"In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us." Flora Edwards

Larry Hamm over at Chelsea Lynn Designs on Artfire is a friend of many in the world of handmade, he is also the voice of The Crazy Train on Blockhead Radio. Larry has a fantastic wife Janet, and an 8 year old son Jacob who live with him in Lansing, NC deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Larry is a friend to everyone and just an all around swell guy. He is most definitely the "shirt off your back" kind of friend. Right now, all of Larry´s friends and Blockhead Radio are teaming up to help him out in a tough time.

Larry is a disabled diabetic who currently has lost his health insurance. His medication alone monthly is over $2,000. Larry is not receiving disability, he has not been approved yet. His wife is the only source of income and she doesn´t make enough to cover his medications. Larry´s doctors have given him an outlook of only 18 months to live if he doesn´t receive a $17,000 gastric bypass surgery as soon as possible. Larry and his family need all the help from their family and friends they can get! Jacob and Janet need Larry to hang around here with them as long as he possibly can! All of his friends surely want Larry to stick around too!

All of us at Blockhead Radio are gearing up for the biggest Radiothon you´ll ever be a part of! July 24th at 6pm until July 26th at 6pm, Blockhead Rod will be live on the radio for 48 hours straight raising money for our friend Larry. A silent auction of donated handmade goods will also be going up on the home page of Blockhead Radio with 100% of the proceeds going to Larry.

If you would like to be a part of this wonderful event, please email DeDe Sorensen at: 48forlarry@blockheadradio.com Please donate any handmade items you can for the silent auction have your emails in with your donations by July 22nd. If you would like to donate cash for Larry’s prescriptions and surgery please visit Blockhead Radio July 24th through July 26th. There will be plenty of ways to get your donations in.

Keep listening to Blockhead Radio for fantastic indie music, and how you can help Larry Hamm of Chelsea Lynn Designs.

Here are the links for the Artfire Chatterbox thread and Etsy thread. Please comment on them if you can.

If you would like to donate and item to the silent auction please email DeDe at 48forlarry@blockheadradio.com. We ask that you hold onto the item and mail it out. Please provide the following information:

Bidding on the items will begin at 6pm eastern time on July 24, 2009 and the highest bid recieved by 6 pm eastern time on July 26, 2009 will be declared the winner. All the donations will be going straight to Larry's Paypal account and he will notify you of the winners name and address.

I had the honor of interviewing Shelly of The Lemon Tree Studio. Shelly is a stay at home mom who has a passion for paper and over 2350 online sales since February of 2008! I asked Shelly to share some of the marketing strategies that make her shop so successful! It was clear to see that when it all comes down to it, having stellar customer service and a unique, fresh product line goes a long way!

Here's a peak at that interview....

"What “online” marketing strategies are you currently using?

Right now I do not do as much as I should! I use Google Analytics to observe and "watch" my traffic so to speak, I blog, I cross-market with one other seller on Etsy, I will sometimes visit the forums on Etsy and I do participate in giveaways and promos on other blogs that request so - But that about it for now......"

Read the whole interview with Shelly at HandmadeNews.org in the Marketing Department where it was originally published.