Design This – Custom Keepsake Feather Earring

What to do with the pretty peacock feather that you received as a keepsake/favor on a family member’s wedding invitation? Have your jewelry designer turn it into a statement feather earring of course!

Now this feather was not just the eye and a bit of quill like I have made earrings out of before, including a custom set for my customer in the past. It had a much longer portion of quill with many pairs of filaments below the “eye”. My customer wanted to keep as much of the peacock feather intact as made sense for her earring. I had some macaw feathers whose color I thought coordinated nicely with her peacock feather, my customer agreed and ok’d the design that I suggested.

To keep the design stable, I first sewed the macaw feathers together. I then added a black leather wrap to cover their white quill ends and provide a better foil for the peacock feather. I laid the peacock feather on top of the macaw feathers and attached each to a jump ring that was in turn attached to the bottom loop of the post earring.

It brought a smile to my face when Miss Cheryl of the John E Dosher band shared with me that she was wearing this special feather earring in her avi photo on one of her sites. Please contact me if you would like to inquire about having a custom piece designed just for you.

Artist Spotlight – Daryoush Ababaf

With this post I am standardizing my articles for sharing the amazing art that my husband and I purchase from artists whose work we admire and have added to our home. This past April, I wrote about two pieces we picked up at the beginning of this year. We have purchased from more artists this year than we have in the past several combined. I will be sharing these wonderful finds with you over the course of the next several months.

I want to start by sharing photos of this wonderful wooden sculpture by Daryoush Ababaf. We saw his work at the Christkindl Market in Arlington last year and were very impressed. Even though we saw several pieces that we admired, none asked to be taken home. This year one did. When we saw the sleeping lioness, we both fell in love with it. The relaxed beauty of this fabulous feline kept drawing us back. She is such a great accompaniment to a couple of bronzes that we purchased in Arkansas many years ago.

Daryoush’s skill at what is essentially 3D inlay is something I have never seen an equal to. He had some examples of different stages in his work at his booth to give visitors an idea of the process he goes through to construct his pieces. He picks from various woods to create the shadows and colorations needed to bring his creations to life. In addition to amazing depictions of nature the other works of his that I thought had outstanding form, movement and grace were his dancers. You can find examples of his work on his website and facebook page as well as keep up with where you can see his work in person next by liking his facebook page.

Thanks for the Treasuries - November 2012

Three different Etsians let me know that they had featured one of my items in a treasury during November. Four November Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one of my creations. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during November. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below (in alphabetical order) links to the 3 Etsy sellers that let me know that they featured one of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the shop links of anything that catches your eye.

AfrochaDesign
This artist's shop is stocked with train and subway maps, and fabulous water colors of Chinese paper cuts, goldfish, and cities.

TheYellowRoses
Rag dolls, teddy bears, stuffed animals, pincushions, & quilts, are handmade with love & great care by this seamstress!

WhatsHerName
Handmade craft supplies, hair accessories and more are found here.

Happy Holidays Gift Market 2012

I will be at Happy Holidays Gift Market with over 50 artists, crafters and collectors presenting their creations and collections for your shopping pleasure. The range of fabulous finds is tremendous, from "rocking horse" dinosaurs to original artwork to jewelry and much, much more. You will find links to some of the artisans on the event page to be able to get an idea of the range of products that will be there.

You are sure to find unique gifts to satisfy even the most difficult person to shop for on your list. Unlike much of what you find in department stores, many of these items will be one or few of a kind, so don't delay. Come early to grab your gorgeous goodies before someone else does. Some of the vendors may even be able to create a custom piece for you, just ask. I'll be in booth 51, stop by and say hi while you are there.

Happy Holidays Gift Market - Friday (noon - 7 pm) & Saturday (10 am - 4 pm), Dec. 7-8, 2012
500 W. Nedderman Dr., Arlington, TX 76013

Join EDC at Olde Town Christmas 2012

Just a quick reminder that Eclectic Design Choices will be at Dottie Lynn Recreation Center in Arlington, TX for the Olde Town Christmas Craft Fair this Friday, November 30 and Saturday, December 1. I will have my handmade items from both of my Etsy shops, EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic as well as similar items not currently listed.

Click to enlarge.

