Crafting 365 / 45 & 46 - moustaches again

Blergh. I am ill, and it is rubbish.

The day before yesterday I guess it was creeping up on me as I was super-tired and spent most of my day curled up on the sofa listening to the radio (crime & thrillers on BBC7, excellent stuff) whilst sewing some moustaches. Then yesterday I had to go back to bed and spent 90% of my day asleep in a big nest of blankets. I did get up in the late afternoon to put the finishing touches to the moustaches so that they could get parcelled up and posted by my long-suffering boyfriend (he really hates going to the Post Office).

Here are the moustaches just before they went into their jiffy bag...
... they're destined for a kids birthday party, apparently. I love the idea of a room full of 8 year olds all with moustaches! Makes me smile rather a lot.

Also excellent and smile-inducing: I was featured on Cuteable today! :D
It is a really lovely feature, I am very chuffed indeed.

I'm going back to bed now though... zzz...

Crafting 365 / 44 - some knitting and some more moustache-related fun

It is starting to get very dark here in the evenings so sewing anything dark is right out. I managed to get two brown moustaches finished & labelled before the light went but the rest of the moustaches had to wait...

Instead I turned my attention to my bag of knitting and made a few more little hats. I'm rather slow at knitting them so I only managed three last night, but as I've been knitting one or two at the end of each evening the pile is gradually growing. Here are the 20 I've knitted so far, along with those 2 moustaches:
So far there have been no knitting disasters, though a few of the hats are a little irregular and one time I forgot to change the colour over so the stripes are Not Quite Right. I'm tucking them all away in a brown paper bag once I've knitted them, ready and waiting to get stitched together & pompommed at a later date. It is very satisfying making a new mark on the tally (I can never remember how many I've done otherwise) and I do love to make stripey things.

In other news, my cloud-themed treasury was on the Etsy front page last night, hurrah! I missed it as I was tucked up in bed but you can take a peek at it here - I'm really pleased that several of the people I featured sold stuff, excellent items one and all.

Also, the lovely Brooke has been taking some more self-portraits with her moustache... the second one is particularly excellent, I think (a moustache eye-patch! genius). She also has a teeny thumbnail of herself modelling the moustache included in her new banner over in her Etsy shop which made me smile rather a lot! Hurrah for moustaches! :)

Crafting 365 / 43 - news from the moustache factory

My kitchen table is currently a moustache factory. It looks like this:
As you can see, I have finished the batch of moustache cards (they are currently getting a bit of a pressing under a big pile of hardbacks to make sure they flatten properly). Last night I also cut out LOTS of moustache-shaped pieces of felt in order to make LOTS of moustache disguises. I have a custom order for 10 of them, and shall be making another 10 just to restock. Lots of black, lots of brown. I had a very dull shopping expedition for supplies yesterday afternoon - black elastic, black felt, black thread. I did find some rather exciting navy blue felt though which I've not seen before. Ah, such exciting times.

Oh, and my giant mobile got blogged by the lovely Tamara of blockpartypress ... her son is currently covered in hives, poor boy, and so she featured lots of lumpy, bumpy, spotty Etsy things on her blog! Such a cute idea & chatting about inspiration she pointed out another fun thing she'd been inspired by - an interestingly shaped drop of milk. Awesome.

Crafting 365 / 42 - moustache cards in progress

Not much craftiness going on last night, unfortunately. Rather a bit of grumpiness instead. In the middle of my slightly grumpy evening though I checked my email and lo! The lovely Knithappens had sent me a message suggesting I add this gorgeous photo to my moustache listing:... naturally I gave it pride of place! I love that photo so much, it is just so sweet and funny. I am going to be changing all the photos round lots I think, they all make me smile so much :)

Logging into Etsy to reply, I was rather delighted to discover that I (well, some of my bird ornaments) was (were) on the front page! Hurrah! Cue happy dance and much less grumpiness! So I managed to get a few little felt moustaches embroidered ... here they are waiting to get glued onto their cards to become, yes you guess it, moustache cards:

Crafting 365 / 40 & 41 - winged works in progress

On Saturday night I attended to my work-in-progress box. It is somewhat overflowing, and I really ought to try to tackle at least some of the contents instead of just making exciting new things... so I spread out the contents of the box (covering my table completely) and set about making myself useful. Whilst listening to some Agatha Christie on BBC7 (such addictive tosh, just marvellous) I sewed a lot of little eyes onto a lot of little birds:
These birdies were all cut out and had their wings stitched on aaaages ago and have been sitting neglected in my wip box along with several others (I had a bit of a bird-making frenzy a while back, you see). They will all become ornaments or mobiles of some kind eventually but for the moment it is enough that they can see :)

Then last night I got distracted again and started something new. Actually it's something rather old from my to do list - and something the boyf is always nagging me about. I made a moth brooch for a swap with Seaurchin earlier in the year and the boyf has been on at me to make more ever since. Other, sparklier things have taken precedent (so many sparkly distractions) but now I am finally turning my attention to the little furry winged creatures:
... that's the first 2 layers stitched on, there are 2 more yet to go (the detailing on the wings) and of course then they will actually need turning into pins (one destined for the lapel of my boyfriend's coat). They're sitting on an upturned placemat - I have so many wips spread about the place at the moment that I have quite run out of handy trays and box lids and am resorting to placemats instead!

