Renee from Wolfie and the Sneak is looking for donations of handmade goods for her Bleeding Hearts Benefit. After reading about the impact oil drilling will have on Alaska should the US pass legislation to begin leasing drilling rights in the Chuckchi Sea, Renee was spurred into action. Always interested in environmental causes, Renee decided to use the impending Valentine’s Day holiday to raise the awareness of this particular issue and to raise funds for the Sierra Club, a champion of the environment.

So, if you are a bleeding heart and would like to donate, contact Renee at nobiting [at] gmail.com. The sale will take place for one day only on February 1st, so make sure to visit and shop as well. 100% of the proceeds will go to the Sierra Club.

On this last day of the month and of the year, I thought I’d share some of my favorite goodies from the December edition of Poppytalk Handmade. Poppytalk Handmade is an online street fair of indie artists and designers curated by one of my favorite bloggers, Jan of Poppytalk. Each month the featured shops change, so be be sure to check back later in January for the the Valentine’s Day edition.

Here’s some favorites from the December line-up.

I really like the Branch Necklace by handmade JULZ. Made from wrapped copper wire, the center pendant features an original illustration of a tree branch. I’m also loving the Raven Linen Pouch by cedarseven, which is decorated with an original illustration of baby raven.

I really want to buy a couple of these Mushroom Sculptures from swigg to keep on my desk instead of plants….then I wouldn’t have to worry about whether I forgot to water the plants or not.

I’ve featured kim wested ceramics before, but I’ve really fallen in love with this Honeysuckle Vase in Red…it’s definitely on my wish list. I loved the Someday print by Yellena so much, that I bought it! I’ve got my eye on a few more too.

Lastly, but certainly not least, are these Blue Poppy Notecards from Jengs Shop. You know I am a sucker for poppies and I am definitely digging these pretties.

Saturday’s Holiday Heap indie craft show in Baltimore was amazing. I was there as a vendor for both Tilting Swiftly and the Indie Fixx Shop and I was so busy with customers all day long that I almost didn’t get a chance to go shopping. Luckily, I got away from my table because I had my eye of Imogene’s Fox necklace from before the show and I knew I wanted to pick one up. I also got some Honeycomb Fingerless Gloves from itknits. I’ve featured them before on Indie Fixx and after talking to some peeps at the show (Shawna from Pink Kiss) about ‘em, I decided they were just the thing I needed to help keep me warm in my cold studio. I’m using them right now while I type this post.

Overall, it was a great day. I sold a ton of stuff, met a lot of cool shoppers and vendors, bought myself some early holiday presents and I also met a few designers who I hopefully will be carrying in the shop in the future. Thanks so much to the Charm City Craft Mafia for a job well done. You guys really know how to show a girl a good time.

All you folks in the Baltimore/Washington corridor and vicinity are in for a real treat this Saturday, December 1st. The Charm City (Baltimore) Craft Mafia is putting on their 2nd indie craft show, the Holiday Heap. Their first show, Pile of Craft, was a blow-out success and the Holiday Heap is sure to follow as another smashing success for the group.

Indie vendors include some of my favorites, deNada Designs, Tigerlily Shop, The Candy Thief and Little Flower Designs among others. I’ll be representin’ too with some Indie Fixx Shop and Tilting Swiftly wares. There will also be some good food from local eateries and tunes from a dj all day long.

The Holiday Heap event is free to the public and will be held indoors at St. John’s Church, located at 2640 St. Paul St, Baltimore, MD 21218, from 10:00 AM until 5:00 PM.

Plus, bring a canned good or two to help those less fortunate than yourself for a collection for the Maryland Food Bank and receive a free raffle ticket for a chance to win one of several amazing gift baskets.

