In the basement of their flagship store in Manhattan’s Herald Square, Macy’s is running an experiment. One Below is a store focused on shoppers in their teens and twenties that the department store is using as a laboratory to figure out what the kids today like, and they plan to use what they learn there in their other stores across the country. Now they’re adding something new: a real-life Etsy store. [More]
crafts
Tide Detergent Pod Containers Make Easy Trick-Or-Treat Baskets, But Is It A Good Idea?
By 9.10.15
Back in 2012, Procter & Gamble changed the packaging of Tide Pods to look less like candy in a jar after children showed an affinity for putting the colorful, shiny, toxic detergent packets in their mouths. While the move – and constant reminders to keep the detergent far, far away from kids – was meant to deter children from snacking on the poisonous packets, consumers are apparently finding a new use for the bright orange opaque container, a use that some say might not dissuade youngsters from thinking the contents are edible: Halloween candy buckets. [More]
Etsy Launches Pilot Crowdfunding Program To Help Sellers Grow Their Businesses
By 6.16.15
While Etsy has long been a marketplace where sellers could launch small businesses, the site has not had a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding platform for sellers to raise money to grow their businesses. Today, Etsy announced it is finally giving crowd-sourced funding a shot with the launch of a new pilot program. [More]
Michaels Knows That The Rainbow Loom Gravy Train Has To Stop Eventually
By 6.16.14
Michaels, a store that sells craft supplies and random decorative crap, managed to become the only big-box craft store that sells kids’ current favorite craft/toy, the Rainbow Loom. Here’s the problem with having one hot product, though: it might boost a company’s sales and profits now, but how long will the trend last? [More]
Is Gift Wholesaler Cody Foster & Co. Responsible For Wholesale Ripoffs Of Indie Crafters?
By 10.17.13 — Updated: 10.18.13
You’ve probably never heard of Cody Foster & Company, even if you own items that came from them. They’re a wholesaler with no public-facing catalog. You have to be a small gift shop or large-ish chain like Anthropologie to even see their site. You can buy directly from the independent crafters and designers who claim that the company took their designs, mass-produced them in China, and sold them to retailers with no compensation to the original artists. [More]
3 Things You Can Make Instead Of Buy
By 11.30.11
With a pair of hands, some raw materials and imagination, you can make a lot of things you’d otherwise buy. Your do-it-yourself projects may or may not measure up in quality to manufactured goods, but at least you’ll know whom to complain to if you’re not satisfied. [More]
False Alarm: There Is No 50% Off Everything Sale At Michaels
By 4.20.11
Customers (myself included) on the email list of craft retailer Michaels received a message this morning with the subject line of “50% off your entire purchase – Friday only.” thought that perhaps the stakes had been raised in the ongoing coupon arms race between the big-box craft retailers. Alas, no. [More]
Make Your Own Zhu Zhu The Fad Robot Hamster Toy
By 12.16.09
If you have kids, you’re probably biting your nails down to the quick worrying how you’re going to find–much less pay for–this year’s super hot fad toy, Zhu Zhu the Robot Hamster. But don’t be so stupid! The thing about fad toys like Zhu Zhu is that they’re about 30% fun, 30% marketing, and 40% media hype. You can bypass all that nonsense and make your own in less than 20 minutes, and for a fraction of the cost. [More]
How To Ruin Your Jeans On The Cheap
By 10.16.09
If there’s one thing my grandmother and I agree on, aside from the fact that Marlena being possessed was a dumb storyline on Days of Our Lives, it’s that it makes no sense to pay top dollar for deliberately weakened/damaged denim. The ConsumerReports blog ShopSmart has found a website that offers tips on how to distress your jeans at home, like using a pumice stone to cut holes, or a cheese grater to create patterns.
Urban Expressions Craft Store Calls Customer A Whore
By 7.17.09
The only thing crazier than people involved with wedding planning are people in the scrapbooking supply industry, it seems. Weddingbee reports that an online craft supply store called Urban Expressions (not to be confused with the handbag company) completely lost it when an angry customer wrote in asking why they had neither shipped the item she’d bought nor specified otherwise as promised. Their response makes us understand why they chose the name “Urban Expressions” for their store.
Recycle Old CDs Into An iPhone or iPod Dock
By 6.15.09
Do you have a dozen or so unusable CDs or DVDs lying around, some glue and tools, and a burning need for a cool-looking iPod or iPhone dock? Geeky Gadgets can show you how to combine all of these things into a functional, and fashionably recycled, gadget.
Make Jewelry From Your Discarded Credit Cards
By 5.27.09
Sure, you could cut up your credit and debit cards and throw them away once they’re closed, expired, or the account number has been stolen in a massive data breach. Or, with a few simple tools, you could re-purpose them into lovely pieces of jewelry.
Delta Creative Settles With Artist Over Defective Paint Products
By 10.8.08
Remember Vickie and her defective Delta Creative PermEnamel experience? It ruined several of her pieces, not because she applied it incorrectly but because something was wrong with the product. It happens sometimes with products, no big deal. What was a big deal was the company’s CEO, Bill George, refused to approve a compensation payment that his employees had already agreed to with Vickie, leaving her with no choice but to contact a lawyer and write to us. It looks like Delta Creative and the artist have now resolved the issue, and she’s sent us a statement saying everything has been resolved to her “complete satisfaction.”
Delta Creative Prez Denies Refund: "We're Not In The Business Of Reimbursement"
By 10.2.08
I have used the Delta PermEnamel Products for several years with marvelous results. This was an isolated incident which I would not expect to recur. This isolated incident has been resolved to my complete satisfaction. Thank you, Delta Creative, Inc.
Decorate Your Walls For Less By Gluing Random Crap Together
By 9.9.08
My friend and I used to pretend to be crafters, and we would email elaborately ridiculous project descriptions back and forth to each other as examples of that past time gone wild. Now we must put down our imaginary glue guns and denim swatches to pay homage to Pamela Cole Harris, who does this stuff for real. Below, see what happens when a kindly scrapbooker goes insane.
Make Your Own Toy Kitchen
By 11.9.07
It’s your kid—you should get to decide what kinds of choking and lead poisoning hazards make up its playthings. One woman clearly didn’t need any Fisher-Price plastic toy kitchen ruining her white-on-white aesthetic, so she made her own entirely out of found corrugated cardboard, contact paper, and a few household items. And if you don’t feel you have the skills to replicate it by looking at the photographs, then she’ll sell you a copy of the plans for $7.
Now You Can Crochet Your Own Snuggies At Home
If a Snuggie is just a blanket with sleeves, doesn’t it follow that as the crazed hybrid of a blanket and a sweater, it makes an ideal crochet project? One yarn manufacturer thinks so, and has released a free pattern which, coincidentally, requires at least $21 worth of their cheap acrylic yarn.