Giveaway = Free Stuff For You!!

Since Made for Cache is soooo awesome, we wanted to give you the chance to get a piece of the awesomeness for FREE. All it will take is a minute of your time and you too can own your very own super spiffy piece of hand-crafted coolness :)

The Rules:

To enter, just take a look at any of the team members etsy shops and comment about one of their items. Then leave a comment on this blog post about the item you looked at. Simple as that! The shops are linked to in the right side-bar via our names listed under "Sellers" or you can search etsy using "Made for Cache" in the search bar.

The giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada. This is not prejudice against people living in other countries, we just want to keep shipping costs under control :)

The winners will be drawn at out next team meeting, August 12th and winners will be announced the following day. If you see you're a winner, please send an email to madeforcache@gmail.com with your address and we'll send you your prize.

You don't have to buy anything to enter the giveaway, but the karma might help you win!

The Prizes:

From Cave Creations comes this "Cherry" Pair of Earrings. Sterling silver and Czech glass and pressed glass beads. Length of "cherry stem" may vary. Earrings hang is 1" to 1.5" from ear.

From Days Gone By, Inc is a set of 4 cards with envelopes. These are enclosed in cellophane bags and will be tied with a pretty ribbon. The four I'll include are:

Genie with Roses: inside reads: "Can there be too much love in the world? I think not."
Aunt Bess - inside reads: "My friends have made the story of my life."
Something Silly(Pictured Left) - inside reads: "Take time everyday to do something silly."
Best Friends(Pictured Right)- inside reads: "My very best friends are those who know without ever being told."

From Char's Impressions comes this beautiful necklace made with a Jasper stone and lots of crystals. It has a rectangle silver accent, tipped on end to give the piece a dramatic flair. A small crystal is wire wrapped on the end. A beautiful dressy necklace. It measures approx 18 inches, the Jasper stone adds about 2 more inches.

Designed just in time for the giveaway, Hilary Frisby Design is throwing in a coordinating set of 4 greeting cards–one for every occasion! Included are "Happy Birthday", "...missing you...", "Thank you," and "Congratulations". These come with envelopes and are blank inside.

From Taraduff is a crocheted potscrubber. It measures 4 1/2 inches in diameter. The pink side is 100% cotton and the black side is 100% nylon. It's fabulous for cleaning, and lasts forever, pretty much.

From EllietteBaby is a Scrub-a-Dub Washmitt. Made from soft cotton terrycloth, this washmitt makes bathtime fun! Gentle on babies, but tough on dirt, washmitts are machine washable and all seams are professionally serged.

So, tell your friends and may the gods of randomly drawn winners smile upon you!

"Homegrown" Tomato Pincushions

I got this in my e-mail today from Martha Stewart (you didn't know we were friends?) and I thought it was adorable. We've seen these before, but she's got a how-to for making them for yourself. Especially you sewers. And HOW CUTE would this be, if we had a cute little basket with tomatoes and other veggie pincushions (since you are all so creative) as a display or for sale or as a giveaway item. So basically I'm nominating the rest of you to make these. Haha.

Thanks, Martha!

Handmade Wedding Cake

My friend and old college roommate Jessica got married a week ago and I made her a special gift. This:A 4 tiered, vanilla buttercream covered, chocolate and white marbled wedding cake. The medallions you see are gum paste with an intricate piping pattern on them. Those took me 3 days to do and are coated with luster dust for a pretty pearlescent sheen. I suffered quite a bout of "frosting bag claw" but it was worth it.

Here's a close up of their cute topper and you kind sorta see the piping on one of the medallions. All the flowers on their cake came from the farmers market too.

Just remember, if you need a cake for a special event - call someone else :)

See You at the Cache County Fair!

Yes, it is official. Made for Cache is going to have a booth at the Cache County Fair which is coming up on August 6, 7, & 8th!

Those exhibiting are Elliette Baby (Blaire), Sparrow Originals (Jen), TaraDuff (Taralee), Cave Creations (Suzie), Days Gone By Inc (Bonnie) and Char's Impressions(Charlene).

We'll be next to the 4-H building, so come and see us and help support Handmade!!

Finally, the details of July's Meeting

Wow, things were totally crazy last week, so it's taken me a while to get things updated.

Our last meeting on July 8th went well. We were a little short on numbers, but July is the month of vacations, family reunions and so on. Despite that we forged ahead and made some new plans for the months ahead.

As you can see, we've set up a twitter account for the group as well as a forum. Both can and should be used to tell the team and the world about new developments in your shops, new items, articles you found useful and so on. If everyone on the team twitters once a week and/or posts to the forum once a week then there should be plenty to talk about! :)

We also decided August would be a great month for a giveaway. I'll send the team members a note with the details, but it should be loads of fun! We can draw the winners at our next team meeting, which is August 12th at Hilary's place. It'll be a great opportunity to get our team noticed and spread the love of handmade to a bigger audience. Also we'll be discussing Search Engine Optimization and how it can drive more traffic to our shops!

Another thing we accomplished was to set the schedule for our inspiration themes for the rest of the year. Taralee made a good point that the inspirations should be in the month ahead so you can make the sales ahead of the holiday/season they represent. The schedule goes as follows:

August - Back to School
September - Halloween/Fall
October - Harvest
November - Winter/ Holiday
December - Favorite Thing from the past year
Also, there won't be a meeting in Dec due to all the holiday craziness :)

Show and Tell
Taralee was the winner for show and tell as she was the only person to send me a photo of her item.

Albeit a little warm in most parts of the country for the 4th of July, this little hat is my ode to our independence day! I crocheted this hat from 100% cotton worsted weight yarn. It has diagonal stripes of navy blue and white with a navy band on the bottom and red crochet pom pom trim at the top. The red chain pom pom looks like a firecracker exploding! The hat pictured is sized for a toddler, however the hat is available in all sizes.

So have a great month and we'll see you in August!!!

New Forum

We now have a forum set up where we can discuss anything you want to! At the last meeting Taralee brought up a good point that sometimes there are things you want to talk about with other group members before the next meeting. The forum is a great way to do that. We can dicuss upcoming events, questions and a variety of other things.

I sent out invitations today, if you didn't get one and would like to be included, send me a message at madeforcache@gmail.com and I'll get you added to the group.

The address for the group is http://groups.google.com/group/made4cache so get posting!!

Tag it Up!!!

Hey everyone, at our last meeting (more on that later) we thought it would be a great idea to add the tag "Made for Cache" to all our shop items. That way if people want to make a tresury of our team items, or want to support team shops, or as part of a giveaway, it would make all these things easier.

So when you have a sec, be sure to add Made for Cache as one of your item tags and make it easier for people to find stuff!!

Made for Cache is now on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/madeforcache

We can now use Twitter to update one another on our shop items, upcoming events, new topics for discussion...whatever you want! You'll all be getting an e-mail soon with the password for our Twitter account so that we can all keep it updated. If you already have a Twitter account, this is a great way to keep in touch with the group.

July Meetin'

Hope you had a great 4th of July! Our meeting for this month is going to be this Wednesday the 8th at 7 pm at Bonnie's House. If you didn't get my email with her address, just send an email to madeforcache@gmail.com and I'll get it to you.

The Show and Tell for this month is patriotic, so I can't wait to see what everyone has come up with. Be thinking of themes for the coming months so we can plan out the rest of the year (August - December).

At the meeting we're going to talk about etsy tagging and forums. Maybe share the experiences you've had with either and what's worked for you. If you haven't used either of these before, maybe you'll get some new ideas on how to use these tools to promote your items.

Hope to see you all there!