A few weeks ago my husband came home from work and showed off the mini origami cranes he had been making during his down time. When I say mini I mean mini. One was less than a centimeter across! The others were a slightly more reasonable size of under an inch and about an inch.

I was totally amazed at the fact that he had folded them so small! I loved origami growing up but his skills and attention to detail far surpassed mine.

As we were playing with them the thought came across that they would make great earrings. I’m not sure who said it first but it seemed like it would be fun

So we decided to make some earrings for me. I brought out some of my favorite papers from my stash to see what he could do with them and we picked up some earring hardware at the craft store.

We loved the result so much that we decided to keep going! We made the cranes together while watching Gilmore Girls and I mod podge-d them for stability and assembled the earrings. These earrings are so perfect. They’re delicate looking, graceful and a bit geeky. And they wear really easily. It was so fun to collaborate with my husband!

I had wanted to try hand printing for quite a while when I made the hand printed cards but hadn’t started yet because getting started seemed expensive! So when I finally sat down to do it I raked through my materials and cast offs to see what I could rig up for a fun at home print.

 I came up with some pieces of cardboard and the cover off of an old book to carve the print into. The cardboard failed me; but the book cover worked pretty well!

I drew out my design of repeating triangles and then carefully sliced along all the lines and removed the top layer of the book cover in between my triangles. When I had carved everything out sufficiently I covered it in a couple of layers of mod podge to protect the cardboard from paint and water.

When it was all dry I painted over the book cover turned printing plate in a thin layer with acrylics then carefully placed it on my surface and pressed down.  Success!

I love how these hand printed cards turned out. I’m really into the triangles and bright colors. 

Today, I took the plunge.

I took the plunge and opened my etsy shop today!

Granted there is only one item listed and the photos that I took myself aren't the quality I'm looking for (I'm planning on enlisting some photographer friends), but it is up!

I'm selling at a flea market in Snohomish on July 28th and I wanted to have it launched before then so I could point people towards more of my product.

So my goal between now and then (only a week and a half!) is to get my entire inventory photographed and listed and to have business cards ready. Also to fill in some holes in my stock where I've so far only created one of a particular item  but could easily create multiples.

Check out my one item shop and give me some feedbacck for encouragement! Soon I'll have an "official" launch and let my friends now that everything is listed but for now here it is: http://www.etsy.com/shop/AmandaAileenLantz