Guest Post from Orabelle Baby

**Thanks to Shayne for Orabelle Baby for agreeing to provide a guest post while Regina and I are "away" at a Moda Retreat***

Greetings from Orabelle Baby! I am excited to be a guest on Crafty Girls Workshop blog, and to have the opportunity to introduce my shop and myself to you. My shop features handmade clothing for infants and toddlers. In addition to making clothing, I am a full-time momma to a 4 year old son and a 2 year old daughter. I feel so fortunate to be able to stay home with my children while at the same time help somewhat with the bills! I find passion in my work and my children bring me inspiration daily. I love it! I hope you have a minute to check out my site and my blog (which offers some great discounts and giveaways!)

Happy Spring!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/OrabelleBaby

http://orabelle-baby.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Orabelle-Baby/194925981741?ref=sgm

Shayne

**Here are some pictures of Shayne's adorable creations!***

A perfect spring outfit for a little girl!

A fun outfit for a little traveler!

I'm Linking this up to Friday Follow, Follow Me Friday and New Friend Friday (see links in Sidebar)

We were featured!

I can't believe it, but someone chose some of our fabric to show in a treasury on Etsy! That's totally cool. Well, I can't figure out how to get it to show up here, but you can see the treasury if you click the underlined words.

Thanks Crazy Daisy Designs!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Black Wednesday SALE

So is anyone getting ready to hit the stores on Friday for the Black Friday shopper mania? I, for one AM NOT planning to do that. In fact, I've never been a 4 in the morning get the best deals, get out of my way sort of shopper. Usually, Regina, my husband, and I travel an hour north to Fredericksburg to shop the town, eat at our favorite Italian place (Pasta Bella), and go to the Country Peddler craft show in the afternoon. BUT after doing that for the last four or five years, we've actually been increasingly disappointed with the offerings at the Country Peddler show, fewer crafts and more kitchy, rhinestone studded purses and not so crafty stuff. So, this year, we're going to take a day off after Thanksgiving to rest (I'm going to hopefully learn to crochet with my sister) and on Saturday and Sunday Regina and I are planning a Sew-A-Thon! We're hoping to sew up some cute stuff to get a good head start on building a handmade inventory that we can sell at a craft show in the Spring. Yes, I said SPRING (have to start early because we want to do A LOT of sales). A thought just occurred to me (that happens sometimes early in the morning). What do you do in other countries since you don't have the "official" start of the Christmas shopping season the day after Thanksgiving? Perhaps this is why it is easier to focus on handmade gifts and the less commercial reason for the season in other countries. Well, that's just a thought, if any of you out there are in other countries, I'd love to hear what you're doing this holiday season. Alright, now, for the exciting part of this post, the...

BLACK WEDNESDAY SALE

10% off ALL

Fat Quarter Bundles

The prices have already been adjusted for you so stop on by and grab some goodies before they disappear! Why is it called Black Wednesday? Well, Brandy (sorry about that), over at The Buzz decided to set up a list of all the great sales that are going on from Etsy sellers starting the day BEFORE Thanksgiving. Perhaps you're like me, and you're stuck at work instead of able to be at home prepping for Turkey day (or perhaps you don't have the Thanksgiving holiday in your country, you can still benefit), but you don't feel like working, well, why not surf on over to our shop and check out all the great Fat Quarter bundles we have for AWESOME prices! Throw in one of our great patterns and you'll have a great gift for a friend who sews/quilts or a great gift for YOURSELF!

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Shopping,

Anna and Regina

The Crafty Girls

The Cat's Out of the Bag

I just added a new line to our shop announcements, and this is what it looks like:

Pssst...visit our blog to see today's SECRET ITEM, if you purchase the SECRET ITEM, you'll get FREE SHIPPING, even INTERNATIONAL!!

Or something to that effect. So, that's what I'm going to start doing. But instead of clogging up this oh so important space here in the middle, I'm going to add a little widget over there----------> in the side bar called SECRET ITEM and underneath I'm going to put a picture of the item and include a link, so it's SUPER easy to get to it! Now, the best part is that if you read this blog, or visit my shop, you'll know about the SECRET ITEM but those who don't, might not get the FREE SHIPPING deal. But, feel free to tell your friends, because in the days leading up to Quilt Market (NEXT WEEEKK YEAH!!!)the items might just get better and better! And we do have multiples of some things, so there is a chance that even if you don't get it right away, we might have some more. So, sign up to follow me if you don't already, or you can even subscribe to this blog in a reader and get updates EVERY DAY! Remember there will be a new SECRET ITEM every day!! (Or that's the goal at least)

Are you as excited about this as I am?? PLUS, did you know that we always offer FREE shipping for purchases of $100 or more? Yep, we do!

