10
Nov
2009
What is Etsy? Helping you keep up with the cool kids.
If you get any cool blog alerts sent to you, or tend to trawl the web a bit (in a very non geek-I-have-a-life manner), you will no doubt have come across references to ‘Etsy’. And if you are genuinely cool and don’t surf, you should still pay attention because Etsy is actually really good. Not in a facebook/twitter/2.0 kind of way – in an oh my goodness, some of these things are beautiful, I must buy something immediately kind of way.
So Etsy is like a massive online shop, where people who make things can sell their wares. But we are not talking all painted light globes and pet rocks here (although I am sure they are there somewhere), there are actually high quality, beautiful and individual pieces of jewellery, craft, art and clothing, alongside vintage gear. According to Wikipedia (and what quality journalist wouldn’t quote Wikipedia?) it has been compared to “a crafty cross between Amazon and eBay”. Don’t get me wrong – there is some utter sh*te , but there are also some fab pieces.
So – in order to sound truly hip and with it, feel free to drop the following conversational gems into dinner party chit-chat:
6
Aug
2009
Wall Stickers – Decorating the Nursery, Low Maintenance Style
I was eagerly awaiting the legendary nesting stage in the late stages of my pregnancy to see myself transformed into a fabulously feminine and motivated domestic goddess type person but instead of a full butterfly like transformation I experienced a small fluttering of domesticity by way of an urge to buy stuff. Which I am pretty sure was there before. But this time it was, at least, an urge to buy stuff for the transformation of the office like spare room into something more like a babies room. I say it was a nesting urge nonetheless. Yay. I am woman.
This urge to decorate the nursery resulted in trying out wall stickers. My perception of wall stickers before my personal venture into this entirely new world was that they were the kind of not very cool thing people who also knit “there´s no place like home” wall hangings and embroider doiles might use to “brighten up a room” by, say, creating borders and floral features on walls with stencils. Naturally the pervayers of these wall stickers would also be into lavender and purple in general. However, I have discovered wall stickers (or decals) are part of a whole world of very cool designs and interior decorating. For me it’s turned out to be one of those things that until you’d heard about them, well you hadn’t heard about them… and then when you start looking into it you wonder how you could have missed it. There are a LOT of sites where you can buy wall stickers (or decals) and the amount of choice online means you can find far more interesting designs than cheesy kids cartoons – which are the wall stickers you tend to see more of in your average home decorating store collection – if you can find one at all.
