Thanksgiving Weekend Sale!!!

Everything in lama works is 20% off this weekend!!!! 

After purchasing your item please wait for me to send you a revised invoice to reflect the sale price before you pay for it in PayPal!

Sale ends Monday at 10 pm Central time.

Happy shopping :)

Until next time ....

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

********Free shipping in the US and Canada to all blog readers!  Just mention my blog in your notes to the seller***********

Featured ETTeam Member: Dividivadesign

As a proud member of the ETTeam I've decided to start featuring my fellow members and showcase their stores every Thursday. Our first installment is from Dividivadesign

Here is the story behind my store, where did it all start?

When I was round 20 I was a silver jewelry artist educated by a well known jewelry master in Sweden. Then I studied Ceramic art and after some years as full time CRAFT worker I opened a Crafts and Design gallery and made a lot of exhibitions with new Scandinavian design and Craft for many years. There where no time left for me to make my own thing. But since about 2 years I have started to make jewelry again, but now with a different taste. More colorful . More beads and pearls. When my oldest son saw my jewelry he showed me Etsy and then It all started.


What can we find in your store?

You can find unique handmade jewelry like Bracelets, Necklaces, Ear rings and Rings. mostly one of a kind. You can also find jewelry supplies as beads, specially unusual lampwork beads, and freshwater pearls in good quality.


Do you have any favorite items?

For the moment, Jewelry with combination of pearls and silver or gold plated spacer and jewelry with unusual lampwork beads.


Where do you get ideas for your products?

I get my inspiration from the colorful Caribbean I live in but also from the Scandinavian nature. I love that mix!


What has been your biggest store challenge?

As I am rather new it is to be seen and to find my buyers.


Do you have any advice to other store owners, especially newbies?

Be proud of your talent.

Make sure you check out all of the items in Dividivadesign's shop!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Before I head out for the weekend, I wanted to wish everyone a very happy and turkey filled Thanksgiving!! I will be traveling north to the frozen tundra of north central Wisconsin for Thanksgiving with my family. It should be a fun filled weekend of lounging in front of the fire, relaxing in the jacuzzi, cooking tons of great food and playing with my adorable 2 1/2 year old niece.

I'm hoping that the sub zero temperatures will inspire me to get a lot of knitting done so when I come back I have many more items to post in my shop! What's on the docket? I picked up some alpaca yarn to make my new cable knit hat design in a few different colors. One more pair of socks is on the way. I have some more cashmere yarn to make the newly popular scarflettes in new colors. I'm also bringing along a lot of cotton yarn to restock up on my dish cloths. I've been throwing some of those in as my free gift lately, so I'm actually running low! I think I'm going to pull out some chunky yarn for a few more ear flap hats too.

I know it's a lot to do, but it is a 5 1/2 hour car ride and when you live in the middle of the woods and it's way cold outside there isn't much to do other than hang around, chat and knit. I'll probably be challenging my husband to a few games of Rummy (and winning of course). I'll try to get some works in progress up while I'm up there.

Happy Thanksgiving!! Eat lots of turkey :)
Until the next time ...
The girl behind the lama
~LMM

2 Sales!!

2 Sales in one day?!!??!?!! I sold 2 of my brown scarflettes today! YAY! This scarf has been featured in a few treasuries from the Etsy Treasury Team of late so I'm wondering of the sales came from that.

Who knows, but I sure am happy about it! 3 sales in one week is huge for me! Let's hope it keeps on rolling through the holidays. Seems like I need to get some more knitting done and find some daylight hours to take pictures of the new items ...

Until next time,

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

Busy Weekend!

I forgot to blog about it, but I managed to survive my super busy week at work and successfully pulled off another Visiting Professor Lecturship and learned quite a bit about new happenings in the world of 3D motion analysis in the pediatric orthopedic world.

We celebrated the event with a fantastic dinner at Texas de Brazil, a new restraunt here in Chicago. What a cool place to eat! It's definitely a new twist on a buffet dinner. There is a more traditional buffet with salads, rice and beans, soup, cheeses, meats, bread, potatoes, you name it.