Too much of our lives are spent doing things that we have to do and not enough time is spent on the things that make our lives meaningful, fulfilling & enjoyable. We spend too much time cleaning the house, stressing out about paying the bills, and for many people, working at a sucky ass job. We really should spend more time with our kids, go to that art museum we’ve been talking about visiting, drink a bottle of wine with old friends, take a walk in the woods alone with nothing but a sketch pad to keep us company or just be more in the moment, happy and seize the day.

Jeffrey Yamaguchi, the author of the books 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity and Working for the Man: Inspiring and Subversive Projects for Residents of Cubicle Land and the creater of 52Projects.com and WorkingfortheMan.com, understands seizing the day and wants to help others do the same. Through his blogs and books, he encourages people to think outside their cubicles, see the humor in working for the man and to add more meaning to their lives through creativity.

We should all be adding a little creativity to our lives. You might have to work for the man to pay your bills, but that’s no excuse to turn on the boob tube as soon as you get home from work. Instead, spend your time creating a manga with your boss and coworkers as the main characters or design and screenprint your own tee shirts from all those doodles you create during meetings. Or leave work at work, and use your creativity to document your last vacation, join a group of gorilla knitters, take pictures of your cats every day and make lol cats out of them to send to friends or make collages out of all the paper, magazines and junk mail you accumulate over the week.

To give you an incentive to make your life more creative both on company time and your own time, Jeffrey Yamaguchi has offered a copy of his latest book, Working for the Man: Inspiring and Subversive Projects for Residents of Cubicle Land, for a giveaway here on Indie Fixx.

To win a copy, leave a comment on this post with a creative project you have completed, a project you have in the works, a humorous or horror story from work or anything else you want to share that you to do to combat cube stress and to just lead more meaningful and enjoyable life. Jeffrey will choose one winner from the commenters to win a copy of his book. Projects can be anything and aren’t limited to just crafting projects. You can write a brief description or post a link to your blog or flickr account to share your project. Just share your creativity!

We’re giving you until December 4th at 11:59 EST to comment!

Jan of Poppytalk has put out a Call for Submissions for the November version of Poppytalk Handmade, a new online street market. Just like a real street/flea market, indie makers of all kinds will be able to rent a virtual table at Poppytalk Handmade. The theme for November is Holiday + Gifts and Jan is looking for gift type products and seasonal items! The deadline to sign up is October 14th. For more info, go to Poppytalk Handmade.

I received my October Sampler in the mail yesterday and once again was throughly impressed with the samples from quite a few folks. I certainly will be adding a few bookmarks to my shopping folder.

Here’s my favorites, which are pictured above:

Flora and Fauna Press letterpress cards, Nut and Bee stickers, stickers from Hey Pretty Cupcake, The Dreamy Giraffe limited edition mini prints, Miss Chief Productions magnet sets, Two Busy Bees vintage fabric hair clips, Sparkle Plenty necklace & a Gotbeads.com bracelet.

Design*sponge, now at the new address of designspongeonline.com, has just rolled out a fresh new layout that I am totally loving. I like the desk blotter/mood board feel to the new design, but the new easy-to-use navigation is the real big star to me. It’s great to be able to browse the design*sponge city guides, sneak peeks & mini trends with ease. For the unveiling, Grace has even included a sneak peek of her own home and family (including Turk and Ms. Jackson). Great job on the new design and your home, Grace!

Ms. Jackson pictured on the left and Turk is on the right. See more of Grace’s home, kitties and the new design here.

So last night was our Wilmington Craft Mafia trunk show at Bloom and it was a smashing success. We had tons of people who came by and it was just such a gorgeous night to be out selling our wares. You can see some of our wares above. Last night was just our first step in helping to make Delaware a hipper, cooler and more indie aware place to live and shop. Bloom is such a great store and we are glad they are around to help us with this goal. I, of course, just had to check our some of the new goods for sale at there.

Some of my favorites included: jewelry from Patch NYC, more jewelry from Lucky Loo Loo, and clothing designs by Nicole Rae Styer (also available at My Bonnie and Clyde, another one of my favorite shops).

