Trove Thursday- Athena's Armoury Fundraising Raffle

This week's Trove Thursday post is different than my usual ones; this time I'm promoting my FAE friend and teammate Janine's (of Athena's Armoury) fundraiser. (You may have noticed the banner over to the left of my blog sidebar, but if not, that's who it's for.) Janine has taken on a huge (and absolutely wonderful, brave, and spirited) task: she's going to be participating in the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure walk.

She's raffling off a whole bunch of really awesome handmade items that have been donated over on her blog- the tickets are $5 each and are bought by donating directly to her profile on the 3 Day website. You can find out more about the items in the raffle and how to donate here on her blog. It's for a great cause, so please stop by and enter her raffle. :)

Here's a peek at the items that are being offered for the raffle- you can click the image to view them larger.

There's all sorts of really great jewelry, art, dolls, accessories... lots of awesome stuff! This post will give you details about the items. (Psst: one of my cartilage chain earrings is included!)

Just in case you missed it the first time I linked it in this post, you can find the raffle here.

And hey, stop by the new Pink Warrior Collection of chainmaille jewelry in her Etsy shop. All proceeds from the sale of those items go straight to her fundraiser, as well. :)

Presenting Pretties- Mandies Candies

This week the Stalkers Guild is featuring one of our own: Mandies Candies. I suppose that makes this a "Presenting Yummies" post instead. ;)

Let me tell you, her shop is drool-worthy. I mean, chocolate! In cute shapes! Here are some of my favorites; click them to view the listing:






(Yup, that's a candy Wii-mote. How cool is that!)

So stop by her shop and drool over these yummies. :) And if you're interested in joining the Stalkers Guild and are a member of Artfire, you can find us here.

Book review- The Truth

Yup, yet another Discworld book review. I can't help it, I really love those books so I read them a lot. ;) This time around I'm reviewing The Truth.



The Truth is the 25th book in the Discworld series, but it's one of the books that functions as a stand-alone, so you don't have to read the ones before it. I'd advise you to, since it makes the series more enjoyable to read them in order, but with some Discworld books like this you can jump into the middle of the series. Anyway, this book is about William de Word, a writer (and one-time aristocrat; as he says at one point, "My family's rich. I'm not") who teams up with a sensible young woman, a vampire, and dwarves to create the Discworld's first newspaper, while at the same time they have to solve a mystery and keep themselves alive. There's so much more to this book than that and it's a lot more interesting than that sounds, but it'll work for a short summary.

I last read this book years ago, but it's one of the Discworld books I've only read once or twice because it wasn't one of my favorites. I have no idea what I was thinking when I last read it (I'm convinced I must not have been) because this time around I loved it and I'm trying to figure out how the heck I could have ever thought otherwise. My only theory is that the last time I read it I was a teen and hadn't developed my love of words yet; back then I was more into books like Soul Music (probably because it has a young, cute musician in it and a very young heroine), so I guess then I couldn't appreciate a book about an aristocratic rebel obsessed with words. Well, I most certainly can now, because that's the kind of character I find most appealing and interesting. (*cough* My main writing character certainly doesn't fit that mold; I don't know why you're looking at me that way. ;) )

William de Word (ah, what an appropriate name) I now realize to be one of the most interesting characters on the Disc; he's witty, intelligent, and clever. I love the scenes where he's interacting with Commander Vimes, trying to out-smart him (good luck with that, but William definitely gives him a run for his money). And I couldn't help but laugh at the bit where William begins correcting the spelling of the graffiti on the jail cell wall, because, hey, that sounds like a good way to pass the time to me (said the girl who has been known to add punctuation to things). I also loved how developed and strong of a character William is; he's constantly fighting what he is in order to be a better person, and that's something I can commend (and not to mention understand a lot better now than I could when I was younger).

