Handmade Love Wednesdays

Before I get to the Handmade Love Feature, I wanted to wish M a Happy Anniversary (9 years). I'm so fortunate that I get to spend my life with you & I look forward to the next 9+. Love you always.

Today's post is going to be a little different. Instead of spotlighting two handmade features, I am going to give you a list of different places where you can shop & do some creative tithing.

Let's start with Etsy - the most popular & most known of the handmade marketplaces. Etsy is an online site focused on handmade or vintage items, along with art & craft supplies. The items are wide-ranging & include photography, jewelry, bath & body products, edibles, toys, stationary & other paper products, clothing & toys. It has been described as "a crafty cross between Amazon & e-bay." In June of this year alone, 390,547 new members joined. Find more statistics here. Some of the perks to buying items from here are that you can shop locally, shop by color or by most recently listed products. 

Meylah is an Artisan Marketplace much smaller in scope & size than Etsy. Their mission is focused on "building an online creative community for individuals to learn, share and support each other’s business growth online." They are unique in that their site offers a seller both a storefront & a blog together. Like Etsy, they offer a ton of free educational resources on not only on how to sell, market, & use social media, but also tutorials on various subjects like digital scrapbooking or how to make chocolate covered pretzels. 

Big Cartel sells everything from music to handmade to vintage products & more.  

Art Fire bills themselves as the Premiere Artisan Marketplace & offers craft supplies, handmade items, vintage, media & even services (.ie. tarot card reading, software programming, multi-media development). If you're looking strictly for handmade items then you will need to stick to their handmade marketplace only. 

Made It Myself let's you browse by categories, sub-categories, recently listed & artists.  

Folksy is based in the UK, and if you don't mind the conversion rate, there is a lot of great stuff to choose from. Also, it appears that some sellers have a flat international shipping rate too. Their site features Makes, which are tutorials from the sellers on how they made specific products. 


You can see some of the other handmade love posts in the "you might also like" feature I added below my posts.  In addition, I added some social media buttons too. So if you're reading this in google reader, hop on out & check out those new things. Happy shopping/creative tithing! 


*All logos taken from their respective websites.

Handmade Love Wednesdays/Creative Tithing

Today's features are from the Etsy store Shop Dirtsa. Becky worked as a Display Coordinator for Anthropologie (lucky girl) & you can tell from her shop items that she has a unique & fun sense of style/design. First up is her chalkboard state map. Isn’t it perfectly styled? Absolutely loving that vintage scientific equipment.

Photo Credit: shop dirtsa

I recently purchased an Ohio map as part of my resolve to make a creative tithing purchase once a month. You can read my original post on this concept here & see my some of my purchases here & here. The pic below is the map in our joint office. We will be using it to record our visits for this project.

Becky also handcrafts these fun science & classroom pillows.
 

Photo Credits: shop dirtsa

 
Hope you enjoyed today's pick. On a couple side notes: we have posted a new Examiner article here & on our blog here. Pretty eerie stuff. Also, REALLY looking forward to a 4 day weekend & my 35th birthday (eek!) coming up this Fri.  Lastly, just a reminder to check out my brand new facebook fan page & "like" it if you haven't already. I really appreciated everyone who visited me there - you guys are the best!

Handmade Love Wednesdays

Paper Love Wednesdays are temporarily on hold & in its place is Handmade Love Wednesdays. I believe in creative tithing (read this post if you're not sure what I'm referring to) & want to feature some favorite handmade items, not specifically geared towards paper.

So without further ado, here's today's double feature - straight from Columbus, Ohio - yeah!:

Who doesn't need or like soap? So why not have a sense of humor about it? Stinkybomb Soaps fills both of these qualities. Started by husband & wife team, Rob & Megan, these soaps push "the bounds of irony and cleanliness through fun, uniquely designed soap." And the best part? 1% of the proceeds of the grenade soap goes to the Wounded Warrior Project. Read their very unique and cool story here & shop here.

