We went to Surfside Beach, Texas last weekend to see our friend Adam, who runs a restaurant there on the beach called Pirate’s Alley Cafe. My boyfriend, Dave, shot some web commercials for Adam’s restaurant & beach rentals, plus another hotel out there and he even did a commercial for the city itself! We got to stay in one of those amazing beach houses. This quaint little beach town is what I imagine much of the Florida panhandle must have been like 50 years ago…

My RSS feed is fixed now! In case you missed it, something happened and it was out for a few weeks, but hopefully everything should be working now. Thanks to everyone who commented with suggestions on my post about it, and to the lovely folks at Dreamhost for all your help!

Today is the last day to enter the L’Occitane Shower Gel & Body Lotion Giveaway.

My friend Jene just tipped me off to this thing called Groupon. They’re about to launch a New Orleans program, and they already have programs in place for most major U.S. cities. It’s basically what the name implies – a group coupon. Here’s what Jene had to say about the program: “I highly recommend it. Basically you subscribe, every day you get ONE e-mail of an offer. You decide if you want it, if you do you sign up for it and if enough people request it then it is valid.” She used it when she lived in NYC and says that often the coupons are for restaurants, but that she once got a $75 massage for $40 and a deal on $35 worth of groceries for only $20 at a local natural grocery store. It sounded like a pretty sweet deal, so I’m waiting to see what deals are in place for New Orleans! This sounds like it could also be a great way for local businesses to get new customers in their doors. If you want to sign up, please feel free to use my referral link to do so! (Once you do, you’ll get your own referral link to send to your friends!)

Awhile back, I wrote an article on Southern artists who use recycled materials in their work for the 1st issue of a new magazine called Southern Flourish. The premiere issue, Spring 2010, is scheduled to launch next week, but there are a few teaser images already on Flickr, including one shot from the article I wrote. (That’s the image above.) This magazine is going to be sort of like Southern Living meets Domino with a modern upbeat flair. I can’t wait to see how the whole thing turns out!

Here are a few great recent crafty business links from around the web:

Focus Your Energy @ Handmade Spark
Asking for It @ BAKERY
from in-house production to outsourcing, why you should offer microwave classes, designing sticky products, part 1 @ crafting an MBA
a short rant about business cards @ White Hot Truth
Code for Crafters :: Images 101 @ Tara Gentile
The Keys to the Store: Selling Handmade to Retailers and Wholesalers, Inventory Management for the Creative Entrepreneur @ Meylah
Understanding Merchant Services @ Retail Minded Blog
Thinking about selling your hand made craft and design online? @ Pure Design Blog

BizCamp is this new “UnConference” coming up here in New Orleans on Saturday, March 27th for entrepreneurs. It will be held at The IP Building (643 Magazine) and will include complimentary lunch and a DJ set from DJ Soul Sister. I’ve signed up to go, and if you’re interested you can check out more information and register at their website. It’s totally free to attend and it sounds like a great networking & learning opportunity.

If you’re in Philly, be sure to check out the Philadelphia Designer’s Market for Independent Fashion Designers on Saturday, April 17th, from 11am til 6pm at 123 South 17th Street. Admission is free and there will be free totes for early shoppers!

April 17th is also the day of the Alternative Media Expo here in New Orleans. The New Orleans Craft Mafia will be putting together free goodie bags for the first 100 shoppers as well, so be sure to check it out if you’re in the area, and no matter where you’re located, you are welcome to contribute to the goodie bags and get the word out about your business or organization! More details on how to participate are here.

I just heard about the fiercegrrl fund on Modish. It was formed to raise money to help Nicole Puzan, a 26 year old artist and crafter who was diagnosed with Stage IIIc ovarian cancer. She is uninsured, like so many artists & self-employed folks in this country, and can use all the help she can get right now. Check out the post on Modish or go to the fiercegrrl fund for more info and to donate.

I just discovered Londi Creations via Felt Plum.  She creates these GORGEOUS jewelry pieces using zippers and felt. I’ve seen a lot of different zipper jewelry, but I think this is a unique take, and I love the splash of color that the felt pieces add! If you’re a fan of the felt, you should also check out a few other posts by Felt Plum. She links to Felt Kits Galore on Etsy and shows off some super cute felted animals by Bossy’s Feltworks.

The Green Project, one of my favorite local organizations, was recently named one of the winners of the 2010 Social Innovators Institute. This means they’ll be able to expand their paint recycling department into Second Line Recycled Paint. Lately the demand for their recycled paint product has far exceeded what they can supply, so now they’ll be able to keep up with demand and create revenue to fund their environmental education programming. Congrats to The Green Project!

One of The Green Project’s annual fundraisers is also coming up in a couple of weeks. Their Salvations 2010 Furniture Competition takes place at The Shops at Canal Place, 333 Canal Street, New Orleans on March 19, 2010 from 7pm to 10pm. Local artists took the challenge to create great furniture and lighting installations out of recycled materials for this competition. You can check out their Flickr photostream to see some of this year’s entries or check out their blog for more details and ticket information.