A Different Shopping Experience

So you’ve had a great visit with family and friends and hopefully you will survive the rush of Black Friday without tangling with someone over the last door buster item in store. However, if you yearn for a different type of shopping experience and especially if you want to find something truly unique for someone on your list or a special something for yourself, come out and meet me in person, along with lots of other artists and crafters from whom you can buy directly. I will be at two local Arlington craft shows on two different upcoming weekends.

First, you will find me at Olde Town Christmas at the Dottie Lynn Recreation Center on Friday, Nov. 30 – Saturday, Dec. 1. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

The following weekend, I will be with over 50 artists, crafters and collectors and their wares at Happy Holidays Gift Market at the UTA Maverick Activities Center. There will also be live and recorded music and DIY crafts. In addition to providing a DIY craft, the Greater Arlington Lions Club will have a drop off box for you to donate your old, out of date prescription glasses. They will use them to provide free eye glasses to those in need.

Each of these shows provides you with a more personal shopping experience. Get to know the maker of the items that you purchase when you buy directly from the artist. Who knows, there might be an interesting story of the inspiration for that special creation that you find. These things make the finding more fun.

New Ready to Hang Photographic Art Print for Wine Lovers

Earlier this year, I developed a new image for a card that I wanted to give on a special occasion. I liked my altered image so much, I decided to offer the cards as a new addition to my blank note cards after removing the special text. I also planned to later size the image to be able to offer it as one of my matted photographic art images.

I titled the image “Dressed for Drinks”. I have just made a special sized, 6”x8”, double matted and framed, ready to hang in your home print of this image. It is currently on display at Gypsy Riddles Boutique and Gallery in Downtown Arlington along with four other photographic art pieces of my work. This print would look great in a wine cellar, on the wall near a wine rack or in a kitchen. If you have wine lovers on your holiday shopping list, stop in to see this framed piece in person along with other goodies for wine lovers that Gypsy Riddles carries. Cheers!

Update 12/20/12: Unfortunately Gypsy Riddles is in the process of closing, however you can still find "Dressed for Drinks" in Downtown Arlington. It has moved to Potager's Other Stuff.

EDC to be Back at the Dallas Handmade Arts Market

Another chance for you to see me and my creations in person is just around the corner.

Saturday and Sunday, November 10 - 11, 2012 I will be at the Dallas Handmade Arts Market in the Design District of Dallas, TX. The goal of the market is to give artisans a space to showcase their work on a rotating basis. The market will not look the same from week to week. Expect to find something new each time that you visit. Their regular weekend hours are Saturdays from 10am - 7pm and Sundays from 11am - 5pm. I hope you’ll get a chance to come out and browse through the talented artisans that will be sharing space at the market with me and my work this coming weekend.

I'll have items from my EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic shops on Etsy and many more in a similar vein. My space should look similar to my set up when I was there in October.

Thanks for the Treasuries - October 2012

Two different Etsians let me know that they had featured one of my items in a treasury during October. Two October Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one of my creations. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during October. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below (in alphabetical order) links to the 2 Etsy sellers that let me know that they featured one of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the shop links of anything that catches your eye.

BrankletsNBling
Handmade jewelry for every occasion, from a night on the town, to formal wear and wedding attire, to *Sparkly* everyday accessories.

WhatsHerName
Handmade craft supplies, hair accessories and more are found here.

What’s in a Phrase?

All of my photographic art bookmarks include a phrase on the back that I feel complements the image on the front of the bookmark. Sometimes I come up with a phrase that works for the entire series as can be seen on my sunflower bookmark series. The back of each sunflower image reads, “Light up your day with a good book.” Other series have sufficiently different images that I feel the need to come up with something different for the back of each image as I did with my Piggy Pollinator series.

I have recently created a new photographic art small bookmark series. It is my critter series and since each critter is different, I needed different sayings for the back of each image. As in the past, some of these sayings were easy to come up with while others took me some time to come up with something short and connected in some way to the image on the front of the bookmark. You can see all five phrases that I penned in the photos in my listing for my new critter series bookmarks in my EDCCollective Etsy shop.

For this blog post however, I want to focus on just one of my phrases, the one for the spiny lizard. It reads, “Mistaken identity is a common plot convention.” The reason that I am focusing on this phrase is because the two people that I showed my new bookmark series to could not figure out the connection of that phrase to the lizard image. Once I explained the connection to them, they agreed that the saying worked. This experience led me to believe that I had a golden opportunity for a contest for my subscribers, followers and fans.