The other character I didn't appreciate the last time I read this book was Otto, the vampire photographer. I hate vampires, so that was probably the reason, but he's just so ... well, amusing. I mean, you know how vampires are with strong light and this one has picked a career very much involving light, so antics ensue. He, too, is a really strong... er... person because, as one of the vampires on the Disc who shuns blood (along with most of the things that make a vampire a vampire- they're called "Black Ribboners"), he always has to fight against what he is, as well. My favorite quote of the book has to do with this and was said by Otto: "I like Villiam. He was not brought up to be nice but he tries to be a nice person, vithout even cocoa and a singsong to help him. It is hard to go against your nature."

As for the plot, last time around I just couldn't get into the political intrigue of this book, but now I realize just how well-written and not boring it is. I mean, William and the main characters end up having to fight for their lives, all because they're pretty much thrown into a situation beyond their control, and all they have to fight with are pen, printing press, and words. They really do have to test that whole "the pen is mightier than the sword" thing.

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars and a slap to the back of the head to my younger self for not appreciating this book earlier. I'm seriously wondering that as I'm rereading this series as an older adult, if the books I always loved before will begin to be replaced with other ones. I don't think anything can ever replace Thief of Time as my favorite, but I can maybe see Soul Music and Pyramids being pushed down as I begin to appreciate some of the other books a lot more.

Art update- more horns, drawings, jewelry, writing... I've been busy!

Ugh, while I was typing this up the other day I accidentally hit the enter button and it published way earlier than I wanted it to because I wasn't finished yet. Of course, that means it went to everyone's RSS feeds when I didn't want it to. Sigh. Sorry about that, guys. This is the real post.

Amazingly I've had another productive week! My muses are really working overtime; I've done a bunch of things, so I'll split them up to keep them organized. I think if I have this much stuff next week, I'll split it into two posts because I know how much people hate reading full paragraphs. (Eep, not words!) I can't help it; I've verbose. At least I stuck a bunch of pictures in here for those who are loath to reading. ;)

***WRITING:***
Cyneric is shaping up to be quite a good writing muse! I wrote another ficlet/short story post called "A gift from a fox", which turned out to be about 675 words, and I have another two blog posts worth of story written up for later. What's great about this is that while Josh is giving me liberties to come up with almost anything for my bit in the world he created, it's also giving him ideas for his D&D game, so we're feeding off eachother's creativity. :D

If you'd like to keep up with my writing, you can find it over on Cyn's Musings of a Messenger blog.

And while you're there, can you let me know if the italics are difficult to read? I like typing that way because it looks most like handwriting, but I don't want to give people headaches and scare them away. It's hard enough to get people to give me feedback on the writing, lol.

***DRAWING:***
It's been a while since I broke out the pencils and pens. My friend Niere wanted avatar art and I figured I'd chip in (hey, I can use the practice!). I'm not anywhere near as good at drawing as she is, but I think this one came out pretty well compared to my last few tries at drawing people:

I know I need practice on hands, but the fact that I don't have good inking pens really doesn't help. What started out looking okay ended up all sorts of weird when I tried to ink it, and the pen left little blotches that I tried to edit out in Paintshop with little luck.

The other drawing I finished is, surprise, related to the story I'm working on. My art and writing muses have gotten jumbled together, it seems:

The fox came out great. The human, not so much, but since that was my first try at drawing someone sitting and not facing straight ahead, it's a good start. I'll rework this until I end up with something I like more. (As it is, I had to paintshop together multiple sketches to get it where it is now, and I'm still not sure if I made him look anywhere near the age he was when the backstory took place.)

I think I figured out another problem, as well as the lack of good pens: I draw too tiny. My sketchbook is small to start, then I take up a small portion of the page instead of stretching out the drawing, so it always ends up getting smeared and I lose track of the lines when I ink it. Note to self: draw larger.

***CLAY:***
I've been a horn making fiend lately (and by "fiend" I mean "have made six pairs"). I'm especially excited about the latest two pairs, but you'll have to wait to see them. ;) Here are the most recently listed pairs, though:

"Purple and Black Dragon Costume Horns" on Artfire and Etsy.


"Small Brown Curved Faun or Dryad Costume Horns" on Artfire and Etsy.

