Etsy Challenge — Please Vote!

Etsy Challenge, in its own words:

Welcome to The Etsy Challenge. Here Etsians compete in 12 different categories each week. The winners of each category will compete the following week for the Weekly Grand Champion.

This week my Lark’s Spicy Footy Salve is taking on all comers! Well, okay, it’s up against four other pretty awesome things in the Candles/Bath/Body category.

I’m not gonna win if y’all don’t go and vote for me. I can only vote for myself once, after all! Please go here and add to my tally:

http://etsychallenge.blogspot.com/2008/09/929-candlebathbeauty-challenge.html

If I win, next week I’ll be in the Weekly Grand Champion challenge, so I’ll need your votes again. I’ll let you know, and thanks for voting for me!

August Contest Winner, and a New Contest!

The August contest went as follows: “Since I have a kitten, tell me a story about a kitten. Or a cat. Or, if you’ve never had a cat, a dog. Or perhaps your younger brother. Someone smaller than you, in any case, and ideally kind of fuzzy.”

I’m afraid I indulged in a bit of nepotism in choosing my winner, and it is indeed my own mother, who brings us this tale of the cat we had while I was growing up:

My favorite cat story involves our first cat, Spot. When she was about 8 years old, my husband came home from work and found a dead cat in our front yard. It had been hit by a car and since it was white with black spots like our cat, he assumed that Spot was the victim of a tragic accident. He carefully put her in a bag and waited for the rest of the family to come home.

As each member heard the news there was a lot of crying and gnashing of teeth. Karen was the last to arrive and I really dreaded telling her. When she heard the news, she could not believe it was true and insisted on seeing the cat in the bag. (The rest of us had only taken a peek.) I tried to convince her not to look but she was persistent and when I dumped the cat out of the bag and saw the belly we all looked at each other in amazement as we realized that the cat in the bag wasn’t Spot.

At that point we all looked around asking each other where she could be. She was always patiently waiting for dinner when we came home from school & work.. It didn’t take too much calling before we saw her coming across the yard. I would love to know what went through her mind as we all ran screaming to greet her. I don’t think she had ever gotten a reception like that before.

Spot lived to a ripe old age of 18 or 19. She had adopted us when she didn’t have a home and I think she was a very happy cat.

Unfortunately we never found out who the cat in the bag was. I am sure that some family missed her though.

I’ve decided to make a change in the way I run my contests — instead of only offering them to people who get my newsletter, I’ve decided to open them up to anyone who reads my blog! Here’s September’s contest:

Tell me a tale of harvest — whether it’s ‘tomatoes coming out our ears’, or a ride in a haywagon with a teenage sweetheart; a corn maze, the farmer’s market, or your grandmother’s favourite method of cooking up all the extra zucchini. Pictures, recipes, poetry, I’ll accept it all! The prize as always is a ten dollar gift certificate to Om Shanti Handcrafts.

I’ll take entries here, or you can email me at om.shanti.handcrafts@gmail.com; even send me a link to a blog entry if it fits the theme. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Deadline is early next month, whenever I get round to doing next month’s newsletter.

July’s Contest Winner

But wait, you say, I didn’t know there was a July contest!

There’s a contest every month, in fact — but you have to be subscribed to my monthly email newsletter to get it. I write up a bit of shop news, an article or two, and the contest around the first of the month (sometimes later than others) and send it out. If you’re interested in subscribing — if only for the contest! — you can comment to this post, or email me at om.shanti.handcrafts@gmail.com to subscribe.

July’s contest was ‘how do you beat the heat’ and this month’s winner didn’t take but a moment’s thought:

That would in fact be Dani of SweetTarragon, lying there looking oh so nice and cool. I admit to jealousy! Okay, I do that too.

Sign up to find out about this month’s contest!

A winner!

A couple weeks ago I was featured at De Lavande Hand Beaded Necklaces & More — Rachelle did a lovely interview and ran a contest. The winner was one Mary, otherwise known as PopBlocks on Etsy and the lady who writes Now Entering Momville, an awfully fun blog.

After a lot of consideration Mary opted to spend her ten dollar gift certificate on a bottle of my Good Smellin Bug Stuff, which I duly sent off. Upon receiving it she did a little review in her blog…

From Lavande blog, I won a $10 gift certificate to Omshanti, a terrific etsy shop with tons of all-natural beauty and health goodies for pretty darn cheap. I am going back there for birthday gift baskets and stocking stuffers.

Check out her place for the rest of what she had to say — and thank you, Mary, for your kind words!

A contest!

…and not even mine, this time. But you still might wind up with some of my stuff. And another feature! It seems to be the week for it.

Rachelle at De Lavande Hand Beaded Necklaces & More does a weekly bit on another Etsy-er. This week it was my turn! Here’s a bit of the interview I did for her:

Favorite thing about it?
Making people relaxed and happy. Also all the good smells. And playing with pretty colours. Really, it’s all about playing with things.

Read the rest at her blog, and enter the contest!

Also, you might want to check out her shop — she sells beautiful jewelry!

Of upcoming bath teas and lip balm experiments

I figured today that it was time to take a moment and reformulate one of my old favourites…

Bath teas. Muslin bags filled with a variety of lovely-smelling herbal blends designed to pamper your skin and make your bath a thing of luxury.

I had to go to the post office anyway to mail a package — my first sale from the Creative Cafe Salesrooms, thank you Jill! — so I figured I’d inventory my herbs and see what I needed to get my old bath tea recipes up and running again. Well, it turns out that ‘what I needed’ was ‘most of it’ and I was less pleased than previously with my old recipes anyway — so I’ve invented a couple of new ones:

Afternoon Tea — rooiboos tea with orange and lemon peel — good enough to drink though I don’t suggest drinking your bathwater, truly.

Wake Up Call — spearmint, eucalyptus, sage, and rosemary — it’ll get you moving in the morning!

Flower Garden — roses, lavender, jasmine, and red clover — for the more delicate soul (or someone who just needs a nice soothing bath)

And lastly, one I haven’t thought of a name for yet — oatmeal, calendula, chamomile, and comfrey leaf — every ingredient chosen to soothe and pamper your skin.

A contest! Suggest a name or two — if I like one enough to use it, I’ll send you three bath teas of your choice!

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On lip balms: For those who are confused (or just greedy), who can’t settle with just one thing — I’ve posted a three-pack of my lip balms, your choice, for only ten dollars — that’s a two-dollar savings from buying three at their regular price. Do go and take a look, and never fear, though there are only two choices now, more will follow!

Along those lines, I decided today to attempt to mend the Scarborough Faire lip balm, with success! I’ll be posting it tonight, as soon as the tins cool enough that I can put the lids back on. [ Edit: It's been posted now. ] I simply put the tins in a shallow pan, heated them very gently until the balm was melted again, and added a few drops of sage and rosemary essential oils — both foodsafe and thus fine for your lips as well. The scent is still subtle in the tin, but once you get your finger in there and warm it up — and once it’s on your lips — it’s heavenly.

I’m also doing an experiment — banana lip balm. I don’t know if it’ll work. Fresh bananas were obviously out and I haven’t ever seen banana essential oils so my idea was thus: purchase banana chips and put those in the oil. Simple enough I hope though I did have to do quite a bit of searching before I found banana chips that didn’t have tons of additives. Eventually I met with success and (minus tributes of a banana chip each for the rats) they’re sitting happily in the oil as I type.

Looking forward to seeing if it works, because that opens the doors for a whole slew of fruit-flavoured lip balms. Mango lip balm, here I come…