Category Archives: fun finds

Scrap shopping!

Posted on August 15, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

Thanks to a post over on Keyka Lou I was enlightened to the fact that people sell scraps on Etsy. Cute fun little packets of odds and ends of fabric from their stashes. So off to Etsy I went to do a little search. I think I got a little carried away.

I went to The Hey Day Shop and couldn’t decide between the 3 stash listings she had for sale, so I bought them all.

There’s even more listed right now . . must . . . resist . . .

I also went to Funky Good Stuff and picked up 2 bundles. It arrived yesterday and it was full of a bunch of cute fairy tale fabrics! Snow White, Little Miss Muffet, Goldilocks and Rapunzel, they’re all so cute.

Finally I picked up some cute bird themed scraps from Starlit Nest who has odds and ends for sale and even offers a subscription program that lasts 6 months of fun scraps arriving in your mail box every month!

Oh AND I had some fun ordering some cute fat quarters from Bytinster. There’s some really adorable stuff there right now! I’m loving these.

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Posted in fun finds, sewing

Tagged destashing, Etsy, fabric, scraps

Friday Find – Creative Inspiration

Posted on July 23, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

At first I was just going to find a bunch of fun images and post those but things changed. I googled, ‘creative inspiration’ and found some neat stuff. Strangely it took a while before I found THE Creative Inspiration. It’s sort of like We Heart It like images only, in my opinion, less overwhelming. Good for a quick visit and perhaps some inspiration. Here are a few of my favs, click images for original posts on Creative Inspiration and sources.

It’s Friday, go waste some time on their site!

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Posted in fun finds, neat spaces

Friday Find – JewelzyBug Designs GIVEAWAY!!

Posted on July 16, 2010 by SewTara| 16 Comments

As if playing around on etsy isn’t dangerous enough already, the other day while poking around I clicked ‘shop local’ and stumbled onto some pretty neat stuff. My favourite was JewlezyBug so I’m sharing her first! Julie has created some really cute characters and uses some interesting materials. She paints on rocks to make neat pendants and uses pages from old books and phone books as the canvases for her whimsical paintings!

I sent her a message on etsy and she seems really fun and agreed to do a GIVEAWAY!!!!! Soooo free stuff to someone who’s in need of cuteness! Julie is willing to giveaway one of her prints, see them all here in her flickr pool, just leave a comment here telling us which one is your fav (they’re numbered 1-90). I like this little guy.

I asked her a little bit about herself and she sent this little blurb, thanks for sharing!

“I have always doodled and painted for as long as I can remember. I am drawn to bright colours and happy motifs that catch the eye and make you smile. I like my art to make you feel good and brighten your day. I use old books and phone books as my back drops because they visually stimulate the eye and provide texture to the art. I feel my art is a reflection of my inner child just wanting to play. I take inspiration from colour, from my day, nature, from the people in the my life and from my furbabies (4 cats and 1 dog: Jewels (hence the name!)”

She also has a blog where she shares her new creations, fun crafts and her cute animals. I love these ribbon curtains she made.

I’ll do some magical random winner picking Sunday night and announce Monday morning! Ohhh the suspense, I’d better set my iphone alarm . . .

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Posted in fun finds, other crafts, papercrafts, repurposing

Tagged art, Etsy, oshawa, papercrafts, pendant, recycling, repurposing

Friday Find – Vista Print!

Posted on June 25, 2010 by SewTara| 2 Comments

Last month I was at a rather dead craft show and got talking to a lady a few tables down and she saw my Moo cards and started showing me all her cards and said she gets her things printed at Vista Print. If you go and sign up to receive their email newsletters (the privacy policy says they don’t share the list) you get chances for some awesome deals. The site has a drop down with oodles of countries listed but I was being my Canadian self of course. I figured I’d actually give it a try, but I love my Moo cards so when I got a Vista email about tons of FREE products I gave it a go. All I had to pay was shipping so I decided to get a small banner, which is actually pretty big, because then I can have something hanging at my table at future shows.

The banner seems huge! It’s 90.2 x 50.8 cm (sorry for being metric) and I stuck with the really simple one figuring I can add my own grommets and such. It seems really durable and would be great for indoor or outdoor use, I even got it wet on my kitchen counter and no harm done!

Just to be silly, as though I’m some sort of big rock star, I also picked up a small car magnet! Here it is stuck on my fridge for now. It says to stick it to a clean car . . . my van is so not clean right now! This is the small magnet and it’s about 28 cm x 21 cm.

I chose the ‘slow’ shipping option, trying to keep my costs down, which they describe as 21 days. I placed my order on the 11th, it was shipped the 22nd and arrived on the 24th! So not bad at all for all that fun stuff for only $10-ish.
The site is really easy to use, I found it got a bit wonky with the images I was uploading but had I paid attention to the requirements and pre-organized myself a bit better it might have gone more smoothly. You can also keep projects ready to go in a ‘portfolio’ and go back later to finish up. Once you’ve created something you’d like to order there is a bit of clicking to get through before you actually finalize. They try to upsell more things with crazy deals. But a few extra clicks and an email here and there are totally worth it, in my opinion, for the products you get! I sent one of the emails onto my hubby a few weeks ago and he came home and said, ‘why are you sending me spam?’ then today when he walked in and saw my stuff he was pretty impressed. So there you have it FREE Vista Print = a good thing!

