Working hard for the Spring Bash!

Heya folks!

We love planning the Etsy Dallas shows each year, the Spring Bash and the Jingle Bash. It's that final week before show time and we've been working extra hard to get everything ready for show time fun time.

The Bashes are presented by Etsy Dallas, a team of 50 local Dallas artists who sell their handmade goods on Etsy.com. Pamela was fortunate to hop on the Etsy Dallas bandwagon early on and be able to take on some reigns and help steer the group into putting on 2 awesome handmade art shows each year. We love doing this, and we think this is something that has totally benefitted Dallas' art community, or at least we hope it has brought a few smiles to some faces.

Last week we joined about 30 team energetic Etsy Dallas team members, Spring Bash vendors and happy volunteers to all join in and help us make some rocking decorations and prep supplies for our Etsy Dallas Make n Take booth for the Spring Bash.

Mia Maria, Red Tile Studio, Yellow Bug Boutique and DCImaginations whipped out some awesome big ass pom poms for decorations.

They also made a pretty mess. We only got a shot of the yellow and white paper cuts, but later on there was some pretty teal mixed in there too!

This week we gathered the troops again over at Bonny Bead's home studio and stuffed the Bash Bags that we designed and printed for the show. These Bash Bags are STUFFED with so much awesome!

Here's a quick sneak peek of just a handful of the goodies that you'll find in there if you're one of the first 50 shoppers.

We included some of our new coasters in pretty teal and black. These we so much fun to make. Dylan hand cut the wood, sanded and printed our logo on each one, then Pamela designed some fancy packaging and we stuffed one of these babies in each bag.

We hope to see you next weekend, April 30th at the Spring Bash!!! Come on by and say hi + shop cool handmade stuff made by us!

And if you can't wait that long, come see us this weekend at Bolsa Cafe in Dallas. We'll be there Saturday and Sunday in the Dowdy Wagon selling tees, prints, jewelry, messenger bags and featuring our guest artist, One Up Designs!

Easy How to: Insta-Bunting!

Ok gang, this is super super easy and you just need a few items and about 15-20 minutes to make super duper sweet bunting.

We made this fun bunting to decorate the Dowdy Studio Wagon for it's big showing in Austin for SXSW. Now we're showing you! It's great for decorating for parties or for permanent home deco.

So if you wanna make some go get these supplies:

- Fabric Glue

- Quilt Binding (3 yrds = 9 ft)

- Pins

- Multi colored Fabric

- Fabric Scissors

Optional

- Chester the kitten/intern (not recommended)

Step 1 - Cut some triangles and strips. I freehand cut mine, but you can easily make your own templates out of a piece of paper or find one online to use. I decided to change up the standard triangle bunting by adding some ribbon shapes too. Yeah! We're getting fancy, shake it!

Step 2 - Now that you have all your pieces cut, begin placing them in the quilting tape. I started the bunting about 10 inches in so there would be some extra quilt binding on the ends to tie around the Wagon. Unroll the quilt binding and unfold the first fold to place the top of each fabric piece inside the top crease of the folded quilt binding. It's good to lay out about 4 pieces at a time. Anymore and it gets messy, and you'll be yelling at the bunting for being such a mean bully face and getting all crazy on you. Just a warning.

Step 3 - Glue party fancy time!! We used Liquid Stitch fabric glue. This stuff is great. It dries fast and holds strong. This is how we can get this bunting done in 15-20 min. Slide down one fabric piece and draw a line of glue across the back part of the quilt binding, place the fabric piece back in place over the glue line, then draw another glue line on top of the fabric piece and lay the top part of the

quilt binding over it.

Step 4 - Press firmly on the quilt binding for about 3 seconds. This stuff dries pretty fast, so make sure you have the fabric piece in place exactly how you want it before you press down. Now get back up there to step 2 and repeat until you finish your bunting.

Step 5 - Done. Awesome!

Step 6 - Get Chester to check your handmade bunting for quality. He approved this one, which is good. When he doesn't like them he gets his claws in them and runs around the house with them.

Step 7 - Hang it! If you're decorating for a party and you're done early....uh, grab a pre-drinky to celebrate! You did great.

If you've made some homemade bunting, we'd like to see! Share with us in the comments section below what you made.

Cheers!

-Pamela _ Dylan