If you were a member of the CAST Team at the beginning of 2010 you know there have been so many changes throughout the year. I just want to recap a few and mention some upcoming changes. You can chime in, in comments with others you remember or tell us what you'd like to see changed in 2011.

As I mentioned in my last post, this CAST blog was started at the beginning of 2010. We'll have over 265 posts by the end of this year. We've welcomed and featured so many great CAST Shops and items. I think the blog has become a nice hub for the CAST Team.

A more recent addition is the new CAST Facebook page. This is a wonderful new tool for our team. If you are on Facebook and haven't done it yet, please go by and "like" the CAST page.

Sheila from sewfaithful has started and maintains a first name list for us. You can find the link in the side column of this blog.

A new improvement has been thanks to Etsy implementing the new Team Format. We now have more tools on site at Etsy to use for our Team.  We have our own little "website" within Etsy and, as a result, have gained a lot of new members very quickly. Under the new Team Format Bonnie (AuntBonniesCloset and TIGGERBONN) is now "Captain" and Sue A from MYSAVIOR and I are additional "Leaders." It's now much quicker and easier for Etsians to apply to CAST Team and for us to review shops.

Our teams now appear on member profile pages. Etsy has plans to make it unnecessary to use our team tags for search as they will be added automatically. In the meantime, continue to use the tag "castteam." We also believe Etsy is working on a way for leaders to be able to convo all the members of a team at once instead of one at a time.

Our Yahoo Group is becoming obsolete. The Yahoo members and the official CAST members don't really have that much overlap anymore as there is no way to synchronize the membership (Yahoo names don't usually match with Etsy names). Also, there is no good way to keep spam out of the Yahoo e-mail. Now that we have so many more tools available to us on site at Etsy the Yahoo Group may be deleted. We shouldn't have to log in to another site in order to connect with each other.

Welcome to all the new members! With the rush of incoming members and the shuffle from one format to another we have suspended New Member Welcomes on the blog for a while, but hope to begin them again soon. There are still a lot of outstanding "invites" to old members to join us on the new format that need to be cleared up in the meantime. If you are a member from the old system and have not yet confirmed your membership under the new system please do that or simply reapply.  Thanks!

Just to let you know, CAST Team is allowing membership to all Etsians who wish to claim that they believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God, their Savior and their Lord. We love having Christian Artists as well as their supporters on the team. Therefore, if you still have an Etsy membership, but no longer have an active shop, you can still retain your membership.

With the new format we now have the ability to create public or private discussion threads in our own team area on Etsy. If you haven't come by and joined in, please do. We are a friendly group and would love to interact with all team members.

Etsy has made lots of changes this year. Feel free to mention on your favorites in comments. Also, if there is something that you wish to see happen with CAST Team in the coming year, please let us know in comments as well.

Sue of SueRunyonDesigns

. . . . eventually.



Bonnie, our team Captain, asked me to post a quick announcement about the CAST Yahoo Group. She will be keeping the Yahoo Group open so that she has the option to e-mail all Yahoo Group members at one time. The CAST Yahoo Group may close entirely if Etsy implements group convo capabilities in the future.

However, Bonnie will be closing the Yahoo discussions as there is no good way to keep spam out of our inboxes over there.

I know there are some who really enjoy the Yahoo format, but we hope everyone will take the opportunity to come over to the new CAST Team Format on Etsy and join in our various CAST discussion threads there. Unlike in the past when we just had a profile page with a list of team members, we now have a dedicated area of Etsy with our own forums, a much nicer way to browse CAST Shops and links with the possibility of more capabilities to be added later. Come try it out!

by Sue of SueRunyonDesigns

If you haven't seen it already, the CAST Team has a new fan page on Facebook.  If you are on Facebook we'd love for you to come "Like" the page.

Christian Artists Street Team on Etsy (CAST)

Sue of MYSAVIOR is the admin for the Facebook page.  Please contact her with ideas and offers of help.

Thanks,
Sue of SueRunyonDesigns

In case you haven't noticed, the new member welcomes are starting to happen more frequently as we are blessed with more and more new members! We have a couple dozen new CAST members to welcome this time around, and we're just tickled ORANGE that you're here!

This is the first group of 13 shops ... look for the next batch to come soon. :-) Enjoy browsing the shops, and please show all the new members some of that CAST team love. ♥

NOTE: When a shop is on Vacation Mode there will be a blank spot in the list, but you can come back and see who it is later.
















Members, we invite you to come join us on the current CAST team forum thread on Etsy. You can find the link in the side column of this blog. Please come by often, introduce yourself, and get to know the team. We are a friendly and welcoming group.

If you have requested membership (or even if you have already been approved) and do not show up on this list, you will probably be in the next batch of new members. It takes a while to review all shops, submit them to Etsy, and add them to our member list. If you are not in the batch next month, please contact Bonnie. (Thanks, and sorry for the delay.)

