The Challenges of a Small Success

Despite the fact that I've had my Etsy shop open for over a year now, I still consider myself a newbie because (until recently) I didn't really mess with it much. I think over the past year I've posted 15 items and 10 of those were in the past month.

I sort of jumped the gun when I first opened shop. Bright and early one morning, while the rest of my house was asleep, I hopped on my Mac, got myself a cup of coffee and said, "Really, how hard can this be?" I grabbed a scarf that I'd knitted a while back, took a couple of photos and voila! An Etsy shop was born. 

My first item sold within a month or so, and frankly that was a surprise. After my initial spurt of confidence, I hadn't really thought too much about the shop or the solo item that I'd thrown on the web. A woman in Australia bought my scarf for $15, but I hadn't really researched my shipping costs and ended up losing money in the end.

Did that bother me? A little. But I was riding the Cha-Ching high from Etsy.

This spurred me to convince my parents to go in halfsies with me at a local antique mall on a booth. 

I didn't have the inventory.

I didn't have a business plan.

I didn't really think past that blur of I can do this!

And so, a year of significant monetary losses later, my contract is almost up and I'm about to close down my booth. Actually, Friday is my last day. And I'm okay with that - I jumped in without really thinking. My parents were more geared towards selling knick knacks and interesting small pieces that they found at auctions while I was more interested in making and selling my wares. It didn't mesh well. Frankly, it looked like an awkward hodge-podge of just stuff.

To make matters worse, the booths on either side of mine were well-done and exactly what I had been hoping for my own.

So now I'm taking a BIG step back, revamping my Etsy shop, researching SEO and marketing. I'm hoping that this next step with EclecticMES is a little more successful than my last one and definitely hoping that it'll be at least more organized and focused.

Lesson learned: Don't let a small success go to your head and interfere with your business plans and goals. Keep a clear, calm head, work hard, and the rest will follow!

Crochet baby blanket

It's official! I've finally finished my first crocheted baby blanket!

I've been knitting since I was eight years old and all my life I've heard that if you learn to knit first, you'll never learn how to crochet. I'm not sure who decided that was a fact or why it's such a popular notion, but I'm here to tell you that it's not true.

I love crocheting. I hate to say it, but I might just like it even better than knitting. 

I've been teaching myself to crochet through trial and error, online tutorials, and the occasional youtube video. I've done hats and scarves and was really excited to tackle my first "big" project, if you can consider a baby blanket big.

I love the bright colors on this thing. My boyfriend shied away, but then again his idea of a "fun" color is gray. Bleh.

I went with a 3 double crochet shell pattern for this one. With the cotton yarn and the no-brainer pattern, it worked up in time at all.

 

Nothing beats the clean lines on this thing. I stuck with a single crochet border on the blanket and I'm glad I did it. The single crochet brings it all together with a clean, crisp outline.

My pride and joy baby blanket is for sale in my Etsy shop :)

Chalk Paint and Re-Upholstered Chair Makeover

This is the fifth day that it's been raining here in the Valley. We're really not used to this kind of weather and I think everyone's going a little stir-crazy. My own stir-craziness prompted me to revamp an ugly dining room chair left over from a yard sale I had over the summer. What was I supposed to do with a single chair? For the last few months it's been living underneath of a pile of junk in my basement. 

Well, after getting my new desk settled in my craft room, I realized that the hulking rolling chair that I used with my old desk was way too big. And thus began the great chair makeover.

Welcome to my dirty basement!

This was really a project of firsts. I've never worked with chalk paint, never made chalk paint, and I've never re-upholstered anything. I never really thought that I would.

First, I removed the chair pad by unscrewing the four screws on the bottom of the chair.

Which left me with this:

That's a layer of dirty, outdated fabric, a layer of rounded foam, and a final layer of square foam. I saved the old fabric to use as a template for my new polka dotted material.

Then I painted. I used the recipe for chalk paint that I found online from Lowe's: 

1/3 cup of cool water

1/3 cup of plaster of paris

1 cup latex paint

I used paint that had primer in it and I've read in a few different places that it's better to use paint WITHOUT primer, but it was just what I had on hand. Like I said, this was a stir-crazy, gotta-do-something-NOW kind of project, so I literally had everything I used for this project on hand. Was that the best way to do it? Probably not.