Oh, and one last thing, IF you happen to fall in love with the SECRET ITEM of the day and IF you happen to fall in love with something else, IF we can fit all the items into a flat rate, priority envelope ($5) we will ship the ENTIRE order for FREE! What a DEAL!! Now, since I just thought of this idea, and I'm just starting it NOW, I'm going to go and post that new SECRET ITEM and you'll have an EXTRA few hours to find it, because I'm going to keep it up until 12:00AM Friday October 2 (at which point it wil turn into a pumpkin, haha) Hopefully that will give our wonderful customers in other countries time to find the SECRET ITEM.

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to share the excitement in the comments!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

P.S. Following me on Twitter, MIGHT just be a great way to find out right when the new SECRET ITEM is posted. Hint, hint.

P.P.S. Actually, I'm feeling sort of CRAZY, so I think I'll try and do something fun. How about this, if the SECRET ITEM is a one of a kind and it SELLS right away, I'll post something NEW! So it could be any time of the day! A great reason to follow me on Twitter or just check back often!

One Pattern, Endless Possibilities

Isn't this pattern adorable? It's sooo cute and versatile and reusable in so many ways! You can use it to make little onesie dresses for your daughter, grandaughter, neighbor's children, best friend's baby, the list goes on and on. It only takes a standard onesie and 1/2 yard of fabric! Look at all the cute options we have right now for sale that are already cut into 1/2 yard pieces!

Here is a cute bundle of Snippets by American Jane.

It's getting harder to find this fabric. But it happens that we have a 1/2 yard bundle!

Check out this lovely group of holiday fabrics from Sandy Gervais!

All 1/2 yard cuts, there are 11 fabrics in this bundle and they are already prewashed for you!

These are just a sample of the many fabrics we have that would be super adorable made into little onesie dresses for your (or your friend's) baby. I think I'll try and make up a few since I have a friend who is having their first baby girl in October. Her name is going to be Lily and we happen to have some adorable fabric called Lily Pond that would be perfect! I've also started adding the patterns from our Etsy shop to our New shop, so that you can purchase yardage for a pattern at the same time you buy the pattern and the precut fabric, it's your one stop shopping destination! I hope you'll stop by and check it out! More gift suggestions tomorrow!

Happy Stitches,

Anna

I'm Back!! And there is a SALE in our Shop!

Hey Everyone,
I really missed posting on here. I haven't even been able to keep up the blog over on our website. I've been posting more on my personal blog, called Sew Good Sew Far, and I usually have mentioned shop updates over there as well. But I really enjoyed having a blog dedicated to the shop that I don't have to dig around to find. And I also really love knowing that at least 88 people are following my posts! So I've decided to keep this one up again, and do my best to post more often if I can. So, today's exciting news is that we've decided to do a little house cleaning before the fall starts. And by house cleaning I mean, CLEAN HOUSE because Regina's house is our shipping and receiving department and we need some room for all the NEW fabrics that are going to start arriving VERY soon. Yes, NEW fabrics, that's what I said. But before we can show those, we have to clean out some old sewing patterns and even some older fabrics that we have left over from our destash that we started in June. Please help us clean out our shop by visiting us on Etsy and viewing the items on pages 7, 8, 9, or 10. If it has the word SALE at the beginning of the listing title, it has been marked down 10%! I've put more than 40 items on sale, many for less than $5!! (Such as this, or this, or this.) Remember, we will combine as much as possible into one shipping envelope or box, so make the most of your shipping cost by purchasing multiple items! And while you're visiting, we wouldn't mind at all if you want to peruse the items on the front page that are the most recently listed fabrics that we picked up last Monday at the Moda warehouse. Yes, we made the 5 hour (each way) drive to go up to the warehouse so we could stock up on some basic solids that will coordinate nicely with the new fabrics we have coming in, as well as some prints we just couldn't say no to. As you are looking at the newer items, you might notice that the title says "YARDAGE AVAILABLE" and then the listing description says something about another website. It's true, we are expanding a little to allow you all to purchase more than just one yard, or as much as we might feel like listing, at a time. Our other site, that I like to call our sister site, is set up as an e-commerce shopping cart specifically so you can purchase yardage from the bolt! (Because who can ever just buy ONE yard?) We hope to expand it later to include more patterns and even kits, but at the moment we're trying to keep it up to date with the yardage listings as we list the fabrics on Etsy. So, please stop by and if you do decide to buy something, mention that you heard about the SALE from this blog (or from a friend who read this blog) and we'll send you an extra surprise with your order, how about that!? Gee, is that enough links for you? If you click on any of the links you should see some of the items I've picked out and think are hidden gems within our shop. Well, I hope you'll have fun visiting our shop(s) and that even if you aren't able to purchase something at the moment, you'll keep us in mind (and your favorites list) for future gifts for friends or projects for yourself. Until next time.

