Americana Flag "Porch Swing" Pillow Cover

I was digging through my stash a month or so ago and found some very large flag panels. I've had them for a few years, but hadn't ever figured out what to do with them. So I thought and thought ... and then it came to me! They're "close" to the size of a standard bed pillow, so why not design a pillow cover with the flag as the centerpiece. And so I did!

The border is genuine vintage ticking fabric, straight from grandma's featherbed! The pillow cover closes with 7 red vintage buttons (I use a different assortment on every pillow!). I've lightly stained this pillow cover with my favorite coffee & vanilla mixture.


This is the pillow cover that I currently have listed on eBay. The starting bid is $24.95 and there's a BIN price of $45. If you mention that you saw this blog post when you pay for this item, I will refund your postage! For shoppers outside the U.S., I will refund $2.50 which is the U.S. shipping cost. But you must mention that you saw this offer on my blog!

Wouldn't it be great to have a nice big pillow like this on your porch swing? One of my customers even bought four of them! Let me know if you need more than one!

Meeting the Etsy Admins in San Francisco

Yesterday, I trekked to SF, along with another member of Sac-Etsy, for a meetup event with many of the Etsy top brass (known as "admins"). The get-together was held at the Delancey Street Cafe. If you're not familiar with the Delancey Street Foundation, it's worth reading about on their site!

While we were the only representatives of Sac-Etsy (and the only Etsyians from Sacramento), I met a handful of CCCOE gals, including including Dyanne from 2dy4, Allie from Allie's Adornments, and Tara from Combustion Glassworks. There were a couple other gals sitting with them, but their names escape me at the moment. :-( We also chatted with Hue from huesculpture.com (she's just started selling on Etsy, but huesculpture doesn't seem to be the name of her shop), along with her friend Noelle Nakama, who has an Etsy shop bearing her name.

The Etsy admins were represented by Maria Thomas (CEO), Chad Dickerson (CTO), Sara Hicks (VP of Product), Jesse Hertzberg (Director of Business Development), and Carrington Williams (Director of Strategic Finance). Their database guy, who works from home in Marin, was also there; I think he goes by the handle "CB."

The admins talked about what they're working on to improve the site. The most exciting announcement is the ability to rearrange your Etsy shop, which just went into closed beta yesterday! This announcement received a HUGE round of applause!!! When this goes live, we won't have to relist items to get them in a particular order! :-)

The admins handed out a bit of swag, but no ballcaps or t-shirts (which is what I'd been hoping for ... LOL!); just stickers and flyers and bumper stickers. They gave everyone a picture to color, and said this would be the wallpaper in their new office!

Sutter Creek & Magnolia Marketplace

Just wanted to let y'all know that this Saturday, May 23rd, I'll have a booth at the "Trash to Treasures Sale" in Sutter Creek, CA. Sutter Creek is in the heart of California's Gold Country, right on Highway 49! If you haven't been over that way in awhile, they've built a bypass around the delightful town of Sutter Creek, so you have to make a point to turn off (to the left) to actually get to the town now. I was thrown for a loop the first time I was over there after the bypass opened. I'm not sure where you'll end up if you miss the turnoff, maybe Jackson?

Anyway ... the hours for the show are 8am to 3pm. We'll be there by 6:30 (I'm going to try for 6:00 am!!). I'll be sharing the booth with my friend Julia who sells on Etsy as JnJ Designs. Julia tells me that her mother-in-law (the other J) will be joining us as well.

The booth won't look like the one in the picture above -- although that was also taken at the same show in Sutter Creek --- about 5? years ago. The signs are by my friend Trish Everett who, despite my encouragement, has neither a web site nor Etsy shop. She can be found on Facebook, however!

Hope to see you Saturday!

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By the way, the following Saturday (May 30th), I'll have a booth at the Magnolia Marketplace at 6468 Fair Oaks Blvd. in Carmichael. This is a semi-annual show put on by the Magnolia Antique Mall. Several members of the Sac Etsy Team will have booths at this event, including cascreates and candyglass, and myself. Several others are considering joining us as well!

Americana Listings on eBay!

After a fairly disappointing week last week on eBay, I'm back with more goodies ... I hope the shoppers are in the mood for Americana this week!

