This week has been a fraught of computer and networking issues, so I'm terribly behind on getting this feature ready.  This week's artisan is baublezptoa! 

A self-proclaimed ex-hippie, Carmen began her jewelry career right after high school when she found her local bead shop.  She strung for friends and family, but soon found herself drawn away when the local bead shop closed and school and work picked up in intensity.  Her talent laid low while she maneuvered herself through the corporate world, but it came into full bloom when she began searching for a new way of life.

Since she made that break from 'the real world', she's acquired more and more skills and explored her artistic abilities and talents in many different areas.  One of her more recent accomplishments was to gain her certification in Precious Metal Clay.  The below piece uses PMC as a base for two lovely peridot cubic zirconias.

Carmen's certification in PMC allows her to share her knowledge and skills with others.  I'm a pretty bad teacher and have a weird learning style, so I have a great deal of respect for anyone who's able to communicate with others and allow them to explore new things.  That said, she prefers to stay in the studio and design, sculpt, and tweak her pieces.  

The piece below really caught my eye.  The glitz of the cabochon is unbeatable and snazzy, and you can see how much care she puts into her pieces in the detailing around the sides and top.

Another part of her life is her animals.  She has a beautiful fur family, and I really enjoyed looking through her galleries.  Currently, baublezptoa is donating 30% of sales to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.  Pet lovers will also love the paw print medallion at the top of the page.  Everyone will love at least one of the drool-worthy, fine-art pendants!  Absolutely gorgeous.

You can find baublezptoa's shop on etsy, as well.  She has a website here, and a blog where you can read about her crafts and other artist features.

Travel inspires many artists, whether it's other artisans creating beautiful things in a new, exciting way, the vistas, beautiful building, the exotic taste of another language, the novel flavors of a foreign dish, or simply just the time away from daily life.  This week's artist, Holly of Tuscan Road Designs, is no different and found herself in a new, creative world after her visit to the island of Murano.

Her style is very eclectic and feminine, and you'll be able to find rustic, organic designs and frilly, victorian-esque designs snuggled next to clean-lined, modern and bold, colorful designs. It's a candy shop where almost anyone would be able to find something to suit their tastes.

Her outstanding collection and gallery of jewelry is only part of her day-to-day life.  After taking lampwork classes, inspired by the beauty of the glass artists discovered on her journeys, she taught and she shared her knowledge with her son.  Her son, in turn, shares his experiences with wildlife rehabilitation.  You can read all about the baby owls (who are disgustingly cute) on her blog.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a thread about branding your products.  It was interesting to hear how people identified their products and I got some ideas for the future.  Then I forgot all about it. ;)

Today, I noticed that I had an unusual number of views, consistent throughout the day and decided to check it out.  I found that my orange tabi were in the 'related items' section at the bottom of this article (which is as interesting as the original thread!)

It's spring/summer so I doubt I'll get any sales from it, but it made me smile all day to see my views climbing and the few extra hearts spread around.  Yay for nice surprises!

While looking for my next project, I ran across six balls of a wool-acrylic blend yarn.  I vaguely recall receiving it a few years ago from my mother-in-law, and it's been stuck in one of my stash boxes since then, awaiting a project.  

I did some experimenting with it, knit a couple of swatches, and found that it actually had a pretty hand and excellent memory.  Both of those qualities made me automatically assume that it'd knit up into nice socks, and indeed it did!  I'm actually pretty impressed and listed the pair in my shop.

They're a bit less, price-wise, than my 100% natural fiber socks, which is probably a good thing.  They're also easier care than most of my current listings, and I hope both appeal to people who've been put off before. 

I have two more colors that need to be used up, and I hope to get to them in the next week or two.  It's great to see my item count climbing!  Of course, it'd be nice to have to work my butt off to keep things stocked, but I might actually reach my goal of 50 items by the holiday shopping season.

Last night I was doing some reading on the computer (and shopping, I'll admit it), and I flipped over to craftcult to check my evening's views.  I noticed that they'd made a significant jump, when I got the statsy email saying that I was on the front page!  My chrome and black tabi were the featured item.

Anyway, I thought I'd share.  I was pretty excited!  I got a tidy amount of hearts and a number of views.  Maybe next time I'll get on in the middle of the day! :)  

As you might have noticed, I did a bit of tweaking on the website.  I changed the layout and color scheme to something a bit less stark.  

I liked the 'clean' look it had, but I realized that wide expanses of white with a touch of black and orange probably wasn't the most welcoming.  I hope the red and gray is somewhat warmer.  I still need to go back and redo the colors of some of the text to make them match the new color scheme better, but that can wait a little while.

The Shop section also now has a full range of custom listings, where you're able to pre-purchase a pair of socks and then communicate with me on the colors.  I have a few other ideas for making that slightly more user friendly, but it'll do for now.  Depending on how well I'm able to maintain stocking my etsy, 1000markets shops, and consignment sales, I'll probably add some pre-knit items there, as well.  More organized than it currently is, hopefully!

It looks like incoming custom orders are about finished for the Christmas shopping season, and I'm breathing a big sigh of relief.  I have a few more to finish up, and I'm then going to tackle a few holiday gifts for my loved ones.
I got in a rather fat shipment of yarn today, and I'm resisting the temptation to rip into it and knit up a storm.  I set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year to use up some yarns that have been hiding in the back of my stash, and I realized that I needed to ramp up on that before rolling around in my new lovelies.  The recent stash busting has yielded two more large pairs of my Simple Luxury Alpaca socks in a nice, subtle buff color (found here and here), and a nice, cushy pair of super thick, large, graphite tabi (found here.)

Exciting news: After the holidays, twiddletoes will be joining hands with Leslie from CoolEastMarket, where my handmade tabi will accompany her extensive offerings of tabi.  Leslie has been fantastic and upfront, as we've hammered out details, and I hope this relationship is lucrative for the both of us!