Update on my current Squidoo lens (web pages)

KNITTING CHALLENGE AND PATTERN - 911 Helmet Liners by 9/11/2009This project is developed to challenge others to knit helmet liners for our troops. These liners are knitted from a specific pattern of 100% wool worsted weight yarn and then donated to our troops that are being deployed overseas. Word back from the deployed soldiers in Afghanistan is that the liners are wonderful in both hot and cold conditions since wool wicks moisture away from the skin.

http://www.squidoo.com/knittedhelmetliners

If you have difficulty reading a knitting pattern, this lens is for you. It takes the above pattern and give explanations and illustrations of the techniques needed to create a helmet liner.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/new_workshop/readingknittingpattern

How about some humor to ‘kick start’ your day. This lens is designed to make you chuckle, giggle, or laugh out loud.

http://www.squidoo.com/AnimalAntics

A personal glimpse into a sturdy country woman of pioneer stock and how that determination helped shape my view of life.

http://www.squidoo.com/Country-Woman

Some ways to save both money and our planet.

http://www.squidoo.com/GreenAndFrugalLiving

Some of my favorite recipes and tips on how to save money while eating healthy food that is quick to fix.

http://www.squidoo.com/frugalcooking

Squidoo is open to anyone so how about sharing what you know about with the rest of us. It is easy and free to sign up. If nothing else, please visit any of my lenses and comment, rate them and let me know what you think.

I hope that if you decide you want to join Squidoo that you will click on my personal referral link below as I receive credit for all referrals.

http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/TalesTrailsAndTips2

What Can I Do With This? Game

What Can I Do With This?


“A stitch in time saves nine.”

Notice that this pearl of wisdom doesn’t state nine what – stitches, cents, minutes or all of these?

“But I don’t sew,” you say.

No problem. It is very simple to sew on a button or to tack a seam by hand. All it requires is a needle, scissors and thread that matches the garment. In fact, if you secure the buttons before you wear the garment the first time you will probably never have to replace one as they will stay in place. The commercial sewing of buttons leaves a thread hanging and if you pull on that thread your button magically disappears. Once that happens you have to spend more than nine minutes finding another one, more than nine cents to purchase a new one and often more than nine minutes to sew it on if you count the time to get out your supplies, sew and put everything away.

The same principle holds true with many things. If you oil a squeaky hinge when it first starts to squeak, it won’t annoy you as much and it won’t wear out as fast.

Fix a leaky faucet and you save money on the water that drips down the drain and the faucet won’t wear out as fast.

Tighten a loose screw or bolt and it won’t fall out and disappear so you have to purchase a new one or throw the item away because you can’t find one the correct size.

But what if the item does break or wear out? What do you do with it? Throw it away? That is the American way after all – just toss it and go buy a new one. But remember, we are working on not spending extra money but learning how to change our wasteful habits.

The thrifty person looks at it first before tossing it to see if there is any part that can be used for another purpose.

Does it have a handle that will work on that case where the handle broke?

Do the small gears lend themselves to your latest art or craft project?

A plate breaks and after I get through being annoyed I wonder if I can use the pieces as mosaics in the new stepping stones for the patio.

My jeans have too many holes to repair – can I make a purse or an apron or a pot holder out of the useable pieces?

When something at our house breaks I hold it in my hand for a moment and try to imagine a new life for it.

Of course, not everything can be reused but you will find many items that can and save pennies or dollars with a small amount of thought and effort. Remember every penny you save this way you don’t have to pay the government taxes on again so it is really more than a penny saved.

One example of this is, I have a lovely brown stretch top in my shop that had a small spot on the front. Now it looked like new except for this small spot and I couldn’t bear to just toss it. I found a small piece of lace with a flower and leaves in it and cut them out, used some fusible webbing and attached the lace to the top. Then I added some fabric paint and a few amber and topaz colored glass beads. Instead of a spot, now I had a lovely lace bouquet on the front. Since this top was slightly too small as you can see from the picture I listed it on Etsy in hopes it will make someone else’s wardrobe sparkle.

Every item you reuse instead of discarding means that there is one less thing in your trash that you have to pay to have hauled away and one less thing in the landfill.

Reuse, Repurpose, Upcycle, Recycle – make these words a part of your daily life and your piggy bank game will grow rapidly.

I'm in two Etsy groups that focus on reusing and recycling items: EcoEtsy and Trashion. When you visit Etsy, search for trashion or teamecoetsy and you will find a wealth of ideas and products to help you save money and be creative with your own items.