Behind the buffet was this incredible wall, 2 stories tall, full of wine. It's more of a room of wine, encased in glass. Up at the top?? A girl ... in a harness ... doing acrobatics around the wine room. Flipping around, dancing up and down the walls, moving across from one side to the other efortlessly. She may have been actually getting bottles of wine, but regardless, so incredibly cool!

Dinner itself is literally meat on a stick. Waiters walk around with big swords (yes they call them swords) of all sorts of grilled meat ... filet, chicken, lamb, pork. They literally bring the sword to your plate and slice a hunk off for you. So good! I highly recommend it to anyone near a chain.

So now hopefully I can get back to the buisness of the store. I started working on some Christmas cards this week (to be posted soon!). I also finished up another bambo skinny scarf and another pair of socks. Stay tuned for new project updates! Check the store for updates! And don't forget about free shipping to all my blog readers.

Until next time,

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

I'm such a nerd ...

So I'm sitting at work thinking about what projects I'd like to put on my list to work on (shhhh don't tell my boss!). It's been awhile since I've made any dish cloths, so I was thinking about new colors or sizes or new something. I feel like I've made cloths out of every color I could find in my local stores and to be honest, I get tired of buying the little skeins that only give me 2 maybe 3 cloths, so I'm trying to buy in bulk, so why not shop on the Internet??

Well, in my searching I came across this other fantastic blog post: Putting Cotton Through the Paces. Oh yes, it is an excellent scientific article on the shrinkage, absorbency, stain release, softness and durability of 5 different cotton yarns commonly used in making dish cloths (most of which I actually have at home right now ...). As a scientist, it was really a well thought out and clearly conveyed study that has answered many of the same questions that I have: yarn. ... I want to make something ... is one yarn really better than another???

I found it a pretty entertaining article, I hope you do too!

Until next time ...
The girl behind the lama
~LMM

Guess who had a sale?!?!?!?!? That's me!

How exciting it is to have a sale! It's been about a month since my last sale so I'm super thrilled! To be honest I think I'll get excited about every single sale that I make, regardless of how many I have :)

I have the great Etsy Treasury Team to thank for the sale too! They have been consistently pulling my items into their featured treasuries and someone saw my bag ... marked it as a favorite ... and was still thinking about it a few days later and just had to get the bag for her daughter!

I think this sale in particular is really special to me because the bags are where lama works all started. To be honest I really like to make the bags (when I have a few hours to dedicate to it) because it's much more creative for me. I don't really have a pattern to follow and my color choices are endless!

So I'm a pretty excited girl today, lets hope the sales continue!

Until next time ...

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

Kind of?

OK I cheated a bit, but that's what engineering is all about right, working with what you have.

So I took a basic blogger template .... found the html codes for the colors I wanted and just plugged them into the blogger color editor section. I stumbled on the fact that I could insert my own image into the title, so that helped things a lot.

I gave up on finding a lovely template online somewhere that I could edit to my own desires. It's way too hard to jump into someone else's code, and believe me ... I avoid writing code like the plague. Hate it more than anything.

So here's the new blog design to go with my new logos. Thanks to mycreativepaper for the new designs! Here are some samples ... what to do you think????

Business Card

Custom Order Tag

Stamp Design for my cards

Warning - blog under construction!

I am so excited to have completed my Etsy store makeover and have a whole new image for myself ... new banners, business cards, labels, tags ... the works. So now what to do with my blog.

I really want to incorporate my banner into my and the design elements into the page and have no idea what I'm doing.

So in light of that. I apologize if things go missing or my page looks like a mess. I'm experimenting and doing my engineering best to figure out what I'm doing without going crazy.

Stay tuned!!
~LMM

What's Cookin?

So what's cooking in my kitchen this week? Lots of yummy things! I'm switching things up this week and cooking a mix of Pilsbury and Taste of Home recipes. Here's what's on the menu for this week!

Ham and Cheese Pasta

Broccoli Sausage Simmer

Bread Bowl Beef Stew

White Bean and Pasta Soup

Beef Stroganoff

Enjoy and happy cooking!

Fun New Toy!