In other news, I think I am becoming obsessed with grey and blue, clouds and rain, and also umbrellas, thanks to a combination of the weather and the cloud pin I made the other day... I got a treasury on Etsy for the first time in ages and guess what theme I have picked? You can see it here while it lasts...

Crafting 365 / 39 - felt is too distracting...

I really needed to be doing other things last night - specifically, my house could really do with a good tidy... We are not yet tripping over the mess but it's heading swiftly in that direction! Instead of tidying or doing anything else on my To Do list I instead got totally distracted and made three new things out of felt:1) A teeny little apple pin, my entry for this month's UK Etsy sellers challenge (theme of, yes you've guessed it, apples). Each of those pips is about 7mm long.

2) A little cloud brooch which was meant to be my entry for last month's challenge (theme: clouds - I take these things rather literally, don't I?). Unfortunately August was just crazy and I didn't have the time to sit down and work out exactly what I wanted the brooch to look like. Rather appropriately one of the reasons why I was so busy in August was all the rain & flooding we had here! I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out, especially the lovely soft blues with that grey, and I was in the mood to do very precise little stitches last night so it came out really well (to my eyes, anyway!). I may well try some more of these little "picture" style brooches, watch this space.

... and finally, just at the edge of the picture is 3) A secret surprise gift for someone. I have been meaning to make this for just ages and now the person's birthday approacheth... I will post a picture of it when it has been received!

Crafting 365 / 37 & 38 - birds!

Bit busy yesterday so no time for the old blogging. Two days of craftiness have passed and thus here are two photos:As you may be able to gather, I have been making fat little bird ornaments. These are bigger versions of an old pattern - you can see the old & new patterns in the first picture. Hurrah for birds! Also late last night I started knitting little hats for the Big Knit. They are the perfect "it's late at night and I am half-asleep" crafty project, although sewing them together takes a bit more concentration!

In other news, I got very excellent tea-themed post yesterday. Here it is:
A lovely print from theblackapple and the gorgeous teapot brooch I ordered from seaurchin (she also sent a little freebie heart pin and an "emergency" teabag, brilliant!). The brooch is even more beautiful in real life than in pictures, it almost made me cry when I first saw it. I shall be wearing it pretty much constantly this winter I think. The print is the second piece of art I have bought from Etsy - I also treated myself to a print from atwhim which is now available as delicious postcards. I have my eye on a few more bits of art but I shall have to restrain myself and build up my collection slowly or I shall be bankrupt before you can say "gosh what a nice picture of an owl/tree/teacup"

I have also been sent another moustache-in-action photo, this time from the lovely Brooke of gemmafactrix (another one of my wonderful volunteer moustache models). She even sweetly blogged about it here. I really love seeing these photos, they are just so much fun.

Oh, and I managed to get some photos taken of my giant mobile all stretched out - I had to move the kitchen table over to the windowsill to get anywhere near enough light, and I was perched rather precariously on a chair but I got there in the end...

Crafting 365 / 36 - Round like a circle in a spiral...

... like a wheel within a wheel... That song has been going round my head like crazy as I've been finishing off my current project. Circle after circle, round and round, stitching, stitching, stitching. After a big final push and several ribbon-based tangles, I have finally finished it! the biggest mobile I have ever made (and possibly one of the largest things I have ever made, too).... proper photos another time but here it is in a big heap:
Hurrah!

In other news, my moustache obsession continues apace as I have been listening to Hercule Poirot mysteries on the radio (tis Agatha Christie month on BBC7, you know) and I have treated myself to this little beauty of a t-shirt from the lovely John Allison:
It seamlessly combines my moustache-madness and my crazy love of all things tea related making it therefore perhaps the perfect t-shirt for me. The tea love has also driven me to purchase this little treasure from Seaurchin:
(she is making it into a brooch for me). How darling is that? I love the thought of wearing it with one of my "I love tea" badges (I always say about those that they are "declaring my political allegiance") and I think it will look mighty spiffy on my winter sweaters :)

Crafting 365 / 35 - sequins and circles

Late last night I finally finished sewing the last of the felt discs together whilst watching "The War Room" (rubbish!!). Ah, how deeply satisfying it is to see them all in a row...

As you may have guessed, I also finished the dragonfly brooches. They are very deliciously sparkly and have eaten the last of my turquoise sequins (well, I do have more but none the right sizes...). I sense sequin-shopping on the horizon.

I wore one of the dragonflies into work this morning, pinned to my winter sweater (very necessary: brr!) and lots of people mistook it for a butterfly. Hmm. On the up side though no domestic crisis occurred yesterday :)

Crafting 365 / 34 - distractions from the task at hand

So yesterday I was determined, with 20 more of the felt discs to sew together, to push right through and devote as many hours as possible out of my Sunday to sewing round in little circles. But as is unfortunately the way of things, life rather got in the way...

