Cards

When I was a kid, my dad had printing presses in the basement that he made all sorts of things on.  For example, he printed postcard announcements for all the seniors in town every month for their potluck lunch.  When I was about 12 he started making me business cards for babysitting, pet sitting, and pretty much every other odd job I could think of.  While those cards surely have sentimental value and a certain personal touch, when I decided to get some new cards, I thought maybe I would go with a professional company.  A friend told me about moo.com and I after some investigating, I bought a pack of cards.
I could not be more pleased with the result as many of you surely know.  I've been giving them out like candy.  The great thing about moo is that you can put your own images on the backs of the cards, which gave me yet another opportunity to display my crafts.  I chose 20 images and had 100 mini cards printed.  It's great!  Instead of just handing someone my card, I can let them choose for themselves from all my designs, and I know that when they get home they will want to follow up with me because of the cool experience they had getting my card.

The cards arrived in a neat little carrying box.

In case you can't read that, the asterisk says "OPEN THEM QUICK".  I feel like the box has the same enthusiasm for the cards as I have.

They look so elegant all lined up in the box.

The twenty images I chose reflect my current offerings, and I only got 100 cards, so when I add new crafts to my repertoire I can get new cards.  This way I won't be stuck with old designs for years.

I hope you are inspired by my experience, and I can't wait to put a card in your hand!

Pillow! (Part 2)

Hopefully everyone has seen and loves my pillows.  I certainly do, they bring a bit of sophistication to my bedroom and quite frankly make me grin every time I see them.  I've been working on some more and I have one complete to show you.

I found this rich red fabric at my favorite fabric store (Halsey Fabrics on Halsey Street in Newark NJ)  and fell in love immediately.  The combination of red and blue first occurred to me as a reference to autumn colors, but the completed project makes me think of dragon scales.

Or maybe that  is being 700 pages into A Dance with Dragons (which is great by the way).
Either way, I'm in love with my new completed pillow, but not so in love that it won't be available very soon on my etsy shop.

Also, send me a welcome shout-out on twitter.  I just got an account for the first time.  GriffinDryGoods.

New Success

A few months ago I got the idea to try out making a sourdough starter.  My fiance loves sourdough and, being a bread baker, I thought it should be easy and fun to make my own.  I was wrong.  My starter blew up and smelled awful.  It made a huge mess and I know that every bread book I have read and every person I've talked to says that sourdough is tough and if your starter doesn't work, you should just keep trying.  Unfortunately, when an attempt fails to the extent this one did, I feel disinclined to try again.  Luckily, I have a friend who makes fantastic sourdough.  While I was visiting in Oregon recently, my friend Nat showed me how he makes sourdough, and it is good.  He suggested I use a technique to start my sourdough I had never heard of.  Instead of using water in the starter, you use pineapple juice and it adjusts the pH to the ideal conditions for wild yeast.  I did some internet research and found a recipe I liked.  I used rye flour to begin with in the starter, and changed over to white flour after about a week.  I've been baking sourdough for several weeks now and every loaf is better than the last.

So my advice to you is if there is something you've been wishing you could do, try again, you just might end up with a delicious success.