What makes a great Guild/Team

Isn't that the question everyone wants to know? How to become a successful guild or team is a new series on Handmade News.

Part one of the article:

http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=993

Choosing the Perfect Guild or Team

I have written an article for HandmadeNews.org discussing how you should choose the perfect guild or team on handmade venues.

Please go check it out by clicking this link:

 http://www.handmadenews.org/article/index.php?id=953

Artfire Cafemom Team!

A selection from our guild. Search Artfire Cafemom Team to find more items from our talented ladies!

Artfire Cafemom Team Open House

This week I am coordinating my guild on Artfire's Open House. Many shops will have a sale going on in their shops. We have lots of talented ladies in our guild and make a variety of items from baby to glass to jewelry to paper goods to original artwork.

Please support other moms (and grandmas) by browsing their shops and supporting handmade mamas!

Here is a list of shops on sale. Feel free to grab the list and help us promote this awesome sale. Goes on until Saturday May 9th!

Jemz – 20% off , free shipping on orders over $30
www.jazzyjemz.artfire.com

Bows for Baby: 15% off items in store, not on custom orders. Free shipping on orders over $20 before shipping.
www.bowsforbaby.artfire.com

Stitch’N Love : 10% off all orders
www.stitchNlove.artfire.com

Spirit Essence Art: 20% off all items, Free shipping on orders over $30
www.spiritessenceart.artfire.com

Creations with Heart: 15% off all items
www.creationswithheart.artfire.com

JewelrybyJanzia: 15% off all items
www.jewelrybyjanzia.artfire.com

Chantilly Lace: 15% off all items
www.chantillylace.artfire.com

Totally Tyra: 15% off all items
www.totallytyra.artfire.com

Diecutz: 50% off all items
www.diecutz.artfire.com

Bittersweet Design Studio: Free Shipping
www.bittersweetdesignstudio.artfire.com

Francisbel Boutique: Free Shipping
www.francisbelboutique.artfire.com

Waters Girls Crafts: 15% off all items
www.watersgirls.artfire.com

By Coco: 15% off all items
www.bycoco.artfire.com

SW Designs: 20% off all items
www.swdesigns.artfire.com

Eddy’s Pressies: Free shipping on all goods over $25 to UK, US and worldwide
www.eddyspressies.artfire.com

Soft Shell Body Shop: 15% off all items, free shipping on orders over $30.00, after discount
www.softshellbodyshop.artfire.com

DJ Storeroom: Free international shipping, international airmail, delivery confirmation and insurance for all items.
www.djstoreroom.artfire.com

Vestque Creations: 50% off all items
www.vestque.artfire.com

SubEarthan Cottage: 10% off all items
www.subearthancottage.artfire.com

Handmade with Love: 20% off items in her store
www.handmadewithlove.artfire.com

ACT Giveaway : Earrings

Reminder to everyone to check out Artfire Cafemom Team's giveaway! One lucky winner will receive these very spring earrings!

http://artfirecafemomteam.blogspot.com/2009/04/giveaway-4-abitofcolor.html

Giveaway- beenie

My Artfire Cafemom Team is having a giveaway! A beenie is being given away by Bows For Baby.

To enter, its as simple as a comment. Go check it out! Ends Thursday!

http://artfirecafemomteam.blogspot.com/2009/04/welcome-to-giveaway-3.html

How to make a Crochet Hook Roll Up

Being a crochet enthusiast, I set out to make a stylish crochet hook roll up that will keep my crochet hooks safe and not misplaced. I also thought that it would be nice to have my scissors in the same place, so I am not always looking for them together. This small crochet roll up is small enough to toss in your bag so you can crochet on the go.

Here is how I made it with photos:

You will need:

Two compliment fabrics- one for the exterior and interior

Cut two 12x8 inch pieces from the exerior fabric

Cut one 12x8 inch piece from the interior fabric

cut one 11x7 inch piece of fusible interfacing

18 inches of complimentary ribbon or bias tape for closure

Thread

Before you start it is a good idea to prewash all fabric and press all wrinkles out. In my demo, the floral print is the exterior print and the pink is the interior and the tie-closure.

