#CyberMonday 25% OFF Sale! – Extended through Dec. 3rd!

Shop in my Etsy Store December 2nd & 3rd (aka Cyber Monday + 1) and save 25% off all available shop items!

Use code: CYBERSFETSY during checkout to instantly save 25%!

Are you or someone you know a huge sports fan? Show off your favorite team colors with cute and stylish bubble hats! Don’t see your teams colors? Convo me about a custom order!

Go Team!

Or maybe you or someone you know is in need a warm headband to wear to the gym, under a ski helmet or as a fun warm accessory for a day or night out.

Great gifts under $20

Got a friend or family member who ‘has everything’? Get them a handmade scarf that is sure to accent their winter outfits with style, plus keep them warm!

Warm and One of a Kind!

Can’t for get the oh-so-essential Stocking Stuffer! Cute cuff bracelets will do the trick and can be worn all year round!

Great stocking stuffer ideas all under $10!

Whatever gift needs you have be sure to check out my shop on Cyber Monday for great savings on unique handmade items!

Thanks for stopping by!

Getting crafty with CraftBrewlry!

Last night at Spread in Campbell, CA our host and local SFEtsy team member Gretchen from CraftBrewlry taught us how to make her super cute bottle cap earrings.

Our first task was to dig through the massive amounts of bottle caps she brought to find a pair we wanted to use to turn into earrings. My husband and I thought we have a hefty collection but I believe we got beat! Her collection included unique brands and styles, as well as some soda caps too.

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Then we got to work pounding out our caps using some metal hammers and any current frustrations we needed to expel, sure was fun! After hammering them as flat as possible, you attached the earring pieces using pliers. This took me seconds to complete for 1 but minutes for another as the tiny metal rings can be super easy to fling across the room by accident if you are not careful. Maybe it was just my lack of jewelry making skills but luckily Gretchen happily showed me great tips and suggestions along the way, she was a great teacher!

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I was super excited to find 2 soda caps that said “Fizzy Lizzy” on them, how could I resist right?!?! I also saw this neat pair of orange caps with suns on them that looked fun so I made another set with those as well. Not only did you get to make the earring set, she also provided a really cool eco friendly board to post them onto made out of cardboard cut out from 6-packs, how creative!

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What a fun and great way to reuse things that generally get tossed away without a second thought. Thanks to Yelp for sponsoring the event, thanks Spread for providing the location (they have amazing sandwiches and mac n cheese btw!!!) and to Gretchen for sharing your craft with us and showing us how fun and creative we can be! Please check out her shop, its full of fantastic items and would make great gifts this holiday!

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Thanks for stopping by!

@EcoMonster Snow Globe Yelp Event

This past Sunday I got the chance to check out EcoMonsters new store space and participate in their Yelp Event. There are many of these events going on around the area through mid December, including another I will be going to where you can make your own bottle cap earrings! At the EcoMonster event we got to make cute snow globes out of mason jars and a bunch of little trinkets including trees, bells, sea creatures, angels, elves and all sorts of other things.

You select a jar, then pick out your decorations and hot glue them to the inside of the lid, see my work in progress photos:

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Then you fill your empty jar with ‘snow’, water and a few drops of glycerin. Carefully turn your lid upside down and tighten the lid to the jar then hot glue gun the edge to prevent leaking. The last step is to decorate the outside of your jar and you are finished!

Check out my finished snow globe, it ended up having an ocean seahorse theme to it.

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I really had fun, these events are great for anyone who likes to get crafty but does not want to buy all the supplies each time for what you want to do. Also great for kids and adults alike, a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Be sure to see if there are any Yelp Events in your area and try one out! Thanks for stopping by!

Holiday Accessories: Stockings

One of my favorite times during the holidays was decorating the house with snowmen (my mom had a huge collection of them), putting up the tree, and hanging our stockings on the banister of the stairs. My mom had sewn up one for each of the four of us in the family, and even 1 for  our dog and cat. Mine had my name embroidered on it with an angel. The stockings were felt and fabric sewn together with thread. Each Christmas morning my sister and I would get up and run down to grab our stockings while we ate breakfast before opening presents. Oranges, nuts and other small trinkets were always customary for stocking stuffers are our house.

When I moved away to go to college and subsequently to Atlanta, and presently California, I did not get to enjoy my stocking unless I happen to be visiting my parents for the holiday (which was not every year unfortunately). So one of my goals when I began to learn how to crochet about a year ago was to become efficient enough to make new stockings for myself and my husband, to use as a new family, and one for Chester Cat of course too!

I decided to give this pattern by Red Heart called Holly & Berry Stockings a try because I liked the cuff part because I wanted to put our names on them. I also wanted to use the Red Heart Super Saver yarn because it will always be available if/when I need to make another one.

The pattern is easy to work up and I followed it as described except for 1 part. When I was putting together the first stocking I made, I felt that after I made the cuff and was stitching it together that the cuff part was a tad too small and I did not want a seam to show at the back of the stocking where you join the sides together. So for the remaining 2 stockings I added 2 stitches to the noted 44 they put down in the pattern. This gave me enough to work with at the back so the cuff fit snug but not too tight. Just me maybe, but I liked it with the extra stitches better.

