Fabric Friday

you might be asking yourself what you should do with the fabric you bought this week. well I found another fantastic blog that could help you with that question. A site called Sew Much Ado has lots of tutorials that are great to use- and even beginner friendly. I love their peasant dress pattern.  I love sites that do tutorials- they seem to organized and with it and I want to be one of those awesome people. 

Maybe I will start being one of those people- but I can't find my camera right now so I'm going to be one of those other people that loves looking at what other people do for tutorials.  oh maybe tutorials should be on a different day than Fabric day.  but they really go hand in hand.
So do you buy fabric for a specific pattern or look for something to do with the fabric you love?
I thought of a few fabrics for this pattern.

and I love this Michael Miller fabric. I think it would make a cute little baby dress.  you know what else would?  Chevrons.  Chevrons are quite possibly my latest obsession.  I have a board on pinterest inspired by them.  So this dress could be made with chevrons. for real. Imagine how fun that would be.

what are you doing with your fabric today?

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Steps to being a Bad Etsy Blogger.

It's come to my attention that I can give a really good guide about being a bad etsy blogger.  Here are ten easy steps.

some happy sock monkeys have joined the claireandjanae team

1. Get pregnant.  This will help you feel sick for at least 20 weeks.  Maybe 28 if you are lucky. Or more.
2. Start challenges where you give stuff away and then get jealous of the people who start blogs about them after you and have more followers. Then they start an awesome team. and you realize it probably wasn't your original idea but you still feel a bit sad about it because you don't get to pick the winners anymore.
3. try to start a Facebook page but realize they are really hard to manage and apparently you aren't as Facebook savvy as some.  Don't blog about tutorials since you can't do it.
4. Realize there are ten million other sellers who also blog from etsy and do awesome tutorials.
5. Don't advertize. This way no one will find your blog.
6. Don't tell your friends to buy things from you and follow your blog. This can be achieved by being secretive or unfriendly (see step one for help if you are too kind).
7. Complain a lot in the Etsy forums about how some people get all the Etsy attention.  I'm pretty sure people like complainers. you could link to your blog in your complaints.  Then the right kind of people will be following you. You could also complain about other stuff on etsy on your blog, which is mean.
8. Don't update your blog except every five months.
9. Don't ever do giveaways.
10. Don't feature other sellers.

Hopefully this short tutorial will help you attain mediocrity.  I am off to start working on it, because I realize that I am never in the etsy forums so I have definitely not complained enough.

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Etsy Blogs: A Treasured Year

There are so many beautiful Etsy Blogs out there. One of my favorite is inspired by Etsy treasuries. It is from my friend Ashli from twitter. She is so fabulous on Twitter she is private. You have to request her elusive friendship. And I would, because it will blow your mind. She's nice. and she's quite a force- she has a well maintained Etsy shop, a shop blog and posts regularly on the curation nation blog. Also, her blog I wanted to talk about today features a daily treasury.
I like her treasury making style- I would describe it as "romantic". I can't imagine how hard it would be to make a treasury every day.
You should check out her treasury blog. and follow it. If you look on the right of the blog there all links to all the front page treasuries she has curated- so many!

to see it click HERE

A Treasured Year

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Breaking Up the Social Networking Way

Breaking Up the Social Networking Way

I was so excited to be featured on a blog- about breaking up. Because really, I feel like part of my "shop vision" is that people should be able to break up more humanely. Like giving a card. I moved less than a year ago and some people at my church never invited me to do anything or even really talked to me. I felt a little bad but really, these are not people who I would be friends with probably anyway. We are just not a good match. I just wanted to tell them I think they are great and all but I'm Ok with us not being close because they would just make me feel guilty about who I am and I would make them feel a little less holy.

OK the blog post is more about not following a million blogs- which is why i don't make it necessary to follow my shop blog to win the treasury challenge. I follow lots of blogs. One of them mostly rants about parenting and how terrible Obama is. She lives in the south and seriously no giveaway is worth her thoughts. This blog post is inspiring me to do a little pruning.

Thanks so much for including my cards!
I have a feeling I should follow this blog...

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