Would you like to be a featured artist?

I believe in handmade items and cottage industry. I would rather buy an item from a fellow artisan or crafts person than to buy it from a mega-store at half the price!

In order to do my part in promoting the handmade industry, I am going to feature a different artist or crafts person each week – the offer is open to any artist or crafts person who creates handmade items and sells them.

These posts will appear one day each week (not sure which day, yet – I will let you know when we get ready to roll!). If you would like to be featured, simply email me at hollylu16@gmail.com and include the following information in interview form:

1. What is your first name and where are you from? (State or country only)

2. What type of art or craft do you create and how did you get started with it?

3. Where do you market your products? How long have you been selling your work?

4. What is your dream for your products or artwork? Is it a mainly a hobby, or a main source of income (or would you like for it to become a main source of income)?

5. How are your items different from the next guy’s? What is unique about your work?

6. What is your favorite subject matter/medium/material (whichever applies to your art form)?

7. What is your favorite part of creating and selling your products or artwork? The part you like the least?

8. Tell us a little bit about your family and how they feel about your business or your artwork.

Please also provide:
• A link to your shop, website or blog

• A photograph of one of your items or a link to the photograph with permission to use it in this post

• A photo of yourself or your work space if you wish (optional)

Once you’ve sent your information, we’ll schedule a date for you to “go live” on this blog. I will send you a reminder email the day before your feature goes live so you can tell all your friends to watch for it!

All I ask in return for this is a link back to my blog (to your feature) and that you spread the word among any other artists or crafts people you feel may be interested in a bit of free advertising and promotion.

Thank you to Cher at cecilbobby.com for the idea to do this. I am kinda copying her! I don’t think she will mind – it is all for the good of the handcrafted community!

I have decided to formally promote the handmade and artisan items of my friends and fans of Holly&Sage! This decision was influenced partly by Heather of Studio FM and partly by the weekly FEATURED FELLOW ETSIAN feature on Cecil Bobby's blog.

Heather's generosity to all of her friends that sell handmade products inspired me to do more sharing of my own resources with my friends. It can only help all of us if we spread the word about each others work! I am all for buying everything I can from a cottage industry rather than a mega corporation!

Cecil Bobby's blog gave me an example to follow. She features a fellow Etsy seller each week and in order to be included you only have to have an Etsy shop and answer a few simple "interview" questions. She only asks that each participant links back to her site and that they "spread the word among any Etsians [they] feel may be interested in a bit of free advertising and promotion." (If you have an Etsy shop you can find the information for being featured on her blog at )

I am going to do a similar feature here on my blog. This blog started out as just a place for me to ramble on occasionally about things that were on my mind (like whether buying sweat pants at Walmart was a good deal... ( )

Anyway, I am working on improving it and using it to promote my handmade products as well as those of my friends (including my Facebook friends and fans of Holly&Sage). I reserve the right to publish the occasional rant about Walmart, but I will try to keep it professional! ;- D

This is the plan: I will make a list of questions and anyone wishing to participate can send the answered questions to me and I will schedule a date for their 'interview' on my blog. I will, of course, link to your site or Etsy shop (I don't require that you have an Etsy shop, only that you make a handcrafted product that you sell). In return I ask that you link back to the blog - from Facebook, Twitter, your site, I don't care where! The idea is to get incoming links. That will make the whole endeavor work. The more people that see the blog, the more it will help YOU, ME, and EVERYONE else! I think it is a win-win situation!

I will come up with the questions and post them in a day or two. I welcome any advice or suggestions, and please spread the word!!

Thank you!

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holly&sagewelcomepage
Originally uploaded by Steve & Holly2008

I am spending the day updating Holly&Sage fan page on Facebook! (I was expecting to spend an hour or two on it, not all day! But alas... I guess I am more tech-impaired than I realized!)

This is my Welcome page to new fans, what do you think?

Frugal and Green Avocado Facial Mask

Clair Boone from Mummy Deals talks about making a simple and inexpensive face mask out of avocado. Mmmm - feels so nice!



Visit Frugal Living Now for more homemade beauty products that you can make easily with things you already have around the house.

Frugal Weddings Part 1 - Save on Your Wedding Flowers

If you are planning a wedding and trying to stick to a budget, flowers are going to be one of your main considerations. The prices that couples pay for their wedding flowers is highly variable. For example, if you choose to use expensive out-of-season orchids flown in from Hawaii, you are going to spend a LOT of money!

On the other end of the spectrum, my mom and I gathered wild flowers from the side of the road for my wedding and arranged them ourselves in vases that she already had! You may not want to go that far, but you can save a substantial amount on flowers if you know what you are doing.

• Try to stick with local and in-season flowers. You will spend a lot less this way whether you hire a florist or do it yourself. If you are not getting married in the spring or summer, you may have to think outside the box. For example, if you are getting married in December, holly and evergreen boughs make lovely arrangements.

• If you choose to use a florist, be honest with them about your budget. They can help to steer you to choices that you can afford.

• If you are planning a church wedding, consider scheduling it right after Easter or another occasion when the church will already be decorated.

• More and more brides are arranging their own wedding flowers. For a step-by-step guide to creating your own wedding flowers Click Here!

Our culture has changed so much in the last 50 years that so-called timeless parables may no longer apply. Case in point: consider the classic story of the ant and the grasshopper.

The OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away..

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY : Be responsible for yourself!
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NEW VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopperdoesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

What Price Those $5 Sweatpants?

I was recently involved in a discussion about the evils and the virtues of shopping at Walmart. One person said, "I just bought $5 sweatpants from Walmart today, I'm pretty darn happy." For me that sums up the problem with Walmart right there!

If you think about it, how can anyone expect to buy sweatpants for $5? We couldn't buy sweatpants for $5 twenty years ago! How is it possible now? Think of the people involved in making those pants (cutting, sewing, packaging, labeling), shipping them to the store, stocking the store and selling them. How much money did each of those people earn?

A lot of our economic problems have been caused by this mindset that we need to have EVERYTHING and have it NOW and have it as CHEAPLY as possible. Walmart has convinced us that we need $5 sweatpants! US companies can't provide them for that price (they have minimum wage standards to follow), so Walmart gets them from another country (China, India) and there goes another US manufacturing company out of business. Then people lose their jobs - not just those that work for that manufacturer, but support people that provided services for those people - local stores, restaurants, gas stations, etc. Unemployment goes up and the cycle continues. Who is the winner in this scenario? I don't think there is one unless it's the corporation of Walmart. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I would rather pay $20. for a pair of sweatpants and live in a town where people can earn a living by doing an honest day's work. I would rather pay $20. for a pair of sweatpants and wear them for five years instead of getting them from Walmart and replacing them in three months because they fell apart. And I would rather buy only what I need (do we really need 6 pairs of sweatpants in every color of the rainbow to do our daily jog? or will one good, well-made pair suffice?) and pay a fair price for it and know that I am supporting our economy in the only way I know how to.

Low-Cost Bookends

This is such a brilliant idea! I love unique and quirky decorating ideas, and I am always on the lookout for bookends that are heavy enough. (A light-weight bookend is useless for holding up a stack of books!) I saw this on HGTV and couldn't believe the ingenious simplicity of it!
Use classic Campbell's tomato soup cans (or other attractive cans) as book ends! I am not as fond of the bag of sugar on the next shelf up, but to each his own!