Tuesdays Are For Treasuring

Happy Tuesday friends! I have a beautiful, new treasury for your viewing & shopping pleasure today… Hearts Galore! I’m “hearting” lots of things right now, including the Fall-ish weather that has hit Kansas City recently, the current book I’m reading “Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe” by Jenny Colgan and the fact that we are all getting back into the routine of things now that schools been in session for a few weeks.

 

How about you? What are you currently “hearting”? 

Hearts Galore

Hearts, hearts and more beautiful hearts!

Doxie Dachshund Pin CartersPottery $10.00	Mother’s Hold Their Children Mixed Media Art Print AlteredIris $8.00	I Love Fishing Coffee Mug, Red Heart, Fathers Day, Grandpa, Angler, Trout, fly fishing, deep sea, lake Mugsleys $10.50	I Love You to the Moon and Back, Garden Sculpture, Copper and Glass Mobile, Wall, Window, Porch Hanging JewelsInTheGarden $29.00
Red Heart Earrings, Valentines Earrings, Love Earrings, Red Crystal Earrings, January Birthstone Earrings BlackberryDesigns $32.00	The Sofia Dress – Girls Dress with Red Velvet Heart and Peter Pan Collar – Valentines Day Dress (Made to Order Sizes 2 3 4 5 6 T) SewnNatural $78.00	22 HEARTS Nail Art nail decal NAILTHINS Nail Design NAILTHINS $4.00	Keychain,Leather, Heart, Key chain, Red, Recycled,Women,Key ring, Funnyleather €15.00
Heart Shape American Fried Egg and Pancake Mold -1 pc muimuichow $2.19	Minty Teal Heart Barrette Hair Accessory, Hair clip, Heart Barrette, Mint Green, Spring Hair Fashion, MaineCoonCrafts $24.00	038 Vintage Home Decor Wall Hanging Heart Shaped Mirror VintageGoods1994 $9.99	Stained Glass Autism Puzzle Heart Suncatcher glassnwood $15.00
Red Heart Pitcher Waechtersbach 32 oz MaryWaldsPlace $24.95	My Heart in Your Hands CopperRavenCreations $45.00	Hearts Basket Cloth DollsToYou $8.00	Anniversary Gift City Map Print FRAMED Personalized Gift – Any Location Available- Personalized City Map Poster DefineDesign11 $49.00

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Blog Has Moved… please resubscribe.

Hi Everyone! I’ve recently switched to a self-hosted website/blog so if you’d like to continue following along on Altered Iris’ adventures please come visit my site directly (www.alterediris.com) and resubscribe. 

 

Thanks so much! I look forward to continuing to connect with you! 🙂 

Spring Has Sprung

Happy first day of Spring! One of the fun things about moving into a new house is being surprised by what pops up in the yard in Springtime. Even though we did a complete overhaul of the landscaping around our house last Fall, we still had these beauties show up this week. I was so excited to see them. Spring is my favorite season and one of the reasons is because of the lovely flowers. I’m also excited to see the tulips we planted peek out soon.

What are you doing to celebrate this first day of Spring? What’s your most favorite thing about this season?

Wanna Shop Local?

Hi Everyone! Just wanted to pop in and let you know about a new website that features handmade sellers in the Kansas City area!

There’s everything from embroidered hoop art, bags, cute kids cuddly’s, wedding supplies, jewelry, coasters, clothing, bath & body products, ornaments, fabric pouches, cuff bracelets, hand weaved baskets and more! There’s SO MUCH cool stuff… all handmade in the Kansas City area. You simply must check it out! Links to each shop as well as their social media and other places you can find them are all on the website under the “handmade sellers” tab. Enjoy! 🙂

New Originals & Prints in Shop!

Hey there! Happy Wednesday! Anyone else done with Winter?! I am. Last week we had a break and temps were in the mid 50’s here in Kansas… this morning it was 4 degrees… 4! They are calling for potentially lots of snow this weekend too. I’m thankful we had a break last week, but it’s brought spring fever on big time! Winter is my least favorite season though, so I’m always eager for it to end. 😉

Today, I wanted to share some recently posted new goodies in my shop, both originals and prints with more on the way soon. Here’s a little sampling of what you’ll find, but you will definitely want to go visit my shop for yourself to check it all out. 🙂 

Also, if you want to stay up-to-date with me and the happenings of my shop, I’m on Instagram and have been posting some sales and behind the scenes sneaks recently. Check it out and follow me… I’m @alterediris.

