school is about to start

and i have mixed feelings about the semester. i am rested up and in a way am looking forward to the new typography class with jennifer sterling and my new letterpress class which i am sooo happy about 'cause one of my favorite teachers (Macy Chadwick) is teaching. i'm also considering whether or not i want to drop the general studies class to take it in the winter or summer... i also have to present my new thesis topic, so i'm a little gunshy about the whole idea. sigh.

on the crafty front, i'm going to start a new men's line of winter hats to put up on my etsy shop. i'm also working on a skull hat ;) which i think i'll looooove :) and perhaps a monkey hat? i'm not sure but there will be more kooky hats in my future!

new stuff in my shop!

there's some new things that i've made for my etsy shop :o)

i love these lovely & simple filligree wind beneath my wings earrings! i think they're quirky but cute.

the next picture down is a pair of crochet earrings that look like suns; i originally made this as a surprise gift for one of my buyers but i made a second pair think they could also sell! i hope so. i called them the long summer crochet earrings!

the third pic is actually a felted teeny tiny turtle pin that i custom made for a customer who wanted a green turtle rather than an orange/yellow one. i love him! oh and on a side note, this turtley pin is currently ranked #57 in the top items list in the etsy sampler!

additions to the gallery

i've kinda been slowing down on the swappin, as i've working on my new etsy store :) i've made 25 samples of my lucky penny necklace and sent them into the sampler. it's my first contribution and hopefully will add to my 12 sales i currently have :)

additionally, since we have revamped the gallery a little, i decided to include my wedding photos on this gallery since marco doesn't really have time to integrate the photos into the former isla-fiorelli wedding site. today is our three-year (!!!) anniversary and so posting this pic (my absolute most favorite pic of them all) and link to our new wedding gallery is appropriate ;)

new a lot of things...

so i've been going through major gallery site issues lately so i've upgraded my gallery and i think most if not all the previous links i have made to my gallery will be broken. poooo. but on the upside, it's now working as it should, and poor marco can finally get some sleep.

in other news i'm doing well on etsy, and so far have 9 sales :) i hope i'm not jinxing it by saying so, and hopefully more sales will come along. i've made a few things lately, some for my shop and some for swaps. here are a couple of my favorites:

the first is a beheading necklace! it's crocheted and when worn, it's meant to look like your neck is severed. totally cool. i made this for a swap but i hope to make another one for wearing at school on halloween :)

the second is a wooden frame that i'm selling on etsy. it's fully customizable, so it doesn't have to have an octopus, but this is my sample showing up in my shop. i hope to sell many!

featured on etsy!

i've been open for three and a half days and i've been featured on the front page of etsy! see if you can spot my item (hint: it's smack dab in the middle and it's got a little red animal on it!). i hope to make enough cool stuff to make a featured item appearance again :)

i've also sold 4 items, which is great too! i'm off to a better start than anticipated. now, i'm just going to have to keep at it. i'll be posting new items for sale every couple of days, so hopefully i can tempt people to keep visiting the shop :)

lasandri * at * etsy

today i opened my new etsy shop! if you are familiar with what i make then you'll see a lot of stuff in my shop is very familiar. if you have liked something i have made and want it for your very own, let me know and you can purchase it through my shop! come and visit! you can find me at lasandri at etsy.

the hummy cam

oh the hummy-cam is totally the most happy-exciting thing for me this summer (a little sad, i know!) but it makes me so happy! you know, it's the little things. these are two screenshots of the low-res hummy-cam. i've been getting a lot of "customers" to my feeders and usually if you watch it for a couple of minutes, one will show up. i have noticed, however, that yesterday it was pretty hot and they didn't come out as much :-/

i know the link is in the post before this, but i love the hummy-cam, so here is the link to the hummy-cam again ;) (until i figure out how to embed it into this blog (i've said that already, right?)

brian's birthday & some family pics AND the hummy-cam

last thursday was my cousin brian's birthday; he turned 13 and we decided to throw him a party on saturday since he went back to florida this morning. it was a typical family party and here are the photos :) this is a pic of him and his sister, jackie (who lives here in cali).

since we hardly are all together at the same time, we decided to take pics of all of us cousins together too... except the day we decided to do this, cj had to work so he's missing from the photos. we took the pictures anyway, and here they are!

in addition to all the party craziness, i've been finishing up my summer class and gearing up to re-start my thesis. meanwhile, i have been doing small contract jobs here and there, localizing (checking translations) in italian for cisco. that's been cool 'cause since i only go one day here and there, it's easy to squeeze it into my schedule.

and last but not least, my amazing husband marco, who is wonderful in every way, has help me set up a hummy-cam! it's a webcam pointed at our two (we just bought another one this weekend) hummingbird feeders. i'm working on embedding it into a webpage that relates to this blog, so if you're feeling down, they you can take a look at the hummingbirds that come to my balcony :) i'm still working out the kinks right now, but it's viewed best in mozilla, netscape, or firefox, and if the picture looks really static (like the feeders aren't swaying or anything), just press reload in your browser to start the picture feed :)

kanzashi heaven (or kanzashi hell!)

i've made several kanzashi flowers for a couple of swaps and i thought i would show one set i made. they are for shadowboxes and i think the recipient was pretty happy with them. i don't know how many more i will be making 'cause these took forever! of course, they are tiny (about 1.5 inches each) and they take so much more manual dexterity than i can manage. i'm quite clumsy, so i've poked myself a ton with these :)