7 New Pens

I have been a busy little bee getting ready for the Etsy Dallas Spring Bash! I made 7 new pens over the past 2 days. I wanted to make 3 each of my favorite 3 designs: cupcake, peace sign, and skull & crossbones. So after this blog post I plan on making the last 2 skull & crossbones pens. I plan on listing all my new items and all my journals on Sunday after the show. I also hope to have an amazing show write up as well. We were featured in Daily Candy, so this is going to be BIG!

Don't forget to enter my Cupcake Pen Giveaway! Contest ends tonight!

Good News and Bad News

I guess I'll start with the bad news so I can end on a positive note. My package to the Sampler was lost in the mail! I cried when I saw they didn't receive it, and after I went to the post office and they said there's nothing they can do. I lost over $200 worth of merchandise and promos, plus all the time that went into it. It was so stupid not to insure it or get delivery confirmation or something. For those type of packages I think I'll use UPS or FED EX so this won't happen again.

The good news is that I got a new lightbox, and I can finally get those awesome white backgrounds for my pictures! I just posted this blue peace mini pen in my shop. I'm going to re-photograph all my pens this weekend and hopefully have everything finished in time for the very first Etsy Texas Crafters "First Mondays." The first one is this Monday -- this will be 24 hours of great sales and special offers in the ETC team shop, as well as in ETC members' shops, and will be held the first Monday of every month (12:01am to 12:00 midnight Monday, Central Time / 1:01am Monday to 1:00am Tuesday, Etsy Time). Watch for our special avatars to appear when First Mondays sales are going on. My sale will be a BOGO, so when you buy a regular size pen, you'll receive your choice of mini pen free!

New Style

Here are the new pens I made this weekend, and I will be listing them on etsy today and tomorrow. I have to get all the photos taken first. It's a variation on the swirl design really. Instead of going around and around with the colors, I move them up and down as well. The mini pen is straight up and down evenly. The regular size one was an experiment with both techniques that turned out sweeter than I imagined! I'll be experimenting more in the future :)

I went to a peace rally yesterday! We marched from Mockingbird Station (Dallas) to a park near the site at SMU for the Bush Library. My sign said "Make Art, Not War" I posted a picture on my myspace page. The reggae band that played was awesome, and there were some excellent speeches. Three SMU students had signs across the street from us, and the one I remember the most said "Yay Bush". I was glad to see them exercising their first amendment rights, too. More people need to stand up for what they believe in. I draw the line at kid who cussed out a priest that was with us and told the priest he was going to hell. Violence is never the answer.