***JEWELRY:***
I also listed two more hemp bracelets/anklets this week:

"Hawaiian Dune" on Artfire and Etsy


"Summer Fire" on Artfire and Etsy

I really need my sister to come over soon so I can get her to model the two necklaces I made a week or two ago- as soon as I get those photos, I'll share the necklaces. :)

***Random Ramblings:***
And Cyneric has inadvertently been a double-muse lately; as well as my sketches, you'll also start to see in these art updates that I'm working in a lot less greens and blues (my colors of choice) and a lot more reds, oranges, yellows, and purples than usual. I normally avoid those colors (well, minus the purple- I use that occasionally since it's next to blue so it's fine by association and technically counts as "cool") like the plague because, ick, the dreaded warm side of the color wheel, but since Cyn loves warm colors and he's been taking over my head for a good portion of each day... Yeah, he's had some influence on what I'm making as well as what I'm writing. I refuse to completely give up on green, though. ;)

My muse is Fire and I'm a Water (okay, Water with a good deal of Earth) and he's very much my opposite in almost every way... oh boy, this'll get interesting if he continues to stick around; who knows what I may end up creating?

I have really awesome friends

I was having a really really crummy day yesterday (mainly caused by my mother, but that's no surprise) but things got a lot better, so I'd like to share. :) I finally felt up to going out and was able to hang out with my best friend, her mom (who's also a good friend), her boyfriend, and my fiancé. I got some cool dice beads off of Care, then she surprised me with this necklace she and her mom had got/made for me:



It's a red fox on green ribbon cord with some silver-y beads, which is perfect. Foxes mean a lot to me; they're one of my favorite animals (just below housecats) and since they're Cyneric's totem animal and he's been inhabiting my head a lot, foxes have become doubly important. Needless to say, I'll be wearing this every day. :D Thanks so much, guys, for thinking of me! And yup, since she mentioned how the fox seemed to have cat eyes instead of fox eyes, I attacked them with some black paint and fixed the pupils.

And then when I got home I saw that my friend Niere had left me a message on gaia; she's one of the two friends I had asked to draw me pictures of Cyneric, so I was extremely excited to see that the subject line was "Art for you". And let me tell you, I wasn't disappointed! Niere is an amazing artist and has often drawn me awesome art (which reminds me- I need to change my AF banner to use the drawing she did of my art muse), and this time was no different. Look at the great job she did:

(Click to view it larger)
Yup, that's my Cyn, alright! Winged fox quarterstaff (which seems to be based on the one my doll has- cool!), smirk, and all. I'm completely and utterly pleased with this drawing and I've already put it up on Cyn's blog.

So *big hugs!* to these awesome friends who made me feel a whole heck of a lot better. Friends are just great people to have around and certainly make up for the shortcomings of family. :)

Trove Thursday- Elfsisters BNR, Colors of the Forest

Sorry if your RSS feeds caught a blog post yesterday that then vanished. While typing up some of an art update that won't go live until Saturdayish, I accidently hit the enter key at the wrong time and it forced the post to update. Unfortunately it wasn't done so now I'm worried that when it does post for real people a) will think I'm spamming, b) they'll completely ignore it because it went through twice, or c) try to reply to it and it won't exist yet. I'm so sorry about that, guys! Blogger really needs to make it so hitting enter never publishes a post.

Anyway, on to the Trove Thursday post. This week I decided to try out Etsy's Treasury East and made one for me and Ruthie's Elfsisters BNR. Since we're Elf-Sisters, I decided to go with Colors of the Forest as the theme and filled it with items from people in the BNR.

You can find the treasury here for quite a while because they don't expire. I may change it around sometime in the future with new items from the BNR, though.