I will be participating in a trunk show with my Wilmington Craft Mafia peeps tonight, at Bloom on Main St. in Newark, Delaware from 6-9. If you live in the MD, PA, DE, NJ area come on out, do some shopping and say ‘hi’! Main St. Newark is a cute little college town and is hopping place to be on Friday night. Listen to bands, eat some good food, get some gelato, drink some good beer, do a little people watching and do a bit of shopping at Bloom and the other stores on Main St. Everyone who stops by Bloom and mentions Indie Fixx will get a treat!

I just love getting my monthly Sampler…it truly is almost as good as Christmas morning when I was a kid. My favorites this month include a Zombie Escape Plan notebook from re-conceived.com, necklace and pin from Art School Dropout, earrings from Manic Trout, card from Lizard Press, hairpin from Sweet Stella Designs, recipe cards from Allison Biggs Graphic Design, fabric from Sassy Cotton and a hand mirror from Eclectic Elements.

For those of you not familiar with the Sampler (you must living under a rock) each month indie shops send samples into the Sampler and those samples are then divvied up and sent out to the Sampler subscribers and contributors. Some contributors send in as little as 25 samples and others send in 200+, so each each sampler may be completely different from every other Sampler. To give peeps an idea of what is being sent in, the folks over at the Sampler post Sneak Peaks as the samples come in. I always get super excited from checking out the sneak peaks. You can even sign up to receive sneak peeks via the email Samplergram.

Find out more about contributing to the Sampler here and find out more about how to subscribe to receive Sampler goodies here. Just to let you know, every sample contributer does receive a complimentary sampler.

The neato keen Sampler folks are doing something new called the Sampler Select. This September, October, and November, in addition to the Sampler proper, three very special Samplers will be available in the Sampler Shop. Each Sampler Select will have a theme and this month’s theme is stuff for the home and will feature products from My Favorite Mirror with artwork by meganmary.com, Botanical Earth, India*Romeo, Sublime Stitching, Green Chair Press, Little Flower Designs, Bread and Badger, The Small Object, and a special, Sampler Select Exclusive print from The Black Apple!

The September Sampler Select will go on sale September 18th, so don’t miss out, these will sell out fast.

Aimee from the blog Aimeeroo.com is planning pink themed giveaways on her blog for the month of October. As you know October, is breast cancer awareness month, so Aimee is looking to offer pink prizes all month long to help raise awareness about breast cancer. If you are interested in donating pink prizes, just contact Aimee for more details.

Rachel Bone, one of my fellow Craft Mafia sisters (she is in the Charm City Craft Mafia and I am a member of the Wilmington Craft Mafia) is having an art show at the Pentimenti Gallery up in Philly from September 25th - October 27th. The opening is September 28th from 6-8. If you are in the area, you should make sure to attend the opening and check out Rachel’s new collection called “Remedies”. Pictured above are a few of the new works that will be on display.

Rachel also has a shop called Red Prairie Press, which I have featured on Indie Fixx before.

Baltimore’s Charm City Craft Mafia is looking for vendors for their Holiday Heap show, which will be held at the St. John’s Church on December 1st. The deadline to apply is October 1st, so apply now before you forget and miss the deadline.

I did their Pile of Craft show in June and it was spectacular! That show had some amazing vendors and lots of shoppers, so I can’t wait to see what’s going on at the Holiday Heap show. You know I already applied to this one as well.

A little birdie told me that there is End of Summer sale going on at Modishoppe and i just had to share, because we know what cute indie stuff Jena stocks over at Modishoppe.

Starting today and for the next 3-days, take 15% off with code “goodbyesum07″ at checkout. I’ve had my eye on one or two or twelve things over there, so you know I will be doing my own end of season shopping. Pictured are just some of the goodies that I’ve been coveting including the Leaf Wristlett Wallets by Blissful, Wooden Brooches by Allira, and the Secret Message Card by paperedtogether.