Credit for photos: Stinkybomb Soaps

The second feature is Alison Rose & is another husband & wife team that specializes in apparel, handbags & accessories. My favorites are these t-shirts (one of these is for you & your mother Andrea F.) Below are my favorites but they have a whole bunch of other stuff here.

Credit for photos: Alison Rose

 I had the pleasure of hearing Megan from Stinkybomb Soaps & both Alison & Nicholas speak at the Midwest Craft Caucus.  I hope that you enjoyed this new series & these two selections. Have a great rest of your week!

Creative Tithing - Support Handmade

Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday weekend. Today, I wanted to share some of the other items we bought from our trip here and discuss the concept of "creative tithing." Inspired by this post, Caiti writes about how she has started a monthly practice of supporting the handmade community & her motivation behind the practice of creative tithing.

By consciously choosing to buy handmade, you are supporting others not only financially but you're also contributing to & supporting a person's goals and dreams. You're recognizing their talent & the time & care that each person took in creating their product. Caiti hits close to home for me, when she says that she never purchases anything from Etsy but that she can go to Target & spend a lot of money on things she doesn't really need. I'm the last person to advocate against big box stores or companies because I so willingly purchase stuff from them. What creative tithing is about though, is finding a balance & to think about how you can support creative business owners, alongside the big businesses.

So without further ado, here are some of my handmade purchases:

These incredible vases are made from wood

Mark and Linda Milich are an adorable husband & wife team, from Marshallville, Ohio, who fashion these absolutely gorgeous vases from wood, found on their property, & elsewhere like Africa & South America.  The coloring is all natural; meaning the wood is not stained. Unfortunately they do not have a website, but their business is called Wood Art & you can leave a comment if you'd like their contact info. We bought the 3 vases below:

This is Walnut.

This is Maple & was a fallen tree. The lines running
throughout are actually mold.

This is Paduak & Cherry.

We also bought a lamp from DS custom concrete. The base is fashioned from concrete & the lamp shade is constructed from paper & wood. The artist, Dave Schoeppner, resides in Magnolia, OH, & works for his Dad's construction business. He also creates amazing tables, sinks, & other home decor, all made from concrete. You can check out his gallery here. Prepare to be blown away by his unique craftsmanship.

I haven't found a place for it yet, hence the
 floor picture. We're still waiting for furniture
 to be delivered & assembled.

I'll have one more creative business we bought from to share with you on Paper Love Wednesday. For handmade goodness, check out Etsy, Heartsy (you have to sign up for this & its like Groupon, where you pay a small amount for a lot larger amount to spend on handmade items at specific shops) & feel good deal of the day. (*Full disclosure: If you sign up for Heartsy or the feel good deal of the day, please let them know that I referred you because I can earn credit. Thanks so much!)

Thanks for stopping by & here's to a great week!





Mini Road Trip

This past Saturday, we took a mini road trip to Canton for the Art is Alive event (a 2 hour drive one way). This was our first time visiting Canton and I was pretty impressed with its Arts District. The draw for me was to see Tim Adams (a fellow Ohioan) speak about his successful experiences with Etsy & his super popular website Handmadeology. He also wrote this book, which I had him sign & plan on jumping into this week.

For those of you who are familiar, you may remember, I opened my Etsy shop in December of last year. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve since done nothing with it and am just now ready to take it seriously & give it a complete face-lift. I was hoping for some uber inspiration & motivation from listening to Tim speak & from walking through all the craft booths. I definitely came home excited & re-engaged. I’ve got numerous to-do lists & ideas spilling out, so I’d say it was a successful trip.

As for the craft booths/vendors, there were so many talented individuals & it was difficult limiting ourselves money-wise. We definitely did our part & contributed greatly to “creative tithing.” I’ll share what we purchased later this week & explain the concept of creative tithing as well.

For now, here are some of the pics I took around town in the Arts District:

Cool 3 dimensional faces



Huge insect



Mural/Paintings on the side of a parking garage

Canton's Art District slogan