Along with the Canadian Etsy Sellers List I have also been compiling a list of blogs run by Etsy sellers, which you can find here. I have added them all to my Technorati and would love a link in kind if you are on the list. If you are an Etsy seller and have a blog and I have not put you on this list, just leave me a comment with your Etsy username and blog URL and I will add you on the list.

So, with my new fancy-dancy woodburning system, I have been working on a few projects.
The box above is based off of an idea from Colin (a real, live IRISHMAN!) who suggested the offset cross. I was complaining that the cross centered made it look like a bible, and I like the way this one looks traditional and contemporary at the same time.

And here is a fun thing I burned up last night: 

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My friend and fellow Etsy seller Uli (Owner of Sparkles and Fuzz Etsy Store) recently shared her story of the wonderful recipe book prepared for Mother’s Day by the children and staff at her daycare. Each child dictated a favorite recipe and the instructions were recorded word-for-word and collected into a little recipe book. Here is the submission by her Daughter…

How to make Chocolate Chip Cookies

(as recorded and transcribed by her daycare teachers)

I think they sugar in them. Definitely chocolate chips, sometimes she puts Smarties in it. She uses butter. She puts brown sugar in the dough. She uses two eggs in it. She mixes them up with a mixing pan. She puts chocolate chips in it. She takes the bowl off the mixer, I’ll call it that cuz I don’t know what its name is. She puts them on a pan, then puts them in the oven. The balls of dough are this BIG. Then you flatten them up or all the smarties or chocolate chips will fall out or they will break apart. The temperature is really suppose to be 500 degrees, I thin, if my mom put them in the oven for 40 minutes they would like burn so I would think about 5 minutes. She lets them cool down then lets me taste them.

I can’t really explain why I am so restless lately. Not in the large sense, the “what am I doing with my life?’ sense. On a smaller scale, “what am I doing at this exact second?” Most women “putter” and that’s fine, but I interrupt my puttering to putter with something else, and so on so at the end of the day I have started 82 projects and finished nothing.

It’s getting to be that way for my art, too. I am so excited about so many new techniques I want to try and many new pieces of equipment I have bought, (against the advice of my credit card) that I can’t sit down long enough to actually do anything. Case in point – yesterday. I was making a clock by dismantling it and flipping the plate to make it run backwards.

In the middle of this, with half the clock gears scattered around my workbench I noticed a bead on the floor – a pretty expensive lampwork glass bead and perfect choking size for the cat. I picked it up, got out my bead bins and put it back in its compartment. I was about to close the lid when I noticed some really nice clasps I had from a necklace I took apart a few weeks ago and I got an idea for a new design of collar for Chuki (the aforementioned cat, who does not like collars, but will proudly wear his tags if I put them on a nice beaded necklace for him.) so I pulled out the supplies and started beading. Partway through THAT I remembered that I was going to make a homemade bead spinner and this would be the perfect project to try it on. Out came the glue guns, dowels and a margarine tub (Okay, yes, I did throw away ¼ tub of margarine for this, but I really wanted to try it and had no empty tubs) and off I went. At the end of the day my workbench was littered with clock parts, beads, a beading tray, my wire storage box, 15 handmade wire beads I had just finished and three books on woodworking that I had found while looking for the fire mountain catalog. I had started a total of 9 projects and finished a total of none.

At this rate, it will be 2008 before I have anything to sell on ETSY.