Strawberryluna

Etsy’s new Treasury East rocks!

Click to see this Treasury.

Hey, are you like me and you love the Treasuries at Etsy.com, but are frustrated with the stampede of trying to snag one? Be frustrated no more. Etsy has launched a new Treasury system that they are now Beta-testing, called Treasury East.

Gotta say, it ROCKS.

What’s a Treasury? Great question. In Etsy’s own words: “The Treasury is an ever-changing, member-curated shopping gallery of handpicked items.” So, it’s sort of like a favorites list, or a collection put together by users based on themes, colors, craft type, a play on words, whatever the Treasury curator wishes. They’re often very lively and a great way to find new things and previously undiscovered shops on Etsy. And, there is always one treasury featured on the front page of Etsy, showing just a peek of the many hundreds of thousands

However, the last time that I tried to make a Treasury was probably in 2006, it was just too bothersome and hard to be at the very right place at the very right time with all of my selected ducks in a row. So, I didn’t even try for the past 4 years.

The way that the current / soon to be old Treasury system worked, there was a finite number of Treasuries and once one expired it was chaos with hundreds to thousands of Etsy users trying to get that next open spot at any given time.

Now, with Treasury East in Beta-testing, it’s wide open, and pretty awesome. So rad in fact, that I spent my Tuesday morning over coffee and making my very first Treasury featuring some of my favorite screenprinters, called “Inky Fingers: Screenprinted and Silk Screened Beauties” <— Click there to see ’em all.

There are some new features, such as no longer being Flash-based (hey! I can see Treasuries on my iPhone now, thanks),  and best (!) lists in Treasury East are not limited to a finite number nor do they currently have expiration dates. This means that anyone, at any time can curate and create a Treasury. Hooraay!

So go play with a Treasury East jimmy-jawn today. For all of the new features, rules, and most importantly, add your own suggestions & experiences, read over this thread on Etsy all about the new Treasury East. And, to find out if your shop is currently featured in a Treasury East list, check out this nifty tool from Craftopolis that will show you, Etsy East Hunt. (Note, you will need to have an active Google Analyitcs account linked to your Etsy shop to pull the info. Currently there isn’t a tool to see if your shop is featured on Treasury East yet via Etsy itself.)

Have you played around with making a new Treasury using Treasury East yet? I’d love to read any comments and see what other Etsy users think too.

To see my Treasury of Inky Fingers: Screenprinted Beauties, click either HERE or any of the images above. And don’t forget to comment on Treasuries that you like 🙂

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Shops & prints featured above in my “Inky Fingers: Screenprinted and Silk Screened Beauties” Treasury:

1. beethings – limited edition screenprint: “frog dog hog log bog”

2. standard – limited edition screenprint: “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend”

3. strawberryluna – limited edition screenprint “Let Love Grow”

4. Little Friends Of Printmaking – limited edition screenprint: “I Am Number One”

5. girlscantell – industrial felt, set of four coasters: “turntable diagram”

6. youngmonster – screenprinted gig poster:  “Why?”

7. Miss Amy Jo – screenprinted art print: “Kitty Cat”

8. Who Made Who TOOTH – screenprinted art print: “New Wave To The Grave”

9. DWITT – limited edition screenprint: “Magic”

10. Jetsah – limitee edition screenprint: “Arrival”

11. Hero Design Studio – limited edition screenprint: “I Heart My Bike”

12. Anne Benjamin Mok Duk – limited edition screenprint: “Bird In Hand”

13. cricket press – limited edition screenprint set: “Scorcher and Stingray Bike Set”

14. doctor pizzoli – limited edition screenprint: “Awooooga Elephant”

15. darling clementine – screenprinted canvas bag: “Monsieur Cabaret”

16. Jen Skelley – limited edition screenprint: “Beemazed”

New art print release: ‘Let Love Grow’ hand screenprinted, limited edition

New hand screenprinted, 3-color, limited edition art print: "Let Love Grow", fresh & ready. (click here for more info or to purchase)

Lately, I’ve been really obsessed with 60’s design, but not the psychedelic and (to me) overly wrought side, but more of the very clean and simplistic designs that came out of Madison Avenue in the forms of advertising and brand / logo design and cohesion. There is something so appealing about those directions to me, very pure. This print and design is a part of that interest, as well as a statement on everyday negativity & violence, be they figurative or actual.

Hey negativity! Scram! Just feed, water, and nourish love and it will grow like a flower forever.

This simple scene is my newest art print “Let Love Grow”, bright & ready to help you plant seeds happiness and love all around you. Featuring hand lettered text, it’s a perfect gift of hope and love for your sweetie pie, as a wedding gift, for a young person in your life, or to brighten up your own home.

Love: Let it grow bright and strong.

