Cody is a monster making mom for the midwest who is passionate about using textile discards & creating ecofriendly products!
Author: Cody
Maker Mail Launching in 5…4…3…2…
Maker Mail is a revolutionary co-op service delivering handmade giftables and goodies straight from our makers right to your door!
Maker Mail is a collaborative project entirely created by OMHG community members in our forums. The team took an idea thrown around at an #OMHG chat and turned it into a beautifully crafted movement connecting makers and supporters of handmade directly!
How Maker Mail Works
You can purchase a one-time trial today for $35 and receive three surprise packages of handmade goodness this July along with a sweet handwritten note. After this trial Maker Mail will become a quarterly subscription with new makers and products rotated through the year to keep introducing subscribers to new tastes, styles and creative businesses. You can feel extra warm and fuzzy inside knowing funds go directly to the artists.
Each item is handmade with love and shipped straight from the maker to you, a series of sweet little goodies and giftables arriving to brighten your day and connect you with makers from all over the world! We want opening your Maker Mail to feel like a gift from a dear friend so each package comes with a handwritten note from our makers to you.
The introductory round of subscriptions will be sent out July 1st and will include three of the products shown below to keep or gift to a loved one. Products will be chosen at random so it’ll be a sweet surprise to see what shows up at your door!
Maker Mail is Perfect For:
- Supporters of handmade who want to invest in our lovely makers
- Makers who want to be inspired by the handmade community
- A gift for your creative friend or crafty biz owner
- Anyone who wants a little sweetness in their mailbox!
» Sign Up For Maker Mail (only 20 8! spots available) «
Meet our Makers
One of three seasonal surprise letterpress prints by Stubborn Press & Company
These art prints are the result of a fantastic collaboration by 12 of our fabulous Oh My! members, letterpressed beautifully and ready to frame. You’ll receive 1 of 3 seasonal surprise prints from the OMHG Community Art Print collection, plus an extra print-related goody from Stubborn Press & Company.
Make-your-own cuff or headband kit from Joyful Roots & One Girl Circus
This kit includes all the materials needed to get you started and create your own hand stitched accessory in one crafty afternoon: 3 pre-cut organic knit fabric pieces, one mini skein of embroidery floss, two hand sewing needles in an organic wool felt needle book, and instructions to complete your project.
Boy’s bow tie by Dazzling & Dapper
These tiny bow ties for dapper dudes are perfect for baby shower gifts, dressing up your little man, or photography props! With a velcro closure, they’re easy to put on & are kid approved for formal events or rough and tumble play. The bow ties included in Maker Mail will be sized for dudes newborn to 7 years old.
Set of 3 hand-dyed mini-skeins from Kitty’s Curiosity
This set of three mini-skeins from Kitty’s Curiosity are hand-dyed in an exclusive set of colors developed specifically for Maker Mail. Made of 100% superwash merino in a sock yarn weight, these cute little skeins are perfect for adding a dash of color to your projects! Use one to spice up the toes and heels of socks, or pair all three of them together in a small shawlette.
Each mini-skein is approximately 20g, or about 80 yards, of fingering-weight, washable wool. Three mini-skeins come bundled together, one each of a coral pink, turquoise blue, and light gray, inspired by the community and colors of Oh My! Handmade.
Six Oh My! Handmade Goodness magnets by Little House of Crafting
These magnets are perfect for you to have and share with friends! Half the size of your thumb, these eyecatchers are the perfect size to put on your fridge and show off your love for the handmade community. The strong ceramic magnets each hold up to 6 pieces of paper at a time, making these a great “fun”-ctional accessory for you and yours!
One surprise Gadget Mon-stor by Lu & Ed
Protect your tiny treasures on the go! These pocket sized cuties are the perfect size to store cell phones, cameras, and some handheld video game systems, car keys, gift cards, money & lip balm, or even crayons & tiny toys to keep kids occupied on the go! The strong velcro closure keeps your stuff from slipping out into your purse, diaper bag or backpack, and the fluffy fleece body creates a layer of padding to protect your possessions from bumps and bangs!
As a bonus, all products from Lu & Ed are handmade from upcycled fabrics. These are made from scraps from larger Mon-stors, so each one is unique & there is absolutely no landfill waste from the production of them!
Oh My Handmade Goodness Soap by Operation Soapbox
Treat your senses with a luxurious spa soap, scented with a blend of lush and sensual Sandalwood & Jasmine. Operation Soapbox combines skin loving ingredients such as rich, moisturizing coconut oil with nourishing vegetable glycerin that will leave your skin feeling clean, silky and pampered.
Bumper notebook pack of five 4×6 40 page recycled notebooks, each with a unique colourful pattern on the cover, by Sam Osbourne
The notepads are perfect for handbags, pockets or laptop bags to help you can get all your ideas down on the move, I use one of these on a daily basis to keep track of my to do list!
Each notebooks is 40 pages of 100% recycled paper with heavy weight cover and two staples along the spine.
A 4×6 card from the The Like, Totally Awesome Paper Collection by Sara Does
These cards bring you a bit of whimsy, a bit of snark, and some giggles in paper form. The front of these cards is a nod to the girl inside all of us who can’t put a grammatically correct sentence together, while the inside serves as a translation to help us get the message across.
The Get Living postcard is perfect for reminding your bestie or your mom or your students or clients or maybe even the love of your life that NOW is the time to be living. Like, just go do it! Card measures 4×6 and will fit perfectly in a frame, should you choose to keep it for yourself as a little inspiration-art.