Here are the items in it:
1.) "Forest Meadow - Fancy Jasper, Ryolite and Sterling Silver Bracelet with Paw Toggle" by BeadedTail.
2.) "Hemp Bracelet with Green Beads - No Metal" by roseworksjewelry.
3.) "Handmade Zip Patchwork Pouch with Felt Leaves" by TiLTcreations.
4.) "Green and Black Leaf Cartilage Chain Earring - Leaves of the Woodland" by merigreenleaf.
5.) "Shades of green with Envy - French beaded flower/ leaf fascinator, luxurious silver, glass blossom" by BeadFloraJewels.
6.) "Earth Day Every Day magnet" by breathofthedragon.
7.) "Remy the Tea Fairy, Tea Kettle Character" by CoffeePotPeople.
8.) "Little Flowers Handmade Lampwork Bead Set 685" by DerondaDesigns.
9.) "Embroidered Cotton Cincher Skirt" by 28SidesDesigns.
10.) "Perched Fairy plaque" by breathofthedragon.
11.) "Oh how I love bees Magnets" by smiss00.
12.) "Faux Jade Green Owl Ring" by shesbattydesigns.
13.) "Aquatic Bloom - Moss Aqua Boro lampwork Keishi Pyrite Sapphire and more" by CrysallisCreations.
14.) "Lime Lemonade Beaded Bookmark" by BeadingInspirations.
15.) "Purse in Clifton Green Floral" by TiLTcreations.
16.) "Emerald Eyes - Green Cats Eye Bracelet with Animal Awareness Ribbon" by BeadedTail.

Overall, I'm not too keen on the Treasury East. The fact that they don't expire and that there's an unlimited number is rather dumb because it means people will never see the vast majority of the treasuries, so what's the point? At the time of writing this there are 203 pages with 20 on each, which means there are more than four thousand treasuries. Sheesh. It is helpful for something like this, though, where I can't always snag a regular treasury each week for this blog post and byhand.me (what I usually use) is frequently down.

Presenting Pretties- Buttercuppity Designs

It's been a while since I made one of these posts, but the Stalkers Guild is back to doing what we do best: stalking great Artfire shops, of course! ;)

This week we're featuring Buttercuppity Designs, who makes adorable sewn items. Here are some of the pretties in her shop:







So stop by her shop and take a look at the lovely handmade items. :) And if you're interested in joining the Stalkers Guild and are a member of Artfire, you can find us here.

Art update- a very productive week! (Jewelry, horns, writing...)

I was (oddly, but thankfully) productive this past week or so. I got a whole bunch of stuff made and/or listed, but I think what I'm most proud of is that I actually got some creative writing done. This is big for me because I haven't seen my writing muse in years, but this week I was able to write an 830 word ficlet/short story. I decided that I'm going to start writing ficlets based on my D&D character and the world that Josh created because it's a good starting point since I'm so familiar with the character and the world. I'm a pretty good writer but I've had a lot more practice with essay-type writing than the creative kind, so I'm hoping this'll give me the inspiration I need to practice.

(Don't get me started on how my lack of self-confidence at creative writing stems from the fact that, when growing up, my teachers never ever let me write anything remotely fantasy, which was the only creative writing I ever wanted to do...)

Anyway, you can find the blog where I'm going to be posting my writing here:

I can't promise you that I'll be a Tolkien, but I can promise you that it'll be well-written (as in sentence structure and things like that; I obviously can't say everyone will like the subject or my writing style and whatnot) and extremely grammatically correct (hey, I have to make use of that BA in English somehow!). Warning, though: I will have some silly posts over there, as well, because when have I ever taken myself seriously? ;)

Now onto the art!
I've been working on a lot of horns and listed the first pair this weekend:



These blue dragon horns are made from polymer clay and extremely shiny blue glitter and can be found here on Artfire and here on Etsy.

I really really love the colors in this necklace and I'm extremely partial to frogs, so I may have to make another one like this for myself. ;)

"A Frog's Garden" can be found here on Artfire and here on Etsy. It also doubles as an anklet. :)

And here are a few simple hemp bracelets/anklets:

"Water Garden"- here on Etsy and here on Artfire


"Red Ocean"- here on Etsy and here on Artfire


"Summer Sand"- here on Etsy and here on Artfire

I still have more horns and jewelry queued up, so look for those soon! :D

And before I sign off for the night, I wanted to share this picture of my cat barging in the way of my work area:

"Hey, mommy! Take a picture of me! I'm cute!"

