October 2nd Friday

Last Friday I had a booth at Downtown Mesa's Monsters on Main event. It was my first booth in 4 years!I had a great time setup alongside my friends and fellow EVA group members, Kandes and Anne.

Kandes of Tricky Fox with her too cute for words sidekick, Eldon.

Anne demoing in her booth

My booth, Creative Stash

I brought with me my canvas earrings, pendant necklaces and recycled bottlecap magnets. Anne really had a way with customers,she drew them in with her chainmaille demos, colorful booth and product storytelling. Kandes got into Halloween spirit, all dressed in black with a witches hat and super rad back and white striped stockings!

It was so nice to be outdoors and there were a lot of people roaming about, enjoying the music, costumes and zombies. Yep, I said zombies! There was a zombie walk and lots of people really got into it. Check them out ...

I am looking forward to being there again for the November 2nd Fridays. The TGIF - Thank goodness it's fall! event is November 12th in Downtown Mesa featuring live bands, hay rides, holistic exhibits, country fair games for kids, pony rides, food, entertainment, art galleries, 60+ art booths, farmers market, charity events, and much more! Hope you will join us!

Guest blogger Kristen Fagan of Creative Stash. Graphic Designer by day. Mother, wife, painter, jewelry artist, bookworm, cook and all around crafty gal by night. Contact her at krisfagan [at] cox [dot] com.

website | blog | facebook | twitter | etsy shop

Announcing the Treasury Challenge Winners!!!!

Congratulations to our winners of the first ever EVA treasury challenge! We appreciate the effort of everyone that participated in our first challenge. All of the treasuries were wonderful, making it very difficult to select only three winners. But the decisions were made after a couple tie breakers and we ended up with three very beautiful treasuries to represent our winners! MudHandChan and ChealseaSea have both won gift certificates redeemable at participating EVA team members shops.

Our First place winner is:
ChelseaSea with her Cool East Meets Hot West treasury

In Second place is:
MudHandChan with her Treasury Contest treasury

And in Third place is:
ChelseaSea AGAIN with her Arizona's East Valley Artisans Treasury

Thanks for curating such wonderful collections. I hope everyone enjoyed the challenge and will participate in upcoming treasury challenges!

EVA Meeting tonight

Tonight is our EVA meeting and Meetup open house for interested applicants. EVA is definitely ready to grow. Our group will have a lot of new events and projects in the future and we need a bigger army to make these things happen. Tonight the current EVA members will be voting on the EVA treasury challenge. We ended up with 13 treasuries submitted and have to pick winners. That is always a difficult process. We had a lot of wonderful entries! I will be posting the winners on Friday and will also share with you photos from the Beach themed exchange. I love EVA exchanges! Fun stuff!

EVA Meetup is August 18th!

EVA is having an open house in less than a week!!! Next Wednesday August 18th we will be available from 7 - 8pm to meet with anyone interested in joining our group. The location will be disclosed at a later time. I know it will be in downtown Mesa at one of two places, depending on the size of the group.

The requirements for joining us are that you must be an artisan or crafter that has samples of recent work, fill out a simple application, and attend the monthly meetings.

We are excited about adding new people to our awesome group of artisans. If you are interested in knowing more, visit our Meetup page.

July Giveaway Winner and Meeting Recap

Drum roll, please ...
The lucky winner of the butterfly shadowbox pendant is Diana Brower! She is with Crop Circle Clay. Like myself, Diana is a member of Etsy Project Embrace. Her work is really, really unique. I just love it! Be sure to pop in her shop and take a look at some of her stuff!!!

We had our meeting before I left for Omaha. Time is really going by fast. It's amazing how that happens as you get older. Jill, Marci, Jeannie, Renee and Myself were all there. We discussed the Treasury Challenge. We decided to giveaway EVA gift certificates that are good in our shops. Participating members are listed on the EVA team page. Check it out ... and I would love to see more entries rolling in. It is not just for EVA teamies. Anyone can enter!

Our exchange theme for July was Rockabilly. It was cool to see what everyone came up with. We exchanged items and Jill and I exchanged ATC cards. We also exchanged the Butterfly Cards from June. The August theme is the beach! Fun!

Prize announcement for Treasury Challenge!

I announced last week that we were having a Treasury Challenge! We met on Tuesday and decided that EVA would be giving out three prizes for the winners. The prizes will be EVA gift certificates redeemable at all EVA member's shops. First place winner will receive a $30 gift certificate. The second place winner $20 and the third $10! Our shops are listed here.

Anyone is invited to create as many treasuries as they would like and enter the challenge. Rules can be found at the previous blog post, here.

The deadline is August 15th and the winners will be announced August 20th!

EVA Etsy Treasury Challenge (Contest Closed)

Hi again! Tomorrow I am leaving with my husband and baby son to go to Nebraska. My husband is a professional musician and is playing a big blues festival over there, so the little one and I thought we would tag along. I have never been to that part of the country. I am looking forward to sharing about the trip on my Tricky Fox blog. Before I go, I thought I would get over here and squeeze in a post about our latest EVA Challenge!!

EVA's Kristen of Creative Stash posted on Etsy's treasuries last month. I have been having a lot of fun looking over the treasuries of Etsy Project Embrace members. They post many new ones to their Etsy forum on a daily basis. I made one with some EVA members in it:

And a Cowboy theme:
And a Vintage Butterfly theme:

As Kristen said, making treasuries are a whole lot of fun!!! That is why EVA is hosting a treasury challenge. I encourage everyone to get in on it!! You don't have to be an EVA member, but you do have to create an etsy account if you don't have one. Once you have an account, click on this link. Then click the blue "Create a List" button on the right. You can enter as many times as you wish! Tonight at our EVA meeting we will be discussing the prize! I will come back here and let you know what it is! At our August meeting we will all be voting for the top three treasuries. All three will win a prize!

Prize info added Monday July 26th - The prizes will be EVA gift certificates redeemable at all EVA member's shops. First place winner will receive a $30 gift certificate. The second place winner $20 and the third $10! Our shops are listed here.

Here are the rules:
1.) The deadline is August 15th at midnight pacific time.
2.) Must have three EVA members items featured in the treasury. All of our members shops are listed here!
3.) The title of your treasury must have one of the words from our team name: east, valley, or artisans.
4.) After completing your treasury, you must come back to this blog post and make a comment with a link to it.

EVA members ARE eligible to enter! And enter as many times as you wish! Winners announced August 20th via email. Please make sure we have your email!

Well, I am off to pack! Have fun making treasuries while I am gone. I will catch up when I get back. :o)

(The contest is now closed to new enteries. Thank you to everyone that entered. The winners will be announced August 20th via email and EVA blog post!)