The pen truly is mightier than the sword

A few months ago, I was approached by Dave from Craftiness with an exciting suggestion. Dave makes the most beautiful wooden pens (among other things) and he asked me whether I would be interested in drawing a couple of barrels, one for him and one for myself. He will then make them into pens for us. I, of course, said yes!

Once I received the maple barrels, however, I got cold feet. They were so small, and round, and I thought anything I will paint of them will look terrible. It took me a few weeks to get the nerve to start working on them (I'll say that for Dave - he is very patient!). Dave asked for something which has Etsy written in Hebrew and a peace symbol. So I used my acrylic paint and a toothpick to paint a peace dove, a few olive branches and the word אצי in Hebrew. I used the world tiniest brush to paint a little silly bear on mine, an signed my name on the back.

Once I was finished, almost three months after we decided to start on this project, I sent the barrels back to Texas, to be turned into pens. I was shocked to receive mine a couple of weeks later. I never imagined it will turn out that beautiful!!

Dave's wife Tina wrote about this project in her blog as well. You can also see pictures of the second pen over there (I should have made one for Tina as well..).

I can't wait to do this again, and this time Dave, I promise I will be a hell of a lot quicker!

Still ill

Every time I am sick for a long time (or rather, a too long time) I get reminded of this song. I was sickish and tired all last week, and now - I am sick again (a head cold this time). How annoying. I lost hours of work, which annoys me as well. To sum it up, you may say I am an annoyed person.

You cannot tell that from these pictures though, taken by my friend Maya this morning. Lots of concieler on my red red nose, and some blush and hop - Nick and me posed for the camera in a cute little playground across the street. This is supposed to be in a "shop local" article on the Storque. I hope they will like this shoot as much as we do.

As for new items, I added this little showgirl to the shop last night. She is made out of wonderful embellishments Kat sent me from Portugal. Obviously, I had to name to name her after Kat. Here is some fun with colors.

If you want to adopt her, you can find her on my shop.

And speaking of my shop - I have a special Black Friday & Cyber Monday deal going on tilll Monday the 2nd. It is Free Shipping on all items 20$ and higher. I hope to get some nice sales out of this one. I don't usually FREESH anything, so this is a one of a kind deal.

Etsy Israel

There has been a lot of interest in the Etsy Israel Team lately, and God knows I worked hard to get that attention.

First, I arranged an "Artist of Etsy exposed" treasury for the Israel team members. These treasuries, curated by VickiDianeDesigns usually get the featured artists tons of views and indeed, our list got almost 2000 views total! It was a great publicity for us and we all got lots of hearts (and maybe some sales as well).

Next, with the help of Neta (who gave me a sock-doll making workshop which I highly recommend!) I found this commune of Israelis in Etsy on Tapuz. It seems a bit strange to me that a person with a shop with so little sales can offer private tutoring on selling on Etsy (not that I am a top seller myself, but I have my 14 years of tech support management and technical writing experience and a lot of experience in international customer relationship management). Anyway, I invited the members of the commune to join our Flickr group and team, and many of them indeed came forward asking to join! I am very happy about that. A growing team means our promotional endeavors have a much better chance of actually coming through.

Unfortunately, Rachel asked to stop being the team leader and contact person, so I took over (as if I don't have enough to deal with right now, blah! But I do enjoy this). I will do my best to revive the team action and website (I am not even sure what the URL is at this point in time!).

On top of this, I added a new Hebrew guide to my "Etsy for Hebrew readers" series. Now you can learn how to open a shop, list items, and create a treasury - all in the holy language :o)

All are available at the Hebrew section of my shop.

Jaffa flea market finds

The Jaffa flea market used to be our dwelling place when I was 17 (a period I like to call "my new age period"). We used to hunt for trinkets in those narrow passages, breathing in the scent of incense, dark strong sweet coffee and fear the solicitations of the merchants to buy from their old and sometimes rusty merchandise. These days, I find, I can go there and enjoy the antique shops without even entering the clothing and jewelry allies I don't like.

Just look at these amazing perambulators! I bet they were carrying the script to an unpublished novel, and a baby, at some point in their existence.

I haven't been there in a long while, but as an adult I am starting to like it again. Last night I went there for a meeting, and spent some time searching for my favorite new crafty play - broken chandelier pieces. I was fortunate enough to find these amazing pieces, which I am turning into wonderful jewelry.

This I bought to make a necklace for myself. It needs some cleaning, and I might change the center piece to something smaller and rounder, but I think it would make a wonderful Boleyn style necklace.

