Find Hudson Valley Etsy on Pinterest!

Are you familiar with the fast growing popular website and super time-waster Pinterest?

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. To get started, request an invite.

There are several Pinterest boards dedicated to the Hudson Valley Etsy Team to click through...

Etsy has made it real easy to pin your favorite item on to a pinboard.   Every item listing has a "Pin It" button which will give you a pop-up from Pinterest letting you choose which board to add your item to.

So use our team tag "hvny team" to search through Etsy and start pinning!

Where To Find HV Etsy this weekend!

Danielle from Wishbone Letterpress will be at the 64th Annual Albany Tulip Festival in Albany this Saturday and Sunday from 11AM-6PM 

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Quitting Your Day Job With Reclaimed Designs

Jenny Strohm is a mosaic artist who recently took that daring leap of pursing her art, Reclaimed Designs, full-time, here she shares her experience and how it's been going.

Last December, after nearly 30 years of being employed in various jobs as a Registered Nurse, I decided to take a hiatus. My emotional state was becoming more important than the money that I earned, so I decided to follow my heart’s desire; to work full-time creating and selling my handmade mosaics. With a savings of less than I had planned on, and with the complete support of my family, I took the plunge.

The first couple of months were exhilarating. I was ecstatically happy and confident. I was consumed with creativity and my every ounce of energy went into prolifically producing mosaics and posting them daily in my etsy shop. With all of the hard work that I was doing, I was disappointed to have only made a couple of etsy sales, however I remained positive.

I joined Bliss co-op in Sugar Loaf, placed my mosaics in Karmabee in Kingston, participated in a show at Cornell Street Studios in Kingston, joined The Treehouse in New Paltz, and had a few pieces accepted on consignment into Hudson Valley Finds and at Bumble and Hive, both in Rhinebeck. I started an etsy vintage shop and due to a surprising amount of sales, my energy seemed to shift away from my etsy mosaic shop.

After four months of working for myself, I can say that I am content with my accomplishments so far. My profits have been tiny, but satisfying. Sometimes I wonder if I can keep up the momentum and the creative juices flowing. What I miss the most is having the comfort of a steady paycheck. I rarely get lonely, although I do get restless for a change of environment at times. When that happens, I have the luxury of being able to take a walk, or a nap, or a drive somewhere and there is no time clock running. This is my job now, and in order to make it work, I have to keep pushing on. There are so many opportunities still yet to pursue, and I have to get my etsy mosaic shop running again.

I know that it would be very difficult to return to the rigid and structured environment of a “real” job, so I frequently remind myself how lucky I am at this time in my life. I am fortunate to have a husband who is able support us financially. Hopefully my good fortune will last, my profits will get larger, and I can continue to work for myself.

Jenny will have some of her artwork displayed at Passion for Fashion at Cornell St Studios in Kingston, NY starting this Saturday May 12th.

THE GARDEN -  PART 2

Every year I try to make an improvement to the garden.  I was sick of looking at the shabby grass around the raised beds.  The enclosure is too small to get a mower around and too big to be using a weed whacker.  I wanted to neaten the place up.  Let's spruce up the walkways!

The first step was to lay landscaping cloth over the grass to keep grass and weeds from growing up through my ground cover, defeating my purpose.  Pretty easy work as long as you don't mind being down on your hands and knees for an hour or so.  Didn't pay too much attention to precision or neatness - it's not carpet.  I did make sure I used plenty of landscape staples to keep the cloth taught and less easily compromised.

I explored a couple of options for ground cover.  Initially, I thought of pea gravel, that stuff that is common on walk ways that makes that lush, crunchy sound when you walk on it.  It's a little expensive and really out classes my humble wood beds.  Also, no doubt bits would find their way out of the enclosure and into the lawnmower blades and that would not be good.  The other thing I thought of was crumbled rubber, a product that is gaining popularity on playgrounds and being touted as earth friendly because it is made from recycled tires.  I had seen it at Home Depot, not too expensive but before I lugged all those bags home I took a look on the Internet to get the real story on it's safety.

Good thing.  Because it is made from tires which involve rubber (not too bad) and petroleum products (uh-oh), gardeners were reporting that they were not using it around their organic gardens because of chemical leaching.  Not only is my garden organic but a) I go to great lengths to do my part for the planet and b) I live about 50 yards from the Mahwah river which is a primary water source for upper Bergen County, New Jersey.  Needless to say, no rubber pebbles for moi.

That left good old fashioned mulch.  It is environmentally safe and it eventually just composts to soil.  Yeah, I'll have to replace it every couple of years but it's worth it.  The garden looks neat and it will keep weeds and grass from jumping into the beds.

Mother's Day is coming up and then it'll be time to plant the veggies.  Can't wait!

Where To Find the Hudson Valley Etsy Team This Weekend!

New member Danielle of Wishbone Letterpress will be selling her beautiful hand-printed stationery and more at the 5th Annual Prospect Park Craft Fair, located at the Bartel Pritchard entrance drive to Prospect Park at 15th Street and Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, NY. The show is on Saturday, May 5 from 10 am - 6 pm, so you won't forget to pick up a nice card for your mom this year, right? Good.