I've been slacking on the blog posts a lot lately. Things are rather busy in my neck of the woods these days. The lab I work in is hosting a conference on Friday, so I've been rather busy throwing together the last minute details for the speakers and all of the fun administrative work that comes along with having 100 physicians and therapists over for a visit.

But I did want write a post about a fabulous new toy I bought this weekend, an early Christmas present to me. I've been thinking about investing in a die cutting machine for awhile now and when I was at the Holiday Extravaganza party at Archivers this past weekend, they were having demos on a few models. Let me tell you, I fell totally in love with the Making Memories Slice!!

This baby weighs less than 2 pounds, is completely electronic and cordless. All of your die cut shapes are stored on a collection of SD cards. Each card costs $39.99 and contains at about 100 designs including least 1 or 2 font sets. That's not even my favorite part ... you can take any image or letter and cut it in just about any size from 1" to 4" in 1/2" increments! So not only am I getting a lot of dies for only $40 but I can cut them in any size I want - SOLD!

It's super easy to use and kind of fun to watch. There is a tiny razor that retracts in and out and revolves around a motor to draw your shapes (yes I'm an engineering geek). I've been having a great time with it and should have a few cards out this week with the new dies on them. I only have one SD card for the moment, but I'm sure more will be coming my way in time :)

So until the next time (hopefully not too long from now) ...

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

What's Cookin' in Laura's Kitchen??

So what am I cooking up in my kitchen this week? More Rachael Ray faves for sure. Here's what's on the menu this week:

Turkey Bacon Double Cheeseburgers

French White Burgundy Chicken Stew

Greek Goulash

Tacozagna

I hope you find something in that mix that you might make for yourself this week!

It was a bit of a lazy weekend here in Chicago. Cold and kind of raining, bordering on snowing. Dark and dreary for sure. I did get a few projects done and a few more started, and found a new toy at Archivers, by far one of my favorite scrapbooking store. They had their big Holiday Extravaganza today so I'm starting to get much more pumped up about the holidays.

Hope you all had a great weekend!!

Until next time,

The girl behind the lama ...

~lmm

Store Updates

The socks have made it into lama works! I've also changed a few of the pictures for my scarflettes. What do you think??

More projects to come this weekend. Don't forget about the Half Price Friday below!!

Another Friday ....

Another half day Friday is here! Before I get into that I wanted to show off another treasury I made it into this week, this time with one of my Batik bags!

Fantastic Creations from ETTeam

I'm just thrilled to be a part of this new team! I've definitely seen the number of views on my items spike up since I joined, but no sales yet. My next big task is to create a treasury of my own ... I wish getting in didn't require me to be online at 3 am ... or I wish the treasuries weren't blocked from my office computer :)

But on to Half Price Friday! What to offer this week? Well, because snow is sadly in Chicago's forecast for the weekend, I'm offering my Purple Passion Boucle Mittens for only $9.00 plus shipping this Friday only!

Soft and fuzzy purple boucle mittens with with fuzzy purple and light pink accents! Perfect for staying warm and stylish this winter.

This pair of mittens is sized as either a woman's small or child's large. Length from tip to end of cuff is 9.5 ". Distance from base of thumb to tip is 6". Circumference of mitt is about 8".

Additional sizes and matching hats are available upon request, just drop me a note!

So go ahead and purchase the mittens if you'd like them, but make sure you mention my blog in your order! I'll send you a revised invoice with the sale price.

Have a great weekend! Socks are complete! Pictures will be up on here as well as a post to Etsy this weekend!

Until next time ...
The girl behind the lama
~LMM

What's coming up?

I was shopping around Etsy the other day, yes I'll admit i was looking for inspiration for something new to make. What did I come up with?? Socks!! I haven't knitted a pair of socks in a few years and I just found my last missing sock needle , it's destiny!!

I was looking at sock yarn the other day and my hubby got so excited about the prospect of having hand knit socks.... He might get really mad if I tell you this, but last winter I was thinking of knitting something and socks again came up and he actually asked me to teach him how to knit so he could make some socks. We'll just leave it to say that he doesn't have either the fine dexterity or the patience to knit, so that was a quickly abandoned project.