Happy shopping!
♥ SoSaje

We have a total of 48 brand new CAST members to welcome this month! This is the second group of 24 shops (the first two dozen debuted a few days ago - look for the Recent Posts link at right if you missed it). CAST team welcomes you! Enjoy browsing the shops, and please show all the new members some of that CAST team love.

NOTE: When a shop is on Vacation Mode there will be a blank spot in the list, but you can come back to see who that is later.



























Members, we invite you to come join us on the current CAST team forum thread on Etsy. You can find the link in the side column of this blog. Please come by often, introduce yourself and get to know us. We are a friendly and welcoming group.

We have 48 new CAST members to welcome this month! This is the first group of 24 shops -- look for the next 24 soon. CAST team welcomes you! We are so happy you're here. :-) Enjoy browsing the shops, and please show all the new members some of that CAST team love.

NOTE: When a shop is on Vacation Mode there will be a blank spot in the list, but you can come back to see who that is later.




























Members, we invite you to come join us on the current CAST team forum thread on Etsy. You can find the link in the side column of this blog. Please come by often, introduce yourself and get to know us. We are a friendly and welcoming group.

If you have requested membership, or even if you have already been approved, and do not show up on this list, you will probably be in the next batch of new members. It takes a while to review all shops and to submit them to Etsy to add to our member list. If you are not in the batch next month contact Bonnie. Thanks and sorry for the delay.

Happy Shopping!
SoSaje

Cindy of cksilver made us a new CAST badge.

You can grab the html code from the side column of the blog and paste it onto your own blog which will give you the badge and a link back to the CAST blog. Just be sure and paste it in a HTML/Javascript Gadget.

Thanks Cindy!

I began woodworking in 1989 with a love of country cupboards. Over the years I have gone from making little cutouts for crafters and rosemaling artists to a wide variety of custom furniture products. About 3 years ago when it seemed like fun to again sell at shows, I wanted to design something small and not so heavy. That's when I designed the cutting boards. The next year I built a playhouse for my girls using reclaimed pine for trim. The huge load of pine that was given to me inspired me to come up with a use for it. Something prompted the memory of a log table I made quite a few years ago which was inspired by Thomas Molesworth's log furniture of the 1940's. That's when Rustic Log Decor came to life.

Although I don't have a formal education in woodworking, my career has been divinely orchestrated. When I started this business, I was doing bear cutouts and sometime back I completed a special commission from the Reverend Roger Patrick Dorcy Cancer Center to build something to house the collections of Father Roger Dorcy. It has been an honor to build small and large special projects which I've only been able to do because my opportunities have stretched and expanded my skills. It is a privilege for me to be in the company of my Christian brothers and sisters on Etsy and do what I love to do.

 






We are a Father & Daughter team from Baldwin City, Kansas. We both love to create new functional items, out of the old abandoned things we find. 8MileCreekDesigns began the day I (Ruth) decided to help Dad clean out his shop. He had 8 hubcap clocks hanging on the wall in his workshop, I photographed and listed them on Etsy. Little did I know what we had started! We have learned more about hubcaps, cars and clock making than we ever thought possible. Working together has been a great blessing. My sons are also interested in helping Grandpa in the workshop. It is wonderful to have three generations working together and having fun!

The idea for this post came about after listening to a sermon in which our pastor threw out the questions: "What would the church look like without men? What if it was just a place where women and children hang out?" That got me thinking about our CAST team and that it would be great to try to identify the CAST shops that are run by men or are husband/wife, father/daughter or father/son partnerships. So far we have been able to identify 15 shops. If you know of any others please Contact Me.


These are the first five shops:



My name is Joel Quiggle and I create Limited Edition art prints of my work. I graduated from Penn State University with a BFA in Drawing and Painting. In the fall I plan on attending Edinboro University to complete my Masters in Art Education and teachers certification.I didn't take much of an interest in drawing until about 10th grade, from then on, I have loved translating my imagination onto paper or canvas. I realize God has given me all of the gifts or talents I have and I want to give God all the glory and honor that may arise from them.God has given me a true passion for Art in general and I just love being able to do what I do. If my artwork ends up in a gallery or in my basement, I am content on what God has done in my life. I am putting all my sales towards an engagement ring, so help me out and get some great artwork with it!


I am Dave Alden owner/operator of Wolf Creek Millworks. We are a small artisan forestry products business that uses the wood found along our roadways, backyards, and other non-traditional locations. This wood often ends up in landfills and/or is allowed to rot. This seems like a waste to us. We hold the Christian belief that we are to be “stewards” of this planet we live on. While we do not espouse radical environmentalism, we do have concerns that we are not doing a very good job taking care of the place God made for us to live on. Our equipment is well suited to operating in suburban back yards, parks or woodlots without leaving a large footprint. Wolf Creek Millworks makes finished home décor items, mantles, bowls, oil-candles etc. from the wood we gather. We also make slabs and blocks available to other wood working craft-persons.