Happy Stitches to You,
Anna and Regina
The Crafty Girls

Destash Sale

I hope you all had a fabulous July 4th weekend. I had Friday off from my full time job and was able to spend most of the day scanning in some NEW items for the shop, almost 100 new items in fact. After spending a few months madly sewing like crazy (Thanks Regina for your lovely creations) the Crafty Girls have come to a conclusion, the people who read our blog and visit our shop already know how to sew! And all you wonderful visitors probably would rather purchase fabric and patterns instead of pre-made items for gifts. SEW, that is the new direction we are taking in our shop. To start off, since we don't quite have the capital to just run out to the Moda warehouse and buy bolts of fabric (although it is very tempting, let me tell ya) we've decided to DESTASH our own fabric. Now, there are several advantages to this, first of all, Regina and I are pre-washers. Meaning we pretty much always wash any new fabric we bring home. This is an advantage for you because when you purchase fabric from us, it is a particular length AFTER being washed/pre-shrunk! I don't know about you, but I've been very frustrated lately when I have purchased fat quarters (18"x22") and gone home, washed them and then found out they were actually closer to 17"x21" after washing! If we sell a fat quarter in this destash, it's AFTER washing, so you're getting a better deal. We've also gone through our sewing and quilting patterns and found several that we've never used, and no longer need to keep around, so we want to make them available to anyone who would like to make good use of them, and the price reflects that. This is a DESTASH sale, so the prices are very good, we didn't even mark any of our fabric over $8 a yard, now that's a steal! Some of this fabric is still out on the market but difficult to find, so you might want to check us out and snatch it up while you can! Oh, and did I mention that we have several charm packs for sale? I still have a few more to get listed today, but I've posted the ones I thought would be relevant, including a couple of Christmas/Holiday packs. Remember, it's time to start thinking of making gifts for your loved ones for the holidays. Our charm packs are a steal for only $7! OK, the down side, shipping. Yes, the cost of shipping is going up and it may seem pricey to spend $4 on a pattern and have to pay $2 for shipping, but we are willing to combine shipping. We'll even set up a custom listing for you on Etsy if you want to purchase multiple patterns (and fabric, and charms). This will make it easier to get a specific cost for the shipping. With the new flat rate postage boxes, it is a little easier to figure shipping costs, but it's to your advantage to purchase multiple items so that you actually save on shipping costs. So, go take a look at the new items in our shop. We still have more to destash, these items are really only the beginning, plus we will have some BRAND new patterns to list very soon! Thanks for visiting!

Anna
The Techy Crafty Girl
P.S. Tell your friends too, the sooner we sell this stuff, the faster we can get new items ordered to offer to you all.

More Items Listed

We've listed several new items in the Etsy shop today. I'm sort of torn at this point. We've been listed on Shop Handmade for about a month with zero sales, but I listed several of our items on Etsy on Friday and this morning found out we had made a sale! So, we are considering switching over to Etsy permanently. But for now, we will have several items listed on both. Thanks for visiting and shopping with us. Please note, we are willing to make custom items if we feel we have the skills to make them, so please don't hesitate to contact us about custom orders. Also, if you live in or around the San Antonio, Texas area, we can arrange to meet you to deliver any item you purchase. That will save you the cost of shipping. Just send us a message on either Etsy or Shop Handmade to let us know you are local. Well, I hope you will visit us soon.

Happy Shopping,

The Crafty Girls