Welcome!

I wanted to welcome everyone and anyone who is following along!  I started this blog to attempt to document my creative projects!  At this point in time I feel like my creative thought process is so very scattered.  I come up with one idea, which leads me to another idea, and then another one and so on and so on.... There are SO many crafts out there which I am interested in, however, there are only 24 hours in a day, and I have things to do other than craft (unfortunately).  So, lets start at how this Etsy shop, Blogging, Facebook page, Crafty Sewlution thing started!

So, since deciding to stay home with my son (and now daughter) I have wanted to have a job or work or something that I could work on during nap time, and at night or any other free time I might have during the day.  Nothing that was too important or would require me to be gone from my kids during the day, but would fit in with my somewhat unpredictable schedule.  I never tried very hard to find something that would work, so I never really found anything, but knew there was something I could do! 

I visited a friend in this past February who had started to sell on Etsy and in local stores.  I was so impressed with what she was doing and really wanted to do it too!  However, moving into a new house and having two little ones to take care of, one of which was not the best sleeper, I never had time to do anything other than take care of her or her brother! So, fast forward to April, I had found a sewing project online, with video tutorials and it seemed so simple! Realizing I had probably picked a project that was, to say the least, a bit over my head, I found another project.  My first project was to make a simple blanket for Eamon.  It was basically sewing two pieces of square fabric together, which I could handle.  So, to make it a bit more difficult, I made one side of the blanket out of 4 square pieces of fabric sewn together. At the fabric store I found a piece of flannel fabric with tools on it for the other side, it was perfect!  The blanket seemed to take FOREVER, and cutting and sewing the minky fabric (for the patchwork side) was a bit tedious.  But I finished it and my son loves it and still uses it!  Then I made another blanket for my daughter, this one had patches on both sides.  It turned out really well, still working on getting my patches to line up perfectly, but Ainslee doesn't care about that and loves snuggling with the blanket!  Which I guess makes it successful??

After these successful and enjoyable projects I starting thinking about creating and selling on Etsy.  There are SO many online tutorials and guides which helped me gain the basic skills needed to create more difficult projects.  I was nervous to actually sell my products on Etsy, so it took me a while to actually create my shop on Etsy.  I finally did however, I opened my shop over labor day weekend, with some enouragement from Mark and help taking pictures from my sister-in-law Jenny (thank you)!! It has been a process learning how to take creative, accurate, attractive photos, to learning how to figure out shipping costs, to communicating with the shoppers and fitting in sewing time.  However, I feel like I am starting to get a handle on all of this.

I hope to post tutorials for different crafts and pics of what I am working on or crafts I have created.  I am going to start small and hope to get a post in a week, if I do more than that than think of it as a bonus!!

Enjoy and hopefully you followers will start to do some crafting too!

Sarah