Three treasuries!!!

January is "the month of treasuries" for Vegan Etsy. The member that makes the most treasuries during the next month wins a prize! If there's a lot of participation in this, we'll have more than one winner. Plus, all treasuries will be featured here with credit to the person that created it. So, grab those treasuries whenever you can, members, and make sure to post about them on the message board or send me a link to it.

To start off this month long challenge, Michelle of My Zoetrope created this very colorful one.

I also was able to get two of them. You can find them here and here. Please show all three lots of love by leaving a comment and clicking on the featured items! Let's get veganism noticed!

Become our fan on Facebook!

If you have Facebook, you can now become a fan of Vegan Etsy!

Thanks to Melanie of The Coma Girl Designs and the soon to open Doolang Doolang Boutique for creating the fan page. Melanie has been a huge help to the team by creating several of our lovely graphics (the four with fruit in it and the one below), Facebook group and blog ring. You rock, Melanie!

Welcome to new member!

We have one new member to welcome to the team this week!

Adornment Deluxe

Please give them a warm welcome!

Another team treasury

This one is extra special because it features items that 100% of the profits go to charity. Please show it lots of love!

Two Team Treasuries!

The first is one that I got yesterday and the second is one that one of our customers made. Wasn't that nice of him? Please show them some love here and here!

The screenshot cut off the bottom three store names on this one. From left to right, they are from For The Love of Vegan, Lemon St. Photography and Cards & Jewelry by Michele.

Happy Holidays To All!!

No matter what you celebrate, I'd like to wish everyone a very happy season. I hope that 2009 brings much health and happiness to each and every one of you! I'd also like to thank the members for making this team possible and to all of our followers and customers- a huge thank you for being so supportive of us!

Most of all, thank you to everyone that not only celebrates the holidays with compassion, but lives the compassionate life year round! If you're not vegan yet, why not make it a goal for 2009? Just give it a try for three weeks and see how it goes. Your health, the animals and the environment will thank you!

Cooking With Compassion Cookzine

The Cooking With Compassion Cookzine is now available for preorder and will be ready to ship soon! This zine features about 50 mouthwatering vegan recipes from the Vegan Etsy, Cruelty Free Etsy and EtsyVeg teams and all profits will be going to Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary.

But wait, there's more! It's also made out of recycled paper and is printed with vegetable ink. Pretty neat-o, right? Just go here to preorder your copy today!

Team Sampler Packs Are Available!

We now have team sampler packs available for purchase in the team shop, so get yours while they last! Over half of them have sold in the last 24 hours and what's listed is all that we have left. There are some nice goodies in the packs and you can't beat the price!

All profits from the sales of these sampler packs go to helping our team pay for promoting our team and veganism. We donated $200 to two different sanctuaries from the money we raised with the last round of sampler packs!

Review- Forest Nymphs and Brisil Bath & Body

The following review was written by Roni of Daisy Wares and Daisys Destash.
It's winter time and my skin is dry and itchy. Yuck. Nothing worse than being stuck in an office where everyone has their space heaters cranked up and there is nothing I can do about all the hot air blowing around just drying out my skin further.

So I was on a search for something to quench my thirst so to speak. I turned to my good friend Silvana's shop, Forest Nymphs & Brisil Bath & Body and found the perfect solution, Yerba Mate' Botancial HYDROSOL Facial Mist. This is the miracle of all miracle cures. You just spray and a comforting mist comes out to moisten that dry skin. To quote from her ad, "This facial mist is an all natural botanical hydrosol (by-product of esential oil production) made with yerba mate'for its antioxdants;chamomile and rosemary,orange, rose and our essential oil blend to calm, heal and hydrate parched dehydrated skin."

You can't get closer to earth or more natural than this. Why would you want all that alcohol and other crap on your skin when you can have a little bit of heaven to gently sink into your skin and make you feel so good. This product is highly recommended for the dry and itchy!

Our Team Shop Helps Farm Animals!

We took a vote for what to do with the money we raised through our team shop and it was decided to first spend it on adopting a farm animal. I'm happy to report that after some discussion and another poll, it was decided to give $100 to For The Animals Sanctuary and another $100 to Animal Place Sanctuary. These are both wonderful places that focus on vegan advocacy.