I can't wait to get started on these pieces! Very exciting. I really don't want to go to work today, but I must. Sigh. At least autumn is officially here. You can't quarrel with the Crocus.

Oh! My camera! My camera!

The heart breaking truth is that I have been managing without a printer for the past few months. My Canon printer-scanner was dying for the past year or so, but I always managed to fix it till now (well, my first job out of the army was tech support for Cannon printers!) but now it is gone, dead, kaput. The scanner is still working though, so I am printing what I need at work (which is just as annoying as it sounds).

So now my stupid 4 years old Olympus decided to join. It shuts down with an annoying click each time I touch its front side. Every time I finish setting it for micro shots, I hear the click and poof it shuts to the sound of me cursing and swearing and then I have to reset it all over again, and then it shuts down again and so on and so forth. I can't explain how annoying that is, I can't stand things which should work fast but work unimaginably slow. That is just the kinda person I am.

I managed to take some pictures yesterday and today though (to the horror of my neighbors who had to hear my screams on the roof all morning).

Some new and improved shots of Angelica Flutterbutt

And also, new pictures of Apple and Mimi Flutterbutt

And finally, a picture of my new slippers! The distinct indicator it is starting to get chilly.


And last but not least - I am featured on the Stroque's weekend deals guide. Yay! I hope it will bring in sales. I also start a new ad campaign in Majaba this week. Very excited about that.

Carfty paper galore!

My friend Yael came back from a short but sweet vacation in England and brought me a wonderful Indian paper craft pack by Globe Enterprise. I was first amazed with how beautiful it is, and then worried cause I am a horrible paper crafter. What ever shall I do with all this goodness?

Then came Junie to the rescue and suggested I make envelopes out of them. Oddly enough, while I was waiting for Junie to send me a template, I stumbled upon this blog. So I took my favorite little envelope, tore it open, and made a template - et voila! The perfect envelope for my "Thank you for buying" and mini Moo's.

How wonderful is that? And on top of that, Poopki got a brand new royal outfit for her duckie.

Portraits of my husband and I in bathing suits

made for me by a local artist called Ayelet Shwartz. Don't we look great together?

I love the end of summer

The most beautiful pants in the world
Originally uploaded by Sharona R

The smell of guavas, and summer end of season sales. For the first time in a long while I feel like my old self. With all the things that happened this past two years, and with the weight I gained till lately, I forgot how wonderful it feels to wear beautiful cloths.

I bought these amazing pants at the end of summer sale at Alambika. 30% off, still expensive, but they are just perfect. They are just the right length, look perfect with sandals and a tank top with a a big necklace. And I already plan to narrow the waist when I lose more weight.

The purple blouse is from Zara, and is so cool! It sit very loosely on the body, and has this wonderful pompom, flowers and wood built in necklace. Blouse and accessory in one! I bumped into Flora the fashion journalist yesterday while wearing it, and she thought I made the necklace, which is always a good sign.

New dress
Originally uploaded by Sharona R

And this amazing oh so orange dress from Tovale's was half price. It looks like a nurse outfit gone mad, and fits my very pale skin. It is just the right length, looks wonderful from behind and has beautiful sequin details.There is no way I will not get noticed in this dress.

I have to say "yay" for Naama (the designer). Her last two collections were simply terrible. Old and boring. Nothing like her older inspired work. This year, it seems she made a huge improvement. You can see how I love her designs, I am wearing her on my blog picture! Ah, that is the cutest shirt in that picture. I hope I will lose enough weight to wear it soon. Here is a wonderful picture from 3 years ago with me wearing all Tovale's.

Bambozo helping me shoot

Camera guy
Originally uploaded by Sharona R

Many people asked how my photos improved so much. That is because Nick is helping me shoot (when he is not in kindergarten that is). In this picture you can see him holding my backgrounds for me.

I listed a lot of new items recently, including some early Christmas puppets. I had to make them early so I can start work on my Christmas cards in time (wait till you see those!).

Here are Santa and Twinkle Flutterbutt playing on set

Starting to work on the holiday stock

New Flutterbutt
Originally uploaded by Sharona R

This weekend I started building a stock for the holiday season. It seems autumn, however hard to believe with all this heat, is getting near and with it - lots of sales.

If you want to help me name her, or would like to buy or reserve her, please let me know. I am not planning to list her for a few more weeks. She turned out real cute!

I decided to go on an Etsy forum diet for a while. I had enough of promoting in vain. True, I love my forum buddies, but we will keep in touch in convos and mails for a while. The shop still runs as usual though, and my summer sale is still on till September 12th.