Etsy Excitement

Continuing on the crafty and alliterative theme (for the blog titles) I thought I would tell you about a few of my recent orders from my Etsy shop. In case you didn’t know I had an Etsy shop I will let you know that I sell custom and ready made pet toys and various bags from tote bags to clutch style. All of my creations are embellished with machine embroidery to personalize it for the buyer. So without further ado here are a few of the recent purchases made from my shop.

First up is an order I received a couple of months ago from my blogging friend Samantha at The Quilting Doberman. As we get older so do our parents and when it comes to birthday and holiday presents we struggle with what to get them because it seems like they already have everything they need. Well Sam had the great idea to get her mom’s pets some special toys and ordered them from me.

Her mom has two mini Australian Shepherds and two cats so the dogs received personalized small squeaky bones and the cats got the mouse and clown fish catnip toys.

Sam had me ship them directly to her mom and since it was a birthday gift I wrapped them up and added a little card.

Gypsy quickly claimed both dog toys for herself and even enjoyed using one of the bones for a pillow. What a cutie she is.

The next order I want to tell you about is a clutch style bag. After a few conversations via email with the buyer she settled on a pink micro suede clutch with an “I Love My Dachshund” embroidered on it.

The buyer is a knitter and told me that her dachshund GingerSue liked to steal her balls of yarn like a cat and play with them so I picked a special fabric for the lining.

The embroidery on the bag turned out perfect. If you are interested there are a variety of puppy and kitty breeds of similar embroideries that can be embroidered on any type of bag. You can check them out at the Embroidery Library where I get most of my embroidery files. The buyer also let me know that she was buying this bag as a birthday gift to herself so when I packaged it up I added a few special things.

I had some left over yarn from a skein so I used it for a bow and added a birthday card. I also included a skein of Lion Brand Bonbon yarn as an extra treat. After the order was delivered I received a lovely message from her that read in part:

My beautiful doxie bag and surprise contents arrived. I picked it up at my apartment clubhouse yesterday afternoon and immediately took it with me to my knitting group. Another knitter who have a precious doxie too immediately had tears pop into her eyes. I am sharing your Etsy link with my galfriends.

It’s notes like this that make the work so fun.

The last order is the one I received a week before I had to finish the crochet baby blanket and it was a big order. The buyer ordered 7 different custom dog bones in all three sizes that I make.

The buyer did a great job communicating her choices for the order and let me know what color, size and embroidery she wanted on each toy. There are three large and two each of the medium and small bones. I really wonder what “Itchy Richie” thought of his bone. Do you think he used it to scratch his back? 😀

As you can see in addition to the baby blanket and bandannas I have been keeping busy with other crafty things. A couple people wanted to know if I sold the bandannas in my shop. So far I haven’t added them, but would be curious to know if there is a genuine interest among my readers.  I have a few cute embroideries that I think would look great on a bandanna like the ones you can view here (check out the “Kisses” and “Queen/King of the Dog Park” embroideries). You might remember that I also embroidered a bandanna for Millie with a cool “Rescue” tattoo style embroidery. I could make the bandannas in almost any color you would like.

The price would vary by size, but they would probably start at around $17. Let me know what you think. If there is enough interest I will add a custom item in my shop. Thanks for visiting and checking out my craftiness.

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Project Week – Dachshund Bags

The next project on my list are a couple of dachshund bags I made for Agnes (What’s Her Name from the Dachsies With Moxie). Her mother in law is owned by a longhaired red dachshund and Agnes asked me to make a clutch and a tote bag embellished with a longhaired dachshund embroidery.

I found a nice embroidery for this project at Embroidery Library, but the colors they stitched theirs out in were for a black dog so I had to figure out how to modify the colors for a red colored dog. I asked Agnes for some hints and she suggested that Ruby, one of Frankie Furters beautiful wives, looks very similar to her mother in-laws dog. I printed a couple of pictures of Ruby from their blog to use as reference and I think it turned out very well.

The tote bag has the embroidery on an exterior pocket on both sides of the tote. The green area was quilted with a Sashiko style of quilting and the interior features a fun dog related print.

When I first saw the lining fabric I knew it was right for these bags. It is printed with all sorts of words like, woof, yap, bark, arf, ruff, etc. There are two zippered pockets and two plain pockets inside as well.

I made the clutch bag out of micro suede and embroidered the dachshund on one side. The lining is the same fabric as the tote bag.

Since the bags were for Agnes’ mother in laws birthday and I was shipping them directly to her I wanted to spiff up the packaging just a little so I wrapped the bags in some colored tissue paper and included a birthday greeting.

As an added bonus I also included the “Bad to the Bone” toy shown above. According to Agnes the bags and toy were a huge hit and will be well used. If you are interested in a bag with your favorite breed on it leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can come up with.

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A Donation & a Father’s Day Gift

A couple of month’s ago Christina, Sagira’s mom of Sagira’s Agility Adventures, solicited me regarding a donation for the Louisville Weimaraner Rescue for their Weim & Cheese Fundraiser they held on June 16th. She had seen some of the bags I previously posted about and thought one would make a great addition to their event.  Originally she offered to pay for a bag, but being the pet lover that I am I couldn’t charge for something going to a charity.

Weimaraner Clutch in Faux Suede

I decided to make a clutch in faux suede with the Weimaraner embroidery on both sides. The faux suede is so soft and gives the bag an elegant look and feel.

Interior of Weimaraner Clutch

Thanks to Giles from Touch and Sew I had just the right fabric for the lining. He recently moved back to England and couldn’t fit all of his fabric stash in the suitcases that he and his parents were carrying home so he graciously gave what they couldn’t carry to me. This cute paw print fabric was among the many fat quarters I received and the colors were perfect for the clutch.

Weimaraner Embroidery

I think the embroidery turned out great! The other great thing about making this bag was that the day Christina posted a picture of the bag on the Louisville Weimaraner Rescue’s Facebook page I had an email from someone who saw the bag and wasn’t going to be able to go to the event, but wanted a bag just like the one I made.  After a few emails back and forth the order was placed and I started stitching again.  When I first told my husband that I was going to make a bag to donate his response was that we couldn’t afford that since we are both not working at the moment, but I told him that I was hoping it might generate some sales and I guess I was right!

Now on to the Father’s day gift I created for a fellow blogger. Shortly after I posted my pictures about the “Grill Master” polo shirt I embellished for my father for his birthday Mindy Slimmer of the Slimmer Pugs and more recently of Pugs and Purrs emailed me about making a shirt like it for her father.

BBQ Crest Shirt

I emailed her back and showed her some of the other barbecue designs I had and she chose the “fancy” Grill Crest to be stitched on a Navy blue polo. We finalized the order and I headed off to Tarjay (Target) to pick up the shirt.

BBQ Crest Embroidery

I love the subtlety of this embroidery and had it as my second choice for my dad’s shirt as well. I think if you saw it being worn you would have to do a double take to tell what it was.

Whether it is making a bag or embellishing a shirt, I always enjoy adding embroidery to my work.  If you are interested in custom designing a bag for yourself or a friend or would like to embellish a t-shirt with a special design just leave me a comment.  I have a lot of embroideries that haven’t been shown on this blog so I might already have the one you are looking for.

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