neonfoxtongue

Friday I'm in Love: Great Design from Supermarket

Like most people who like to buy crafts, handmade items and independent design, my go-to site for online shopping is Etsy.  As far as I know, it was the first of its kind - a website where people who wanted to sell what they made could open their own little online storefront easily and very affordably.  And it really is a great place to discover incredible handmade goods and great indie design.  But whenever something is successful, it's going to be imitated.  Similar sites have popped up in recent years, each offering sellers and buyers different benefits.  I think that's good because it gives people more choice. 

I've made some efforts in the past to feature items from some of these site on my blog, particularly for the Friday I'm in Love posts, but beause I'm on Etsy so often and so many other bloggers I follow also post about items on Etsy, I know that I'm linking to that site a lot. So this Friday, I thought I'd post some of the items that have recently caught my eye on another site.  Supermarket, as far as I can tell, is an Etsy-type (Etsy-esque?) site dedicated to indie designers (okay, some may not exactly be indie, but you're certainly not going to find Umbra or Cath Kidson here).  The visual design of the site it great - very simple and functional; the perfect canvas for the great design items it showcases. Take a look:

Cuckoo Clock True Orange ($28) from Decoylab

Indian Summer limited edition print ($18 - unframed) from 12fifteen

 

Circle Pop-Out Pendant ($20) from Melissa Borrell

Band Logo T-Shirt ($10) from BeBack/Soon (check out the entire Counterfeit Outfit collection)

 

believe IN yourself print ($14.95) from Right Brain Terrain

I hope you enjoyed this little tast of what Supermarket has to offer. Now go find some great design that YOU love! 

Have a great weekend!

Creative Goals Mondays: New Blog Design!

Hello! I feel like a deserve a big gold star for last week's goals because my blog re-design is DONE!  If you're reading this post on a feed, go check out the new look here!  Though it's a pretty simple design, I did learn a few things while doing it.  Like, a handmade paper banner should probably be perfectly rectangular if you want to use a patterned background on the rest of the blog.  Also, I really, really need to take a course on Photoshop.  But I feel that my blog is my own now, which makes me very happy.  I'd love to know what you think, so please leave comments, especially if you think it's loading a bit strangely on your browser (I use Firefox).  A big thanks goes out to The Leopard who helped me with Photoshop, took my pic and made me look pretty, and was super patient with my whiny self when things weren't working the way I wanted them to.  

I've also updated the links, which are now found in the right column, and divided them into two lists. 'These are the blogs I know' has links to the blogs of people I actually know (like, for real) and want to promote because they are good at what they do (whatever it is).  'Craft/DIY/Design Blogs' has links to the many, many blogs I follow regularly, so if you have an inclination towards the handmade or crafty, I suggest to check them out.  I'm also working on a more general list of blogs I like and will post that soon. Finally, I updated my About page a bit and added a dedicated e-mail address for all things neonfoxtongue.

Not only did I complete my blog design last week, which was one of my Creative Goals for 2009, I also worked towards achieving one more of my goals - I took a creative workshop!  My goal is to take some sort of creative course, class or workshop for each season, so this one was for Spring (a bit late, I know, but Summer doesn't officially start until next Sunday, so I'm still good).  I participated in a workshop at Bizzy B Stamp & Scrap Shop on using alcohol inks, which I discovered are way cool for making beautiful backgrounds for cards, ATCs and scrapbooks.  The workshop was fun, informative and the instructor, Daniza, was super generous with supplies for us to play with.  I'd definitely take a class there again. It was great to learn about a new technique and to play around with colour and paper.  I made a bunch of stuff and I'll post pics later this week - I don't want to distract you from my blog design today! :)

This coming week is all about card making.  I have about eight cards to make, what with the swap I'm doing as well as Father's Day.  It's also a busy week in general as I have a job interview (fingers crossed) and a bunch of social stuff going on.  I haven't been this busy in a while, but I'm hoping I'll be all the more productive because of it. (Again, fingers crossed!)

