Thursday, November 12, 2009

EART Team Scavenger Hunt

The Eclectic Artisans Team (EART) has a new team shop. Check it out! To celebrate our new shop and the beginning of the holiday season, we held a scavenger hunt.

The winners visited the participating etsy shops and searched their items for this photo:


When they found it, they sent the shop owner an Etsy convo letting them know they had found it and where. Each shop owner randomly drew one winner at the end of the hunt. Congratulations to the following winners!

Matrix0258, texasmonkeyboutique, lsshepler, sassygirliegirl, khollich, alainndesigns, TimRachel, MadeInCanarias, kssm, apamperedprincess and Corkycrafts

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Fellow Etsian Sightings – SkepticZone

Ok, I must admit that Richard was not an Etsian when I had the opportunity to sit across from him at a conference this past summer. He opened his Etsy shop (SkepticZone) shortly thereafter though, so I think it should count. Richard does really marvelous origami that you have to see to believe.

I actually had met Richard the previous year and marveled at his pierced earring origami creations. I don’t have pierced ears however, so I just window shopped. This year, I decided to look a little closer and realized that they would be easy to convert to clip earrings. The tiny, precise folds of his creatures are amazing. I found a pair of cranes that I just had to have. Now just two changes and they would be ready for me to wear. One, was the aforementioned conversion to clip earrings. I replaced the ear wires with hinged screw backs. I also wanted to find something to dangle from the loops under the cranes. Upon looking through my supplies, I found some small freshwater seed pearls that worked perfectly.

Richard’s origami skills are not limited to cranes however. He also creates flamingos, elephants, dinosaurs and more. (Oh my!) He treats the paper creatures so that the earrings will be durable. Currently his affordable earrings include free shipping anywhere from Australia.

Richard is the author of several origami books if you need some guidance in order to try your hand at this craft. You can also find some of his “how to” videos online, such as this one on the somersaulting horse. These step by step videos could get you hooked on paper folding in no time.