COME PLAY GRANDMA’S ECONOMY GAME

My grandmother and mother both lived through the ‘great depression’ and learned some very hard fiscal lessons. Money was scarce but taxes still had to be paid on land or the family homestead would be forfeited and sold to pay the taxes, jobs were non-existent or paid very little if you could find one, often workers were paid in local script and that ‘money’ didn’t pay the federal tax bills. Hopefully we won’t experience these dire circumstances again but we can all use some of the lessons to increase our financial well-being.

They lived by some of the sayings that we now call clichés and ignore because we’ve heard them so often. In this series I’m going to examine some of these sayings and see if they are still beneficial today.

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

I know that we’ve all heard this saying so let’s start by analyzing it. In today’s world a penny isn’t even worth picking up – or is it? If we find a penny on the ground and pick it up we’ve gained a little much needed exercise but we’ve also gained a penny that the government isn’t going to tax us for earning. So that penny is automatically worth more than a penny because we haven’t paid income taxes on it or social security (FICA) taxes on it. That probably makes this penny worth at least 1.15 cents or more. Now if we save this penny and put it into our savings account it will start to earn compound interest and be working for us immediately. Just imagine, if we find a lot of pennies, we have increased our wealth by just bending over and picking them up and saving them.

Now if we apply this saying to our spending habits by thinking before we spend our hard earned money, we can increase our wealth by putting the pennies we’ve saved into a savings account and again use the power of compound interest.

About now I can see you jumping up and down and saying, “But I have too much month for my money right now. I can’t save anything because I need every penny for current expenses!”

I won’t question that this is the case but we are on a mission to fix that problem. I hope that some of what I’m writing about will help you accomplish financial freedom from overwhelming bills and money worries.

How do we determine if we are saving money or overspending our income? One of the easiest ways is to write down every purchase for at least a month and then look at where your money is going. Am I spending it on espresso coffee? Cigarettes? Movies? Eating out? Beer? Snack foods? Rent? Gas? Car payments? Or….?

Once I have this information then I can see where my budget is leaking or hemorrhaging money. As a famous TV psychologist is fond of saying, “You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge”. Information about my spending habits is the first step to fixing the problem. After analyzing my monthly expenses here is the next step.

If you are married and/or have children, it is important to involve the whole family in the debt reduction process. Children need to learn about money matters and how to handle their finances and if you work as a family then everyone has a sense of accomplishment as the piggy bank fills.

NOTE: If you have very small children set aside a small percentage of the savings for a reward the whole family can enjoy so that they see an immediate result of saving.

THE PIGGY BANK GAME

Now you are ready to start playing the Piggy Bank Game. Start playing by picking at least one thing that you are going to reduce or stop buying for at least one month. See how many things you can find that you should or could reduce. If you have an espresso coffee every morning ask yourself if you could make it at home for less money and be just as satisfied. If you smoke, could you cut down one or two cigarettes a day? If you rent movies a lot, could you use the public library and check them out instead. That is free!!!

Once you have determined what you are saving on this month, set up a piggy bank to put your savings into each day. Your piggy bank doesn’t need to be an actual piggy even though that would be fun – use a can with a lid, a jar or whatever you have on hand. You DON’T need to go buy a piggy bank – remember this is about saving money, not spending it!

Paying into the piggy bank is your visible reward for reaching your daily goal. If you drink one less espresso a week, put that amount of money into the piggy bank the day you skipped your espresso. If you smoked two less cigarettes, put the cost of those cigarettes into the piggy bank.

There are three rules to this game:
1. Pay yourself every time you save on what you have determined is your item you are reducing or stopping for the month.
2. Put the money in the piggy bank daily.
3. DO NOT remove any money from the piggy bank until the end of the month.

Once you have done this exercise for a month, count the money in the piggy bank and then take it directly to the bank and put it into your savings account. This is your first step towards economic freedom. Pat yourself on the back and get ready for next month and see if you can save even more.

It is important to continue keeping a spending record of what you are spending each day so you can analyze how you are doing at the end of each month.

Since I like to put a picture into every article and I didn't have a bowl or piggy bank in my shop, I used this beautiful blue felted bowl that is for sale in TanisAlexis shop on Etsy as an illustration of something you could use as a piggy bank. Here is the link to this bowl and other awesome items. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_list_13&listing_id=10715266 She is a member of my awesome EcoEtsy Street Team.

Watch for my next article and please leave a comment if you have found this helpful or not.

Taming Etsy Paperwork

I was recently asked how I handled the paperwork for my Etsy shops. Here is my answer. Maybe it will help others.

I've found that I can print the Etsy invoice on one side of a paper and the PayPal info on the other side as my record (and it includes a picture of the item) and the PayPal stuff includes their charges so most of my bookkeeping info in on one piece of paper.