If you are 18 years old or older and you are not one of the people that I have already explained the connection to between the phrase and the image, then you are welcome to enter the contest. The contest begins now and will run through Sunday (CST), December 9, 2012. *** Update *** No correct entry was received by the deadline, so I am going to continue the contest until I receive a correct entry. The first correct entry that I receive per the rules listed will be the winner. The winner of the contest will receive their pick of one small bookmark as seen in my EDCCollective or EclecticSkeptic Etsy shops or in my photographic art facebook photo album. I will ship the selected bookmark via USPS first class mail. The winner will be selected at random from all of the correct responses entered during the duration of the contest. You are not limited to just one entry.

You may have guessed what the entry should contain by now, but let me specify. Each entry needs to explain why the phrase, “Mistaken identity is a common plot convention.” goes with the spiny lizard image on the front as seen in this post. Email your entry to EclecticDesignChoices@yahoo.com. I will contact the winner by replying to your entry email, at which time I will find out which bookmark you would like and where it needs to be shipped to.

Thanks in advance for all of you that put your thinking caps on and enter this contest. I hope pondering this connection will be a fun puzzler and I look forward to reading your entries.

Remember that you can keep up with my occasional contests and sales by following this blog, subscribing to my short monthly newsletter or liking my EclecticDesignChoices facebook page.

Adding Google Analytics to Your Blog

Google Analytics is a useful tool for tracking what goes on in our Etsy shops and Etsy has made it very easy to "turn on" tracking for them. After I started another blog on blogspot earlier this year, I decided to add tracking to that blog too. A lot has changed since I wrote how I added GA tracking to this blog, so I am updating the instructions with this post.

1) Sign into or sign up for a Google Analytics account.

2) Click on "Admin" near the upper right corner.

3) Click on an existing account and add a property to that account (your blog that you want to track) or click on "new account" to create a new one to add a new property to.

4) Fill out the information asked for on the form that opens, then click "Get Tracking ID" button.

5) This will bring you to a page that says on it “tracking not installed”. Just below this, pick "A single domain" for "What are you tracking?". It will also include a box of code for you to add to your blog, with the instructions to “Copy the following code block into every webpage you want to track immediately before the "/head" tag.” (See 1st screen shot, click to enlarge.)

5) In a new tab, go to your blogger blog and sign in.

6) Click on the arrow drop down for the blog that you want to add tracking to and click on “Template”.

7) Next, under “Live on Blog” click the “Edit HTML” button. (See 2nd screen shot, click to enlarge.) (This will bring up a warning box, click “Proceed”.)

8) This brings up a box with HTML code in it. Before you change any of the code, copy it and save it in a document on your computer in case something goes awry.

9) Look for the closing “/head” tag. You will see the opening “head” tag near the left side and near the top of the html but will most likely have to scroll much of the way to the bottom to find the closing “/head” tag. It will also be near the left edge. Insert a blank line just above the “/head” tag.

10) Click on the Google Analytics tab that is the page shown in the 1st screen shot. Copy the code in the “Paste this code on your site” box. Then click back on the blogger tab where you were editing the html and paste that code on the blank line that you added in the previous step.

11) Click “Save Template”

12) Go back to the tab that has the Google Analytics page that you copied the tracking code from. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save” button. You should then see a green button appear near the top of the page that says “Success”.

13) Log out of GA and your blog and expect results to begin adding up for your new property in Google Analytics.

Happy Tracking!

What’s in Bloom – October 2012

I stepped out this morning and took photos of some of the plants that are currently blooming in my garden. Just because summer is officially over, it doesn’t mean that the color needs to be gone from your garden. Clockwise from the upper left is blue mistflower, fall blooming aster, strawberry gomphrena, mealy blue sage and hummingbird bush. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Blue mistflower is predominantly a late summer/fall bloomer in my garden. It is a good source of nectar for migrating monarch butterflies. As the name implies, this aster blooms in the fall. You can see that it has just begun to open its flowers and will soon be a pretty mound of purple. Strawberry gomphrena is an annual that reseeds and blooms as soon as it can in the spring and continues until a freeze. Occasionally some of these plants will overwinter as a tender perennial. Late summer and fall rains have brought out another flush of blooms on my native TX mealy blue sage. Hummingbird bush thrives and blooms in the sun, heat and fairly dry conditions.

