Hooray for the U.S.A.

I curated this Etsy treasury Monday evening. You can visit it HERE until Thursday afternoon.
Learn more about our Etsy Team: BBEST.

i love you like etsy

etsy has a new trademark agreement policy & my design was approved! Next to sign and return the contract, but, naturally, I wanted to include one of my pinbacks. And, then, naturally, I needed to send it in style ~ my style ~ and then, naturally, once I started browsing for something to catch my eye...and, well, it just kept going from there. This is Manhattan for the love of kismet. I mean, honestly. It was a sign.




Note: Click on the photo above to enlarge and read text with ease.

The toughest part was finding the picture of the earth in the right size. I wanted it to be a balloon. And I wanted an earth taken from space. People, I have only 14 days to return this contract!!! I have standards which does make my life challenging. No, I do not want an earth printed off of the internet. It has to be found in a discarded magazine, book, calendar or ??? Do I have a vault full of these? No Ma'am. No Sir. I do not. I gave myself a deadline. If I couldn't find one by last night, I would have to illustrate (GULP) my own. eek! Desperate times call for desperate measures, folks. I had an earth balloon in my head and come hell or high water, there was going to be one on this collage. No matter that all I sought was a simple attractive square in the first place. Let's be serious here.



There was only one way to solve this. I started working on my new horse linocut. (My first! This is another story. You can see a couple of photos on my flickr or my post on CAD. ) As I was searching for magazine pages for my little pony :), there she was!!!! My little blue planet. She was a little too large, but the thought of resorting to plan B ... Next ... how was I ever going to cut a perfect circle around her? Hey ... this looks like the size of my pinbacks. Hey... wait a minute... and the earth balloon magnet, she is born! Now, the true dilemma... how do I part with this baby? I am sorry, but this is one sweet collage. I am going to send it. And pray that whoever receives it at the other end of the rainbow has a brighter day because of it. Life is a mystery. I'm adding another to the mix.



What would your reaction be if, in the course of your workday ~ this includes you, house people. Remember, I am one of you and yes, we work! ~ you opened an ordinary envelope (OK, we all know, that is not possible here and I will be making a super joonie envie, but... I am overcome with the power of the written word) and this fell out onto your surface? I would love to know. The truth. Thank you for making it this far into my tale.


PS. Be sure and let me know if you'd like to hear how it all turns out, too. Or if your answer to this is: God forbid. ox to you all & happy, happy birthday little blue planet

Front Page of etsy!

I am having a great start to my Friday! Woo Hoo! My first front page as far as I know. How fun is this? Here's to eco friendly handmade. My painting, floating city, is one of two in my etsy shop that I painted onto discarded falling apart vintage book covers. Visit my shop to learn more and see this painting and its sister, JUMP.

Recycling Bin Dive ~ It's SpRing!

Today it is sunny and in the 60s, which is a first this year. Plus, as luck would have it, recycling week in my neighborhood! I found these treasures walking around just a few blocks of our home. And this is without rummaging through...I only took something if it called out to me. Plus, I am moving across the country in a few months so I was sparing in my picks. I am very excited to reuse these items, most in my creations for etsy. I will store craft projects in the Harrod's Tin as I love double decker buses and am not giving that one up. I am going to make my very first tin project, inspired by this incredible bath salts tin.


Do you regularly put items like these into your recycling bins? At the very least, the magazines and tins can be donated to libraries and thrift stores for resale. Yes, people will buy these! There are also places where you can swap your used magazines & books for others. So many people cannot afford these items and would be thrilled to have these to read or use for projects (or both ~ like me!) I passed by a perfectly adorable little blue couch, chairs & many vintage items. It's sad. You can call many recycling based organizations and they will come and pick up your cast offs. In many ways, it is actually easier to reuse, recycle or regift your dispensibles than it is to set them out on the curb.


I would love to hear what you do with your paper and tin goods. With your permission I can compile & incorporate them into a new blog post. I have plans for these paper items and you will see them reincarnated here on my blog and for sale in my etsy shop very soon! Remember: environment is everything.



Let's all do our part to save our little blue planet. One person does make a difference ~ either way. Which path will it be? Refuse or Reuse? Thanks for visiting. And please share your comments, questions and/or ideas with permission for reuse :) below!

Have a wonderful day today and every day.

Love Our Earth & Things Can Be Pretty! by golly!

Today I have a joonbeam blog first. I always make my own envelopes and packages when I can. The other day I was cutting a grocery sack so I could use the body. Normally, I cut down one side first and slice all the way to the base, discarding the bottom. Maybe it was my tired brain ~ I had seven packages to prepare that day! - or maybe it was celestial intervention, but, for whatever mysterious reason, I cut across the fold first instead. Then I looked down and, by golly, I said to myself, that is an instant large envelope! So I grabbed the camera and, by golly, I had brainstorm #5,067,876,439,274,183,201. My first blog tutorial. Woo Hoo!

Here you see the cut across the sack. Next, the item placed inside the envelope. I wrap things in wax paper, bubble wrap or glad wrap to protect my paper items from potential moisture.

Then, I place the collage (just my style. Not necessary, of course!) and address right over the folded closed opening. Viola! Instant sturdy envelope for your larger items and you saved money, energy, time, trees, the environment, the world! From now on, I will be using all size brown bags for this purpose! I mean you have instant four sealed sides. How great is this? Can you tell I am excited?

Here are the tools of my trade. I adoringly use Yes! Paste for all of my paper projects. And I reuse all kinds of paper and envelopes. Do you see my return address? That is a remnant of the postage kiosk stamp. It comes out of the self service machine as a sticker. And I found that I can make two self sticking return address labels with the leftover! I am hard core saving woman, but why not? It's easier and more efficient, too.

Here is the back of the envelope. That Pottery Barn catalog theme came in so handy!

This tutorial is dedicated to Mister Rogers. Just when I thought I couldn't love him more, we saw an episode where he was demonstrating how he and you can reuse envelopes by simply slicing carefully along the lines and turning it inside out. A little tape, glue or paste and... New envelope! Thanks for reading my post. I love everyone and everything ~ Let's all love our earth a little extra in celebration of today, the first day of spring! Try something new. Use something old. You'll feel great. Really. You will. Habits...the more good ones you curate, the less room in your life for the bad ones. It's a win, win, win situation.