Great News about Handmade Holiday!

Great News! The Richmond Craft Mafia has decided to extend the area that we are accepting applications for Handmade Holiday from a 30-mile radius of our fair city to a 50-mile radius of Richmond!

So anyone who lives say 32, 39, 42, 47 or even 50 miles from Richmond who were unable to apply for Handmade Holiday can now submit their application by October 10th just like crafters who live 14, 22 or 28 miles from Richmond or even the folks that are located in the city itself, yay!

Click Here to Apply!

Handmade Holiday Application

Handmade Holiday Craft Show

What: A Juried Indie Craft Show in Richmond, Virginia.

Why: Buy Handmade, Buy Local!

Who: The Richmond Craft Mafia, The Visual Arts Center of Richmond and some of Richmond's most talented indie crafters.

Where: The Visual Arts Center of Richmond (formerly the Hand Workshop) on Main Street.

When: Preview Party, Friday Evening, December 11th - 7-10pm
Open to the Public - Saturday - December 12th 10 am - 5 pm

How: Applications for Handmade Holiday Craft Show will be available online from September 5 - October 10th. Applications are only available online. Only crafters living in the Richmond, Virginia area will be eligible (applicants must be within a 50-mile radius of the City of Richmond). Please read and fill out the application carefully - only complete applications will be considered.

Click Here to Apply

Application - Deadline October 10, 2009

Have you heard of SoopSee?

For a while I was feeling like my internet presence was all over the place. I mean, I had my Etsy shop and a blogger account and social networking accounts. I had purchased a domain, but with my very-limited-web-page-making knowledge, I couldn't do much more than post pictures that never quite seemed to be the right size or in the right place.

What's a girl to do?

Well, luckily I stumbled into an article on The Storque about SoopSee.com. SoopSee aims to unite all of your listings, shops, photos and scribblings under one roof (or rather, one website - your website). Although it's still in Beta testing, SoopSee offers a lot of features that are really helpful. With a free basic account, I was able to choose from 6 webpage themes, pull in listings of my choice from my Etsy shop, and then pull in my blog posts. I can even get stats about my Etsy shop! It was easy, and put all my information on a SoopSee.com domain.

However. . . I had already been giving people the domain I had purchased earlier, and I didn't want to have yet another web address to ask folks to remember. This is where the beta testing came in handy.

While SoopSee is in beta testing, you can sign up for a Sooper account at a 66% discount for the life of your subscription. That means that for $4.99 per month (as opposed to the regular $14.99 per month) you can use your existing domain name with your SoopSee account. You can also choose from additional themes, link multiple etsy shops, link multiple blogs, and split your listings into different sections.

I went ahead and signed up for the Sooper account since the discount is only available while SoopSee is in beta testing, which could end at any time. Because I'm not very technologically savvy, I had a few problems when trying to link to my existing domain, but I emailed the folks at SoopSee and they responded REALLY quickly and helped me fix my problem. I mean, they were REALLY quick.

And there are a lot of great ideas that they are working on for the future, such as being able to import images from your Flickr photostream or link to shops you have on non-etsy websites. You can find more information at SoopSee.com or follow them on Facebook and Twitter. And you can check out some live examples of SoopSee user pages here.


**In light of the article about SoopSee on The Storque they've opened up registration to anyone with an Etsy shop - even though they're technically still in a closed beta phase - but will be limiting signups in the near future again to ensure a good service for those registered.