Here’s some interesting indie newz for ya:

Jan of Poppytalk has put out a Call for Submissions for her new online street market. Just like a real street/flea market, indie makers of all kinds will be able to rent a virtual table at Poppytalk Handmade for an opening date of early October/07 (just in time for the Christmas season)! For more info, go to Poppytalk Handmade.

Call for vendors for Indie Sacramento — 1st Annual Holiday Bizarre to be held at the YMCA Sacramento on Saturday, Dec 1 from 2-9 pm. For more info about participating, visit the vendor page.

The Hipp Benefit Shop at Etsy are looking for crafters who would like to donate items to be sold with 100% of the proceeds going to help Taryn Hipp’s sister, Jennifer, pay her medical bills after an emergency stay in the hospital. Like so many people, Jennifer is under-insured and as a single mom lives pretty close to paycheck to paycheck. Jennifer is a big help to Taryn at her MY MY, while Taryn helps Jennifer take care of her daughter. They sound like a wonderful supportive family, so let’s all pitch in a little bit and help them through this rough patch.

FYI about Wonderland Retreat, the benefit shop for Elijah Wyman’s rotten kidneys, will be closing down September 15th, so if you’ve been thinking about buying something to help out and haven’t gotten around to it, you better make it over there soon. There are some really cute donated goodies in the shop and it’s a great way to help out some deserving peeps.

In our final newsworthy item tonight, the organizers behind I Shop Indie have created two shopping portal sites—Cutique and Loungeluxe. If you are a designer who may interested in listing your products on either site, check out their parent site.

I discovered these adorable Kanzashi Hair Clips from Thea Starr in the Cool Mom Picks Back to School Guide. If you are looking for back to school stuff for you or your neato keen kid, cool moms Liz and Kristen of Cool Mom Picks have got the stylin’ goods for you, like the Library Card Bookplates from One Good Bubblebee and the Babysitter Board from Teacups and Tadpoles.

Make sure to check out the Cool Mom Picks Back to School Guide for more must haves for all you cool moms and your cool kids!

Plus if you put a Back to School Guide button on your website or blog, you will be entered into a drawing for a $200 goodie bag. Read more about the details of the giveaway here.

I’ve been tagged. Annie over at Imogene has given me the award of Rockin’ Girl Blogger. I’d like to thank the academy, the little people and my fans….okay, back to reality. This award was created by Roberta of Blogging Made Devilishly Simple back on July 18th and the only catch for recipients is that they must tag other Rockin’ Girl Bloggers. It was hard to come up with only five, because so many of you ladies are completely rockin’. So that said, I tag:

Vanessa of Indieshopper

Ambika of Into the Fray

Mallory of Miss Malaprop

Jan of Poppy

Rebecca of In the Bakery

The Charm City Craft Mafia is back for another show and they are looking for vendors. Their Holiday Heap show will be held December 1, 10am to 5pm at the Saint John’s Church in Charles Village. For more information visit CharmCityCraftMafia.com. I did their Pile of Craft show in June and it was amazing!

I got my Sampler in the mail today and I just had to share some of my favorite goodies. Some postcards from Paper Relics, earrings from Manic Trout, Bicycle Pouch from Wonderland Q, a necklace from Wabisabi Brooklyn, some cute stationery from Lucid Dream Designs, mini CROQ and of course Bust Magazine.

I just love The Sampler and I’ve been a fan since it started in 2004. IIn fact, I think I sent samples in for the either the 2nd or 3rd Sampler ever….I know it wasn’t the very first one. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about sending in some samples again for Indie Fixx. Now if I can just set aside some time to work on my samples.

If you’re a crafty peep with a crafty biz, you should send in samples to The Sampler. It’s a good way to get your name out there. If you are not a crafty peep, but like crafty stuff, keep watch for when the next round of Sampler subscriptions go on sale…it’s always a lot of fun to see what’s in The Sampler each month.