WhatTheCraft Handmade Giveaway: Handcrafted Affairs

This week’s WhatTheCraft Giveaway is sponsored by Beth of Handcrafted Affairs, who is offering one of her fabulous handmade creations!

The winner of this giveaway will receive:

your choice of a flower hair accessory or a personalized clothing hanger

Valued at $20-35! Read more

Tutorial: Lace Lampshade

by: inkodye

This project is shockingly simple, yet produces really beautiful and unique results. We were able to transfer the pattern of lace onto our lampshade by using the photographic property of Inkodye. It’s like magic! The lamp we used was found at Ikea for $15, but any cotton or linen lampshade will work perfectly.

 

Total tutorial time: 20 minutes

Used in this project: Inkodye Red Orange

 

Materials. All we used for this project was a cheap lampshade, some lace, a sponge brush, a few push pins, and of course Inkodye!

 

Prep. To extend and lighten the dye add water. This step is optional, but it allows your bottle of Inkodye to last even longer!

 

Mix. Stir the dye and water mixture to ensure even coloring.

 

Paint. Coat the lampshade with the Inkodye mixture, making sure to cover the canvas completely.

 

Pin. Next, use simple push pins to secure the lace. We pinned along the seem of the lampshade in order to keep the front flawless.

 

Snip. Cut off the extra fabric so that the print is undisturbed. Then, align and pin the bottom.

 

Develop. Watch the colors deepen and develop in the sun! We left the lamp out for about 5 minutes, rotated it, and left it out for 5 more.

 

Unravel. Remove the lace from the lampshade to expose the beautiful printed pattern. This is our favorite part!

 

Scrub. Wash with laundry detergent and water to remove excess Inkodye. Don’t be afraid to scrub hard; Inkodye is very permanent! Let dry.

 

Illuminate. Now you can display your newest piece of art anywhere around the house. Voilà!

 

Craftastic auctions on Ebay

I’ll be moving sometime in the not-so-distant future, and thus the pile of sewing machines in my house must be thinned. My Singer CE-200 embroidery / sewing machine combo is up on Ebay right now, so go check it out if you’re interested! It’s a great machine and the ONLY reason I’m selling it is because I have 8 machines and taking them all with me is really not an option. I know some crafty person out there will give it a good home!

It comes with lots of extras, like a boat load of thread, so you’ll be ready to embroider right out of the box.

I’m also attempting to thin out some of my SmarmyClothes stock, both because of the move and to make room for Halloween stock, so I’ve got a few one of a kind clothing auctions up as well (ahhhh, listing on Ebay makes me feel nostalgic!).

Fairytale Embroidery

This was my first big embroidery project. It’s from a few years ago, but I just realized I’d never shared it here.

Before this I embellished some pockets on a few pairs of jeans and I made a pouch for my brother that I embroidered last year, but this is the most elaborate project I’ve done.

Whenever I wanted to use something other than a straight stitch or satin stitch, I had to get out this 1970′s embroidery guide that was my mom’s and stare at the thing for 30 minutes before I figured out what the stupid drawings meant.

I intentionally didn’t keep track of my hours, because I didn’t want to know. But let’s just say I went through a whole season of Gilmore Girls DVDs (maybe a season and a half) while working on it, plus many, many hours on top of that. I started in November and finished in (eep!) July.

I probably started in September or October, intending it as a Xmas gift for my mom, but after 7 straight hours of embroidering on Xmas Eve, and many hours of work still needing to be done, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. There wasn’t much embroidery from January through the middle of July, but I busted my butt in the end because I wanted to finish it for my mom’s b-day, which is at the end of July.

This is what I used as my (quite literal) inspiration:

It’s from The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, a book my mom had when she was a kid and passed down to me.  She says she likes this particular illustration the most (though all of them in the book are really amazing.  I’d frame them all.) because the girl looks like me (it doesn’t).  For a while, she even had a crappy scanned and printed copy on the wall, which is what gave me the idea to do this in the first place.  The artist’s name is Adrienne Segur and the illustration goes with the store “The Seven Crow Princes”.

 

 

I did it on muslin… if I did it over again, I’d use something sturdier like canvas. Muslin would have been okay if it wasn’t quite so heavily stitched.
It’s about 11″ X 17″, which is pretty close to the illustration in the book.
Once the embroidery was done, I used colored pencils to paint/color the blank spots that were too big to fill in with stitches. Read more

Handmade Showcase: Red Hot

Most of the country is experiencing a heatwave of immensely sweaty proportions (it’s so humid here, our air conditioning is causing our windows to drip with condensation), so I decided to fight fire with fire with this red hot handmade showcase!

 

 

 

 
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WhatTheCraft Handmade Giveaway – Wirewear bracelet winner

The winner of the WireWear chainmaille bracelet is…

June!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Make sure to check out the next handmade giveaway later this month!

Tutorial: Sun-Printed Batik Fabric Painting and Dyeing

by: inkodye

Batik is a traditional technique that uses Resist to prevent dye from reaching the fabric. You can use this method to create detailed patterns on textiles, wood and unglazed ceramics. With specially formulated Inkodye you get to use the power of the sun to develop the full vibrance of your colors and make them permanent, no other steaming or fixing is required!

