And we all shine on

Wow, I guess a woman's got time for crafts, keeping the house in decent shape, or a blog, but not all three :)

These past several days have had the theme of "Crafty Good Karma". I got an Etsy 'Conversation', which is like an email, from a local seller who needed help setting up her shop. Since I was all relaxed from my vacation, I said "sure, why not" and set up a time to meet her at a local restaurant with free wireless Internet access. She gets help on the technical side of posting items on Etsy and I get to eat a fabulous quesadilla, so everyone wins.

I met her at the restaurant and walked her through the process of listing a new item, how to resize pictures, save them in a folder to organize them, and then upload them to Etsy. All in all a couple of hours, not too bad. She offered to pay me in cash, but seriously, I didn't need to be paid for that. But when I saw her gorgeous jewelry, I asked her if she would make me something cool. I am so excited to receive the necklace she's making me. You'll see why when you check out her Etsy shop.

She makes the cutest necklaces out of old rosaries and prayer medals and all sorts of vintage, upcycled components. Very awesome.

The next event in my theme of "Etsy Good Karma" was that the winner of a charity auction for my high school finally contacted me. I had donated a custom-made necklace and earring set back in the spring, and had exchanged a few emails with the winner, but she went on vacation, and I went on vacation, and no progress was made on this project. But finally she told me what she wants, so I'll get started on her project this weekend. Yippee!

And then it hit me. I love making jewelry, but it's not the majority of what I sell on Etsy. My magnets and stamped dog tags sell *much* better than my jewelry. And yeah, I could make lots of jewelry for myself (I'm working on it!). But I realized I could satisfy my jewelry making fever by making gifts for people, and *also for donations to charity auctions and raffles*.

So I can actually *do good* with my jewelry. How cool is that? So far I've committed to another custom necklace and earring set for my company's Annual Giving Campaign raffle, and also for a final fundraising auction for Barack Obama's campaign.

I'm not really down with giving money to political campaigns, but Obama has a way of making people want to give him money :) Maybe that makes him a really good (salesman) politician, but whatever he's selling, I'm totally buying into it. Smart and articulate? Sign me up, dude.

I suppose that's an indication of how low our standards have gotten for politicians. Speaks in perfect sentences, check. Coherent and makes sense, check. Top notch college and graduate degrees, check. Bingo, you are now the best candidate for President of the United States. Seriously, anyone can win, even raging idiots who drive drunk, can't speak, and are on vacation all the time, so if you meet the criteria above, you must be preordained.

So anyway, I can assuage my conscience by not actually giving him money, but donating a custom jewelry design option for an auction event to raise money. You can see my donation as well the details and signup link for the Halloween Bash here.

Pretty cool, huh? And now I'm off to make more jewelry. Because I'm pretty close to getting *behind* in my orders now. Yikes.