Thanks for the Treasuries - September 2012

Three different Etsians let me know that they had featured one or more of my items in a treasury during September. Six September Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one or more of my items. My carnelian and ceramic gathering pins were even featured twice. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during September. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below (in alphabetical order) links to the 3 Etsy sellers that let me know that they featured at least one of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the shop links of anything that catches your eye.

CorkyCrafts
Find gifts for the wine connoisseur who happens to appreciate hand made items plus more.

GirlieGals
Girlie Gals offers jewelry with sparkle and shine at affordable prices.

TheYellowRoses
Rag dolls, teddy bears, stuffed animals, pincushions, quilts, & wallets are handmade with love & great care here.

Design This – Custom Music Themed Necklace

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some new music geek items that I developed for my EclecticSkeptic shop as a result of a custom order. Today I thought I’d share with you the necklace that sparked the new items.

Ever since I made the first pair of custom cufflinks for my customer to give as a gift, she had talked about wanting some type of custom charm necklace using the image I had developed. She tends to wear a lot of black and silver jewelry and she had showed me some styles that she liked and we brainstormed what components drew her to them. I had the opportunity while I was putting together a supply order this past summer to add some components to it that I thought could be worked into a custom necklace that would suit her.

Once I had my shipment, I scheduled to meet my customer. I laid out my new supplies as well as ones that I already had on hand. I asked her to pick out the pieces that she liked the most. I mocked up some suggestions based on what was left and after we had a necklace design in place my customer asked about the possibility of a charm bracelet too, made using a heart that didn't make it onto the necklace. I then took down some measurements to work from.

One thing that I still had to do was to come up with an image of a keyboard for one of the charms for the necklace. I took several close up photos of my piano’s keys and worked up a couple of photographic art images. The charm images needed to be black and white but I loved one of the intermediate color steps so much that I saved it to come back to later. (I used this image on the new piano keys necklace that I added to my shop earlier this year. I have also framed it as a ready to hang piece of photographic art. I will have it with me next week at my Dallas show.)

While I was working on this image, I put together enough of the necklace and bracelet to be able to do a test fit, got approval to go ahead, put the rest of the pieces together after finalizing the piano keys charm image and delivered them to a very happy customer.

Happy customers always make me happy too. It’s great to be able to create something that is special to someone. If you would like to discuss the possibility of a custom creation, please contact me. I have completed many custom orders long distance in addition to local ones as described in this post.

See Eclectic Design Choices at Dallas Handmade Arts Market

Your chance to see me and my creations in person is just around the corner. I have four shows currently planned during the fall show season at which you can shop offline from my EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic Etsy shops and more. My first show of the fall season will be the Dallas Handmade Arts Market in Dallas’ Design District on October 4 and 6-7, 2012.

While I will be inside the Dallas Handmade Arts Market all three days, Thursday, October 4 is a special event outside of the regular weekend hours of the market. Thursday from 5 – 10 pm, Cole Street will become the Design District Market with street vendors and food trucks. Inside the Dallas Handmade Arts Market you will find local artisans as well as live background music, and complimentary wine and champagne.

Saturday and Sunday, October 6-7 will be business as usual at the Dallas Handmade Arts Market. The goal of the market is to give artisans a space to showcase their work on a rotating basis. The market will not look the same from week to week. Expect to find something new each time that you visit. Their regular weekend hours are Saturdays from 10am - 7pm and Sundays from 11am - 5pm. I hope you’ll get a chance to come out and browse through the talented artisans that will be sharing space at the market with me and my work on the first Thursday and weekend of October.

EclecticSkeptic Expands Music Line

The new and improved music themed cufflinks, that I introduced to my EclecticSkeptic shop and wrote about developing earlier this year, have been a popular item. Over the summer when my friend, whose earlier custom order prompted the development of the cufflinks as a stock item in my shop, requested a custom music themed necklace, I took the opportunity to brainstorm some new music themed jewelry items for my shop using some of the new supplies and tools that I purchased to fill her custom order. (Stay tuned for the “Design This” post about her custom necklace.)

So far I have added music note earrings and a necklace to my music geek line. For the earrings, I am using the music note graphic that I designed for the cufflinks. The earrings, like the cufflinks, are available in silver plated or gold plated styles. Unlike the cufflinks however, the image of the sixteenth note and music staff are printed in a very dark brown instead of black when paired with the gold plated earrings.