Hope you’re staying warm and cozy where you are… have a lovely day! 🙂

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Johnson Family! We pray your Christmas is filled with joy, merry-making and good memories as you celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Settling In

We are getting settled into our new home and the new school year (my baby started Kindergarten… sniff, sniff). I’m a little sad to see summer come to an end, but I’m anxious to get back into a “normal” routine after the busy and hectic year that 2013 has been so far.

We’ve been in our new house for three weeks now and have tackled quite a few projects, some big and some on the smaller scale, and while we aren’t fully complete with some of these projects we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and are finally able to slow down a bit and just enjoy living here.

This home was a foreclosure so there were quite a few things that needed some attention right away. Although thankfully, the bank replaced the flooring and appliances and painted inside and out before we even saw the place, there were other things like a hot water heater that didn’t work, a garage door with no opener, a faulty garbage disposer, no window coverings… etc. Things that you come to take for granted in a normal purchase situation. 🙂 Despite all of that we are really loving our “project” house. It’s been hard work but it’s also been fun.

My most favorite project we’ve done so far is our kitchen… which of course wasn’t a necessity to be functional, but I knew I wanted to update it and before moving in seemed like the best time to do it, so we went for it and I love the result.

Here’s a pic of what it looked like before we moved in:

And here’s a pic of what it looked like after we did a few updates…

I’m so thrilled with how it turned out! 🙂

Now, we’ve moved on to bigger fish and started a much needed update on our yard. Ugh. We have a pretty large yard that needed a lot of help. The foundation had a bit of settling over the 3 years that it was vacant and so we had been getting some water in the basement. The yard had a lot of dips and was very uneven which wasn’t helping the water drain properly away from the house. So the last week and a half has been spent ripping out nearly everything in the yard (except for a few choice trees) and starting over from scratch… bringing in new dirt to even out the yard and eventually we’ll have some new bushes, shrubs and stuff to prettify it.

Here’s a few in process photos from our yard adventures:

It’s going to be fun to see what this place looks like when we are finished.

In the meantime, while the work is being done on the outside, I’m busy putting the inside of the house together, unpacking and settling in. I hope to share my new art space with you soon and will be posting some new things in my shop in the coming weeks.

Good Distractions

Wow, these last few weeks have flown by so quickly! I’ve been pretty distracted… by good things though.

For one… it’s Summer! My kids are both home and we’ve been making the most of every moment… swimming, watching movies (including the newly released Monsters University), Vacation Bible School, play dates, park fun, fun with cousins and grandparents, T-Ball games, fishing, eating chocolate dipped cones from McDonald’s, berry picking and much, much more. I love that my kids are getting old enough that we can just pick up and go somewhere if we feel like it. I don’t have to make sure we have a diaper bag, clean diapers, change of clothes, food, etc. Although it is still a process if we want to be prepared for a certain activity, but not like it used to. Of course there are things I miss about those days too… 😉

Another big distraction in our life right now is that we are in the process of buying a house! Yippee!! When we moved back to Kansas 5 months ago we decided to rent for a time and now we are closing in on another moving date… this time only a mile away and Lord willing this will be the last move for a very, very long time and I absolutely cannot wait! 🙂

So, that’s what I’ve been up to so far this Summer. What have you been up to?

The Results Are In

 {Me in my booth, photo taken by Lindsey from the Artisan Market… more photos of the event can be found on their facebook page, vendor apron from Terrace Hill}

Now… first things first… this entire event could not have happened if it weren’t for this wonderful man… my man… he has been so supportive, done so much work… hard work, he’s encouraged me, shared ideas with me, he’s been my sounding board and my right hand man in this. It was his original “yes” that started the whole process of me doing this show and it was his assistance the whole way through that made it actually happen in the end, so thank you sweetie. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you more than words can express and I’m so blessed to have you as my husband and partner for life.