Trove Thursday- Mirror, Mirror

Eep, almost forgot to make this post go live in time!

The Blogfire theme this time around is "Reflections" and when I saw how many lovely mirrors and mosaic mirrors are on Artfire, I just had to show all those off in a Trove post! I decided to call this Trove Mirror, Mirror, because that was the obvious choice. ;)


1.) "Finding the Perfect Tree" by palisadeglass.
2.) "Gorgeous Stained Glass Mosaic Mirror with Dichroic Glass" by artsyphartsy.
3.) "PEACE, polymer clay mosaic mirror by Maria Greene, Buddha" by MariaGreene.
4.) "Squid Mosaic Mirror" by GreeneGoddess.
5.) "Polymer Clay Phoenix Mirror Wallhanging" by FantasyClay.
6.) "Four Dragonflies Mirror" by GlassArts.
7.) "Mirror, Fairy Frolic" by SticksandStones.
8.) "PieceMakers Winged Creature Challenge" by TwinBrooks.
9.) "Sea Turtle Mirror" by reezie3.

Spring sale is almost over!

Just a quick reminder that there's only two more days for the sale in my Etsy shop! It's 10% off all Spring/flower/Celtic items; prices are already adjusted, so no worries there!

And while I'm promoting, please stop by my and Ruthie's Elfsister's BNR thread on Etsy; we're trying to promote people through the "buy and replace" thing, but we're also there to chat. :)

Book review- Unseen Academicals

Warning: There will be more spoilers here than in most of my reviews. I can't help it; I want to talk about the characters! I'll post the spoiler-y bits last, though, so you can just read the beginning if you want. This is also a very long review- sorry about that!

This time around I'm reviewing another Discworld book, this time Unseen Academicals.

Yes, I'm using the UK cover because, ugh, the US got Yet Another Crappy Discworld Cover (I'm thinking this is a requirement at this point and should get an official abbreviation of YACDC). I think that US cover is actually worse than the one for Thud, if that's even possible.

Anyway, on to the review:
I put off reading this book for three months (got it for Christmas), which is rare for me with a Discworld book. I assumed that since it's about sports, I wouldn't like it much (I dislike pretty much every sport so of course I wouldn't want to read about them), so I wasn't in a big hurry to read it, which meant that it got stuck near the bottom of my "to be read" pile. Boy, was that a mistake!

I should have realized that Pratchett never lets you down, and- this is a good point here- has amazing skill at writing characters. From my book reviews you can tell by now that characters are what make a book, in my opinion, and if the characters are wonderful, the plot isn't nearly as important; on the other hand, extreme amounts of action won't make up for poorly written characters. This is the perfect case of characters making up for plot. Yes, the book is about soccer, but it's also mostly about the characters and things that happen to occur around soccer. (And I will say I kept getting confused when I saw the word "football". However, that's less to do about the British/American thing and more to do with the fact that I know absolutely nothing about either sport. The ball has to get to the other side, right?)

The characters... well, they're wonderfully rounded and detailed, just like all the other characters Pratchett has written. You know a character is well-written when you spend a lot of the book thinking "someone like this woman should bug me, but she doesn't". What I mean there is that one of the main female characters, Glenda, tends to be rather bossy and controlling and very strong-willed, but she's written in such a way that you understand why she's that way and know that there's far more to her than that. She even intrigues the Patrician, for pete's sake; that's definitely an interesting character trait right there. There are so many new characters in this book (and some recurring ones, of course), but they're all like this- well-written and interesting. I'm especially attached to Nutt, the main male character who is a hard-working and kind goblin-type. If Pratchett writes another book about him, I certainly won't complain! (I'll blather more about characters below.)

As for the plot, soccer may be involved, but there's also young romance, lots of humor (hey, it's Discworld!), discord between wizards, the city coming to terms with a new race, people striving for more than what they are... Definitely don't make the mistake I did and assume you won't like the book just because of the theme!