You, my friend, are looking at my 3-color, all hand screen printed, limited edition art print with fresh spring green, vibrant magenta, and heartbeat red hand mixed and non-toxic water based inks. Edition of 190. Size: 18 x 22 inches (45.7 cm x 55.9 cm.) Paper: acid free & archival Cougar, White 100lb cover weight.

Below are some process photos, now also up on my Flickr account, of this art print, “Let Love Grow” being printed. Got questions? Shoot me an email!

1st color of "Let Love Grow", printed. (click to see more process photos.)

2nd color ink (magenta) in the screen, getting ready to print. (click here to see more process photos.)

About to print the 3rd & final color (green) of a new art print, "Let Love Grow". (click to see more process photos.)

All done! "Let Love Grow", finished printing and fresh for spring. (click to see more printing process photos.)

LCD Soundsystem “This Is Happening” preview….is awesome

Click here to to listen to the new "This Is Happening" LCD Soundsystem record preview

I didn’t think that I could love LCD Soundsytem more, and yet it turns out that I can.

And I do.

Simple little post here. Basically, this new record sounds great. James Murphy & co are back, and awesomer than even before. Best, to pre-empt illegal downloads, there is a heft preview of the new record, “This Is Happening” on their site here. Click! Listen! Fall deeper in love.

Early favorite tracks here are Dance Yrself Clean, Pow Pow (! so good!), and of course, Drunk Girls. 😉

If you love it too, buy this jam when it comes out and support your favorite artists so they can keep making awesome.

moe. Snoe.down ice sculpture, based on our poster!


Awesome ice sculpture by Ben Rand at Moe.'s Snoe.down 2010, with our poster characters.

So how often does this happen? You design a poster for a band, illustrate characters from animals, and then BOOM! Those characters & your typography come to life in the form of an awesome ice sculpture?

Not too often. But it’s cool as hell, (pardon the pun if you must.)

The above photo was sent to me from the band Moe.’s label, it’s from their Snoe.down Festival, for which we did the official Festival poster (as below). A friend of the band named Ben Rand  is a nationally recognized ice sculpture artist and he did this interactive &  amazing rendering of our poster’s animals and even the typography that we did, with little holes to poke your head into so you could become either the Moose or the Polar Bear character right from  from our poster. Whoa! ::mindblown::

We love it!

So much so that we’re running a little contest, yep. That’s right.

If you went to the 2010 Snoe.down and have a photograph of this ice sculpture with people in it’s super faceholes, send us a copy of your photo and we’ll add it here, and add your name to the Grand Prize drawing and then choose a winner at random and send you a special winner gift of a free Snoe.down poster + super secret & special prizes! Enter in one of two ways:

1. Email us  your photo at strawberryluna { a t } strawberryluna dot com OK OK.

2. Drop a link to your photo in the comments section.

Contest Runs until April 30th, at midnight EST. Good luck!

Our screenprinted Snoe.down 2010 poster (click for more info or to purchase)

Our Iron & Wine poster in Ready Made, home decor by Bee Things.

Some of the gorgeous walls chez Bee Things, including my Iron & Wine poster from 2005.

While spring cleaning away this past Saturday, I’d left a small pile of fun mail as yet un-opened and un-perused. So, when I took a little sit-down break and read a tweet from my friend Beth from Hero Design that she saw our Iron & Wine poster (sold out, sorry!) in a spread the new April/May issue of Ready Made magazine, I kinda freaked out. Funny enough, my own issue had just arrived the day before but I hadn’t had a chance to open it and read it yet.

So, of course I tore in immediately 🙂

The feature is on the absolutely amazing and beautiful home of Texas design and screenprinting, husband & wife duo studio, Bee Things, (Jeff Barfoot & Shay Ometz) whose work I have admired from afar for a while now. So, seeing their superbly decorated home, so fantastically well curated and without being fussy or overly intentionally showy (you know what I mean!) featured prominently in a 10 page spread was a complete inspiration and a big blushing moment. I think it’s fantstic how you can see their love of printmaking in all forms by the incredible collection of prints that they have hanging everywhere in their home.

A room full of awesome. The Been Things livingroom and book collection.

Bee Things run a screenprinting studio from their home, from design to printmaking, which we of course relate to and love. And the sunlight that they get in their East Dallas space is completely lovely. They also did a great little tutorial on the screenprinting process for Ready Made that you can see in the April/May issue, and it’s also available online here as well at ReadyMade.com. I love the quote from Note the great IKEA flat file ALEX (the while drawer file in the lower left), a screenprinter’s pal. We have one too in our office! It’s a great way to store films, paper, and ink jet printer inks, among other tools of the trade. Good show Bee Things 😉

Bee Things studio.

We’re just beyond flattered and tickled to the gills to have a design & screenprinting couple, like us, like our work enough to hang it in their home and among their other quite formidable print treasures. And, just so you can see more awesome, this is the entire last page of the feature on Bee Things adorable home below.

Full page scan view.