Twelve Days of Christmas in July Wishlist

ArtFire is having a Twelve Days of Christmas in July promotion in which many studios are offering special prices, reduced shipping, and/or coupons to help you get your Christmas shopping started early. If you are a person trying to budget or save money, now is the time to pick a few items to get now so that the bills in the winter are not so high from holiday gift purchases. I decided to work my way through the Christmas in July Trend section of Artfire and pick out a few items that I would love to have or give to someone special. You can click on any of the items to check them out in more detail and to see the special offers available through July 25th.

Above you can see a beautiful fabric postcard. I did not know fabric postcards even existed until recently. What a nice way to wish someone a Joyous Noel.

In our family we have an ongoing buffalo joke, so this lovely wood carving caught my eye. Be sure to check out the listing because the studio’s banner is incredible, with many of her creations in it.

This stained glass studio had me hot listing (method of marking your favorite items on Artfire) many items. This Kokopelli reminds me of a trip to Arizona that my husband and I took before we had children. Someday I hope to visit there again with the kids.

There are many more studios with incredible items participating in Twelve Days of Christmas in July on Artfire. Be sure to check them out. My studio is participating with everything being discounted 12 percent until the 25th of July. I will share a few more of my favorites as the promotion continues.

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Crafting Up A Storm and A New Spot To Find My Patterns

With letters as the decoration, of course

I have been a busy woman this month, with several letter pillows to create for customers as well as taking some time to start making some of my favorite Christmas paper crafts, as you see above. I am also currently crocheting a red letter Z, which I am very happy to do since it brings me closer to my goal of making all the letters of the alphabet.

I have also been busy getting Lovely Little Letter patterns ready for testing and sending them off to testers. I have been able to add three more letter patterns to my shops this week (K, v, D) and hope to add a lowercase m tomorrow.

One of my patterns available at YouCanMakeThis.com

Finally, I have spent the last month getting several of my crochet patterns ready for YouCanMakeThis.com, which has graciously accepted my patterns to sell on their site. I discovered YouCanMakeThis.com through a friend from church who sent me one of their newsletters. I registered and received my free patterns as well as signing up for their newsletters. Then I decided that I might try offering them my patterns. I am happy to say, after some work, they have started to offer some of my patterns on their site. You can find my patterns here.

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Etsyhooker of the week….Red Berry Crochet

I was looking through the offerings of the Etsyhookers and found many wonderful items. Since Christmas is coming soon, Red Berry Crochet’s banner, with its beautiful holly pin, caught my eye. Click on any of images to see more photos and information about purchasing from Red Berry Crochet.

The pin in her banner may be purchased. It would make an adorable pin for your lapel or a great alternative to a bow on a special package.

Red Berry Crochet also has this lovely paperback book holder for the book lover in your family:

For the crochet lover in your family, Red Berry Crochet has beautiful stitch markers, including these holiday themed ones:

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CASTteam Christmas Contest….

UPDATE:
Congrats to the winners:
Hurdler4Eva, Ulixis, DebsRandomArt, and Saire

Here are some details of a contest to win lots of nifty prizes from etsy artists. Check the CASTteam page for contest dates. If you have not registered at etsy.com yet, please let them know “lauraslefthook” sent you.

To enter:

Read through the Christmas Carol “O Holy Night” on the CASTteam site. There will be ten words in CAPS. These 10 words will be hidden in the participating shops. When you find the words, copy the links and submit them to:

Castteam
You go to the Castteam site above and click on contact Castteam.

You will be entered into a drawing to win one of several gift baskets containing beautiful items from the Cast Team shops. One correct entry per person.

Participating shops:

www.meowy.etsy.com
www.knitblitz.etsy.com
www.RubiesNRoses.etsy.com
www.InspiredbyRose.etsy.com
www.SilverRiverJewelry.etsy.com
www.whimsiedots.etsy.com
www.zudagay.etsy.com
www.mitches21.etsy.com
www.eclecticChaosCreated.etsy.com
www.potatoface.etsy.com
www.tiggerbonn.etsy.com
www.DownFromtheMountains.etsy.com
www.MyissaG.etsy.com
www.KelliRene.etsy.com
www.RunAliceRun.etsy.com
www.RoseThistleArtworks.etsy.com
www.Baggavond.etsy.com
www.lauraslefthook.etsy.com
www.BonghiVestiti.etsy.com
www.createdwithjoy1.etsy.com
www.cindyforrester.etsy.com
www.LamplightBoutique.etsy.com
www.debtybeautifulbeads.etsy.com
www.bowbabybow.etsy.com
www.twistedpurl.etsy.com
www.GloryGifts.etsy.com
www.MommyKnowsBest624.etsy.com
www.TheTwistedPurl.etsy.com
www.hiphostage.etsy.com

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Advent by candlelight night

Our church held an Advent by candlelight for the women this evening.  It is a good way to prepare for the holiday season and to get into the proper mood and have the right focus for this coming month.  We enjoyed songs, Bible readings, good food, and the company of women.

My oldest daughter wanted to come along, but she needed to go to bed after a full day that included watching a very long Christmas parade this morning.  There is also a reason why the kids do not come; it is difficult to focus with children in tow.

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Christmas decorating

So, this site is definitely decorated for Christmas, but my house is not. I do not even feel ready to start pulling out the boxes yet. I constantly feel like the house needs a week of cleaning. Perhaps by next weekend I will force myself to give up on getting things any cleaner and just go ahead and decorate.

We will be visiting relatives for Christmas, so I need to decorate soon so we get a chance to enjoy it. I have been excited about Christmas crafting for a while, but am somehow not up to decorating the house. I guess I feel even less like doing it since we spent most of the afternoon decorating the church.

We do have the Christmas lights up along the perimeter of our main living room, but that is only because I never got my dear husband to take them down last year. Should I be admitting that?

Update Monday, the 26th: Today, with one kid back in school, I managed to get a start on decorating. It was such a joy to see my youngest’s face when she noticed the different Christmas decorations. She was thrilled and even distracted from her favorite Wonder Pets.

I put up the small artificial tree we use when we are planning not to be in town for the holidays, put out the Christmas throw on the small couch, and hung the stockings on the railing.

In addition, I put up our Christmas countdown, which was probably a mistake since the oldest one remembers it from last year and just cannot stop touching it. I want to make new ornaments for it, since it was inexpensive and many of the ornaments just are not that great, but I just have not had the time. Maybe I will just exchange some of the mini-ornaments I picked up on clearance at Target last year for the ones that are a little the worse for wear in the countdown pockets before the girls notice.

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My latest crafting interest….

Origami boxes — another look

shades of blue

I just started getting interested in origami. I started with some ideas on line and have now progressed to getting about five books from the library. Right now I am trying to find ideas that would sell, but I also like making things for myself and the girls.

I have made a couple types of boxes. The masu box ends up with lines across the top, which I did not like, so I am making another similar kind, which I am not sure has an official name. Directions for a masu box may be found here: masu box pattern

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What is the secret here?

So, I am making these to sell to make some money for my craft supplies (but mostly for bills right now since we are severely underemployed in our household ), and somebody wants to know how to make them. I want to say, “Buy one and take it apart and figure it out yourself.” I don’t. Instead, I give a generalized statement of materials involved and hope they get the idea that I am not giving my secret away. (Especially when you can easily spend some time online and figure it out yourself if you can use a search engine and have some time to kill.)

Oh, and it is not that I don’t share plenty of instructions and how-tos with friends; it is just frustrating when I think someone is trying to get me to do the work of getting them the instructions for free….

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