This Week in Macaroni

Is it THURSDAY already?!?! If yes, this means several things to me. One, that the system has failed me (only slightly - who could have foreseen this many forces coming together at once to sabatoge my otherwise perfect time-management strategy). Two, that Lost is on tonight. Sweet... And three, that it is now May, and I did not manage to wrap up several outstanding April things over here in the weblog. I had hoped to reach 50 total sales in April, and as of this writing, I'm at 65. Woohoo! But with several of those sales custom orders and two custom wedding invitations in the works, I've been spending MUCH more time in my designing headspace than in my blogging headspace. Alrighty then, no worries. We can take care of that right here, right now, huh? First let's take a look at what's going on this week in the land of Macaroni.

The fun stuff first. I'M HAVING A HUMONGOUS SALE! Ok, not humongous, but still significant (as in, you should head over and save right now). As part of EtsyGreetings Gradation Promo, in the month of May, I'm offering a "Buy 3, Get 1" special on everything in the store. So grab the cards that you need for the special grads in your life and stock up while you're there for holidays and birthdays to come. Not a bad deal, right? And it includes notecard sets, so order your fave four and get one of them for nada.



Next, this week the EtsyGreetings Wedding Challenge entries are in and voting is underway. This cross-team challenge involved designing a (paper) piece for a particular couple planning to get married next year. The wedding theme is "Japanese meets retro" and the colors are Tiffany blue, red and black. Since the couple has already ordered wedding invitations, I designed a simple but fun invitation for either an engagement party or couples shower. Here 'tis:

You can vote for your favorite entry at http://etsyfast.com/blog through May 6th. The winning entries from the paper, fiber and jewelry categories will be featured on Wedding Bee.

Possibly my most egregious error this week was not completing my piece on EtsyBloggers' Featured Blogger for April, StormyDesigns. I won't pretend like I had a big long wonderful feature all keyed up and ready to go, 'cause I didn't. As I said before, the blog is definitely the first thing to go when the orders come rolling in. But I do want to give Stormy a big shout-out and to say that I am completely in awe of what this woman can do with polymer clay. Her "creatures" are amazing too, but I'm particularly fond of her simpler pieces, like this vase:

Fellow EtsyBloggers, please accept my apologies. I promise to feature our May blogger in MAY. And I'm doing my best to participate in this week's blog carnival, but I'm not making any promises...

A couple of cool things on the horizon to tell you about. My beloved EtsyFAME, a collective of talented moms from the FAM (Fabulous Artistic Moms) street team has launched its first major off-Etsy advertising campaign this week. Through the power of cooperative marketing, we'll be reaching literally thousands of brand new web-surfing women and (hopefully!) bringing them into our shops. I can't wait to report back on what impact it has on our traffic and sales. Many thanks to Annie of Annie Howes Keepsakes for her amazing work designing the site and pulling this whole thing together.

Also, please head back over in the next couple of days to check out my interview with Hilary Hitchcock of Hilary Hitchcock Photography, a fellow Midwesterner with an eye for nostalgia. Til then...