## Shop Update For a long time now, I’ve been looking at my website and thinking, it’s all just too complicated: too many choices, too much clutter… and I have finally fixed it! At least, I _hope_ I have! You can be the judge 🙂 Here’s what’s new: * I re-designed the site’s theme to be less bulky, with fewer big elements to scroll past * I updated the mobile design so that you can see more products on a row * I re-did all of the main product thumbnails to be much simpler-looking * I re-counted all of my inventory to make sure it is accurate * I prevented out-of-stock items from displaying * I settled on some core patterns and colors and removed any items that are not in those particular patterns and colors The result is far fewer products to sort through, and a much shorter path to delight 😀 ## Other news ### Free Shipping I’ve decided that for the foreseeable future, **all orders over $50 ship FREE**. Yay! That applies only to handmade products. (Why? Because Downloadables don’t incur shipping costs anyway, and I don’t have any control over shipping costs for external products, unfortunately.) ### New Product Speaking of external products, I’ve added something new that should appeal to the polymer clay enthusiasts among us. I first made a prototype of this t-shirt design three years ago, took a picture of myself wearing it at the beach, and then just forgot about it. Oops. Well, I have remembered now, and I have improved the design and applied it to several terrific things. Have a look! ### In-Person Opportunities This holiday season, which is rapidly approaching, I have more shows than ever before. New Jersey locals, here is where you can find me. I hope you enjoy these updates and that they make it easier for you to shop small this season. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me. Please leave this field empty ## LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH! Sign up for occasional **Polka Dot Cottage** news and get a coupon for **10% off** your next order! This field is required. Don't worry, we won't bother you more than once or twice a month! Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription and get your coupon code. ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor * Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I have so many new blog posts in me, but none of them are quick or easy, and so I keep putting them off in favor of _not_ spending more time at my desk than I have to. But I just had to drop in here today and recognize a little anniversary. Twenty years ago today, I made my first ever blog post. **Twenty!** That’s pretty hard to believe. (That photo was taken in 2020 when my oldest kid bought himself a birthday cake that said `I'm 20 lol`, and I thought it fit this occasion, too 😁) Anyway, back then, my blog was called “Dancing the Polymer Polka,” and was hosted on LiveJournal, where it lived for about 1.5 years before I decided I wanted more control. I moved to self-hosted WordPress in 2007, and have been happily tinkering and controlling every little detail ever since. But back to 2005. I was a fresh-faced 34-year-old mother of 5-year-old and 2-year-old boys, and I was running my online polymer clay book store, Polka Dot Creations. Remember that? It feels like a completely different life sometimes. Anyway, if you’ve been with me since the beginning, thank you! Happy anniversary to us! And if you’ve only just recently started following me, I am sorry that you’ve been treated to mostly crickets. I hope to remedy that soon! Hope you are all well. XO P.S. Searching my photo archive for cake images has made me want to bake. This one is a half-eaten And Many More cake I made for Neil for his 50th birthday a while back. I think I need to cobble together some ingredients ASAP 😋 Please leave this field empty ## LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH! Sign up for occasional **Polka Dot Cottage** news and get a coupon for **10% off** your next order! This field is required. Don't worry, we won't bother you more than once or twice a month! Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription and get your coupon code. ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor * Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_

Hands Across New Jersey

I've been a #guster fan since the late 90s but I only saw them in concert for the first time in 2024. Don't know what took me so long! I've now seen them twice in 2025. Making up for lost time, I guess 😁 Friday night's concert was a blast! My husband came with me this time, and we took it in from the front row. So much laughter and music and joyfulness. We loved watching #themountaingoats for the first time, too. They made fans out of us 🤩 My husband got me one of #adamgardner 's guitar picks after the show, LOL What a great night ❤ #asburypark #thestonepony

What might a progressive policy agenda look like? A longtime nonprofit blogger and NPQ reader offers her starter agenda of a “New Fair Deal” for the United States.

We visited Ocean City, NJ in May, as we usually do. And it was a lovely 5-day getaway, as it usually is 😁 I brought three cameras with me: my old standby DSLR Canon 80D, my late-90s-era 35mm SLR Canon Rebel 2000, and a new instant camera, Lomo’Instant Wide. I am going to spare you the instant photos, because they were largely experimental, and mostly not good. But I am eager to show you some of what I captured on 35mm (Kodacolor 200) film, because I’m _really_ happy with these. I am usually a 50mm-focal-length kind of girl. I like it for everyday life pictures, but this particular weekend I was drawn to exploring the “compression” effect of long lenses. If you don’t know what I mean by that, let me show you two images that should illustrate my point. These were both taken with the digital camera. For the first one, I was standing relatively near to the boat and shooting with a 116mm focal length. For the second image, I backed waaaaay up, and zoomed in on the boat using a 250mm focal length. Notice that while the boat looks basically the same, the pier in the background appears much closer to the boat and relatively larger! Isn’t that a cool effect? And if you think about it, it makes sense. Look out a window, and notice how much of the scenery you see within the frame of the window when you are physically close to it, versus when you are looking through it from afar. So, while the effect is known as “lens compression” it actually has more to do with where _you_ are standing in relation to the subject than it does with the focal length of the lens. Here’s another image taken from a distance with the digital camera at 250mm. Look at how all of those buildings are stacked up right against the “No Surrey Carts” sign. And yet, that pink hotel in the top of the frame is actually a few blocks away! Anyway, I attached my 80mm-200mm lens to the film camera and went out on the boardwalk. You can see that compression effect at work in a few of these, especially the one with the gigantic rubber ducky peeking out of a doorway. These are my favorite shots from the roll. You can click any image to enlarge it, if you want a closer look. Thanks for dropping by! Please leave this field empty ## LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH! Sign up for occasional **Polka Dot Cottage** news and get a coupon for **10% off** your next order! This field is required. Don't worry, we won't bother you more than once or twice a month! Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription and get your coupon code. ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor * Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_