The necklace incorporates an image that I developed in the course of working on the custom necklace order. The image is a close-up of piano keys and has a vintage quality to it that nicely complements the antiqued brass tone bezel and chain that I used to complete this necklace.

I have always enjoyed the challenge of a custom order. It is a bonus when custom orders are a catalyst for new items for my shops.

Thanks for the Treasuries - August 2012

Five different Etsians let me know that they had featured one or more of my items in a treasury during August. Eight August Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one or more of my items. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during August. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below (in alphabetical order) links to the 5 Etsy sellers that let me know that they featured at least one of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the shop links of anything that catches your eye.

ArtSortOf
Here you will find jewelry holders and personalized items such as signs, wall decor and housewares.

BrankletsNBling
This shop carries affordable handmade jewelry for every occasion.

HotDogCrafts
Items such as buttons, fridge magnets, necklaces, pocket mirrors and keychains may also be customizable.

TheYellowRoses
Rag dolls, teddy bears, stuffed animals, pincushions, quilts, & wallets are handmade with love & great care here.

TICC
Here you will find an assortment of handmade crafts including jewelry, candles and crochet items.

Announcing Photographic Art Purse Hangers from EDCCollective

While I was purchasing some new supplies for a custom order earlier this summer, that I hope to share with you next month, I found “backbones” for customizable purse hangers from one of my suppliers. I was also ordering a variety of glass cabochons and paper punches for this custom order from other suppliers, so I looked to see if I could find a properly sized punch and glass cab for the purse hanger backbones too. It took a bit of searching, but I finally found all of the sizes of supplies and tools that I needed for my custom order and my prototype for what I hoped would become a new product line for my EDCCollective shop.

I suspected that some of my photographic art would look good mounted under the glass cabochons that I intended to top the purse hangers with. This hunch was based on working with my graphics that I use to make my flying pig and music cufflinks for my EclecticSkeptic shop. After working with several of my photographic art images, I found out how tight I should crop the images to look their best under the glass cabs. I came up with six floral photographic art images that I liked and made two of them up, a daylily and a water lily. When completely assembled, I was even more pleased with the way my artwork looked than when the purse hangers were just mocked up.

I have just recently listed my daylily photographic art purse hanger. It is a functional and pretty piece of art to carry with you in your purse. It folds flat for easy storage and is easily employed to keep your purse at hand but off the floor. I had purchased a similar purse hanger years ago and love to be able to go to a restaurant, grab my purse hanger from my bag and hang it and my bag from the table. No more germs from the floor in contact with my purse, no more hoping that the chair will allow me to hang my purse from it without it slipping off. These things are great!

I was telling a friend of mine about my new product and now I need to put together a purse hanger for her with one of my photographic art sunflower images. While I’m doing that, I think I will also make one with my Mother’s Day rose image as well as my daffodil image. Please contact me if you have a favorite flower that you would like to have on your purse hanger. If I have an appropriate image to use, I’d be happy to customize one for you.

Arlington Archosaur Site

Let me start with a great big thanks to Derek Main for allowing me and a couple of members of my family to participate in this summer’s dig at the Arlington Archosaur site. After helping out for several weeks, it was also a pleasure to be able to tag along on the tour of the site that Derek gave to a new Earthwatch group that had just arrived for a two week (I think) “vacation” to help out with the dig.

I first heard about this type of citizen scientist project on a TV program over a decade ago. The program had mentioned some digs out West where volunteers were allowed to participate. This really caught my attention and I hoped I would get lucky enough to be able to participate in one someday. A few years later an opportunity presented itself for an archeological dig but unfortunately my family was unable to take advantage of it. Then, I think it was near the end of the first or second dig season at the Arlington Archosaur site, I learned about the call for volunteers to help with the dig a little too late to be able to be able to participate. At the time, I did not realize that this was going to be an ongoing effort, so I was really excited to find out this past spring that it was still going and needed some additional volunteers. (If Derek had not participated in the Front and Center Event this past April, I probably would still be oblivious.) It is so cool to have this type of opportunity “right in my own backyard”.

So what is the Arlington Archosaur site and do they still need help?

