and I think these would do well. I also found some more Eyelash Laces last week that are going to be fun to work with. I'm also working on taking some more bookmark photos taken and getting them listed on http://www.rockcreekcreations.etsy.com. Thank you for visiting!

Our big, happy family

As I mentioned in a previous post our lives changed dramatically 14 months ago. We had our little girl. On May 10th, she joined her 10 year old brother, 20 and 22 year old half sisters into our family. Life has changed, but all for the better.

Here is one of my favorite Woven Brooches. This has purple and teal greens. They really seem to work well together.

What Great New Technology

I am attempting to join the new technology century!  What a great way to post to your blog!  By emailing!  This could really help how much I post!

Attempt Number 2:::::You have to remember the correct email address for this to work!

Attempt Number 3:::::Only have it wait for you to approve if you know WHERE to approve the post.  Otherwise have it automatically go to the blog!