Honestly, with the exception of the book starting off a bit slowly, which could have just been my imagination as I was grimacing in preparation for the book being all about sports, or possibly because since there are a lot of new characters, they had to be introduced, I can't think of a single thing I disliked about this book. I certainly don't mind all those new characters because we get to meet so many that are just so cool; by the end of the book I was liking them just as much as the reoccurring characters on the Disc.

I give Unseen Academicals 5 stars out of 5; a very high score, but I think it deserves it. This book has passed Monstrous Regiment (my 3rd favorite DW book) and Pyramids (my 4th) to slip in behind Thief of Time and Soul Music to become my third favorite. As much as I adore Nutt, I think the only book that could surpass one with Susan in it would be another Susan book (but maybe not; I'm afraid that if Pratchett does write another Susan book, he won't do with her what I think he should, which would just be upsetting and disappointing. Hey, I'm a Susan cosplayer who fancies Lobsang. Let me fantasize).


And here be spoilers... and lots of ramblings!
I absolutely adore Nutt, the main male character; as in, adore him so much that he's now ranked with Imp, Lobsang, and Teppic as one of my favorite male Discworld characters. I thought he was pretty neat (he's kind, helpful, extremely intelligent...) to start, but once it becomes known that he's actually an orc rather than a goblin... well, that just sealed the deal for me. I have a (strangely large) spot in my heart for orcs, or at least the ones that are kind, soft-spoken, and misunderstood; I blame Dungeons & Dragons for this since my character's best friend/bodyguard is one of those kinds of orcs. I don't care that orcs are monsters- if someone is kind, I couldn't care less what they look like. ...Actually, this may be why I think Glenda is so cool- she doesn't seem to care, either. I spent the whole book rooting for Nutt to have a happy ending and end up with love, and I can happily say that I wasn't disappointed.

As for the other characters, even Juliet, who is kind of pathetic and dim-witted, I found to be pretty cool, although had she not been constantly around the characters I liked better, that could have been different.

And here's one of the things I liked best about this book; the wizards that I like are back! Albeit mostly in tiny roles, but this is an important point for me, since most of the regular wizards (ie. the old ones) we hear about a lot tend to bug me, but this book has the Librarian, Ponder (okay, almost too much Ponder, but I like him even if he does get kind of annoying after a while), and- what I thought was awesome- Rincewind and Adrian Turnipseed. I'd missed Rincewind (what was the last book he was in? The Last Hero?) and it's been far too long since we've heard about any of the student wizards, so I thought it was cool that Big Mad Drongo made an appearance. Now I'm just curious as to what's become of Tez and Skazz. I don't much like the older wizards, but I do like the younger ones. :)



And as I'm writing this up, it's occurred to me that I really can't make fun of people who have a thing for vampires, can I? I suppose I can at least defend my thing for orcs by saying that appearances don't matter and I only fancy the kind ones (unlike with vampires who are gorgeous but horrible). If you were wondering where some half-orcs come from in D&D, well, I suppose I just answered that riddle, huh? ;)
...and somehow I already had an "orc" tag on my blog. I am one strange little elf-girl, aren't I?

Art update- Smaug sculpture, earrings, and hemp jewelry

I'm behind with posting things I've made, aren't I? I have a really neat thing to share that I made months ago (I had to wait until after Valentine's day to post about it, then I forgot. Oops!), but the photos are on my other computer, so that'll have to wait. Until then, I'll just share the jewelry I've made recently and the sculpture Josh and I made for my dad for his birthday (I haven't shared that, right?).

My dad is really into The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, so we decided to make him a sculpture of Smaug to match the drawing I did last year.



Josh made the dragon and I did the base, then cooked and varnished Smaug- it's all made from polymer clay and the dragon is coated in Pearl-Ex powder. My dad really loves it! :D


And now onto jewelry!
I made this earring as a custom order for someone who wanted this one but with gold findings:


And this earring was made for last month's FAEteam "Crow Moon/ Sap Moon/ Lenten Moon" challenge:

Of course, being the elf-y girl I am, I opted for the "Sap Moon" option. You can find this earring here on Etsy and here on Artfire.