Before I put them all together I had to learn how to stitch letters into the cuff. I had not done this before so I turned to my trusty YouTube search to find a helpful video and this is the one I used:

From that video I was able to figure out the basics and started to put the letters of our names onto the cuffs, my husbands name and the cats name are both 7 letters so I started with the middle letter and worked my way out, I did not remember to take a photo of them prior to putting them together so I took some close ups of the finished ones instead to get the idea. My name is short so I put it all on one side since that seemed to make more sense. Here is a closeup of mine to see the letters stitching.

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I am thrilled with how they turned out, I hope to get many many years of holiday fun out of these stockings. Here are some more photos of the finished stockings below.

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Thanks for stopping by and Happy Holidays!

Cozy Throw Pillow

About a month ago, shortly after I finished my DROPS Blanket, I made a few new squares with this flower motif in them with some extra yarn I had. Link to Ravelry pattern here. After making a few I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with them so I set them aside for awhile.

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Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago when I was needing to get a few more $ into a Joann.com order to qualify for free shipping, I saw that they had these plain polyester pillow forms. That’s when the lightbulb went off, I can make a few more squares and turn them into a pillow! While I am certainly not the first person to do this of course, however I got excited at the possibility of a new project. The pillow forms arrived, I got 2 16×16 forms and I got to work on more squares.

Taking what I learned from the DROPS blanket, I estimated the pillow to need 9 squares for each side. I did not want to leave too big a seam between them like in the blanket so I opted to do a row of sc in the back loops only across each row (I used white to connect all the squares and then around each set of 9). I then did a row of regular sc around each set of 9 squares, putting 3 sc in each of the 4 corners. Finally to join both sides I did another round of sc all around, this gave the edge a slightly thicker look and hold.

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I think it came out really cute, don’t you?!

Want one for yourself or a gift in your favorite colors? Now available as a Made to Order item in my shop, so head there for all the details!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

This item was featured on:
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Flower Potholder

I took a quick break from some other projects to try my hand at this cute tutorial by RubyRed Eclectic called Crochet Flower Pot Stand.

by RubyRed Eclectic

I have had it pinned for quite some time and yesterday I thought to give it a try. I used 3 colors of Caron Simply Soft yarn in white, grey and teal. It is a easy pattern to follow, you make both sides and then stitch them together. The hardest part for me was the slip stitching between the petals. I did alter my version by leaving out row 9, I was running short on the white yarn and wanted to make sure I had enough, and instead of 12 sts for row 10, I used just 10. Check out how mine turned out!

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This pattern is really fun, I recommend it if you want to try something to use up some yarn and may take a day or two to make. I can see other possibilities for this pattern, downsizing it and making coasters or ornaments.

Did you try this pattern too? Share a photo or link to your blog! Thanks for stopping by!

 

Meet Betty!

Meet Betty!

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Meet Betty! She is my brand new head form that I will be using to take photos of all of my shop items. She allows me to make my product photos much more editorial and reflect my items in style! Curious where I got her? Check out Store Fixtures USA mannequin head section.

I also got crafty at home this weekend, and with the help of my husband (the true do-it-yourself guy) I built a custom light box out of a large cardboard box, an old white sheet, tape, and a lamp. If your interested I followed the basic guides from this tutorial I found here.

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This is the setup that I used to take all new product photos. From building the light box, to taking all the photos then post processing them and uploading them, it took almost all day on Saturday but I cannot believe how great they turned out. This also allowed me to combine my two favorite hobbies, photography and crochet, in a big all day project. It was super fun!

Here are some sample shots from all the ones I took. If you head on over to my Etsy Shop Page to see all of the new photos, plus some new items that are now for sale as well!

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Thanks for stopping by!

#Mashup – Wintergreen Skies Shawl

The Yarn

Company/Store: Schaefer Yarn: Nichole (sadly out of business)
Colorway: Peter; mint greens and light blues
Weight/Length: Fingering/405 yards
Material: 80/20 Extrafine Merino Wool/Nylon

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This is the last of my Schaefer yarn, I got 2 of these skeins pictured above for this project so I had a total of approx. 810 yards to work with. I opted to find a pattern for a shawl that would show this yarns lovely mints and blues off well and be a bit airy to be able to wear throughout the year. Great colors for spring and winter both! Reminds me of wintergreen or spearmint mints like tic tacs or altoids and the blue is just a great gradient of lights and medium baby blues. So pretty!

The Pattern

Name: Colchique (Ravelry Link)
Author: Alix Gonzalez

Colclique Shawl

At first when I downloaded the pattern I learned that it was written in French, I took French in grade school and barely remember any so I wasn’t immediately set on using this pattern. However thanks to a great Ravelry user who left great notes and photos in the Project section for this pattern, I was able to follow along quite well. I will note, that the converted pattern and chart is in UK terms, which I noticed after making the first row! So once I learned that the chart was easy to follow, and works up quite quickly. Here are some in progress shots:

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This shawl is fun because you mirror the pattern on both sides so it makes it symmetrical. Another nice thing about this pattern is that it is very easy to lengthen or widen, the foundation chain is simply a multiple of 7, and it is an easy 4 row repeat. Based on the original pattern I followed it but added an additional 28 chains at the beginning to make it just a tad longer. I kept the suggested 5 times repeat on both sides as well. I really like how its turning out and as I am writing this post I have just finished it so I will be adding completed photos very shortly!

Final Stats

Size: 66 in long x 10 in wide
Yarn Used: Out of the 810 yards I have on this yarn I estimate I used about 750 yards total

This item is For Sale! Link to Etsy Product Listing!

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Thanks for stopping by!