YAY!! 100 Fans on Facebook! Now What??

I DID IT!

I finally got 100 Facebook Fans on my Fuzzington Fan Page!! I now have the power to add a username to my facebook url and make it easy to type in! My link is now http://facebook.com/fuzzingtonfuzz. It was a bit of a bummer because "Fuzzington" had already been taken as a user name (booooooooo...) but this name is fine.

I do have to admit, however, that setting up your user name is not an intuitive process. I had to look it up in the Etsy forums, and I found this SUPER helpful thread by StarGlowStudio: http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6238241

From her thread:

Congrats on getting your 100 fans!
I've had a few people emailing asking if I know where to go to get a custom URL. Here's the link...
http://www.facebook.com/username/
Below the blue box, click on "Set a username for your Pages."
Remember, choose your name carefully - you can't change it later. Make sure it's spelled correctly!

Super helpful, right?? By the way, StarGlowStudio makes some amazing pet portraits, so make sure you check out thier shop (StarglowStudio.etsy.com). This one reminds me of my little Maggie when she has hair:

Thanks to everyone who helped me get to 100 Fans! I'd especially like to mention my 100th Fan, chrissymaciel, a talented young artist that just started her shop not too long ago. She's got some really trendy knitted hats and scarves that are just wonderful!

Give Chrissy's shop some love ( crissymaciel.etsy.com)! Chrissy, we can't wait to see more of those stylish items!!

I Have the Best Husband in the World

A few weeks ago, I was tasked with creating favors for my best friend's bridal shower, and since the theme of the shower was Hello Kitty, I decided to make some cute beaded Hello Kitty bracelets. They're made of glass beads and Swarovski crystals, with a little Hello Kitty charm. I bought the charms on Etsy. Here's mine.. isn't it cute?
However, I only had two evenings to put together TWENTY of these babies and I had no idea how I was going to crimp, tread, and bead all twenty in time for the shower. Luckily for me, I have the best husband in the world!! Now let me preempt this by saying that my husband is definitely NOT INTO CRAFTS. He thinks it's cool that I like them, but his idea of fun is sitting on the couch watching sports all day with a few beers. This same guy offered to help me bead the bracelets, so all I had to do was start them off, and he beaded more than half of the bracelets!! So sweet!!

Here's my cute husband in action.

I think it's so cute how he laid out all the beads before stringing them. I should have gotten him a beading board. =)

He was a real trooper and we finished all of them in one night (even if it took us until 1am)!! He even admitted that he had fun doing it!! What a great guy!!

HOBBY LOBBY

We are very blessed here in Southern California to have a lot of things that many people in the rest of the country wish they had: palm trees, beaches, beautiful weather all year round... but there is one thing that we do not have: Hobby Lobby.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was in Schaumburg this week for meetings, but in a perceived
act of divine intervention, my meetings for Thursday were canceled, and since I had a late flight and a rental car, I had the perfect opportunity to pursue what I consider to be a crafter's paradise. Oh, how happy I was to be in this store!!! I memorialized the visit with pics on my cell phone.

Why do I love Hobby Lobby so much? Well right off the bat, the sheer size of the place is astounding to me. Just look at it! It's huge! If you took a Michaels, JoAnns, and Aaron Brothers, and mashed them all together into the same store, you'd get Hobby Lobby!


And the selection-- Oh, the selection!! And the great prices!! Imagine a Wal-Mart that only sold crafts!

There is a whole half of an aisle dedicated to PIPE CLEANERS! Folks, I present to you the birthplace of Fuzzington:

There are thin pipe cleaners, thick ones, feathery, striped... even JUMBO sized pipe cleaners (in the left portion of the picture above). I didn't get those jumbo ones because I wasn't sure what I could make with them. Needless to say, I stocked up...


On top of that, I got some great deals on postage stamp collecting supplies, as well as animal eyes for my sock monkeys, and some great jewelry findings. Somehow I was able to stash it all in my suitcase, and airport security did not give me any trouble for bringing a bunch of craft supplies home.

When I got back to San Diego in the evening, my husband and I went to Trader Joes to stock up on groceries. As we were checking out, I joked about how the many items we were ringing up at Trader's reminded me of my purchase that morning at Hobby Lobby. The cashier overheard me and asked excitedly, "They opened a Hobby Lobby here in San Diego??" Unfortunately I had to break the news to her that this wasn't the case, and she looked disappointed. She had moved out here from Tennessee and said she really missed the store.