I’ve seen a whole bunch of great tips for crafty businesses & Etsy sellers being posted around the web in recent days. Here are a few of my favorite posts:

• 10 Ways to Maximize Your Facebook Fan Page
• Building Social Proof on Facebook
• SECRET Etsy Tips From Etsy Sellers
• are you giving your customers enough product information?
• Smooth Sailing: 15 Tips For Shipping Handmade Products
• Free Download: Weekly Blog Planner
• Littleput Books’ adventures in wholesale land
• POOL trade show

Chrissy from Indie Biz Chicks is offering a free sneak peek of her new e-book, The Yearly Marketing And Blogging Plan. You can see 5 marketing ideas and 10 blogging ideas from the e-book in the sneak peek version. The full-length e-book contains 52 marketing ideas and 156 blogging ideas, ie enough topics for 3 blog posts per week for an entire year. Pretty handy if you’re always struggling to come up with fresh ideas on topics to write about and ways to market yourself.

If you’re looking for more ways to refocus and reinvigorate your blogging, a lot of folks are looking to Scoutie Girl’s 52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion as well. I’ve been hearing rave review’s of Tara’s e-book, and The Blooming Wildflowers Project gives it a thumbs up! I just discovered this fab blog which features plenty of handmade goods and indie design. The gal behind The Blooming Wildflowers Project blog also has a sweet Etsy shop, Pineapple Sugar, which features the earrings show above.

These last earrings are by Drops of Sun on Never Ender. The artist makes her jewelry from recycled paper findings which she collects during her travels around the world. Pretty cute, no? You can check out more of what else is new at Never Ender here.

So… If you subscribe to my RSS feed, either through a feed reader or by email, and you haven’t been getting my posts for the last week or so and are wondering why… well, so am I. Something happened to my feed, and I’m not sure what I might have done or how to fix it. As far as I know, the last time my feed worked was when this post on February 19 went out. Unfortunately I’ve searched and searched the web and haven’t found many clues.

I posted to the Feedburner Google Group. I’m kind of annoyed that it’s the only help system they have, and there’s no way to contact anyone directly to ask a question. I’ve seen a LOT of unanswered questions in that forum and I’m afraid that mine will remain one of them. Here’s the crazy message I get when I try to re-sync my feed with Feedburner:

“The URL you entered does not appear to be a valid feed. We encountered the following problem: Error on line 1: White spaces are required between publicId and systemId.”

Here is my original feed:
http://www.missmalaprop.com/feed/

In my search, the only possible explanations I’ve found are that sometimes this error message can occur when I saw something you copy and paste things into Wordpress from Microsoft Word. I avoid doing that, because I know it can cause all sorts of formatting problems, so I don’t think that’s how it happened, but I checked over the html for the posts I’ve made since that date and couldn’t find any strange formatting. I also deactivated a bunch of plugins, hoping that one of them was causing this error, but I’m still getting the same message.

Is anyone out there a ninja master of XML and RSS feeds? I’ll keep investigating this further, but for right now, it looks like you’ll have to come straight to the source to see my posts.

Picked By You! is back!  Below you’ll find some great handmade goods recommended by you, the readers!

This handmade Extra Slouchy Beret in Lemon was crocheted by Softspoken and recommended by MariaHug (who I recently featured here). She says, “Yay for yellow and the coming spring!” I agree! Love the bright color and the way this beret is styled in the photos.

Carol Bradley suggested the soy candles by Kenny CoOp. She told me, “I’ve used 8 of their candles… The scents are original, crisp and clean. By “clean” I mean that it’s just right. One small candle fills a small room well without being cloying or overpowering. My favorite is Frog!”

zJayne said this about this handmade stuffed blue gorilla toy made from recycled wool sweaters by sighfoo: “I melt when I click on this listing. The face, I tell you, it speaks to me. Adorable as all get out. (What does that even mean?) In fact, I bought his buddy, spumoni gorilla. May have to have this one too.” I agree, this gorilla is pretty cute, but it’s hard to choose which animal is the cutest out of all the adorable stuffed creatures in sighfoo’s shop!

Got your own amazing handmade or eco-friendly shopping find? Send it my way! You can email me a link to the item, one or two sentences about why you think it is so special, plus your name and a website/blog link so I can credit you to mallory [AT] missmalaprop.com and let me know it’s for Picked By You!, or you can post your picks in this thread in the Etsy forums or at my Facebook fan page. Designers, while I definitely encourage you to let me know about your own work as well, please note that Picked By You! is to showcase the work of other artists, so show some love for your favorite fellow artisans!

Johnny Concert is a new handmade cosmetics line that has both an edgy punk rock look and a heart of gold. CEO Joanna Gatto told me that she wanted to create an edgy line of cosmetics, similar to MAC and Urban Decay, that was green and beneficial, and free of the harmful chemicals found in leading mass produced make up brands.

The Johnny Concert eyeliners, mineral eye pigments, lip & cheek tints and blush are all 100% cruelty free. These products feature the highest quality natural and organic ingredients, and and each order is hand and custom made in the U.S.A. to eliminate waste.

I love seeing more and more companies moving towards this ethic. I try to buy handmade, chemical free cosmetics as much possible (I’m also a big fan of Orglamix!), and Johnny Concert sounds like a great new brand to try out.