From the Arlington Archosaur website, “The Arlington Archosaur Site is a prolific fossil site that was discovered … by UT-Arlington students Phil Kirchhoff and Bill Walker along with local fossil collectors Art and Olivia Sahlstein in the summer of 2003…. To date, more dinosaur fossils have been recovered from the Arlington Archosaur Site than from any other site in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex." Fossils of ancient crocodiles and turtles were the main finds uncovered during my volunteer time.

With regards to help, assistance is needed in two areas, volunteer sweat equity and monetary donations. While the summer field season is over, the fall dig season should begin again near the end of September. You can stay up to date with current information about the site by visiting the Arlington Archosaur facebook page. The website also has information about how to volunteer to help at the site in the “sweat equity” category. While there does not seem to be any information about how to donate funds to this project, from having worked at the site several times this summer, I am aware that there are smaller day to day needs that donations would help with as well as long term wishes, that if they come to fruition, will require a large amount of funding. If this type of assistance is more your speed, contact Derek to see how to help with the monetary category of assistance.

Update: I have just noticed that a donations button has been added to the website.

Happy Holidays Gift Market Vendor Applications

Earlier this year, I shared a post with you about how I was planning on helping promote the Arts in my area through 817ArtsAlliance. In addition to the listings and announcements that I described in that post, I am pleased to let you know that 817ArtsAlliance will be sponsoring a handcrafted and vintage holiday show this coming December.

Vendor applications are currently being accepted for Happy Holidays Gift Market (HHGM). Completed applications received by Sept. 9, 2012 and juried into the show will receive a discount on their booth fee.

HHGM will be held at the Maverick Activities Center (MAC), 500 W. Nedderman Dr., UTA, Arlington, TX on Friday and Saturday, December 7 - 8, 2012. The show will be open to the public on Friday from noon - 7 pm and Saturday from 10 am - 4 pm.

Information about Happy Holidays Gift Market, including the vendor FAQ, is found on the 817ArtsAlliance site. If you have any questions after reading the FAQ, please use the contact form on the 817ArtsAlliance site to ask your questions. After carefully reading the vendor FAQ, you will find a button to take you to the vendor application at the bottom of the page.

If you know anyone in the DFW area who might benefit from participating in this show, please share this post with them.

Veggie Garden Pests – Tomato & Tobacco Hornworms

Even though hornworm caterpillars can grow up to 6 inches in length, they are adept at hiding in your garden until they have chewed their way through a lot of foliage or even fruit. They feed primarily on plants in the nightshade family. In your garden that usually means tomato plants, although they love my pepper plants too. They may even munch your eggplant and potato plantings.

I have found that a good way to watch out for these pests is to look for their black frass (poop pellets). I often find these easier to spot than the camouflaged caterpillars. If you don’t notice the frass or the caterpillars soon enough you could be confronted with stems stripped of leaves (or even completely missing stems) and chewed or missing fruits.

Now before you go and reach for something to spray your plants with, remember that you want to eat the fruits of these plants, plus I find their adult stage to be very interesting. The sphinx moths of both of these caterpillars often make me do a double take because they look a lot like hummingbirds in flight. Therefore, I always handpick the hornworm caterpillars and fling them into my pasture where they can munch the purple and silverleaf nightshades that they find there. If you must spray, Bt is a natural control of these and other caterpillars.

(Click on images to see larger views.)

Thanks for the Treasuries - July 2012

Four different Etsians let me know that they had featured one or more of my items in a treasury during July. Nine July Etsy treasuries, that treasury makers let me know about, included one of my items. My Rainbow of Colors Zipper Pull was even featured twice. You can see a collage below of my items from EDCCollective and EclecticSkeptic that were featured during July. (Click on the collage to see a larger view.)

I really appreciate being featured by the treasury makers. To thank them, I have listed below (in alphabetical order) links to the 4 Etsy sellers that let me know that they featured at least one of my items, as well as an item from their shop that I like.

Enjoy window shopping and please click on the shop links of anything that catches your eye.

AustinLeighDesigns
Get gorgeous gemstone jewelry in a variety of styles and colors from this talented jewelry artisan.

CorkyCraftsCorkycrafts' unique wine cork wreathes and cork crafts make the perfect gift for the wine lover.



HotDogCrafts
Items in Hot Dog Crafts such as Fridge Magnets, Pocket Mirrors, Buttons, and Keychains may also be able to be customized.

FoiledEfforts
Organic, modern stained glass art.