We had a productive October with both online and custom orders keeping us busy.  I am excited to have purchased some more crates and tables for our expanding studio. I spent many hours last month reorganizing and hopefully making our little operations more productive.

Action in our sustainable supplies section of our shop is always fun! We have sent upcycled colorful wine corks all over the country this past month. We have also given leftover azek materials new life.  We sold a couple batches to Chucka Stone Designs, another handmade shop on Etsy.  They turned our reclaimed azek into gorgeous faux granite coasters! How amazing!

Jenn from Chucka Stone Designs wrote a great article on making the faux granite coasters. Check it out! She has a new batch coming out soon too!

Etsy, our online marketplace, offers a team community that is great for shop support and development. We were asked to become a team leader for Upcyclers, a collaboration of 1400+ worldwide shops that love to upcycle and recycle.  I am very excited for the opportunity and now have a regular Sunday article on their blog. Here are a few of the posts that I published there last month:

Sunstainable Sundays: Corrugated Mosaics

Greener Shopping: Halloween Candy

Sustainable Sundays: Abounding Treasures

Sustainable Sundays: Altered Perceptions

Another fabulous team that I am involved with, EcoEtsy, selected my treasury creation to win a contest and I received some free online advertising! Woohoo! They also asked me to become a ”Pinner” for the team, and a small bio of our shop can now be found on their site.

If you haven’t yet looked into Pinterest. It is great! We actually pin for two Etsy teams and love the access to ideas and photos that Pinterest gives the online world. It just a virtual world of bulletin boards. I personally use it to collect and save craft ideas for the kids. For the shop I use it to promote, collect and share upcycled ideas, and for the gardening blog I use it to collect and share organic gardening ideas.  Here is screen shot of my boards:

Looking Ahead…

Now that Halloween is behind us we are looking forward to the holiday season!  We have tried to replenish our online shop inventory to get ready.  This has been a bit hard to do with our sustainable coasters kits. They have been so popular that at one point I had a small waiting lists for them. We currently only have four sets online. Hoping for more by the end of the month!

November plans included several crafty holiday blog tutorials. Be on the look out!  We also have plans to showcase our first ever reclaimed wood tree ornaments! We are very excited to introduce these gorgeous wood creations. Quantities are limited (as in 5), so be sure to be on the look out!

Here’s a little sneak peek…

Happy November!