And now for the rest of the juicy (bulleted) details:

*The wind blew ferociously, but the sun was shining.

*Even high quality tents can rip if it’s windy enough… bummer. 😦

*I spent the first two hours of the show trying to keep my stuff from blowing down… Then I finally got smart called my hubby who came to the rescue and told me what I should do. 😉 After a bit of reorganization, things went much smoother and I actually got to sit down. And so did my mom… who by the way, was with me the entire day! (I failed to get a photo of us)! 😦

She is another person I couldn’t have done this without. She was there so I could take bathroom breaks, she was the gopher for our lunch, she gave me ideas as we discussed what might work better next time, she was my moral support and not only that but she slept at our house the night before and watched our kids so hubby and I could get everything set up without child-like interruptions and distractions. Thank you Mama!!! Love you!!! 🙂

*I realized there is no such thing as being too organized for an event like this. I definitely could have been more organized. Mostly with supplies and such, my products themselves were pretty organized, but I could have spent more time organizing and planning out where I was going to keep supplies and other necessities.

*Next time… More tables. I need more workspace and space to keep things like packaging/bags/receipt book/postcards/business cards/etc. Maybe something with drawers would be good, something with a top that could possibly even be used to display products. I only had a couple of little inches here and there at the back of the table for stuff like that and the plastic totes I thought I’d use under the table were holding things like bags, business cards and the like, so I could really use them as a surface for other things.

*I learned that I can keep track of cash in the Square app! If only I’d figured it out sooner though! Whoops! 🙂

*I realized I need to work harder at promoting my work, even when it’s right there in front of people… It will not sell itself. It’s not natural for me and certainly doesn’t come easily, but it’s necessary in order to build my business.

*Pretty decorations really do matter, many people noticed and commented. Maybe they don’t matter completely, maybe not even a lot, but it’s nice that people noticed, because it was definitely part of the fun! 🙂

A lot of people mistook my prints for cards, which tells me a couple of things…

1) There’s a market for cards… Which doesn’t surprise me, something I want to add and have been working on, but maybe something that needs to move a little higher up on the priority list.

2) I should package my prints to make it more obvious what they are. I think the easiest way to do this would be to add mattes to them. Another thing I’ve considered previously and that should move up on the list, at least before the next show (which is to be determined).

*It was a lot of work, but it was a labor of love for sure. And while I didn’t quite get to the sales goal I had set (I of course had no idea what to expect though), it was well worth it. To get exposure, to get the “first time” under my belt, to figure out what worked and what didn’t, to experience windy conditions and improvising to make things work despite the weather, to stick it out and to be able to support a great cause at the same time.

Thank you to all those who stopped by to show their support and thank you to those who helped and encouraged before, during and after the event. I’d say… it was a success! 🙂

T-Minus 45 hours!

In only 46 hours from now my booth will be open for business at the First Baptist Church of Stilwell’s Artisan Market!

I’ve made booth decorations…

 Labeled and packaged products… 

My hubby has made frames and then painted and stapled wire to those frames…

 I’ve created new art…

 and printed and packaged (with the help of a dear friend… thank you Laura!) a ton of prints…

And put together a “mock up” of my booth…

And now… it’s crunch time… all the last minute details coming together (hopefully). 🙂 Anytime there’s a big event in life there’s always the accompanied adrenaline, excitement and of course a bit of anxiety… and I’m definitely feeling all those emotions. But, I know that this event will be here and gone before I blink my eyes. Sometimes we can get so caught up in all the rush and excitement that we forget to enjoy those big events. And that’s where I’ve been this week… rushing around taking multiple trips to Hobby Lobby (I think I’ve been there or Michael’s everyday this week! LOL!), checking and double checking my list and spending lots of time running through it all in my head hoping I’m not forgetting anything important. Of course, also wishing I had created more stuff or done this or that as there are many ideas that I had that didn’t quite come together. But, at this point in the game it is what it is and I just need to press on, do my best with what’s left, take a deep breath and then smile and enjoy the day. 🙂