Creative Goals Monday: Getting There!

As you may remember, last week's creative goals were all about focusing my blog design.  Well, I'm happy to report that focusing specifically on this topic yielded some success - I did a fair amount of work on it.  Unfortunately, I didn't do enough work to actually complete it.  While working on my banner, I realized that I needed a new marker to get the lettering in the style, size and colour I want.  And since I'm living in the 'burbs, getting to a decent art supply shop requires some planning.  However, I did a lot of playing around with the design and have nailed it down for the most part.  I also figured out what I need to do on Typepad for the new designe and, as you can see, made a new banner for Creative Goals Monday.  The idea for the design came to me suddenly and I'm pretty happy with it, but I'm not 100% sold on it yet.  I will have to see how it works with the rest of the design, but I'd be grateful for any feedback on it in the meantime.

Even though I'm not done the banner, I thought I'd share with you some of the preliminary sketches I did to come up with the design.  So here's a little sneak peek!

I'm excited to put the whole thing together!

Since I still have work to do on my blog design, I'm going to make it the focus of this week's creative goals once again.  I will:

• Get the marker I want
• Make the banner
• Do a photo shoot with The Leopard for my avatar
• Start putting the whole thing together

I'd also like to do some non-blogging creative stuff:

• Make cards, including some for a swap (more on that soon)
• Work on my lacy scarf 

I figure that will keep me pretty busy this week.  I've also been brainstorming some new blogging ideas, so watch this space for a new feature this week!

National Stationary Show - My Fave (So Far)

I found out about the National Stationary Show last year via the various design and craft blogs I had recently begun reading.  I think it would be *the* design show for me, given that I'm an uber-fan of all things paper.  I've been following the great coverage that Design*Sponge is doing on this year's show and if you have any interest in stationary and/or great design, I suggest you do the same.  So far, this letterpress card by Sycamore Street Press is my favourite.  It was designed by Be A Decent Human Being (Not exactly their site, but it's only relevant link I could find).

 

    I love how how it's sincere and irreverent at the same time.  I'd love to give (or receive) this card.

   If I see any more faves, I'll post them.

Creative Goals Monday: yarn, paper and design

It's funny, I usually start writing my Creative Goals Monday posts feeling a bit disappointed with my crafty efforts of the past week, but when I review the goals I made the week previous, I'm surprised to find that I've pretty much met them.  Does this mean that my weekly goals are too eady, or that I tend to forget how much craftiness I got up to?  Maybe it's a little of both, but I do think it might be time to be make my weekly goals just a bit more challenging.

This past week, I planned out a few cards but didn't do much in the way of putting them together.  I also worked on my two knitting projects, the lacy scarf and the pouch for The Leopard's digital recorder.  I ran into some trouble with the lacy scarf and unfortunately had to pull out two rows of knitting.  I need to do a bit of research on one of the stitches (yarn over); I thought I was doing it properly, but it just isn't working out.  But I still think I can figure it out.

The pouch is coming along though.  When I last posted a pic of it, it looked like this.  Now it looks like this:
I've made a few mistakes, including a huge slipped stitch (or something) which resulted in a pretty big hole.  Thankfully, the yarn hides most of the issues.  I figure I only need a few more rows and then I'm going add some on purpose holes for a drawstring. 

So for this week's (more challenging) goals, I'm going to:

• Knit every day: finish the knitting part of the pouch and figure out the pattern for the scar
• Make three cards: two birthday, one retirement
• Work on a new design for my blog, including a banner for my Friday I'm in Love posts

The Leopard and I are working on being better with our time management and daily schedule these days, so I'm hoping that setting more challenging creative goals will help me in this respect. In fact, I've met my non-crafty goals for today, so I'm going to leave the 'puter now and go and enjoy the sunshine with my knitting needles!

Have you set any creative goals this week?