In exactly one month, I'll be stuffing the last bit of tulle into my hiking pack and heading west for the annual convention of those who like to Keep It Weird, also known as Burning Man. I seem to have taken on the role of resident "burner" for Etsy HQ, sewing a hundred gnome hats in the Etsy Labs and blogging from the frontlines of participatory art. While the Black Rock ethic is solidly DIY (and I have the stash of sparkly lycra to prove it), I still can't resist picking up a few choice pieces from fellow burners and fearlessly creative souls on Etsy. Here's a packing list to get started, because while the playa may provide electrolyte-sprinkled snow cones and large vats of Oobleck, it's up to us to bring our latex-covered A-game.

Will I be seeing you out at Burning Man this year? Share in the comments!

More Keeping It Weird Posts | Search for "Burning Man" on Etsy

Sometimes it's best not to overthink things. Rather than limiting today's Etsy Finds to a theme, I've put together a rather random collection of items using all of the different shopping features on Etsy. Some treasures were found using Favorites, some with Connections, others with Shop Local, some from our most shared items, and many were sourced from our member-curated Treasury lists. 

Looking for more Etsy Finds? Try these links:

 Guest Curators | Trends | Gift Ideas

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Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Eve Winslow and I am currently living in the woods of Vermont, although I've been known to be somewhat of a nomad. In the past several years, I have lived in Vermont, New York, Boston, Crested Butte, Colorado, L.A., back to Crested Butte and then back to Vermont! I love exploring new places and lifestyles, but I am hoping to stay here long enough to do a little bit of homesteading and maybe get a few goats. I am moving again next month (I have had so many sewing studios!), not too far from where I am, but hopefully closer to some good skiing.

I collect weird animal art. I have a pick-up truck named Trusty, a peanut of a cat named Henrietta Blue (or Henry, Pajama Bottoms, Pitch-a-Tent or just Peanut) and a boyfriend named Nate. I try to be a good person and inclusive; I am a little awkward, and I scare very, very easily. Sometimes if you just say my name, I jump a little and might scream. I blame Stephen King and my fascination with real ghost stories.

Apart from creating things, what do you do?

Well, this little business takes up a lot of time. Running a business from home makes it very difficult to stop working. That being said, I am also very good at eating and love to cook and bake. I love French, Indian, Thai and Moroccan food. I always need to know where my food is coming from. As for drinks, I like mojitos and White Russians. I used to bartend at an amazing Indian/Thai restaurant in Crested Butte that I miss (they had, hands down, the best ginger martini).

I discovered telemark skiing while living in Colorado and that is my activity of choice in the winter, especially when it's followed by sitting next to a fireplace with hot chocolate and a knitting project. In the spring and summer, I run and try to get out on my bike as much as possible. I am a timid mountain biker, but that is okay because there are so many beautiful country roads to bike on where I live now.

I can barely pluck out a tune on my banjo, but I love when others play it. (Play me a tune on the ukulele, though, and you’ve won my heart!) Oh, and I love playing gin rummy and yahtzee; I even carry dice and cards in my bag, just in case. I often visit my best friends, one in Brooklyn and the other in Burlington. It is important for me to get into the city a little bit so I don’t become too much of a creepy woodsy hermit.

What first made you want to become an artist?

I have always been attracted to the lifestyle of “artists.” I had a hard time accepting the way professional life works — the focus of more money equaling peace of mind and happiness, and working the “nine to five” everyday while looking forward to the weekend. It is important to me to look forward to waking up every morning, to enjoy every working day (many of which are way longer than nine to five).

Like many of the artists on Etsy, I have experimented with many mediums over the years. I studied painting, drawing, and jewelry-making in college, but sewing just took over as I found it necessary to make my own clothes or modify anything bought in a thrift shop. Since sewing made me happy, I kept working at it until I created a life that made sense to me, one that is worth waking up to!

If I start to feel smothered by “sewing for a living” at any point, I plan to focus more on other art forms, kind of like rotating crops so the soil doesn’t get overworked.

Please describe your creative process.