I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm going to start geocaching soon, so I made a whole bunch of hemp bracelets to leave as swag for the larger caches:

(In that pile are also three necklaces I made that I'll be listing in my shop and blogging about soon.) I stuck each bracelet in a small baggie with a description about what it was, my team name (Taurandirath) and a link to me and my Elf Sister's adventure blog.

Since I had a lot of fun making those bracelets, I decided to make a batch for my shop, as well. Here's the first one:

I call that bracelet/anklet "Firebird" because the red beads remind me of the shape and color of a phoenix. That one's here on Etsy and here on Artfire.


I'm going to have to sort through my Artfire shop, though; I fixed Etsy to have new categories, but I need to manually edit the images I use for categories in my Artfire shop, and I can't currently get to my desktop computer (my sister moved out and my parents are redoing that room). Now that I have bracelets that double as anklets as well as necklaces that do, I have to re-sort a lot of things.


It's been oddly warm here (ie HOT- it's hit 90 degrees this week), so Spring was jump-started and now everything is green. That's awesome because now I can take decent photos again! :) Except I seem to have forgotten how to use the multi-zoom function on my camera and am getting a few blurry photos. I'll work on that this week, I guess.

Elfsisters BNR- you could be here!

Well, there, I suppose, since it's not happening here on my blog or anything like that. My elf sister Ruthie and I started a "Buy and Replace" thread in the Etsy forums; we're promoting our friends first to start, then this is how it works:
1. Make a purchase from a shop on the list - be sure to use the most current list! (That'll be at the back of the thread, either posted by merigreenleaf or roseworksjewelry.)
2. Return to this thread and post who you bought from and a link to your completed transaction(s)
3. One of the Elfsisters will update the list to remove a ♥ from that shop and add your shop!

Go to the thread here to find more rules and the current list of shops participating, but that's pretty much all there is to it.

To start off, here are the friends we included on the list:
1.♥♥ tiltcreations.etsy.com - Handmade and one-of-a-kind handbags, backpacks, totes and more!
2.♥♥ breathofthedragon.etsy.com - Unique and Custom Pyrography Gifts for Everyone!
3.♥♥ beadedtail.etsy.com - Beaded jewelry for animal lovers!
4.♥♥ coffeepotpeople.etsy.com - Recycled Art to Make You Smile
5.♥♥ beadflorajewels.etsy.com - Vintage French beading with a Modern Touch!
6.♥♥ smiss00.etsy.com - Cute hair clips and snarky cross stitch
7.♥♥ crysalliscreations.etsy.com - Exquisite Gems and Jewels
8.♥♥ derondadesigns.etsy.com - Lampwork beads and fused glass
9.♥♥ 28sidesdesigns.etsy.com - Custom clothing and embroidery
10.♥♥ shesbattydesigns.etsy.com - Unique Eco-Friendly Handmade Cards & Cute Accessories


Please spread word about this and feel free to bump the thread and come chat with us. :)

Lots of writing and a new blog

I want to wish a happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it (and a happy beautiful spring day to everyone else), and apologize for the lack of updates (especially art ones) recently. I haven't been feeling well but I do have some art things finished that I fell behind in blogging about; I'll try to do that soon.

I've been doing a lot of writing and blogging, though- my D&D game has been running steadily along and is a lot of fun (although I have to remember to update the info about my character now that the group is learning more about her), I updated the blog for Josh's D&D game and the blog for my character in that game, and my elf-sister and I started a blog for our adventures.

That's the blog I really want to share:

It's where Ruthie and I are going to post about our geocaching/letterboxing/outdoor adventures. Yup, I've gotten into geocaching and letterboxing, and I haven't even been up to going out yet- hopefully this week. I've been doing a lot of research and I have Josh designing me an image for a tree for our signature stamp. The team name I picked for us (me, Josh, and my dad) is "Taurandirath", which means "forest wanderers" in Elvish because the three of us are huge Tolkien fans.

So please, head over to the blog and follow us on our adventures. :)