A group of my fellow Etsy artists & crafters have teamed up to do a big sale and a giveaway this week. From a free print of your choice (from me!) to handmade earrings, pendants, cards…there’s a TON of cool stuff to be won. We’re going to be dividing up all the goodies for 5 lucky winners & you’ve got until May 24th to enter. So get clicking!

acageybee.etsy.com
barefoottams.etsy.com
beadcrazed.etsy.com
bedtimebeads.etsy.com
brynnalex.etsy.com
bylynnkrestel.etsy.com
carolforsyth.etsy.com
cocosjewelry.etsy.com
deandymentstudios.etsy.com
debrasdesigns.etsy.com
elseetee.etsy.com
ficklefaerie.etsy.com
gillianbeads.etsy.com
groovyglassgirl.etsy.com
jansonpottery.etsy.com
luckytroll.etsy.com
luludesign.etsy.com
owlandpussycat.etsy.com
prettybetty.etsy.com
radclothing.etsy.com
sleepymoondesign.etsy.com
squareware.etsy.com
whiterabbit21.etsy.com

How To Enter The Giveaway:
1. You can enter once without a purchase by leaving a comment on this blog post.
2. You will get an extra entry with each purchase (ie. 5 items equals 5 entries)
3. If you blog about our sale and leave a valid link you will get another entry.
4. You can visit each shop involved in the sale, pick a favourite listing from that shop, and then post the link in the comments section on this blog post. This means you can leave 25 links from 25 different shops in the sale and you will get 25 entries into the draw.

Check out the official Etsy Canada Giveaway blog here:  http://etsycanada.blogspot.com

A few of my favorite items:

Teeny Hammered Ring Earrings from Bedtime Beads

Handmade Porcelain Butter Dish from Janson Pottery

Silver Robot Print on Wood by elseetee

Happy weekend shopping! And don’t forget to mention the “Etsy Canada Sale”.

What a crazy few days! Between getting ready for my group show next month, promoting the Etsy Twitter Team Sidewalk Sale and somehow ending up trying to organize a Canadian Etsy seller giveaway I’ve pretty much given up on sleeping. I worked for 20 hours straight yesterday, only breaking to dash out to see a movie after my mister won us tickets for a pre-screening of the new Terminator movie. Though I had way too much on my plate to fully relax & enjoy it (I was madly scribbling notes in my day planner during the previews…yeah…I’m one of those), it was a much needed break. And? A really good movie! I won’t post any spoilers, but let’s just say that I was immediately sucked in & forgot about all the stuff that was waiting for me once I got home & back to work. The machines in this one are so clunky & metallic – the sounds are amazing. Much creepier than the slick silver CGI versions of T3 (though that was impressive at the time).

On our way back to the car, happily chattering about the movie & super happy that we got free tickets AND I got points for making time to actually, you know, interact with my sweet pea, we discovered that our car window had been smashed. As much as I love this city, it can be so frustrating to deal with the constant crime. They basically just went through everything, dumping receipts & maps & whatnot all over the place. They didn’t steal stuff like sunglasses or our Sirius radio thingie or FOOD (my emergency granola bar). It seems like they were just looking for loose change. Same thing happened to another car a few stalls down. *sigh*

We’re trying to get it in to get fixed tomorrow, plus fix the other window molding from the last time someone tried to break into it a few months back which has been duct-taped ever since. It’s unfortunately just really bad timing as this means there’s no way we’ll be able to go down to Seattle this weekend for my nephew’s birthday. I doubt we’ll have the car back in time & I don’t foresee any way we’ll be able to afford it.

Anyway, back to work for me! I wanted to share a progress shot of the new painting I had planned to use for the group show, but I’ve actually changed my mind & am going in a completely new direction. After some constructive criticism from my mister (I believe his exact words were, “It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that compared to Murray I want to throw this new painting into a fire.” Okey dokey!)

The show theme is “concepts of home” and since I painted the octopus, my mind (& sketchbook!) has been filled with new ideas. Hopefully I can get several pieces completed over the next 9 days and decide after seeing the finished work. Maybe I should let you guys vote!