For The Animals is run by one of our members, Debbie of For The Animals, who uses the profits from her shop for her sanctuary. They currently have two cows, Herbie and Kevinah, and 8 goats. If you're in the New Jersey area, please consider volunteering some of your time to them. They're a small sanctuary that just got started, so they could certainly use all the help they can get!

Animal Place is located in California and not only are they a farmed animal sanctuary, but they also work with Compassion Without Borders to rescue dogs from Mexico. With the money we donated to them, we sponsored four animals- Cecilia the chicken, Sophie the sheep, Peggy Sue the pig and Howie the cow. They recently were able to expand to 590 acres, so they're a great sanctuary that is steadily growing. Definitely what the animals need!

Vegan Etsy & CFE Team Treasury

Thank you to Jennifer of Jak Random Art for creating this lovely treasury for the Vegan Etsy and Cruelty Free Etsy teams! It can be found here for the next few days, so please show it some love by commenting and clicking on the featured items!

Recipe- Vegan Biscotti

The following recipe was submitted by Lindsay of KM Stitchery.

VEGAN BISCOTTI

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup of olive oil or 1/4 cup butter substitute at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 banana or 1/3 cup of applesauce
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds

DIRECTIONS:

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease 1 large baking sheet. Better yet use parchment paper
-Combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.
-In a large bowl, cream together the oil or butter substitute and sugar until fluffy.
-Add the banana or applesauce, mix well. Add the dry ingredients, and then add the vanilla extract and mix well.
-Fold in the chopped almonds.
-Scoop the batter from mixing bowl on to lightly greased baking sheet or parchment paper, into two mounds. Flour your hands and shape the batter/dough into two loave, shaped kinda like a football.
-Place in the top rack in the oven. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, about 40 minutes. Use a toothpick to test for doneness. Insert a toothpick in the center of one of the loaves, when you remove the toothpick, it should be dry. If it isn’t, return the loaves to the oven for about another 7 or 8 minutes.
-Remove the loaves from the oven ( they’ll look like two giant cookies) and let them cool completely on the sheet.
-Transfer the cookie loaves to a large cutting board and with a serrated knife cut/saw into 3/4-inch thick slices. Spread the cookies, laying them flat, on the baking sheet.
-Bake in the oven on the center rack for 20 minutes, turn the Biscotti over and return them to the oven for ten minutes, turn them over again and return them to the oven for five more minutes.
-Then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. (For Chocolate Biscotti add 1/3 cup of Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa Powder and reduce the amount of flour by 1/3 cup.)

Member Sales!

Forest Nymphs and Brisil Bath & Body is having a sale through December 19. Buy any bath and body product and get a second one at 50% off.

Art by Funk is also participating in this sale. Buy any ceramic piece and get a second one at 50% off.

Discounts will be refunded once your order is received.

Vegetarian Women feature!

The Vegetarian Women website featured us today! Above is what they put on their home page, but that's not all! They also put us on their Holiday Bargains page as well as their blog. How cool is that? Thank you to the Vegetarian Women site for recognizing our team!!

Our team has received quite a bit of publicity since it first formed in February of this year. Check it all out!

Team Treasury!

Please show it some love by clicking on the featured items and leaving a comment! You can find it here for the next few days.

Team Happenings

There are always a lot of opportunities for members to become involved in the team. Here is a summary of what's currently happening with us.

December Team Challenge- "Down On The Farm". Your entry must be farm animal themed. Along with your entry post a short story about the farm animal you chose and why. The deadline to enter is December 24 and after that, a poll will be posted to determine the winner. The winner gets to choose a prize and their entry will be featured here!

Vegan Etsy Giveaway- Melanie of The Coma Girl Designs (and the one who made many of our awesome graphics, including the one that's in the current VegNews issue!) is going to be having a vegan handmade giveaway on her blog. If all goes well, she will be making it a monthly event to help promote our team and the shops that donate to the giveaway. If you would like to contribute something to this, please contact her.