Decide how to apply the resist. We used fine line applicators, also try brushes, stencils and sponges.

 

Choose your design. We printed out an illustration to use as an underlay, if you’re brave try freehand!

Flatten your work surface. We used a mild spray adhesive, you can also use stretcher frames.

 

Apply Resist. Try not to smudge your work as you go! Fine lines dry to the touch in minutes.

Finishing touches. Check your work for gaps, dye will bleed through gaps in lines. Sign your work!

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WhatTheCraft Handmade Giveaway – WireWear chainmaille bracelet

This week’s WhatTheCraft Giveaway is sponsored by Amanda of WireWear, who is offering one of her awesome chainmaille bracelets!

Read more

Twitter Celebration Sale!

We did it! I’ve reached 30,000 followers on Twitter! To celebrate, everything at SmarmyClothes.com is 30% off from now until Monday 07/11!

There are new fruitsy kawaii and circus inspired made to order top designs! Plus more armwarmers and hair clips, too!

Click here to browse the Smarmy shop!

 

Handmade Marketing on a Budget

Today’s Crafty Business Advice Question comes from Ti of NomBieCraftz.

What is the best way to advertise on a budget?

Social networking is one of the best ways to market your shop, period. And it’s free!

Okay, so as the saying goes, “Time is money”. So it’s not free-free, but the time invested in getting new Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and Tumblr follows is worth it because you’re building a long-term relationship with potential customers. Traditional advertising flashes on the screen for 30 seconds, and then it’s gone.  That’s why the big companies have to play the stupid things so often.

So how do you best use a social network to market your shop? Check out my 6 Secrets to Twitter Success for a Handmade Business here. The same basic principles apply to any social network.

It’s also important to continue to build your following. If you have 600 Twitter fans, every time you share a link to your item, you’re only reaching those same 600 people. It’s just a simple fact that the more people you reach, the more potential for sales you’ll have.

Another great way to advertise on a budget is by doing giveaways. Again, it’s kinda free. You don’t pay money (or at least you shouldn’t have to… any blog wanting you to PAY to do a giveaway is shady, if you ask me), but you are offering up a free product, which is costing you the materials and the time to make it.

Be selective when choosing a site to do a giveaway with. One of the things you’ll get used to is people demanding free stuff. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry has an AWESOME blog, PERFECT FOR YOUR ITEMS, and they’d just LOVE to giveaway one of your AMAZING items to their followers! It’ll be a BIG HIT! Or maybe they don’t have a blog but they’re doing a CHARITY AUCTION for KIDS WITH LEPROSY and isn’t this a GREAT OPPORTUNITY to get the word out about your AMAZING items and do something GREAT FOR KIDS all at the same time!

My personal rule is that unless I’ve heard of the site doing the giveaway or actually know the person, I don’t give freebies. There are too many people out there willing to take advantage. It might not even be intentional, but it’s still costing you something. Never forget that. A freebie isn’t free for you.

Here’s a simple checklist you can use if you’re considering doing a giveaway with a blog/website you’re not familiar with:

• Have they done giveaways in the past? What was the response like? I’d like to see that they’ve done lots of giveaways before mine. I’d also like to see a lot of response. If their last giveaway only go 10 entries, then it’s probably not worth it for you, because that generally means the site doesn’t get much traffic and/or the person running it isn’t promoting it. If you’re giving away freebies, then their side of the bargain is getting the word out!
• How much response do non-giveaway posts/pages get? I like to see a regular stream of interaction on posts that aren’t giveaways. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but a few comments here and there show me that the site gets some amount of organic traffic. If they only really get comments on giveaways, then I wonder if their only source of traffic are the freebie/giveaway junkies that run around entering every giveaway on the net, never bothering to look at what they’re even trying to win. Part of the appeal of a giveaway is exposure to your key demographic and freebie junkies aren’t part of it.
• Do they have a following on Twitter and/or Facebook? Again, this speaks to their commitment to promoting their site. I’d want to see a Facebook page or a Twitter account with significant followings (at least 1,000 on Facebook and at least 3,000 on Twitter)
• Are they asking you to pay to do the giveaway or give them a freebie in addition to the giveaway prize? This is an automatic deal-killer for me.

People often get overwhelmed by the idea that they’ll never be done with marketing, but that’s the nature of running any business. We’re like sharks. We have to keep swimming, or we die. To make it easier, set small goals for yourself. If you make it a point to get 10 new Twitter followers a day, by the end of the year, you’ll have gained 3,650 followers! If you get 100 new Facebook likes on your fanpage per week, that’s 5200 new fans for your page in a year! That’s thousands more potential buyers for your shop. They won’t all buy, but again, that’s the nature of running any business.

Happy crafting!

-Lex

Do you have a crafty business question or just general crafty question you’d like to ask?

• Send your questions to what.the.craft[at]gmail.com with your question!
• Include your shop/blog/website URL with your question, and I’ll include it in the post if I choose to answer your question in the blog!
• (Unless you’d prefer to be anonymous. In that case, just tell me you’d prefer to not be credited!)

 

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