For my customer, I print the PayPal packing slip on one side and the Etsy invoice on the other side and use that as a packing slip. I also copy their mailing address and paste it into a word processing page, enlarge the font and print it on the bottom of the page - now I have a clean, clear and accurate mailing label to tape to the package.

Happy selling.

Kae

Hanger Christmas Trees

Here are a couple of pictures of Christmas Trees made from wire clothes hangers. They are difficult to photograph because they are so shiney. The first view is the tree standing on a glass table and the second image is of the inside showing the crossed hangers. I've used 6 hangers that are interlocked with all of the hooks pointing downward. They are taped together like a star and then a craft wire is fastened around the bottom to make it secure. Once the hangers are secured, I then take garland and wrap it around the tree shaped hangers fastening at each hanger edge with hot glue. Once all the garland is attached, you can add a string of mini-lights if you wish. I don't because these trees are perfect for nursing homes and other places where you don't have a plug-in or lights can't be used. I then add decorations (again using hot glue to keep them in place). To store, I cover with a cloth and put in a dry place until next year. The colors and decoration choices are almost unlimited. Go Trashion and impress all your friends and family.

Gratitude - Is It Good Business?

I want to share the link to this Reader's Digest article. Personally I've found this to be true and am grateful to see that the science backs up my experiences for a change. To make it even more special - my Sister sent me this link with the comment that she knew that I already did this. :)

The October Reader's Digest had an excellent article that I wanted to share with you, so here's the link. http://www.rd.com/content/the-new-science-of-being-thankful/

Places to promote our shops

Hi,

I want to start a list and a dialogue of good places to promote our Etsy shops. Here are a couple that I have found and almost overlooked and they are free. The links are in my links section on the right hand side of my blog.

1. PayPal shops. Since most of us accept PayPal as a method of payment on Etsy we should take advantage of the free listing in the PayPal shops. It is a very easy signup once you log into your PayPal account.

2. Eons (for those over age 50 and who will admit it) - they have a group that focuses on people in our age group that are selling online. Again free advertising.

3. Flickr is a great site for posting pictures that many come and view just to see what is happening.

4. Your own blog - If you don't already have one -- start one!!! Run, Hurry, Do It Now!!! It is easy and free on Google, Yahoo and many other sites. If you can read and type you can have a blog. If this 60+ grandmother can do it then so can you. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be done daily. It just has to be.

5. Please feel free to link to this blog, email me and ask me to link to your blog, web site, network, so that we can help each other. The more people who discover Etsy and our wonderful crafts, supplies and ideas the better.

6. Please add any more free sites as comments and I will try to get the links into my links section.

Thanks for reading, linking and posting.

Kae

Introducing my New Supply Store on Etsy

Hi Everyone,

I have opened a store on Etsy just for supplies since I was overwhelming my crafts with all the books, patterns and supplies that I needed to list. I hope you will take a moment and check it at at Kae1Supplies.etsy.com

I am also trying to post my Etsy Mini in this message so I hope it works.

VAST 15% OFF SALE STARTS TODAY

Check it out. VAST members are having a 15% off sale.

15% off all items in Kae1Crafts.etsy.com shop. Buyers please write 'VAST OFF THE WALL SALE' in the notes section of your purchase and wait for a revised invoice.
Sale will take place Friday July 6th through Thursday July 12th (art knows no time zones!)

Come look now and get great buys on craft patterns and books, jewelry, cards and much more.

Removing Smells from Books & Paper

I've had a question on how to remove smells from old books or papers.

Here are a couple of suggestions that I found that work:

1. Cedar Oil Spray:

I have had some success in removing odors from old books by spraying the sides and lid of a cardboard box with cedar oil (used to refresh cedar blocks to place in closets)by putting them in a box being careful not to let the oily parts of the box touch the books. Then close up the box and leave for a couple of days. Your books or papers should be odor free or almost so. If not completely free of odors, repeat treatment.

2. Kitty Litter:

I have had moderate success with burying a book or magazine in kitty litter (clean and unused of course!!!) that is in a plastic bag. Close up the bag and leave book or books for a couple of days. Don't over-fill the bag.

3. Freeze it:

Our librarian recommends treating smelly books by sealing them in a plastic bag and putting them in the freezer for a couple of days. I haven't tried this one but I frequently see books stashed in the library freezer so it must work or they wouldn't keep doing it!!!

As you can see, none of these methods are rapid but at least they are fairly safe for the books or papers involved.

If you have a method that works -- and especially for large quantity of books, please post it. Our Friends of the Library group is constantly running into smelly books -- some we discard, some we clean, some we isolate and let others worry about it. We'd like an easy method to clean them all.