It took a solid 2 coats of paint and I still had to go back and do some touch-ups here and there. Not really sure how I feel about the homemade chalk paint, but I don't have anything to compare it to, either.

Then began the upholstering. I cut my new fabric, tossed the old, and very carefully laid it out on the old foam. Then I took my handy stapler and stapled it down all the way around. I found the corners to be a lot more challenging than I'd thought they would be. I sort of took the bunched-up approach. I pulled it as tight as I could across the front and then bunched it so that you can't see the bunching from the front. Then I stapled. Liberally.

Last, but not least, I figured I had to do something with the big blank space on the back of the chair. I thought about adding the initial of my last name but (with hopes that I'll one day get married), I decided on a big M instead.

I downloaded a cursive M from offline, printed it, and colored the back with a chalk pencil. To transfer the image, I taped it to the chair and traced over the lines on the paper with a pen, then removed the paper. The charcoal leaves a sort of "ghost" image behind and then I painted in the lines.

If you ever choose to do anything like this I STRONGLY suggest that you do NOT do it this way. It took FOREVER to hand-paint that letter. It looks pretty decent, but I didn't even have the right size paintbrush and ended up using a tooth pick to fill in the small lines with paint and at the end gave up and outlined the whole thing in black Sharpie to smooth the outer lines. (Remember: last minute project, here.) If you have the option of a stencil or a vinyl letter, definitely go that route.

All in all, though, I'm pretty much in love with my new chair. 

Love!!!

Ruffled burlap garland

I'm a little late on this week's post - sorry guys!

The big project this week is a ruffled burlap garland. A friend of mine had mentioned that she'd seen one draped over the door of a local primitive store and when I went to check it out, I knew I had to make one for myself. The store was asking $30 for one garland, but I was pretty sure I could remake it myself for less.

It was a pretty good success. I bought some burlap rolls from Wal-Mart, grabbed some scrap yarn and a yarn needle from my craft room, and went to town.

Yes, I have purple walls in my living room. No judging lol.

The secret to sewing the burlap to make the ruffles is to sew in a zig-zag pattern. The larger your zigs and zags, the larger the ruffles. Sew through a good two feet of burlap and then push the burlap down on the yarn to make it bunch up. The burlap didn't go as far as I thought it would - I used two entire rolls of burlap (not sure what the measurements are on the length of those rolls) and it only made a garland long enough to just cover the top of my mantle, about 4 1/2 feet. Right now I'm using it as a fall decoration on the mantle, but if I were to make another one for Christmas, I think I'd make it a little longer so I could drape it along the front of the fireplace.

Some pumpkins and some shiny fall leaves really made the burlap pop.

Bundt Pan Wreath

About a year ago, I came across an old orange bundt pan at a thrift store. It's really seen better days - the coating on the inside is flaking off, the orange on the outside is scratched in places and I really just didn't feel right using it to cook. Who knows how much of that inner coating would wind up in my cakes? Yikes.

Thanks to the trusty Pinterest, I came across the idea for a bundt pan wreath. I started with these materials:

Don't ask about what happened to the scissors - it involves an inattentive crafter and a teething puppy.


I also used my hot glue gun and some wire, but I forgot to throw those in there for the picture.


I strung my ribbon through the center of the pan to make the hanger and hot glued the ends together. Then I made a little bow to go over the top where I planned to actually hang the wreath. I used some wire to attach the bow to the strip of ribbon and made a little hook to hang it on. I could get the wreath to hang by slipping the nail through the holes in the burlap, but I wasn't sure how long that would hold before pulling the burlap out of place.

The pan looked pretty plain just sort of hanging on the burlap, so I surfed the web for some good felt flower DIY instructions. I found the perfect one here. Do be careful with the hot glue - I've got two nice burns on my fingers to show for my hard work this afternoon!

I'm really pleased with how the flower came out. The grey one is from the instructions on the diaryofamadcrafter blog. She used another piece of felt for the middle of the flower, but I used a little wooden bead that I had in my craft room. The little cream flowers were super easy - just use something as a template for a circle, cut the circle out of the felt and then cut the circle into a spiral. I just wrapped the spiral from the bottom out, putting a dot of glue on as I went along. Easy peasy.

I hot glued my flowers onto the pan and voila! The perfect kitchen wreath.

I love it, and it's available on my Etsy shop if you love it, too :)