This Americana Porch Swing Pillow is my favorite new item!!! I love pillows! And if I had a porch swing, I'd definitely want this pillow there with me! The auction is for the cover only -- the pillow is a standard $4 bed pillows, available at your local discount department store! BIN Price $25.00



I made a few of these Americana Stockings a couple of years ago ... this year I decided it was time for more! I've stenciled white stars on a grubby blue painted osnaburg stocking, and I'll be adding a scrap of homespun and a rusty bell to the flag before I send this stocking on its way to its new home! You'll get the Sweet Annie too!! BIN Price $22.00




I've made little hearts from antique quilt for many years, but these grubbied up Primitive Americana Vintage Ticking Hearts are a fairly new item for me. I've tied a scrap of grubby gauze around each one, then pinned on a rusty jingle bell and added a sprig of Sweet Annie! BIN Price $22 for the set of 3 hearts (this includes free shipping!)




I whipped up a few of these Primitive Americana Stick Flags before my last show (the rainy one). This one has a piece of rusty star garland for the hanger! BIN Price $8 (yep, you read that correctly!!)

ZNE Convenzione & Art, Paper & Pleasantries

I've been wanting to blog about the beeswax collage class I took recently with Anna Corba at the ZNE Convenzione in Pleasanton, CA! This is my first-ever collage, but I don't think it's going to be my last! I may even go back and put a crown on the sweet birdie so she matches this blog template! :-)

Anna is a wonderful instructor, and if you ever get a chance to take a class with her, definitely go for it! She was extremely generous with all of her wonderful papers and ephemera, and was always ready to answer our questions and help when we needed it.

I started a second collage in class, but need to get some bleached beeswax and a skillet to melt it in before I can finish it. I'll be hitting the yard sale circuit this weekend in hopes of doing just that!

This class was on a Thursday, and just two days later, I drove back to Pleasanton (1.5 hours each way!) to shop at Art, Paper, and Pleasantries, a vendor fair held at the same location. I found a LOT of goodies there ... and even got a personal lesson from Kate Lyon, co-owner of InvokeArts and StudiosBlackbird, on how to use unmounted rubber stamps without cutting them or mounting them! And she gave me the tag she made while teaching me! I left a good chunk of change in her booth -- and enjoyed every minute of it! :-) Kate made stamping (and especially the coloring) look entirely too easy ... but she readily admitted that she'd been stamping for quite awhile!

I also brought home even more unmounted stamps from the Lost Coast Designs booth -- Linda has a wonderful line of border stamps that retail for just $2 apiece! How could I not stock up?!

I bought a pack of Prima flowers and a tin of itsy bitsy seashells from Danielle Costa of The Art Life, and several more things at other booths that I can't entirely remember right now. I was pretty amazed at the wonderful selection of goodies at Art, Paper, & Pleasantries! And now I need to go get creative ... have a wonderful rest of the day!

Still Working on the Blog ...

Would you mind leaving me a comment about the following:

(1) whether or not you can see the background on this blog [it's a diamond pattern and there's a cute birdie on the right side and a vintage postcard on the left side]

(2) what size monitor you have

(3) what your screen resolution is (this is on the control panel under the display icon, then click on the settings tab)

The template designer has told me that she can see the background just fine. Her only suggestion was for me to increase the resolution on my monitor. I was reluctant to try this, but I did ... not only did the icons and text get realllllly tiny, even when I had my resolution set at its highest point, I still couldn't see all of the birdie on the right side. Turns out the designer is working on a 22" monitor with a killer video card (meaning she can set her resolution very high). I've put this out for feedback on Twitter and Facebook, and so far everyone who's commented says they can see it like it's intended to be. So I guess it's just me ...

This is what this blog template is supposed to look like:

A friend in Ohio grabbed this screenshot for me; she's the one who helped me troubleshoot the situation. (Thanks Jody!!!)

It's Getting There ...

Now I just need to figure out how to get everything on the "paper" ... OR get the sidebar stuff off the paper and into the sidebar area. If you know how to do this (CSS seems to be involved), could ya let me know? Thanks!

Big Whew!

Finally got my blog back to 3 columns. Thanks to Julian at The Beginner's Blogging Guide for detailed directions on how to make this happen!

There's probably more changes to come ... in fact, I know there are! For starters, I need to re-add the Twitter link so y'all can follow me! And I think I've found a background with directions that are not written in Italian (LOL!) so I may be giving it a whirl too! In fact, that's what prompted me to change back to a 3-column format ... that's what the background was designed for. Now I'm just hoping that it won't matter that I've customized the widths of the columns!

Yesterday I listed some of my pink & brown wristlets and bags on eBay. I'm offering FREE SHIPPING on within the U.S. and Canada, just as I do in my Etsy shop!

I've also got a pink & white Double Irish Chain quilt for sale on eBay; it's a cutter, but it's really pretty -- and it's got a BIN price of just $50

But for now, I must run off to my day job ...