Did you know you can now customize your M&M's® with PHOTOS?!! Holy cow this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, close anyway. I thought it was pretty neat when they let you customize with words but adding the photo option is awesome. I see on the home page that they also have team M&Ms® but they're only for baseball. Sadly, hockey gets no love. Oh, you can put logos on too! That might be fun for a craft show giveaway but not as memorable since people would just eat them right away. heh Looks like you can also customize the message inside of Dove® candy wrappers which would be fun. I think the nieces and nephews may have to get some Uncle Dan Rocks M&Ms® this year. muah ha ha

Sneak Peek for Swap-O-Rama-Rama Los Angeles This Saturday

Just a reminder that Swap-O-Rama-Rama is coming up this Saturday (ack! So much to do!) and a little peek at someone's designs for the silkscreening station. I hope you can join us, it's going to be a lot of fun!

Picture Frame Corkboard Idea

I saw a brilliant idea in the summer issue of The Nest magazine. Yes, I know the magazine is aimed at newlyweds but I didn't realize that when I signed up for my free trial subscription. heh It just goes to show you never know where you'll find ideas that will strike a chord with you. And my husband found a recipe or two that he'd like to try, so it's definitely useful. (Am I sounding defensive? ha ha) Anyway they did a feature with the owners of an online store called The Curiosity Shoppe, which carries some really cute things by the way. Come to find out these two are the Derek & Lauren of Design Sponge DIY Wednesdays fame. So The Nest showed many lovely photos of their apartment and mentioned the above pictured wall covered with photo frames which have cork in them. The suggestion in the magazine is to "Buy frames from a thrift store, spray paint them bold colors, pop out the glass and cut the cork to fit the rectangle." Ingenius says I! You could just switch out the artwork or photos whenever you wanted. I especially like this idea for use as an inspiration board in my office. Much better than a traditional rectangular bulletin board.

Vive Le France! and Thailand Too!

We have some new 1" pin-back buttons in the Etsy store. This is the start of a new series showing canceled stamps taken from our childhood collection dating back to the 1970's. Unfortunately the stamp collecting bug didn't stick but we've always loved the look of some of these older stamps that our Maman exceptionnel snagged for us when she worked at the geological society.

Moo moo Moomoo Moo-Moo

I received my Moo Card prize package (which I won through the Illustration Friday blog back in February) a couple weeks ago and finally have photographs to share. I'm extremely impressed with everything! The Moo MiniCards are really adorable, with a beautiful satin finish, and I think they generate extra interest because of the unusual size. The stickers are gorgeous and really, really shiny which I like. The only thing I didn't like, and I'm sure it's my own fault, is that multiples of the same image weren't grouped together on one page when printed. I wanted 6 of the same image on each sticker page so that I could tear out pages and give them to people but they were all interspersed and distributed randomly throughout the 15 pages. I'm sure there's something I should have done when ordering that would have fixed this. The postcards are nicely done and the colors came out just as I had hoped. I have to say the MiniCards printed a tad darker than I would have liked, which I have heard before from others, but now that I've seen it firsthand I'll just adjust for it in the files I submit in the future. I was also going to say that one drawback of getting so many different images is that it was a little time consuming to pick them out and get them uploaded. However, my husband pointed out that I'm a hopeless perfectionist and a normal person wouldn't have had to spend so much time on it. heh.

Final verdict: these Moo products look fabulous and are reasonably priced. I'm going to be ordering more very soon. Not only are they perfect for self-promotion efforts but I'm thinking of all kinds of gift ideas now.

Craft Tutorials Blog Has Moved

You may remember that last year I started writing for the Craft Tutorials blog. It's changed hands a couple of times since then and now has a new home at crafttutorials.net. Vernon is doing a great job of getting things all spruced up and adding new content. Don't forget to change your bookmarks to the new address and also swing by the flickr pool to see what everyone's making.

LA Craft Mafia is Bustin' Crafty Kneecaps

Last Tuesday Lori and I attended the Los Angeles Craft Mafia's monthly meeting in Venice to see what they were up to and spread the word about Swap-O-Rama-Rama. Founders Nichole and Morgan were super-nice and are doing a great job facilitating some crafty togetherness. They have a blog and an Etsy store and are planning to do some craft shows too. The guest-crafter for this particular meeting was Sonya Nimri who showed everyone how to make cute bracelets and necklaces by hand-twisting beads onto wire. Sonya manned one of the designer sewing stations at the last LA SORR and she'll be helping us out again in June. She also has a book out called Beadalicious and it looks really fun. Nice to see the Craft Mafia finally make it to Los Angeles!

Welcome StartUps Readers!

If you found us through the summer issue of Entrepreneur's StartUps Magazine then let us say welcome to our blog! And thanks for taking the time to visit. If you haven't seen StartUps Magazine before you should check it out. Kim Orr wrote a great article about building a business from your crafty hobby and she was kind enough to mention us. You can read part of it online but it's definitely worth it to get the full issue. Lots of good info for all of us entrepreneur-minded people.