So sock knitting it is. I have a pair in the works for Andrew, and some other yarn ready and waiting. I think I'm going to start selling custom socks, made exactly for your foot size, so keep an eye out ... I should be able to make the first post this weekend!

What else is coming up? I have another Etsy artist, mycreativepaper, working on some new banners, avitars and business cards for me. I'm trying to give my store an official image, something more than a picture of the favors at our wedding. So my first banner is ready!!

Hopefully a new blog design is in my future as well! I'm getting rather bored with the standard blogger template and I feel like I'm ready for something bigger than that. I've been struggling with this one lately. I haven't found any free templates that I like. I'm trying to convince myself that it would be OK to purchase one, but I just can't do it. By day I am a biomedical engineer, so and as much as I hate programming, with lots of patience and chocolate breaks I should be perfectly capable of writing my own, or at the very least, modifying one of the free ones to something that I actually like. It's really taken a lot of convincing but I think I can do it. We'll see how long it takes, but I'll keep you posted.

Oh and there may be some sewing this weekend. According to the poll, you guys would like to see some more purses in my store. Any thoughts on what you'd like to see? I'll have to see what I have in my stash and what other patterns I can come up with.

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to enter my giveaway for a chance to win some dish cloths!!

Until next time ...

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

New Feature - What's Cookin' in Laura's Kitchen??

I'm trying to get blogging on a consistent basis (at least a few times a week) so I'm trying to come up with scheduled blog posts, like Half Price Friday. I don't want everything I blog about to be related to my store, because I have a lot more going on than that.

So one other thing that I love is cooking. I'm a HUGE Rachael Ray fanatic. I have I think 8 of her cookbooks and it covers about 90% of the meals I make. I love the originality of the recipes. I love that for the most part they do really take only 30 minutes if you can multitask and seeing as I am always moving and on the go, having 3 pans simmering all at the same time is perfect for me. Her recipes have also made me try a lot of things that I normally wouldn't ... case in point ... last week we made grilled chicken sandwiches with mango chutney and melted brie. Not a typical meal, but it was just fantastic!

So on that note, I'd like to start a new series of blog posts called "What's Cookin' in Laura's Kitchen??". On a normal week, I do all of my PeaPod shopping on Friday or Saturday, which also means that I'm doing my meal planning then too. So I'm going to shoot for posting links to my meals each weekend for you to try out yourself!

As a note, I frequently change the recipes to match what I know I like or don't like. The recipes I include will have all of those changes. It will also be scaled to portions that I'm making, usually it's either just for 2, or for 2 plus intentional leftovers which usually cover lunch for 2-3 days.

This week is an abbreviated version ... but here's what's cookin':

Everything Lo Mein

Mozzarella Filled Meatballs with Bay and Onion Creamy Gravy and Garlic Spinach Mashed Potatoes

Orange Duck Breast with Green Salad

Chicken Dumpling and Noodle Soup

I have a few more to get up, maybe later this week.

Enjoy!
Until next time ...

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

I've Been Featured!!

I've been featured in not one, but two treasuries on Etsy today! YAY! I just joined two new teams this past weekend, ETTeam and EtsyKnitters, which has gotten lama works out there in the world a bit. Hopefully sales will pick up a bit! Check out the Treasuries:

Wild and Bright

ETT Stars and Stripes

Until Next Time,

The girl behind the lama

~LMM

The Giveaway is Here!!!

Today starts my giveaway on A Busy Mom on the Go's Blog!!

Enter now to win one of 2 sets of 3 dish cloths from my store!!!

I'll also give one free cloth to every order made during the giveaway, plus free shipping if you mention my blog!!

Thanks to all who voted in my poll! I had some snafoos with the felting adventure (which I may officially be giving up on) this weekend, so I didn't get as much made as I could have. I also had a really fun trip to Milwaukee for a friend's birthday and an audition for the Woman's Club of Evanston annual Benefit Show. I'm going to try to get a few more projects up before the giveaway ends so stay tuned!

Until next time ...
The girl behind the lama
~LMM