Our shop was started during a period of unemployment. We think that small artisan businesses are the future of the global economy. With the availability of the web and global shipping giants we have the same market as the mega-corporation with the customer service and local flavor of the sole proprietor. We hope you enjoy our work as much as we enjoy making it.

I thought it would be fun to do a feature on "The Men of CAST." Sounds good, right?

Now to find them . . . I know they are out there, but I need a little help to track down more of them. Husband/wife teams, Father/son, Father/daughter, etc are all welcome for this feature too!

Here are a few that I know of. If you know others, please contact me or leave a comment!

Sneath
joelquiggle
sbradney
UdaMan
WolfCreekmil
RusticLogDecor
BirdhouseBlessings
WorldofWoodwork

Thanks,
Sue

by Phyllis Ducey
pfdoriginalartworks






The dictionary definition for an ambassador is "an authorized messenger or representative". Per this verse above we are Christ's ambassador, His authorized representatives. There are various ways that we can represent Christ. Many do by preaching, teaching, writing, broadcasting, or simply by having a conversation with another.

The verse continues to say that "God makes His appeal through us". Wow...what an honor! But during our daily life, how are we appealing to others? When we are at work with more to get done in a day than our 8 hours will allow or when we are in a grocery store with little ones who are crying because they didn't get that toy they wanted, are we very appealing? In our daily interactions with neighbors, people in parking lots, at the mall... the places where we are a nondescript person and don't think anyone is noticing, are we representing Christ? I believe those are the times we can subtlety and powerfully influence others. A kind word, a door held, a smile or a compliment to a total stranger to make their day a little brighter makes a difference. And though they may never know you were doing as an Ambassador for Christ... Christ will and He can use it.

One dreary rainy night I ran into a little store and when I came out there was a woman at a pay phone. I greeted her and she asked me if I knew where a street address was. She was quite distressed and had been trying to get there but couldn't find it. I said I was pretty sure I did and told her the easiest way to find it is if she followed my car and I would drive there (by this time it was pounding rain and I knew street signs would be hard to read). I got her there and she looked at me and said as sincerely as could be "you must be an angel sent by God".

I certainly did not think so and if you knew me you would not think I was an angel but she did. And without even realizing it I was being an ambassador for the God that I love. That was such a privilege.

This poem below expresses my thoughts on how each encounter we make becomes a part of us. Just the same as each person we encounter we become a part of them. Makes me wonder just what am I adding to other peoples lives? Hopefully it is Christ's love.

By Phyllis Ducey of pftoriginalartworks


I love this verse and it is especially meaningful to me right now as I struggle with some of my personal burdens. Christ is so loving that He gave us word pictures that each generation could comprehend the meaning of what He said. With them we don’t always have to be stressed as to the derivative of each word. But we do need sometimes to take ourselves back into the world where He walked the earth to understand fully.

The reference to the yoke back then was so commonplace everyone understood its meaning. You would harness oxen to a yoke.It was like a curved wooden bar in front of them that they would lean against to pull a cart or plow. Behind the oxen was another wooden piece that was straighter and had wooden prongs poking out - that was the goad. If one ox slowed down, it would be goaded making him uncomfortable and giving the ox incentive to move faster.

Everyone knew the importance of properly pairing up the oxen. They needed to be similar in size and in stride because if they weren’t, one ox may pull forward on the yoke, take all the weight of the load and wear itself out faster while the other would be jerking as it hit the goad. The loads were not meant for one ox to carry the weight and become exhausted. It was meant for the weight to be distributed, making each one’s load lighter.

I find that when I start pulling ahead, taking the full burden on myself I am exhausted… mentally, physically and spiritually. What a stubborn ox I can be! Jesus says to take up His yoke. Imagine it, yoked together with Christ carrying our burdens. It is interesting He does not promise to take them away but does say if we yoke with Him that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. How comforting knowing that if we choose to walk with Him, match His stride for us, we will find rest for our souls!

Rest for our souls… worth repeating, isn’t it? As you know I try to link this blog post with some of our wonderful crafters. I could not find anyone with oxen… not really a surprise .But since it is about our burdens here are some items that can help us carry things.

Handbag tote by kplus

Lil Bean Wrap by LilBeanBaby

Reusable gift bag by OleBagLady

Blues and greens purse tote by MaddieEna

Flower girl basket by MeandMatilda

Organizer clutch by thelaughinghouse

bandaid tins by CardsByEmily

By Phyllis Ducey of pftoriginalartworks