Seriously sweet sticker pack by Scrawny Girl
It’s always the perfect time to enjoy the sunshine and take some pictures! This is a pack of 8 hand drawn stickers that range in size from 1″ to 5.5″. Printed on matte adhesive paper perfect for laptops, notebooks, and scrapbook embellishments, all cut out by hand.
Meet the Maker Mail Team
- Genevieve is our phenomenal and highly motivating leader
- Cody is our marketing-genius-in-residence and enthusiast extraordinaire
- Cherish is our lifesaving business guru and organizer of amazingness
- Melissa is our maker of enticing loveliness and financial fantastica
- Kim is our gorgeous graphics girl and wonder-creator
» Click Here to Sign Up For Maker Mail Today! «
Be sure to let us know in the comments or tag #MakerMail on Twitter to let us know what you think about our new collaboration and cheer our community on!
Give Your Studio Space A Makeover
Clutter and chaos stifle creativity, but I think we as creatives tend to be pretty messy folk sometimes, huh? At least I am but clutter disrupts my inner peace, it silences my muse and depletes my motivation. Of course, we always try to tidy up, to put things in their proper place, but when you find yourself in a flurry of fantastic inspiration returning your scissors to their special space just doesn’t seem a top priority, does it?
Recently I was at a turning point with my business and had to tame my crazy, wildly messy, haphazard-piles-of-stuff-everywhere-you-looked studio. After months of struggling to keep up with my inventory, I had finally reached the point in my business where I could afford and need to hire an intern to help with production. We’d set up the schedule and my intern’s first day was on a Thursday. I’d been creating and making non-stop for weeks so there were piles of all sorts of things every which way you looked. I walked into my studio the Saturday before my intern was to start and just saying “Whoa!” I mean, really, I’m surely not that sloppy, am I?
Okay, maybe I am. Maybe when I’m intensely inspired I get a little carried away and just toss stuff to the side rather than putting it back where it belongs. Maybe I am really good at playing Jenga with boxes I plan to upcycle for shipping. Maybe my fabric closet was so disorganized and jam packed with fabric I couldn’t close the closet doors.
So I set to work. Here is how I got my clutter under control and gave my studio space a makeover!
SORT & DONATE
I tipped forward five foot tall shelf in my closet and let my fabrics just fall to the floor. Some were crammed so tightly onto the shelf I had to pull out wads of fabric! It was pretty horrific, really. I folded and started each piece of fabric and when finished, I had two whole bags of fabric to donate that I just had to finally admit I was never ever going to be using. It felt amazing to step back and look at my tidy fabric collection! I even broke down all the cardboard boxes in my studio and reduced the (five) stacks to one small corner of boxes beside my shelf of fabric, hidden behind the doors of the closet!
But then I closed the closet doors and was taken aback by how much clutter there still was in my studio, even after putting all the fabric away. My studio is in the tiny third bedroom at the very back of my cozy little home, it’s not very big at all. Not much room for storage solutions. I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out some storage solutions for the remaining clutter.
TURN UNUSED WALL SPACE INTO CREATIVE STORAGE
Then I had a brilliant idea, one I think maybe other people may like to borrow for their own spaces – take storage UP, all the way to the ceiling. Save floor space and use wall space for clever clutter control! Below I will share how I used previously unused wall space for creative storage solutions in my studio and include some ideas you may like to incorporate in your spaces to free up floor & surface areas!
First up, I used an old over-the-door towel rack thing to hold hangers and hoops in my studio. I can see these being used to hold a variety of things in small studios – skeins of yarn, jewelry, scarves, or maybe even canvas bags to hold smaller supplies, like paint, beads, card stock, printer ink, etc.
Right beside the closet, I have a little nook. To make it a functional space, I brought in my craft show displays – why not use them for their intended purpose, holding products, right? Then I hung my thread rack & art from friends, as well as a shelf/coat rack thing I found in our garage. I stored card stock, my bookkeeping things, sewing machine supply boxes, and more on the shelf near the ceiling and used the hooks to hold a basket I filled with cards and stationery for my business and my headphones and other odds and ends.
I hung more art above my desk, and also a shelf to hold tape, business cards, photo props, a bin for miscellaneous tiny things & some note books and on my table, a basket to catch works-in-progress.
I used the outer ring of a 5″ hoop to hold my washi tape stash and hung it on the wall – no more MIA rolls of washi tape! You could also use this idea for ribbon & twine or bracelets if you are a jewelry maker.
It took two days to get my studio tamed and tidy but when I was finished putting away the final few little bits and I looked around, I was ready to take the greatest step as an entrepreneur with a fresh, clean slate and calm mind and welcome my new intern into my tidy tiny studio. As an added bonus, I’ve discovered with all this wall storage it’s easier to keep my space picked up & keep clutter off surface areas now!
Everything I used for storage in my studio was either thrifted or gifted, or just hanging around the house!
Here are a few other tips for creative studio storage:
- Hang baskets from the wall by their handles for easy access storage.
- Get creative with hanging shelves at various heights on the walls – and get creative with how you store things on the shelf, too! Use vases & small boxes to keep them tidy, or glass jars to hold buttons, pens, paint brushes, polymer clay, etc.
- Stack bookcases for floor to ceiling for the illusion of built in storage and use cute baskets to mask clutter.
- Install colorful cabinet door knobs on your wall to hang things from.
- Hang a series of buckets by the handles – bonus cool points if you spray paint them each a different color and use them for color coordinated storage for supplies like yarn, beads, thread, polymer clay, card stock, or paint.
- Use tiny shelves to store tiny things – figurines, thread, bobbins, little containers of jewelry parts, etc.
Now it’s your turn: try giving your studio/workspace a makeover this week and tell us all about it in the comments or share your ideas for studio organization!