The Etsy Twitter Team is having a Sidewalk Sale! One of the things I love about selling my work on Etsy is the amazing community of artists and crafters who truly want to help each other succeed.  I joined a street team of fellow Etsy sellers from all mediums (jewelery to knitting to photography) who also use Twitter and have been having a great time collaborating with the group. And this week is our first big sale!

From May 17th to May 23rd there’s a big list of shops that offer great discounts from 20% off to free shipping as long as you enter in a special sidewalk sale code when you check-out.

Click here to see the full list of all shops participating and their sales!

In the Cagey Bee shop…every order will get a free sampler pack of 4 postcards included in their shipment! Just enter the words “Sidewalk Sale” when you complete your purchase. Yay!

Here are a few of my fave items from other sellers participating in the Sidewalk Sale:

Cherry Blossom Fabric Bowl from a Curious Mess

free shipping worldwide

Circuit Pendant from Beadwork by Amanda

20% off her entire shop

Thai Coconut Lemongrass Soap from Soap Rehab

free shipping

Plus heaps more! Click here to see the other shops participating in the sidewalk sale. Happy shopping!

This is Kiero, otherwise known as The White Dog (Who Is Afraid of Cameras).

We were snuggling this morning & I was doing my gazing lovingly at her/creepy stalker stare & somehow managed to slide out of bed, grab my camera & snap a pic before she woke up & hid under the covers. Score!

Oh & yes, I’m aware she needs a bath.

Another sign it’s going to be a good weekend? I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. painting last night & when I finally emerged from my little studio, I discovered the mister baking peanut butter cookies. Yum! Nothing like fresh baked cookies when you’ve been hyper-focused on painting & haven’t eaten anything in hours.

Lest you think this is common practice in our house & start giving your own mister the hairy eyeball, I should probably mention that this is not the norm. Proof? The recipe called for baking the cookies on parchment paper (which we don’t have) so he substituted with WAX paper. In the oven. The wafting yummy baking smells were slightly marred by the clouds of wafting smoke coming from the oven. But he still gets an A for effort!

The last couple of weeks have been a complete whirlwind of busy-ness for me & the next two promise more of the same. So instead of a full, useful blog post that makes sense, we’re doing a quickie roundup:

Group Show

I have to finish up two more paintings for my group show next month at Raw Canvas Gallery here in Vancouver, plus I’ve been swamped with trying to get the word out about the show, like sending press releases, setting up a Facebook group & whatnot. I have one sort of finished, but I want to add a few more layers to give it more murky depth & I’m thinking about completely re-doing the girl’s hair. It’s bugging me.

Etsy Sales

The Etsy groups I belong to have both decided to do big promo sales at the same time with a big giveaway from the Etsy Canada Team and a sidewalk sale from my Etsy Twitter Team (more details to come).

Social Life

My art group meetings, this incredibly basic & dull parenting course we signed up for which has so far taught me nothing except that I’m already an exceedingly good parent (*snort*), my nephew’s birthday…why does it all hit at the same time? Even the fun stuff! The mister got tickets for the live re-broadcast of This American Life on Monday as a mother’s day gift for me. It was amazing. It was so cool to see how they cue up the quotes, add the music, Ira narrates…not what I pictured at all. Dan Savage’s story was a particular standout since it left both me & the mister weeping in our seats.

Of course we also had to see the new Star Trek on opening night. We took the boy & we all loved it across the board. Sylar as Spock? PERFECT. And surprisingly hot. Also surprising? It was really funny. Laugh out loud funny. Honestly, even if you’re not a Trekker, go see it. It’s a solid movie even without any back story or character history.

I did have to laugh at the whole ohhhhh! They replaced the original cast with young, sexy newcomers!!! What will Hollywood think of next? But…yeah. That’s Hollywood. Next up on our summer blockbuster roster? Transformers 2! I loved the first one so much I was catching flies the whole movie, my jaw wide open watching the shiny chrome twist & transform. So. Freaking. Cool. Hollywood movies are rarely better than my imagination, especially as a child, but Transformers completely blew my 9 year old mind out of the water.