Salt Cookie Christmas Tree Ornaments

 I teach in the pre-school class at my meeting(I'm Quaker) and this year at the Holiday Baazar we're going to make and sell salt cookie Christmas Tree Ornaments. This is a great activity for kids, families, friends everyone who love to get crafty. I got this from  http://crafts.kaboose.com/saltdoughgifttoppers.html

What you'll need:

• ½ cup salt
• 1 cup flour
• ½ cup water
• Rolling pin
• Cookie sheet
• Toothpick
• Miniature cookie cutters: star and Christmas tree
• Acrylic paints: green, yellow, and various colors of your choice for tree ornaments
• Glitter glue or glitter paint
• ribbon

How to make it:

1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
2. Mix together, salt, flour, and water until dough is formed.
3. Knead the dough on a floured surface until the mixture is elastic and smooth. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle with flour, continue to do so until stickiness is gone. Do not add too much flour, this will dry out the dough and will cause it to crack before you get a chance to bake it.
4. Roll out the dough to about ¼” thick with a rolling pin that has been dusted with flour.
5. Use cookie cutters to cut out as many trees and stars as you want.
6. Use a toothpick to make a hole toward the top of the shape. Poke the toothpick into the shape, then holding toothpick straight up and down, make a circular motion as if you were stirring something. Keep circling until the hole is the size you want.
7. Place all shapes onto an ungreased cookie sheet and place into the preheated oven.
8. Bake for 2 hours.
9. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
10. Paint the trees green and the stars yellow.
11. Use the handle end of the paint brush to dot on ornaments by dipping into paint then dotting onto ornament.
12. When paint is dry, use glitter glue (we used green) or glitter paint (we used gold) to put a sparkling cover coat on your ornaments.
13. When dry, thread ribbon through hole and tie in a knot in the back.
14. Tie onto package.

Tips:

• If your toppers are large enough, you can make two holes in each so that you can thread ribbon through like a button, only showing a small amount of ribbon on the front.
• These make adorable pins to wear to school. Just don’t make a hole. Glue a pin back to the back of the completed ornament instead.
• Uncooked salt dough doesn’t keep well, so only make enough dough for the ornaments you are going to make. If you are only making a few toppers, halve the ingredients above. The listed amounts will make enough ornaments for a classroom of 20.

This Christmas...

The day after Thanksgiving I got up at 3am to visit my local Target with a friend. I figured I had never done the Black Friday thing before, why not this year? I am a hypocrite and maybe a poser because the day before I made my status "buy handmade and local this Friday! Stick it to the big business' and help the little guys!" But we go and it's just awful. I looked around the store and could find nothing that I wanted to give
 my family. It's all the same! 
   Now I've been on Etsy for a little over a year now. While I haven't sold much, I realized that there are 
some incredible Artisans on Etsy. Like these fantastic shoes http://www.etsy.com/listing/53597636/studio-jellyfish-comic-heels-in-yellow byStudiojellyfish. I adore them! You can find anything and everything. Or if you like to see and touch 
what you're buying first hand, shop local, support your local small businesses. I decided to make presents for 
my family this year and I shopped at 2 different yarn stores to get what I needed. Yes it can be more expensive 
but you're helping the little guys make it through these tough economic times too.
  The point of this long shpeal is this: I want to start a campaign to revamp Christmas. And I've even worked 
out a slogan! "Personalize it, Don't Commercialize it". So the next few week I will encourage you to do just that. 
For phase one of my campaign, I will bring you tips for homemade decorations, ornaments, great places to shop 
local around Atlanta and great items from Etsy. Of course for those new tech gadgets you'll need to go to you 
local giant chain...but why not by a nice casing and personalize it? http://www.etsy.com/listing/62788956/sale-peacock-water-resistant-padded?ref=sr_gallery_2&ga_search_query=ipod+cover&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_page=&order=&includes[0]=tags&includes[1]=title&filter[0]=handmade 


Signing off until tomorrow! Happy handmade shopping!