Holidays With Compassion Campaign- This is going on all month and is an effort between us and the Cruelty Free Etsy team. Please encourage people to celebrate these holidays compassionately whenever and wherever you can! Post about it on your blog, twitter about it, create a treasury, bump threads on the etsy forums or anything else you have time for. If you have any more ideas on how to promote this, we'd love to hear them. Just contact me or you can post about it on the message board .

Holiday Gift Exchange- For those of you that are participating, this is just a reminder to mail out your packages to your recipient soon. When you receive your package, please post about it and share pictures!

The Little Black Box- Just a reminder that if you're doing this, Kim needs to receive your promo items by January 21. Want to know what The Little Black Box is? Visit the website to learn all about it! If you want to be in this, please contact Kim as soon as possible. Her email can be found here.

Team Sampler Packs- More will be listed soon! I'm waiting for a few more people to send their items in. If you want to participate in this next round of sampler packs, please let me know as soon as possible.

Business Card Exchange- This is a great way to help promote each other's shops! We are exchanging business cards to send out in our sales packages, hand out at craft fairs and use wherever else we get a chance.

The List Goes On!- For more ways to become active with the team, please see the Handy Dandy Member Guide. It's packed full of things you can do to help this team succeed.

Got Twitter?

For those of you that use Twitter, you can now join the Vegan Etsy Twitter Group! Don't have Twitter? Well, what are you waiting for? It's a great way to market your shop, get to know other team members and have some fun!

We're in Vegetarian Times!

Vegan Etsy is in the January 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times! Thank you to Tami of Tami's Soapworks for scanning the page of the article that mentions us. Just click on the image to enlarge it-

Welcome to new member!

We have one new member to welcome to the team this week. Please give them a warm welcome and heart their shop!

LNC Greetings

Welcome to you both!

Holidays With Compassion Treasuries

Please help to promote Holidays With Compassion by showing these treasuries lots of love! Click on all items featured and leave a comment here, here and here.

Recipe- Penne in Mint Cilantro Pesto Sauce

The following recipe was submitted by Susmitha of Art by Susmitha and Veganosaurus.

Cook 1 Cup of dry Penne in salted boiling water according to the instructions on the pack.

To be blended into a paste/sauce without using any extra water (the liquid from the tomatoes will be enough).

1 C spearmint
1 C cilantro
2 Green chillies
Handful of Almonds
1 T nutritional yeast
1 T flax seed
2 T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4-5 Ripe Tomatoes
Sea Salt to taste

How to proceed:

Cut 1 large capsicum (green pepper) into cubes. Put in a microwave safe glass dish, cover and cook on high for 3 minutes. Mix in the blended sauce, cover and cook on high for 3 more minutes. Let it sit for a few minutes.

For the microwave haters, this can also be made easily on stovetop. Just stir fry the green pepper in a dash of olive oil very briefly (about a minute), add the pesto sauce and bring it to a boil and immediately switch off the flame.

Mix in the cooked Penne.

Enjoy! :)

Holidays With Compassion!

Thank you to Susmitha of Art by Susmitha and Veganosaurus for writing the following lovely explanation of the Holidays With Compassion campaign! Please see this post for a list of members that are offering sales and promotions.

The Cruelty Free Etsy Team and the Vegan Etsy Team have teamed up to create the Holidays with Compassion Campaign with the intention to promote Vegan-Handmade gift shopping. Veganism is by default Eco-Friendly! All creations on etsy are handmade with 100% love but what sets the items of the CFE and Vegan Etsy team members apart is that they are made with a 100% kindness too. Celebrate the true meaning of this festive season of love and giving by gifting Compassionate Handmade items. Not only will the receiver love you for it but so will the animals and the environment.

November Team Challenge Winner

Congratulations to Carla of Threaded Smiles for being the winner of November's team challenge! The theme was "Thanks-Living" and the outline was to show what the true meaning of giving thanks on this annual holiday means to you.

Carla's entry is listed here in her shop. This is what she has to say about them-

this is a set of coasters i made for thanksliving, a way to peacefully and compassionately show what i am thankful for this holiday season. the pics of my family and my rescued animal companions are placed on cork and made into coasters. cruelty-free holidays are the best way to spend the upcoming season.