Our Etsy shop

My daughter and I opened an Etsy jewelry shop last summer.  I have to applaud the other shop owners as it takes a lot of time and thought to make your shop a successful one.  My best customer is my sister Patti.  She has purchased through the web several of the necklaces I made and I treated her like all my customers by packing her purchase in a cutesy box and mailing to her out of state address.  Opening your mailbox and finding a goodie is always a fun thing.  Certainly one of my favorite things to do. My husband is so puzzled as to why that is exciting.

 My greatest take away from opening the shop is that it has given me the opportunity to develop another loved past time and that is making jewelry. I have always loved jewelry since very small.  My mother could not put her dresser jewelry box up high enough to keep me out of it.  I don't know why she didn't just give me some of my own (maybe some old pieces) to play with and maybe I would stay out of hers.  (not likely).  Searching for the box's new hiding place and finding it is one of my fondest childhood memories.  Come to think of it maybe it was one of her fondest memories of me.  Ahhhh

Another reason for opening the shop was for my daughter who graduated from college with a degree in Fine Studio Arts.  Her "think out of the box" approach to making things with her artful hands is the mark of a true artist.  For example I would have never put a wine cork on a chain for a necklace. It turned out precious !

 Since she is young and has to work a full time job for the next 20 years the shop will give her a place to keep her hands in what she really loves and that is ART.  That is what the Etsy shops are all about.
I received an email recently that the Etsy shop members are now 30 million in number, a global community of  entrepreneurs.  Kind of exciting being a part of an artist community.

So after year one of my shop opening I am ever improving on the things that make a shop successful.
Improved photos of the jewelry pieces and think out of the box techniques as inspired by my daughter.
Here is our shop address if you would like see what we love to do. www.studiointhepines.etsy.com

So much time has past since my first post.  Promise to myself that I will find and make time to share projects that I have been working on. 

Since the last post I have gotten interested in using an embroidery machine.  My inspiration for the embroidery came from my sister Shirley who had been making a few really cute things with her machine.  She loved it so much that she was able to upgrade her  12 year old machine to a newer one and passed her old one, a Brother PE-150  to my sister Kaye and myself to see if we would have any interest.   At first the machine was housed at Kaye's home (we live in the same neighborhood).  A

fter purchasing a longarm quilting machine that took up quite a bit of space in her sewing studio she decided that the old embroidery machine could stay at my house for a while.  After all she was not using it and that would give me a chance to play around with it since finding time to get together to sew was limited.   Oh my,  I did get a chance to play around with it and I fell in love with a new sewing medium.  "MACHINE EMBROIDERY". Oh the artful possibility of making cute outfits for the grandkids and using it to put redwork blocks into a quilt.  After making a few samples and getting use to the process of the embroidery machine I decided that maybe I would like to upgrade to a new machine. After doing some research on what I wanted and pricing I decided on a Brother PE-770.

 I love Sunbonnet Sue and found her in Christmas redwork on one of the many online embroidery pattern sites.  Pictured below  was my first big project.   The pattern selections on the embroidery sites are so inspiring and I already have many future projects lined up in my head that I can't wait to get started on.