Our Handmade Gifts wants to give back to the community, and will be doing so with our Support a Cause section. Our first section focuses on Breast Cancer Awareness, and purchases made in this category will have a portion of the selling price donated to various breast cancer organizations.

A group of jewelry designers got together and decided to build a better website, that showcases handmade and custom jewelry that isn’t run of the mill. Our Handmade Gifts is a site where you can find beautiful beaded jewelry, gemstones turned into earrings and necklaces, chainmail (also known as chainmaille) and custom polymer clay combined with canvas and fabric creations. While the site is focused mainly on jewelry at the moment, you will also find things like cell phone charms and wine glass charms, which site creator Deborah Carney didn’t even know existed a year ago.

Our Handmade Gifts includes jewelry created by artisans Deborah Carney, Liz Ababon, Leah Helmrich, Ralph Helmrich and Vinny O’Hare. Formerly involved with Print on Demand companies to sell her photography and art, Carney found the handmade community sites to be too corporate focused and not personalized enough. Investigating some art links posted by other artists on Twitter, Carney discovered that there is a market for “mini prints” or art on pendants. While most artists work with polymer clay and transfers, Carney perfected a technique to print her art and photography on canvas and fuse it to the clay, and create art you can wear.

Father and Daughter team Leah and Ralph Helmrich work with intricate wire and create jewelry using a technique called “chainmail” which is creating chains, earrings, necklaces and bracelets using small wire rings and weaving them to create their pieces. Leah also creates “steampunk” and enjoys working with wire to create other designs that appeal to the younger crowd. Ralph actually creates not only the jewelry pieces, but the components their jewelry is made of. Handmade in the USA with wire and jumprings made in the USA also.

Liz Ababon loves working with wire and beads and all sorts of components to make her jewelry and gift items that appeal to a wide range of people. Vinny O’Hare focuses on earrings created out of the wire jumprings that Ralph makes.

“Old time” scrapbookers relied heavily on newspaper clippings for their scrapbooks. But newsprint is not a great material to add to your scrapbooks; it discolors and can break down other page elements. So how do you use newspapers in your scrapbooking without risking the longevity of your pages? Here’s how.

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Scrapbooking and Preserving Newspapers – How to Incorporate Them on Your Page

Just take a look at two uncommon accessories that should always be a part of your stitching kit. The first is a small but powerful torch. That is exactly right.

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Improve Your Stitching Abilities – Use These Two Useful Sewing Machine Accessories

Scrapbook albums come in a wide variety of sizes, styles, and price points. How do you know which to choose? This short article will walk you through the selection process so you have the perfect “home” for your precious scrapbook layouts.

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Scrapbooking Albums – How to Choose

You’ve probably heard a lot about monthly scrapbooking kit clubs, but you might have a lot of questions. What are they? How do they work? Will they save me money? Read on to discover the ins and outs of monthly kit clubs, and how to choose the right one for you.

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Monthly Scrapbooking Clubs – Kits to Your Doorstep

Once you’ve got your basic scrapbook supplies covered, what do you purchase next? This short article walks you through some great additions to your scrapbooking supplies that will let you enhance your layouts without breaking the bank.

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Scrapbooking Supplies – Beyond the Basics

If you learn engraving or need to personalize the special gift, you will need to have the proper tools. The cutters, gravers, burs and also sharpeners are all you need to be tipped with the carbide to create clean lines in the stainless steel. If you want to do more elaborate work, you can consult to the tool supply house for the additional tools. Here is more information for you.

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Some Engraving Tools For the Stainless Steel

The Cricut Cutter by Provo Craft is a die-cutting machine used primarily for scrapbooking and card making. Since the invention of the first camera, in the 1830′s the growth of scrapbooking has grown exponentially. It has been an exciting and lucrative hobby for many years with the Cricut Cutter making it far easier for the average person to be more creative.

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Cricut Cutter – The Personal Die-Cutter

In the olden times, pictures mostly came out in black and white, and you might have seen at least one of your grandmothers and grandfathers’ photos that were like that. Some people find it boring and monotonous, while some consider it a beautiful means of art expression.

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Grandmother Book – A Story of Her Life

Stitches & Quilt Blocks — Next Year’s Club

I finally got around to counting up the votes for this (I’m a charter member of the procrastinator’s club) and the winner for a club theme for next year is stitches and quilt blocks. I’m excited because quilts always inspire me and this is such a wonderful way to learn new stitches. Best of all, with mostly square sides or true diagonals, compensation is really easy. It will also give us a wonderful way to explore colors through the projects. I’m going off to do some hard-core designing. And I also need to know your opinion for how you would like to see these packaged. There are three options, which I’ll list from most to least expensive. painted canvas – you will get a painted canvas in a specific color scheme. The lesson will tell you exactly the threads/colors to buy line-drawn canvas – you will get line-drawn canvas so you can pick your own threads. Sometimes you will need to color parts of the canvas yourself. counted canvas – you will get a blank piece of canvas and a map that will tell you how big each patch in the design needs to be. You may draw it on the canvas or just count. Sometimes you will need to color parts of the canvas yourself. I’m hoping to have more details, including prices, and a sign-up sheet by mid-October. Lots of people also wanted to explore threads so there will be offerings along those lines as well. Several threads will be used in the monthly projects, there will be some cyberclasses and I’m also planning on putting together some thread exploration packs with threads, canvas, and a small project. Related posts: Christmas Lights – 2010 Needlepoint Club Sneak Peek – Little Quilt Blocks eBook August Twinchy Challenge – Quilt Blocks Quilt Block Coasters with Stitch Guides What Color Should that Stitch Be?

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Grandparents Memory Book – Go Back In Time

Our grandparents have been around for so many years, and they have undoubtedly been through a lot. They have lots of experiences in life that not any one of us can compare to.

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