I treated myself to a little day-after-my-birthday adventure on Friday: I saw The Innocence Mission in concert! If you have an interest in the playlists I share, you’ll know that The Innocence Mission (which I am going to abbreviate TIM so I don’t have to keep typing that) are a staple of my mixes, and have been for many years. They’re a Lancaster, Pennsylvania band, and they rarely tour. So when I saw that they were going to perform in their first concert in over nine years, _and_ it was within driving distance, I jumped at the opportunity to see them. Noonish on Friday found me in my new green dress, driving the two hours to Ardmore, PA, with a salt bagel, a peppermint mocha Frappuccino, and a 100% TIM playlist for company. There was a Vrbo room with my name on it near the venue. I arrived around 2pm, with plenty of time to kill before the concert. I sat down in that comfy chair and took a nice, unplanned nap. What a luxury it is to be able to doze off on a Friday afternoon without a care in the world! Such a simple but rare pleasure. After my snooze, I set off for Ardmore, a mere six minute drive. I walked around Lancaster Avenue for a while, and then got myself a delicious hamburger at McCloskey’s Tavern. By the time I was done, a line was forming outside of the Ardmore Music Hall. I’m a huge introvert, and I probably could have spent the entire few hours before the concert saying nothing to anyone. But I somehow found myself surrounded by people who like to talk, and so I had an unexpectedly chatty time. I met someone who flew in from Portland, Maine, someone from Virginia, someone from Bucks County, PA and someone from Pittsburgh, and we talked about TIM and plenty of other things. It was nice. (Is this how extroverts feel all of the time? LOL!) Being there plenty early, I (and everyone I met) managed to snag a spot in the front row, and it was _wonderful_. I will admit, for the last few weeks I was a tiny bit concerned about whether I was going to enjoy myself. I had watched a YouTube video of their previous concert. It was filmed in 2016, and it was just the three current members of the band, no drummer. It was a 45-minute event, and I felt like it lacked energy. I know TIM is a mellow band. I like their mellow sound a lot. But that YouTube video was beyond mellow. I hate to say this, but I found it kinda boring. And it was really short. Maybe that experience was better in person, but on video, it was lacking. So, I was somewhat afraid that my ticket and my travels, and my incredibly sore feet were not going to be worth it. **Oh, but it was so worth it.** It was worth the sticky floor and the sore feet. It was worth the 2-hour drive, and the cost of a place to crash for the night. From the first song (On Your Side) there was an energy in the room. The original four-piece band was back together for this event, and what a big difference the drums made! There was some nice banter (Karen is funnier than I expected!) and some audience sing-along, complete with harmonizing (Lakes of Canada). You could tell the band was enjoying themselves as much as the audience was. Such a lovely time, and I’m so glad I went. I literally hobbled back to my car after the show. When I said earlier that my feet were sore, that was the world’s biggest understatement. I could barely walk. (Still think it was worth it, though.) I drove back to my room, put my feet up, and immediately made a playlist from the evening’s set list. If you’re interested in that set list, here it is. I woke up the next morning to find that someone posted the entire concert on YouTube. (Don’t you just love living in the future?) Before I checked out, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and some Wordle at my Vrbo, with my feet up before heading home. Major thumbs up to the Vrbo host for the peonies in the room. I’m sure she didn’t know that I am kind of a peony freak, but it made the room feel personalized just for me. What a great start to the holiday weekend this was! When I saw Crowded House in 2023, I decided to make it a priority to treat myself to more live music by bands I love. In March 2024, I kept that promise and saw Guster. I didn’t tell you about this one at the time, but I saw Guster _again_ in January of this year. (And I may or may not have tickets to see Guster with the Mountain Goats in August. I’m a bit Guster obsessed at the moment 🤭) And now this. The Innocence Mission has been a long-time favorite of mine, consistently showing up in my top-five most months, and I feel so lucky to have been one of the 600 people in that room this weekend. If you’re new to TIM and would like some song recommendations to get yourself started, you can check out my “In Reverse” playlist, which is a reverse-chronological (new stuff first) collection of all of the songs I would pick, if I only had a 90-minute cassette tape to put them on. That’s a tough restriction, and I do change it up now and then, because it’s so hard to just pick 25 songs, but it should be good enough for you to get the gist. Enjoy! Please leave this field empty ## LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH! Sign up for occasional **Polka Dot Cottage** news and get a coupon for **10% off** your next order! This field is required. Don't worry, we won't bother you more than once or twice a month! Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription and get your coupon code. ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window) Nextdoor * Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_