I have more than one creative process. For example, if I am not ready to get out of bed in the morning but I feel like I should be working, I spend a little time curled up in bed with Henrietta and I think about outfits that I would like to see on my friends. I usually come up with a few ideas and am then ready to jump out of bed and sketch them out to be made that day or sometime later.

Another method I use is to look around my studio at all of my new and recycled materials until an idea strikes. I like to let the fabric give me direction. Once I get one color combination together, it snowballs into many other ideas and the next thing I know, eight hours have gone by and I am covered in threads with little scraps everywhere and hopefully at least a few pretty dresses! A day of sewing is a trance-like state for me, especially if I am caffeinated and listening to good music. One day is just never long enough for all of my ideas!

What handmade possession do you most cherish?

My lovely fella made me a pasta drying rack for my birthday last year. Fresh pasta is one of my favorite things to make and eat, and this rack is perfect and easy to take apart and store when you are finished. It was the best surprise gift! He also builds bikes and is making me a road bike, so I will just throw out there that this bicycle WILL be one of my favorite handmade gifts. (Now he has to finish it!)

I also have a needlepoint pillow with my name and flowers woven through it that my mom designed and worked on for years; it is very intricate and beautiful.

Name your top five books, movies, musicians, and websites besides Etsy.

You know I can’t limit it to five!

Books:
1) Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
2) Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
3) Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
4) Julia Child and Judith Jones
5) David Sedaris
6) Leslie Feinberg
7) Kurt Vonnegut
8) James Kochalka

Movies:
1) The Wizard of Oz
2) Annie Hall and Woody Allen movies in general
3) Bottle Rocket
4) Hedwig and the Angry Inch
5) The Jerk
6) The Tenant
7) Lady and the Tramp
8) City Lights

TV: Seinfeld and The Golden Girls

Music:
1) The Kinks
2) The Beach Boys
3) Radiohead
4) Edith Piaf
5) Billie Holiday
6) The Blow
7) The Cure
8) Pavement
9) Yann Tiersen
10) NPR (but I can only listen for so long because I end up just crying over my ironing board.)

Websites:
1) David Lebovitz (I just love him, I really do.)
2) 101 Cookbooks (Inspiring photography, unique recipes and ideas.)
3) One Hot Geek (Best movie reviews of new movies and classics. If you like film, you will love this blog!)

Podcasts:
1) This American Life
2) Stuff you Missed in History and Stuff You Should Know
3) Radiolab

What advice would you give to artists who are new to Etsy?

Make sure you would buy what you are selling. Spend time on the lighting to make your photos look good; edit them well and think about cropping. Surf Etsy and see what you are drawn to and ask yourself why. Buy what you can on Etsy and tell everyone you know about it. It will come back to you! When you are bored, daydream about how to get what you want, make a list of goals and tape them to your wall.

What are your favorite features on Etsy? What new features would you like to see?

I love The Etsy Blog! Such a great selection of articles, it is my favorite way to discover new shops.
I would like to see the Shop Local feature have categories to browse through so I could search locally for specific things instead of just browsing.

How do you promote your work?

Hmm, you know, Etsy has really been my main source of promotion. In general, I just try to relist items and post new things as often as possible so more people can check out my shop. I have been featured on a good amount of blogs, but again, I have to credit Etsy for helping them find me! I will focus more on PR and self promotion in the future, but for now, I am just focusing on shaping my business and taking care of the customers who are able to find me.

I do have a Facebook fan page and on that, I post links to blogs I have been featured on as well as some of my newest items. The only problem with the Facebook fan page is that it seems to be mostly family and friends that are my fans, which is sweet, but I don’t know how much that actually counts as “promoting!"

In ten years, where would you like to be?

In ten years, I would love to have a modest little house with a small barn and some hens and goats. It would be great to have some neighbors that like to hen-sit and goat-sit too, so I can spend some more time traveling and eating in other countries.

I would like my business to grow a little, maybe with one or two people to help, so that in the future, I could expand Thimble and Acorn to include handmade soaps, my art prints, outerwear, and bags/purses. I therefore also aspire to magically become a morning person who just naturally wakes up early so I have more time to do all of these wonderful things! Best of luck to me on that one!