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Posted in fun finds

Tagged banner, cards, magnet, moo, moo cards, vista print

Friday Find – Craft Hope and Craft Hope the book!

Posted on June 18, 2010 by SewTara| Leave a comment

So Craft Hope has been up to good for a while now. Being a teacher I love project 7 with it’s educational focus. Currently one of their projects, Project 8 is helping tidy things up with the gulf coast oil spill, another noble endeavor. Here’s some of the little blurb about the project,

“Here is what we are going to do… They need hand towels and wash rags to clean all of the nooks and crannies of the dolphins and sea turtles. They only need small hand towels and wash rags, no large towels please.

If you can sew, knit, or crochet this project is for you. We are asking that you create sets of hand towels and/or wash rags to send. Preferably in sets of 10 or 20. These do need to be handmade since we are ‘Craft Hope.’ If you are crocheting or knitting, please send whatever you can. You don’t have to send a set unless it is something you are up for.”

If you want to help out with that one, go here for the shipping address. Deadline is July 3rd.

AND now there’s a book on pre-order all about the wonderful good Craft Hope has been doing, and some of the crafts in case you’re feeling crafty yourself!

Book blurb: Some of the top designers offer 32-projects that can be made and donated to specific charities. You’ll also find helpful tips on how to give locally and globally, how to give thoughtfully and appropriately, and how to empower those you are helping.

Here’s the Flickr pool if you want to see what they’ve been up to in visual form.

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Posted in crafty books, fun finds

Friday Find – Dress a day with the wonderful Marisa

Posted on June 11, 2010 by SewTara| 3 Comments

So a fan/friend Heather gave me a bag of fabric the other day, people are starting to do that, it’s great! So she dropped it off and I started to sort through the pile.

There were some fun finds inside, including this fabric that made me and my bff had a big chuckle over this funky striped one. Until Heather informed us she made shorts out of it back in the day!

So we kept sifting through the pieces of fabric and I was sorting into ‘keep’ and ‘donate’ piles, and then I reached in and pulled this little beauty out! It’s so horrible! It’s a silky shimmery thing and it was pretty hideous. We couldn’t really figured out how the front would hang, I’m not sure it’s 100% complete, there seem to be some unfinished edges.

After getting over the initial shock of how remarkably icky it was I thought of New Dress a Day, which I’ve recently subscribed to. Marissa has decided for 365 days she will create a new item of clothing from a thrifted item, all for the grand price tag of $365. She does some really amazing things. Some of her ‘finds’ I would just walk by as fast as possible. Here’s one of her recent creations.

Starting with that she creates these 2 awesome pieces!

So I sent her an email and offered her the challenge of modifying the hideous dress I found in a gift bag of fabric. She accepted and yesterday I was off to the post office and mailed her a big envelope full of ugly dressness! Have fun Marissa.

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Posted in fun finds, repurposing, sewing

Friday Find – mmmmmm cupcakes!

Posted on June 4, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

My bestest friend ever is getting married in a month (minus a day) and they’re having cupcakes instead of cake!! How cool is that?

So, even though it was really, really tough we let her bring over 4 different cupcakes for us to sample and give our opinions on which ones deserved the privilege of being eaten at her wedding. They’re from a cute little shop in Toronto called The Cupcake Shoppe. Each cupcake has it’s own fun little name and they taste absolutely incredible! Their site says they offers a total of 17 nut-free flavours, with nine available in-store everyday. They have some awesome sounding flavours, I think I NEED to go to taste the Creamsicle one and the After Ate, I’m a sucker for minty things.

They also asked us to take some artsy photos of their rings stuck in the cupcakes just for fun. I handed that job over to my hubby since he knows the camera better than I do. They turned out great and I think they’d make great thank you cards!

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Posted in fun finds, other crafts

Friday find – The Sea Within.

Posted on May 28, 2010 by SewTara| 1 Comment

At my first craft show earlier this month this lovely lady had a table there as well. I soooo badly wanted this bag, love the apple print, but I resisted. She said she moved here form the US and brought a lot of fabric with her, I checked Etsy for this one but can’t find it.

Good for me, I decided if I want to own any more bags/totes/purses I must create them myself, bad for her. However, her bags are quite lovely and so I thought I’d share the love and let you all in on her wonderful little store. Enjoy!

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Posted in fun finds

Tagged bags, friday feature, purses, sea within, totes

Friday find to help you Get Craftee.

Posted on May 21, 2010 by SewTara| Leave a comment

A little while back I signed up for Happy Mail (which was a blast) and ended up with Cristina as a partner. Crazily enough, she lives really, really close and just so happens to run this super cool web site, Craftee.

If you’re into jewlery, a craft that for some reason intimidates me, there’s a great DIY by Kaitlin on how to turn a not so loved piece into some other items.

The site also provides useful links to other awesome crafty things, like how to make these fabric coloured thumbtacks over at How About Orange, something I totally need to try.

If you’re feeling ambitious you can even submit your own crafty articles. So head over, click around see!

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Posted in fun finds

Tagged craftee, fun finds

Friday Find! Keyka Lou (bracelet bag in progress)

Posted on May 14, 2010 by SewTara| 2 Comments

Thanks to finding Blue Calla I have now found Keyka Lou, which is where she gets her patterns. Downloaded the bracelet bag pattern the other night with my friend, figuring we’d make it together. But then of course I’ve gotten ahead of things and cut it out already. Too excited to try a new project!

Here’s what I’ve got so far.