Holiday Bootcamp Pledge

I, Morgan, pledge to participate in the Etsy Success Holiday Boot Camp to the best of my abilities. I vow to check in every week, do my homework and support my fellow Holiday Boot Campers. I will read the weekly newsletters and blog posts, check in on the weekly forum thread, read the weekly blog post, check off the checklists and salute the mascot. I promise to share what I've learned with those who need it, support my fellow Etsy indiepreneurs and, most of all, have a positive and persistent attitude. I understand that together we can spread the word about our handmade and vintage goods, making this holiday season a more unique and meaningful one to gift givers and give-ees everywhere!

On fire!

   As per my goals, I am back with another blog post! Do you like the look of the blog? They have a fancy new app where you can design and backgroud of your blog. I really wanted an image of my own work but the file was too big. I need to play around with it more.
    This week I made a Dual color bath mat. I found a new way to cut strips of cloth which in the long run I think saves time and there seem to be fewer threads sticking out of the mat. I sold the other one I made last week to a woman in Santa Barbara and she seemed interested in possibly buying another one if she liked the first alright. Whether she does or doesn't I just really felt the need to make another mat. Here are some pictures of the finished product:

   I am on fire because I have already finished my product for this week! And I took pictures! I haven't uploaded them to my laptop yet but hopefully I will get that done in the next couple of days. For now I will bid you all good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.

What's on for this week

Now that I'm home from camp I've decided to set goals for myself in terms of my Etsy bussiness. Some how being at camp helps me to become more focused on my own life goal and opens me up to new possiblities. Every week I will set goals for myself for what I want to do with Morgaine Le Fay and in my own personal life.
      Every week I will try to post 1 item in my Etsy shop. It doesn't sound like much but I have ADD when it comes to crochet projects and tend to take on massive projects. I really need a place to work in my house so my goal is to my desk which is currently serving as a storage shelf into a workspace. So everyday I will find a new home for 5 things in my room so I can clear a space. And lastly I will actually try and post something once a week in this blog. Even if it is just pictures or a video of something I like. Hopefully it will pertain to crochet.
        So this week I have been working on 2 projects. I sold the bath mat I made from sheets which inspired me to make another one, only bigger and with more color. So far I have finished the first layer of colors and have to make the strips for the next color. Hopefully there will be three. I'm also working on a sweater in pumpkin yarn. The yarn is a cotton/Viscose Microfiber/Silk and I got a great deal on it when I was at camp! And I also got a friend of mine to agree to take pictures and her twin sister to model so it should be great!

A song that's been stuck in my head all week:

Shopping local, supporting handmade.

A perfectly lovely way to start my day is shopping for yarn. I think I have a problem: I had a mini panic attack when I thought my credit card had expired and I couldn't buy yarn :). But all in all I love to buy yarn, and I love to buy it from small local shops. I know they are more expensive and people might feel that they are getting less bang for their buck. But what you are paying for is higher quality yarn. Even the acrylic yarns are softer where I shop. But I think is most important is that you are shopping local, supporting small business similar to the ones you see on Esty. I think on a way I'm paying it forward. Shopping local, supporting handmade.

My soon-to-be baby sweater. I wasn't even planning on buying and making this but I saw the yarn and had to have it :)

Support your local hooker! Week 1

And this time I'm not talking about Rugby! Although I do it there too :) So my Etsy team has decided to post blog questions/topics for team members to answer in an effort to bring more readers to our blog and to learn more about one another.

Here is the week1 question: When did you start crocheting? Did you teach yourself or did someone teach you? Tell us the story of how you became a hooker.

   My sophomore year of high school, I joined the fiber arts club. A couple of my best friends from high school were in the club run by  Ms. Taylor and they taught me the basic stitch and I loved it. My first project was a pretty sad, although Ms. Taylor told me it was beautiful ha ha.
   My mother had taught me how to knit when I was in elementary school and while I enjoyed it, I didn't take to it like I did to crocheting. Seeing this, she bought me a book of stitches and I would just sit there with the book and practice the different stitches. Somehow during that time I taught myself how to read a pattern but I'm not really sure when I learned that.
   I think my first major project was a blanket for my twin bed which I never finished ha ha. I think I bit off more than I could chew with that one but it did turn into a lovely throw. I love crocheting. I get so excited about new projects and ideas that I tend to jump from project to project. I'm trying to work on that :) Hopefully I will be crocheting long into the future. I would love to own a boutique with my friend Dan that includes unique hand-made items, but I'm still working up to that. Hope you learned a little something about me :)