Featured Shop: LoveCreations24

Thank you very much Tina for taking the time to answer a few questions about your etsy business: LoveCreations24. I am very happy and honored to feature your shop! http://LoveCreations24.etsy.com

Q. How did you hear about Etsy?
A. This was definitly down the grapevine. My Great Grandmother (who turn 100 in June) has a shop on Etsy where she sells her pillows and she told my Grandmother, Mimi about it, so Mimi set up a shop there, and of course I had to join in on all the action! At first I thought it was stupid because I had no idea what the heck it was, but next thing I knew I was sitting there for 5 hours looking through all the Etsy pages wishing I could have Everything I there!

Q. How did you originally come up with an idea of a Family's Collaborative shop?
A. Well I had to because it was in the rules to. The original flower girls on my site were done by Mimi, my Mom and my Aunts and I did not want to take credit for them. So I read about what I needed to do on the site in order to be able to display them honestly and this was the info they had on the Collaborative shop. Of course, to be honest, they get none of the proceeds! Lol. They don't do any of the work, Mimi and I do it all and even Mimi and I have a standing agreement. Everytime we reach $50...we go out to dinner together =) Besides, some of these were done years ago, forgotten about and we resurrected them! My family is awesome though - several of them have tried to buy packs of cards or the prints but of course we won't take their money! (And now there's even 3 new artists to add on my page since we did a whole swarm of new flower girls last week!)

Q. What is the process and which materials are used to create your flower girls.
A. Flowers are used to create the flower girls!
Basically we go out and round up as many flowers, petals, certain leaves and stems and being very delicate we arrange them into these flower girls overtop white paper. Then we photograph them, and because the photographs always have shadows or gray or dark areas on the white paper I then have to white out the background on a photo program. Lastly once they are printed we do the faces in watercolor. It can be time consuming - but it's fun and worth it!

Q. Who are the artists behind these beautiful creations:
A. Oh my! Lol - Ok, Mimi, My Mom, my four Aunts: Judi, Susan, Maureen, Debbie. And then as of last week we have new flower girl creators; My sister Michelle, one of my Best Friend's Amanda and myself =)

Q. What motivates and inspires you and the artists in your family to create?
A. Anything! Sometimes we just come up with ideas and call them 'projects.' And see this is the thing, it's not even really anyone else but Mimi and I that are normally creating. We spend a lot of time together and so we like to come up with new crafts. Just recently for Easter we made cookies on a stick that were decorated and iced in Easter shapes and then 'planted' them in a pot for all the grown women in the family. They were adorable! (In fact there are pics in my blog about them). So really anything inspires us. It can be in magazines, word of mouth, seeing other people's work. There is no limit!

Q. And on a personal note, who are your favorite pets and how many do you have?
A. Well my current favorite pets are my guinea piggies, Crush and Moo! They are my babies! And they're the only two ones that I have, although Mimi and I joke that she is my pet too - that she is my dog - she even woofs. Lol. But thats only because I want a dog soooo bad and can't have one in our apartment that she tells me she'll be my dog! She's loyal enough I guess! So she is my other favorite pet! ;)

Thank you very much, Tina.