If you're in the Washington, DC area, you should come to the Crafty Bastards show on Sunday. There's going to be entertainment, demonstrations, and 100 awesome craft vendors (including me!). 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., at the Marie Reed Learning Center at 18th & Wyoming.

Ooh, and look! The Washington City Paper posted a Q&A with me on their Crafty Bastards blog!

1) 7/19, 10:00 p.m.: Near the Beach, Lewes, DE

2) 7/31, 8:30 p.m.: Puma Birthday Cake
See: Tiny Little Oven Cakes.

3) 8/18, 3:00 p.m.: Beautiful Yarn Received in Trade
See: Infinknitty.

4) 8/19, 1:00 p.m.: Casting My Ear

I'm always amazed at how many ineffectual business cards I pick up at crafty events. It's not like the cards are ugly – most of them are beautifully designed – but they don't tell me enough about what the person makes for me to connect the card with what I loved about their work. For example, I have a stack of five or ten cards on my desk right now that just have basic patterns, like flowers or paisley, and say something like "jewelry" or "journals." When I go to an event with 100 crafters, how am I supposed to remember someone's work from that? I can't.

Some people do a great job though. Here are four business cards I picked up at the Art Star Craft Bazaar a while back that were successful in reminding me what the artist’s work was:

From the top left:

1. Ray-Min Shoulderware. This card is one of my favorites because it does a nice job of representing Ray-Min's work – handbags decorated with simple, bold shapes – without actually showing the bags.
2. Deadbird. Cat Campbell makes mixed media art with photos of taxidermied animals, and the bit of big cat on the front is a nice reminder. Also, save for the white name on white in the upper-right corner (which is barely visible in this image), I love the design of this card.
3. Bright Lights Little City. Heather makes handmade lamps out of paper parasols. The front of the card is illuminated parasols. Easy.
4. TADworks. Cute little felted critters show up (beautifully photographed) right on the front of the card. No mistaking what this is.

For quite some time I had been bumming around the internet with some shoddy-ass webpages for my crafts. But no more will I suffer the indignity of frames! No more will my shopping cart be constructed from a PayPal hack and internet-based duct-tape! This weekend my dear friend Mark and I hunkered down and, thanks to Shopify, rebuilt the entire thing from scratch. It looks pretty snazzy.

On a related note, Gladys Sells Things is dead and gone. The name "Gladys Sells Things," while logical, was kind of stupid, and trying to hock other people’s wares just wasn’t a good idea for me, who already has 1,000 projects going at any given time. The Gladys Makes Things site now has its own store! The Gladys Makes Things site will reign supreme! The Gladys Makes Things site is the website equivalent of E. Honda doing the Hundred Hand Slap in Street Fighter II!

So, um, here: Gladys Makes Things