Take one of the 12x8 pieces of exterior fabric and fold it in half and press it. This will become the pocket for your crochet hooks.

Next, take your fusible interfacing and iron it on to the wrong side of the exterior print. Follow the directions for the fusible interfacing.

After you put the interfacing on, you will take your folded piece of exterior fabric and line the unfinished edges with the bottom unfinished edge of the interior fabric. The folded edge of the exterior fabric will be in the middle of the interior fabric and the unfinished will all line up. You will pin to mark where the crochet hooks will go. For mine, I left a 2 inch space on one side for the scissors to be placed, then I marked 1 inch over for each crochet hook. This allowed room for 10 hooks. If you want to alter the spacing to fit more hooks, you may.

After all the pining was done, I sewed a straight line down from the top of the folded edge of the pocket to the bottom unfinished edge. I would recommend reverse stitching to improve the strength and durablility of your Hook Roll.

After the spacing was complete, you move on to attaching the interior of the hook roll to the exterior. You will sew an invisible seam for the hook roll.

Place the right sides of the interior/pocket and exterior fabric together I begin pinning by placing my tie closure. Fold your ribbon or bias tape in half. Then attach the tie closure where the folded pocket begins in the center of the hook roll. Be sure to put your loose ends of tie closure inside the the hook roll, don't dangle it outside where you plan to sew.

Pin all around the outside. Sew a 1/4 inch seam around the outside raw edges of the hook roll. Be sure to leave a inche opening in the seam. This opening will allow you to turn your Hook Roll insdie out, leaving an invisible seam.

Here is where I left an opening in the seam. I recommend not leaving the opening near the bottom where the hooks are going to placed in a pocket OR near where the tie closure is sewn in. Put the opening on the top of the hook roll.

Next you will turn the insides out. Be sure to turn all the corners outward as well. Once this is done, you will use a slip stitch to finish the hoook roll. If you need help with a slip stitch see this video

The finished product will look like this with the crochet hooks in it.

To roll the Hook Roll, you will fold the excess fabric on the top down like so. This helps keep the crochet hooks from falling out. And roll the end without the tie closure towards the end with the tie closure. Tie and you are set !

To purchase a hook roll or other crochet items, please check out my shop The Tangled Skein.

The last day for the Nursing Cover giveaway

Is Friday so go check out the blog- as I am giving a way a nursing cover to one lucky commenter!

Waves of Rainbow

Thank you all for commenting and giving me words of support yesterday. I was feeling sad and down and needed to hear it was okay.

I just finished a new crochet baby afghan. I am soo proud of myself. This thing seemed to take forever because I had to stop after each color and add the next. It was quite time consuming but looks fabulous!!!

Here Jasmine is helping model. I hope the sun comes out today so I can get better photos!

I am going to be listing it in my crochet shop: http://www.thetangledskein.etsy.com/

How to place ads on Project Wonderful

I have gotten many questions about placing ads on Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful is a website that links advertisers to websites in need of advertising. Its like an Ebay for the advertising world.


You can find Project Wonderful at http://www.projectwonderful.com/

In order to place bids on ad space you need to have $5.00 in your account. You can paypal the money to Project Wonderful. Ad space starts as low as pennies for a day. Very affordable!

When you enter the site, you want to sign up and confirm your account. You need to do this prior to placing any ads.

After you confirm your account, you can upload your ads. You can make text ads or graphic ads. Your ads can be animated or not. The sky is the limit. There are many options for the size of your ads as well.

Once you have signed to your account you may upload your ads. On the top left corner, click "My ads". A screen will pop up looking like this:

On this screen you have varying options for the size of you advertisement. Make sure your advertisement fits inside these parameters or your advertsment will be pixelated. Project Wonderful does not resize ads to fix the boxes. You are not limited in how many advertisements you can upload. However, the sites you bid on may only allow one type of ad size. You can not put a banner size ad in a square ad space.