So for those of you who are fortunate enough to have this great store in your community, and are amused by how I revere this store-- I think you're really taking Hobby Lobby for granted!! Please, let this be a reminder to not take Hobby Lobby for granted! Perhaps one day, I can "lobby" to bring Hobby Lobby to the west coast. Until then, I'll just have to wait for my business trips to Schaumburg and hope for canceled meetings...

Fuzzington: Where it All Began...

This entry should also be called "I Love Martha" as in Martha Stewart. I have deep respect for that woman to have built an empire on crafts. She's making millions off of what we love to do best.. crafts. And for that I admire her.

I also have to thank her for being the spark of an idea that became Fuzzington. And Hobby Lobby. And I have to thank Cox Communications for their Digital Video Recorder (DVR), which is like TIVO. Oh and the DIY channel for playing Martha Stewart's craft show.

So it started like this: When I moved in with my husband after we got married, I was amazed at how many cable channels he had! One of the channels was the DIY channel, and it had all sorts of crafts shows on it. When I was a kid, I loved crafts shows, but we didn't have cable and we could only get them on PBS whenever they had them. So I was in heaven when I found the DIY channel! I started watching the Martha Stewart Crafts show because I had heard so much about her, but I had never seen her at work. She amazed me with her professionalism and pristine neatness in making crafts (although I like to be a little more freestyle in my crafts than her). I started recording her shows on the DVR and watched almost every episode. There was one show that did these adorable little dolls made of muslin and Martha said that the patterns could be found on her website at www.marthastewartcrafts.com. So I went to look it up and started browsing around, and I stumbled upon a site about pipe cleaner animals. And they were SO CUTE and AMAZING! I didn't know pipe cleaners could be so cute (hence the tagline for my shop). I was intrigued... but I didn't have any pipe cleaners. I marked it down as something I would have to try one day.

Fast forward three months, and I was in Chicago for a wedding and I was staying with my brother-in-law and his family. My sis-in-law (his wife) is also a crafting fiend, and she decided one day to take me to Hobby Lobby. Oh... my... god... can I just say, Hobby Lobby is the bestest hobby store in the whole wide world! I wish we had them here in Southern California... Hobby Lobby kicks Michaels' butt anyday!! Anyway, Hobby Lobby also happened to be having a sale on pipe cleaners. WOW--they had a wide selection of pipe cleaners: thick ones, fluffy ones, striped ones, feahery ones, in all sorts of colors... I didn't know so many types of pipe cleaners even existed! So I bought a few packs to see where they would take me. When I got back to her house, and I was putting the pipe cleaners into my suitcase, I suddenly remembered something about pipe cleaners... what was it... OH! Martha! So I looked up the website again to see how they were done. I decided to try my hand at making a tiger based on the techniques that were shown on Martha's website. It actually came out pretty good in my opinion. But the biggest test was to see if my 2-yr old nephew could understand what it was. If he could identify what it was, then maybe I had something. I showed it to him, and his face lit up and he said, "Fuzzy!" And he loved it! I thought, These are really fun! Maybe I have something here!

My pipe cleaner animals have become a lot more sophisticated since that first one. I started making more pipe cleaner animals, and I found that ideas and techniques just came to me as I practiced and practiced more. It got to a point where I would decide to try something out, and I could picture in my mind how the pipe cleaners needed to come together. I think there are still a lot of artistic juices that are just waiting to be tapped for future Fuzzies!

In the meantime, if you want to try out your own pipe cleaner animals, here's the link to Martha's page.

http://www.marthastewart.com/article/pipe-cleaner-creatures

On her page, you can learn to make these cuties... they're super fun to make, and kids love 'em! As Martha would say, "It's a good thing." Enjoy!!

100 Hearts!

I received my 100th heart on Etsy today! This is very exciting! There are other Etsians out there with hundreds and thousands of hearts, but I think the 100th heart is a good milestone.

