Category: etsy

A Very Star Wars Christmas

I like Star Wars but I’m a pretty casual fan as these things go. I need to sit down and watch the original trilogy again because when the subject comes up my knowledge is pretty lacking.

I think it’s fun when kids are into Star Wars and I’m looking forward to seeing if E will be into the movies when he’s older. If you have a Star Wars-loving kid/adult in your life they’ll probably think these things are several kinds of awesome.

Star Wars snowflakes! Instructions and patterns here.

An awesome Jedi Quiet Book

I’m tempted to try and make the quiet book as a Christmas present for E. But E’s really into superheros right now and still clueless about Star Wars so I want to make him a superhero cape and mask for Christmas.

But I might just buy this pattern and stash it for later. It’s just so darn awesome. You can get a kit that comes with supplies or just the PDF version of the pattern. Julie has more pictures of the book up on her blog here and here.

So is anyone making any presents/crafts this year? Except for the cape/mask set for E my crafty Christmas goals are limited to a few felt tree ornaments. I’m trying to keep my expectations reasonable since I have several projects to do around the house to prepare for the baby.

For a friend

A couple of weeks ago my friend Emily and I had a girls’ night out and went to the Beehive Bazaar and then to dinner. It was a lot of fun and I picked up a couple of things at the bazaar.

I love this card by Sycamore Street Press. Looking at it just makes me smile. I don’t know if you can tell from the photo, but it’s letterpress printed and really lovely.

They have a lot of nice pieces in their Etsy shop which is definitely worth checking out.

Camera Straps

Maybe it has something to due with spring but I have a hankering for a stylish camera strap. I don’t know if I’ll actually get one ($30 would buy a lot of film for my Holga) but I like looking.

Speaking of looking, have you used PicClick’s visual Etsy shopper? It lets you look at tons of thumbnails at once. It’s pretty awesome.

Letterpressed Christmas Cards

Thinking about Christmas cards yet? I am. (It’s more fun to think about cards than about cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner ever tomorrow.) We don’t actually have a strong tradition of sending them out, last year was the first year we did them, but I’d like to mail them again this year.

I haven’t picked out our cards yet, but I took a quick look around Etsy and found these nice letterpress cards.

I don’t know if I’ll end up going with any of these. I have good intentions (as usual) but I’ll probably end up procrastinating until it’s too late to order anything by mail.

Dave Barry and Wax Seal Pendants

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been charmed by nice stationary and fountain pens and various writing accouterments. There’s a certain romance about them that I’m still a sucker for. I liked to write pen pals and loved getting mail in return.

In seventh grade I took a typing class and during our free practice time I would type up these long letters to Dave Barry. Yep, I was a big Dave Barry fan as a kid and had a bit of a crush on him (Nerd!). I would carefully fold these letters and seal them with sealing wax, stamping them with an seal I had with an F on it and mail them off.

After having sent off several letters with no response I wrote Dave and asked him what was up (I guess I had a pretty healthy sense of entitlement as a twelve year-old.) I got a post card from him explaining that he had people open his mail for him and because my letters contained some sort of weird crumbly stuff (the sealing wax apparently fell apart in transit) his staff had been throwing them away (apparently he gets a lot of weird mail). After that I wrote him a couple more times and received a few more postcards back which was fun.

I had pretty much forgotten about my brief correspondence with Dave Barry but lately a few things have reminded me of it: reading this account of a girl being pen pals with John Hughes and seeing these wax seal pendents on Etsy.

These pendents are made out of silver using wax impressions from an hand-stamped seal. I think they’re a nice variation on the initial necklaces that are kind of popular right now.

I think I like the first and second pendants the best, but I can’t decide if the first one is too ren-faire or not. What do you think?

Vintage Sparklies

I enjoy fashion and jewelry quite a bit but am still working on getting to a size where I would feel good about investing in some nice pieces. Right now most of my clothes come from Target or Costco and I mostly just try to make sure I don’t look too schlubby.

But maybe I should jazz things up with some fun costume jewelry. There’s an abundance of great affordable vintage pieces on etsy.

Do you have a card?

I’m a total nerd when it comes to stationary. I love examining different types of paper and fonts. I remember being so excited when I was promoted at work to a position that required I have business cards even though they were very boring. My very own business card! Whoo hoo! I was living the high life.

But now I need some new cards that have my contact info on them to give to people at the office. And being self-employed, I can decide what my card looks like. I want something pretty but still professional looking. I took a look around Etsy and found some contenders.

I love the simplicity of this one. But is it too plain? Do you think it would look cheap?

This one’s gorgeous. But is it too whimsical for an office?

I would love a letterpress-printed card like this one but unfortunately I can’t justify the price since I only need a few cards.

So what do you think? Plain border or blue brocade?