Pretty In Pink Decorative Box

It seems that a staple product in plastic canvas work is the infamous "trinket box". A decorative box that can be used to store various items such as jewelry, potpourri... or anything your heart desires, as long as it fits. 

Pink Beaded Decorative Box

This pink beaded box is one of my favorite pieces. Maybe because it's such a girly piece, and I am a girl after all. My girly-girl teenage daughter doesn't think I should sell it. She has hinted to me that I should just give it to her!

Princess Pink (as I call it) acrylic yarn was sewn into cut sheets of plastic canvas, in a checkerboard pattern. Each small square is sewn in the opposite direction to the one before it. When the light hits it just right, it plays a little trick on the eye, and almost appears to be two different shades of pink! I didn't even realize that the light thing would happen. I just wanted a more interesting pattern, and the happy little discovery occurred. 

The lid was sewn in the same pattern, but made just slightly larger so that it overlaps, but fits snugly on the box.

sparkly glass beads

Once all of the pieces were assembled, I hand stitched pink glass beads around the the entire bottom, and outlined several squares on the sides and the top of the lid. The pink beads themselves have a silver inner lining, so they really are quite sparkly.

pink felt and craft foam lining

Finally, pink felt was glued all around the inside of the box and the lid, to hide the stitching and create a more finished look. And a piece of pink craft foam was inserted to snugly fit the bottom and top of the lid.

"Sshhh, don't tell her she's a jewelry box. She thinks she's a princess".

Click this link the view this piece in my shop!

My First Etsy Sale

Okay technically, my second Etsy sale, but the first was seven years ago when my shop was an entirely different entity, and the sale came in just as I was closing it down.

It was a gold paper mosaic serving tray, very much like the black and gold vase that sits in my shop right now, only on a serving tray.

Now, back to the post at hand...

I made my first Etsy sale! Yaaaaay!

I was contacted by a woman who wanted to know if I would make one of my plastic canvas decorative kitchen magnets in a different color than the one that I already had in my shop, ready to ship.

"Hmmm", I thought. Would I? I had not intended to get involved with custom requests (except for my MiniBaskets, which I think make cute gift basket party favors). Other than that, I only intended to sell the items that are listed, as they are, done and ready to ship. But then I thought "Ooooh what the hell." I didn't have any other projects going on, and I really wanted a sale. So I took the job!

Once complete, I created a custom listing in the shop for her to purchase. But instead of making the purchase, she asked me for another one, in another color.

Now, the advice given by nearly every member of my Etsy Group is to always have a customer pay up front for a customized order. Otherwise you could spend time and materials making a piece, and then the customer backs out. But in this case, even if the customer were to back out, I could still list these pieces in my shop for the general public. So I accepted the request.

Once completed, I updated the listing, and the customer made the purchase! She is now the proud owner of two cute little kitchen magnet owls!

Clipper Ship Wall Art

I have always adored a good old, turn of a long lost century, seafaring, Settler Carrying, tall sails bellowing in the wind... Clipper Ship. In fact, I once was utterly obsessed, having framed prints on the wall, pages of my own sketches, and a collection of small scale models. 

Early on in those days, when I first began my interest in plastic canvas work, I decided to trace a few of my sketches onto clear plastic canvas with a black permanent marker. I followed the traced lines with black yarn, and then slowly began filling them in (like a coloring book page) with long stitches of simple color. The entire background was filled in with continental stitches in a light blue. I framed them all out in a royal blue.

Clipper Ship

These were made somewhere in the vicinity of 1991. There were at one time three of them, but a few years ago, one of them began to unravel. The other two remain tacked to my bedroom wall (as they always have been), right next to what remains of my model ship collection.  

Schooner

You can see that they are a little fuzzy, and they do need a good washing. But they are twenty four years old! That's endurance.