I remember when I first joined Etsy, looking at one of my now favorite shops, Woollyton, who was also in San Diego and sells the cutest polymer clay kawaii charms. She had something like 350 hearts, and I didn't even have one. I remember being so astonished by the high number of hearts and sales she had made in just a year! I thought I would never get that kind of popularity!

While I'm not quite as popular as Woollyton, and still can't figure out how she's managed to get so popular (although her product really speaks for itself), I'm really happy with the progress that I've made since last October. 21 sales! Not too shabby for 4 months...

I might as well put in a shameless plug for Woollyton in here. Make sure you check her out at http://woollyton.etsy.com

Welcome to My Studio!

Some of you have been wondering where all the Fuzzington magic happens. Well, here are pics of me in my "studio." My studio is really also my office where my computer is. The pictures on the wall are some photos that I took at Big Sur. I have Ikea to thank for making them look professional with the frames! I love those pics because they're so relaxing. And naturally, I have a Fuzzington pic on my desktop!


When I sit down to creat Fuzzies, the first thing I do is take out all my existing Fuzzies, including the imperfect ones (hey I still love them) and line them up on my desk so I can be inspired by them! They usually come through.


So yeah, my workspace isn't all that fancy, but it's cozy and simple, a perfect environment to create my Fuzzies!!

Alchemy is Magic - My Best Fuzzies Ever!!

Earlier this month I posted an entry about an Alchemy request that I received from a lady who wanted to give her husband a Fuzzy that looked like their late dog for Valentines Day. With Hachiko passing this weekend, this order meant a lot to me because it really sucks losing your doggie pal and I really wanted to do a good job. Well I'm happy to report that I just finished them, and I'm very proud of how they came out!

I've posted the pictures that they lady sent me, and I've posted the Fuzzy based on the picture.

The trickiest part was the mark on Winnie's back that also looks like a sideways dog. I managed to cut out tiny pieces of felt to imitate the mark:

And here's Winnie's girlfriend Molly:

I love how they came out, and I hope their new owners will love them as well!!

Finally Made it to an Etsy Treasury!! WHOOHOO!!

Beverly, my breast cancer awareness dog was featured in the blog http://www.luvmymonkeys.blogspot.com/ and was also included in a treasury on Etsy! YAY!! Here's the treasury link: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=38844

I've been waiting for the day that I'd be featured somewhere! How exciting! Some Etsians are featured all the time, but my poor little creatures can be neglected sometimes because they're so obscure! Thanks Monkey Baby Creations for showing Beverly to your readers!!

Another Shop Critique!

So after the last shop critique that I had about a month ago, I decided to get another one. The reviewers on Etsy remembered me right away, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing. Overall, they didn't have too much to comment on my shop. The only comments they had left were:

1) Shorten the item descriptions so that they can be easily scanned by the reader
2) Post items more often to get more exposure!!

Number 1 was easy.

Number 2 will be a little more challenging...

Got a Shop Critique Today!!

I sat in on one of Etsy's virtual workshops today to get my store critiqued. Overall, it sounded like I was doing most things right.

Things I'm doing right:
1) Good pictures, using angles, natural lighting, etc...
2) Cute items
3) Overall good look of the store
4) Good listing of other promotion sites like myspace, facebook, etc...

Things to improve on:
1) Shorten the shop announcement so items appear at first glance by customers
2) Add shop policies
3) Better utilization of tags - use all 14, and include colors in tags!!

I'm definitely going to do these things! While I think marketing seems to be the number 1 thing needed to get business, the look and feel of your shop is a close #2!!! Still trying to figure out the marketing thing!

My First Sale! Whoohoo!!!

I sold my first Fuzzy today!! Goodbye Puppy Pair! Have fun with your new owner in Murrietta, CA!

My Store is OPEN!!

I've started an online store for my fuzzy creations!!

http://fuzzington.etsy.com

I hope people will like my Fuzzies! I think they're cute, so I hope other people will too!!! Wish me luck!!

Fuzzington is Born!!

My latest adventure is here!!

My imagination has given birth to a place called Fuzzington!!

I am a pipe cleaner artist. I spend a lot of time twisting, bending, and fashioning pipe cleaners into cute realistic looking fuzzy friends. I've officially named them the Fuzzies.

My goal is to make the Fuzzies look like the AREN'T made of pipe cleaners. I love making these little fellas.

Hope you like what you see! Have fun!