Once you have choosen your ad size, the next screen will prompt you to ad the link to the page you wish to advertise for. Type in the link to your homepage. Make sure it is accurate! The second box asks for the text your cursor will show to the page. For my Artfire shop, I put "Jemz Artfire Shop". You can be formal with your text or cutesy. "Take me there" "Going Shopping" are some cute ones. You will last title your ad.

Next step is to upload your ad. You must choose what type of rating/content it is. Some ads if they are explicit will not be placed on certain sites.

Once you have uploaded your ads, you can bid on the sites that will have your advertisement placed on them. Let the bidding begin!! Go to "place new bid" in the top left corner. This screen will pop up:

This is the search screen for Project Wonderful. On the left you choose which ad spots you want to search for based on size. The next column is for the Catagory of the ad space. So which genre site do you wish to target. For Jemz- I sell Baby items, so I click "Parenting & Kids". I generally don't go to the third column to filter the results- but you can explore that if you would like.

The next button will take you to your results. Let me explain how to read this page, as it may be confusing for some. Your screen will look like this:

The second column shows you what size ad space is available (banner, square, etc.)

The third column is the site that has advertising through Project Wonderful. Click the hyperlink under the name to view the website.

Under publisher- this is simply the sellers profile name This name may not be the same name as the site that is selling the ad space.

The next two columns are one of the more important columns to look at. It is how I discerne whether I want to put my ad on that page. The current page views and average page views. This shows you how much traffic goes to the site. The more traffic=more potential visitors to your site.

You may also want to see if there site receives consistent traffic by viewing the trends. The views for today may be high if they are running a special blog or giveaway. But if the graph shows consistent visitors, then the site has traction and is a great site to place an ad.

The next column shows you the price for the current bid. Generally the more traction the site has, the higher the bids. Project Wonderful allows the highest bidder to get the ad space. This is the column to look at to see if you can afford an ad on the site. Bids prices are per day. You DO NOT pay for however many clicks your ad gets. This per day payment of advertisment prevents fraud (ie someone clicking your ad a gazillion times to make money for the host site). I LOVE the per day rate - which is why I think Project Wonderful is Wonderful !

If you click the last column where it says more details, you can get more details about the potential ad space. It tells you information about the site, the current ads on the site. People who refer traffic to this site. Where in the world the visitors come from. Graphs to show traffic.

Check this page out prior to placing bids. I encourage you to understand the sites before putting your money into an ad on that site.

If you like the site and want to place a bid, click "place bid". These screens below will pop up. One is the top half, the other is the bottom half when you scroll down.

Choose the ad you wish to run. You must place a maximum bid (which you can go back and raise if needed). When you bid, you can put a time frame on how long your bid is active. The default is 30 days. You may also put a cap on how much money you are interested in paying for ad space. This way you don't have a bid for $5.00 a day for 30 days. You can cap your bid for $50.00 and have your ad up for 10 days. However, if you lose out, you can increase your bid for that ad space. If you don't rebid, and someone elses ad expires, your ad may be placed in that spot if it has not expired.

If you are still confused, please check out this link:

https://www.projectwonderful.com/aboutauctions.php

New group I belong to

Hi everyone! Over on Artfire I have started a new group just for moms. Artfire Cafemom Team! We already are rocking over 100 members strong in less then a week. We have some pretty talented ladies in our group. Please go check out our new blog for the Artfire team:

www.artfirecafemomteam.blogspot.com

Artfire

I love it. I joined and became verified. It is the new and better version of Etsy. A place to sell your handmade items.

There are so many talented, crafty people on Artfire. The staff is awesome. They answer my questions immediately. There is no relisting items, and the searches pull up randomly. So your items never get burried by people relisting every day.

Best part, you can list 1 item or 1,000 items and its only $7.00 a month.

Jimminy Cricket! Go sign up now- whatcha waiting for?

http://www.jazzyjemz.artfire.com/