Featured Seller Archive

"Is that all there is?" — Peggy Lee

This week's edition of News From the Craft + Style Blogosphere is a gas-guzzling, listless cruise across the pavement of America. Expect sudden vertical spills, eternal helium balloons, the line between personal and business to be smudged and the shadows of Southern mansions to descend.

The city is getting me down. I pine for the intertwined hum of power lines and cicadas, purple slurpees (never grape), jagged vertical landscapes and a listless crosscountry tour. Photographer ck/ck took in an enviable stretch of road in his travels, and I'm finding it quite difficult to avoid Craigslist in search of a beat-up station wagon. [Via But Does it Float]

Photographer Peter Nitsch recently ventured to Bangkok and observed the deep meld between personal and professional lives. The resulting series, "Shophouses," shows the cramped environs of Southeast Asian city dwellers, often inhabiting the spaces that they use as storefronts. Nitsch explored "the diverse cultural and social mix of a rapidly urbanizing Thailand, in order to uncover the basic human qualities that connect his subjects to his work’s viewers." Parsing the layers of functional and decorative in relation to human life is fascinating. [Via Beautiful Decay]

Now this is a genius concept. Instead of filling a helium balloon, why not have an endless scion of shiny, lighter-than-air bliss above your head? These plush "Helium Eternal" balloons by Clementine Henrion are, in actuality, stuffed and hung from the ceiling. Best of all, you will soon be able to buy them on Etsy. (P.S. Who knew that helium supplies are soon to be extinct?) [Via THERSIC]

"Other voices, other rooms," indeed! Southern Gothic is one of my favorite genres, and I do declare (sorry, had to go there) that Eugenio Recuenco has translated the medium into photography quite effectively. [Via Chateau Thombeau]

Wanna give me some more artsy, style or design blogs to peruse? Leave them in the comments! And check out past installments of News From the Craft + Style Blogosphere!

Kelly Carámbula is a graphic designer by day and a baker-blogger by night. As the photographer and maker behind eat make read, Kelly is on a constant quest to try new things, explore the farmer's markets wherever she may be and whip up tasty treats. In addition to her blog, Kelly also co-publishes and designs the food magazine Remedy Quarterly.

As summer kicks into full swing I find myself lingering at the farmer's market, admiring the fruits and vegetables in all their glory. It just seems sad not to take advantage of each basket of berries or bunch of onions. So I'm drawn to making lots of salsa, something I find irresistible and super versatile. I tend to start with a base of tomatoes, red onion, jalepeño, garlic and lime, then I add in any other goodies I come home with.

Lately it's been cherries, and perhaps some peaches, which add a perfect punch of juicy sweetness to the spicy salsa. Pair it with tacos or over a chicken breast and you've got yourself a tasty meal, but make some corn cakes and you'll be in heaven.

I'm not going to lie, I am so in love with corn cakes. We have them almost weekly during the summer months. Not only are they fresh and delicious, but they're easy to make and can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Together with this salsa, it's a taste of summer.

Summer Salsa
Makes about 2 cups

1-2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 jalepeño, deseeded and thinly chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 cup cherries, roughly chopped
1 peach, sliced

Combine all ingredients and let sit for a few hours, up to overnight.

Buttermilk Corn Cakes
Makes 12 4-inch cakes

3-4 ears fresh corn, kernels cut from cob
1 cup buttermilk
4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick), plus more for frying
2 large eggs
3/4 cup cornmeal
3/4 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Step 1: Combine corn, buttermilk and butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Heat until butter melts, remove from heat.
Step 2: In a large bowl, whisk eggs.
Step 3: Add corn mixture to the eggs and mix well.
Step 4: In a small bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.
Step 5: Add flour mixture to egg mixture and combine. Let sit for 10 minutes.
Step 6: Melt 1/2 teaspoon butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Pour 1/4 cup batter into pan. Depending on the size of your skillet you should be able to fit a few into the same pan.
Step 7: Cook for about 2 minutes or until golden, then flip and repeat. Repeat until all the batter is used up.

Serve immediately with your summer salsa, or freeze the cakes for another time.

What's your favorite summertime recipe? Tell us in the comments below.

More Recipes on the Blog | Plants and Edibles Category