In all honesty, I am completely hopeless at Social Media. After all these years, I still refuse to join Facebook, only have a vague idea of what Instagram does, and have absolutely no clue what that Periscope stuff is all about. It's all a mystery to me!
Back in my day (which wasn't all that long ago, oh the irony!) we didn't have a 150 character limit, and tweeting was something only cute little cartoon birdies did.
I am, to put it mildly, wildly behind the times. And I'm mostly okay with that LOL ;P
However - a friend of mine is really getting into home decor lately and we've been doing a lot of window shopping in real life, just checking out different ideas.
I truly think when it comes to finding your own style in anything - be it throw pillows for your couch or paintings for your wall - it really helps to just browse around! If you keep an open mind, I guarantee that you will find inspirations that will help you narrow down and refine your vision so that you can go looking for what you actually do want, and it greatly increases the probability that you will find what you want.
These days, the best way to find unusual and nifty things is online. Now, I much prefer to shop locally, and I don't have much experience shopping online, but I have been doing a lot of virtual window shopping this week and it's super FUN! I think the biggest platform for this is Pinterest, but the site is so huge that it's overwhelming.
So I decided to start off a little smaller, and joined Etsy instead. My Profile is under AureliaEglantine. There isn't a "Friends" function that I can see, but you can Follow other users. The main advantage of having an Etsy account, if you aren't a Buyer or Seller, is that you can become what they call a "Curator".
This means you can "heart" or Favourite items you like. These are automatically saved to an "Items I Love" list, but you can set up other lists with your own titles and sort listings your own way. Setting up categories makes it easier to find things later.
And you can collect up to 16 such items into a little collection called a Treasury!
Most Treasuries have some sort of theme, usually indicated in the title, and include items from different shops. Although you could have all 16 listings come from one shop, it seems to be frowned upon, as is self-promotion (which is linking to an item in your own shop if you are a Seller). Treasuries are fun and easy to make, and the best part is that the thumbnails of the images take you directly to the full listing.
So if you see something you love and really want you can actually buy it, if the listing hasn't expired. This is very convenient, especially compared to Pinterest where you can end up spending a lot of time trying to trace an image back to its source and often hit dead ends. And Etsy is also great for thrifters, as there is a lot of Vintage (you can filter your searches by Handmade or Vintage) too, although the values vary widely.
The Treasuries look a little different on the Etsy site, and you can view a list of all of them on my Profile here (or click on the titles below to go directly to that specific Treasury). But thanks to a neat free tool from Toastie Studio, you can also add Treasuries to your blog, so here are three full of interesting stitchy treasures:
Stitchy Goodness: Light & Lovely
Soft, lovely colours perfect for Spring stitching! |  |  |  |
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Powered By Toastie Studio - Etsy Tools
Stitchy Goodness: Bright & Bold
Strong, gemstone colours perfect for dramatic stitching! |  |  |  |
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Powered By Toastie Studio - Etsy Tools
Spring Flowers: Needlework Kits
Stitchy kits and patterns perfect for Spring! The designs use all kinds of different needlework techniques but all feature pretty flowers :) |  |  |  |
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Powered By Toastie Studio - Etsy Tools
Also, is this not amazing?
This is the "Canvaswork Embroidered Minihoop Pendant No. 2 Kit" by the shop Beautiful Stitches, which is located in Australia. It looks like an interesting project.
The amount of creative talent on Etsy alone is just awesome! And very inspiring.
Hope you find something to enjoy here, and if you curate some Treasuries of your own I'd love to see them! Feel free to leave a link in the comments :)
Are you a Buyer, Seller or Curator on Etsy? Found anything that you love lately?!
