I recently had the opportunity to visit Boulder, CO. I'm not much of a traveler or photographer, but I like to take pics of things that strike my fancy.



Yummy cupcakes; a cute tote bag at Boulder Arts and Crafts Gallery; the sign in the cupcake shop; assorted grafittied curb barriers (one had a Daniel Johnston quote on it); a rocking pig on the Pearl Street Mall; gorgeous flowers in somebody's yard; the table top in the cupcake shop that made me think of Modern June; and awesome sets of magnets with art by Ashley G and Drew, BoyGirlParty, Matte Stephens, and several other folks I recognized from Etsy.com.

I only wish I had taken more pics.

Handmade Holiday Application

Before there were MP3s, CDs, and even 33 1/3 LPS, there were 78s. 78s were primarily made of shellac, and as a result, were prone to breaking. Because this format was only long enough to hold a song (about 3 minutes) on each side, an artist’s songs were compiled in a Record Album that was very much like a photo album—a hard cover with sleeves in between.

As 78s broke and became obsolete, people were frequently left with just the record album—too big to hold 45s, too small to hold LPs. A few weeks ago, a local record store was undergoing a big transition. They had lots and lots of records and album covers. It had gotten to the point that the 78rpm records needed to be given away or else they would be thrown away. And you all know I hate to throw things away.

In an effort to keep these record albums from going into the landfill, I have started turning them into blank books. Here are a few of my finished products:

I was killing time looking around on the interwebs, and I saw an article on The Storque called "Craft Show Applications Unravelled." And as I scrolled down the article, I saw my show banner in the bottom section of the page. . .

Wait, what?

Yup, in their article about craft shows, they posted links to "related items" and there in the center left is the custom banner I bought from Millwood.etsy.com! I love my banner, and think she did a great job on it, so I'm thrilled that she used it as the main image for her custom banner listings! And I'm also thrilled that The Storque chose to feature her in their related items.

Check out the article, and then keep an eye out for my banner at a craft show near you!

For a while I was feeling like my internet presence was all over the place. I mean, I had my Etsy shop and a blogger account and social networking accounts. I had purchased a domain, but with my very-limited-web-page-making knowledge, I couldn't do much more than post pictures that never quite seemed to be the right size or in the right place.

What's a girl to do?

Well, luckily I stumbled into an article on The Storque about SoopSee.com. SoopSee aims to unite all of your listings, shops, photos and scribblings under one roof (or rather, one website - your website). Although it's still in Beta testing, SoopSee offers a lot of features that are really helpful. With a free basic account, I was able to choose from 6 webpage themes, pull in listings of my choice from my Etsy shop, and then pull in my blog posts. I can even get stats about my Etsy shop! It was easy, and put all my information on a SoopSee.com domain.

However. . . I had already been giving people the domain I had purchased earlier, and I didn't want to have yet another web address to ask folks to remember. This is where the beta testing came in handy.

While SoopSee is in beta testing, you can sign up for a Sooper account at a 66% discount for the life of your subscription. That means that for $4.99 per month (as opposed to the regular $14.99 per month) you can use your existing domain name with your SoopSee account. You can also choose from additional themes, link multiple etsy shops, link multiple blogs, and split your listings into different sections.

I went ahead and signed up for the Sooper account since the discount is only available while SoopSee is in beta testing, which could end at any time. Because I'm not very technologically savvy, I had a few problems when trying to link to my existing domain, but I emailed the folks at SoopSee and they responded REALLY quickly and helped me fix my problem. I mean, they were REALLY quick.

And there are a lot of great ideas that they are working on for the future, such as being able to import images from your Flickr photostream or link to shops you have on non-etsy websites. You can find more information at SoopSee.com or follow them on Facebook and Twitter. And you can check out some live examples of SoopSee user pages here.


**In light of the article about SoopSee on The Storque they've opened up registration to anyone with an Etsy shop - even though they're technically still in a closed beta phase - but will be limiting signups in the near future again to ensure a good service for those registered.