First up, a very strange thing happened. I did my usual hour of housework and actually felt like doing more! Very odd stuff. Obviously, it is never a good idea to stop cleaning if you actually want to clean ... so I carried on cleaning. I decided that the house needed a really good vacuum, too, as we've only been doing one room here and one room there when there's been crumbs or whatever to hoover up. So I started vacuuming, and the Hoover (it is an actual Hoover) started melting!! Not good. It had got blocked up inside somehow and overheated and lo: melting plastic, but luckily no fire (phew). So there was that.

Then to cheer myself up I decided to use the nice organic butter I bought the day before to bake some brownies (yum yum brownies, yum). Halfway through this (butter and chocolate melting in a pan, me with the scales weighing out the dry ingredients) I discovered that my dry food cupboard was infested. Ewww. I managed to borrow some ingredients from a neighbour & finish the brownies but I had to chuck out a LOT of food (including 5 bags of flour, and assorted sugars and dry pulses) as it was all full of little crawling things. I still feel itchy just thinking about it. Horrible stuff. The brownies were rather nice though, very nice with a cup of tea when I threw up my arms in despair at all this domestic chaos and went for a quiet sit down in the other room...

Finally turning my attention to my sewing pile, the urge took me to start making some dragonfly brooches (on my to do list for just ages, since I made one for seaurchin in a swap earlier in the year) so I made a start on those... and only after dinner that evening did I actually do what I'd meant to all day and actually curl up with my sewing box and crack on with those circles. I managed 9 in all, they're pictured here with the in-progress dragonflies...
... in the middle of this large repetetive job it was a nice little break making the dragonflies (so comparatively small & speedy!). I am very looking forward to adding their sequins etc.

Crafting 365 / 33 - sewing round in circles

Yesterday I did quite a bit of work on my current custom project - I cut out the very last of the 320 pieces of felt I needed (yes, really, 320) and started to sew them together. By close of play I'd managed this lot...
... that's 120 of the pieces sewn together, only 200 left to go! They are quite the perfect occupation for sleepy afternoons and evenings (and I do have a lot of those).

I was rather stupid though and forgot to check if I had any black thread left - with boxes and boxes of thread in various colours I get to assume that the colour I want will be there, and then I get in trouble when it isn't. Of course I noticed the absence of black thread only after the shops had closed! Luckily it was black thread I needed so I begged/borrowed/stole some from my lovely neighbour and had a productive evening of stitching merrily but gosh I did feel daft.

Crafting 365 / 32 - finishing one thing and starting another

Some small bits and pieces today.

First up, my crafting 365 pic...
... 20 finished pants badges (completed whilst listening to a Hercule Poirot adaptation on BBC7) and lots of cut-out pieces of felt. This is just a small amount of the felt I cut out yesterday. I now have two whole trays of the stuff sitting waiting to be sewn together. Photos soon, hopefully.

Secondly, the lovely grayeyedscorpio featured me on her blog. Hurrah!

Thirdly (and also finally), the awesome Justin & Elise of LazerBeanz sent me the results of their moustache modelling... just the most hilarious photos, I am dead chuffed with them. It was really hard choosing just 2 to put in my listing, but I have opted for these two for the moment (love that book in the last one! genius!)

Crafting 365 / 31 - an assortment of lucky pants

More late-night West Wing last night... I was half-asleep and needed a simple little sewing project to keep my fingers busy, so I looked through my WIP box and found lots of half-sewn lucky pants badges. I managed to get a few of them finished, the rest still need their safety pins adding and their front & back stitched together:
I do adore seeing them altogether like that (that's the lid of my wip box, by the way). So many colours! Lovely stuff.

Crafting 365 / 30 - butterflies again

We went out last night but watched a West Wing when we got back, giving me the chance to get my remaining butterflies to where I wanted them - one finished (an ornament) and the other three with all their felt pieces stitched on ready and waiting for sequins and either ribbon or a brooch back depending what they will be needed as... Here they are along with a "one I made earlier" ornament and including a view of the reverse of my stitching - the bit no-one normally gets to see!

Oh, and from the other night - here is proof of why you should not label your stuff whilst half-asleep... haha.

Crafting 365 / 28 & 29 - seemingly endless cards and some butterflies

No time to blog my crafting yesterday, bit of a dull but busy day and then I was totally worn out by the evening... since my last post I have managed to get a few cards labelled & wrapped into bundles, and I've snuck a little bit of sewing in too. Here are the cards halfway through - the pile at the front had been finished, wrapped up and photographed and then pile at the back is being tackled slowly when I have a spare moment & the right kind of light:

These are the butterflies I have been working on (the little bit of sewing)...
These have been seen before, as I cut out the pieces for them quite a few days ago. I don't know yet whether they will become ornaments or brooches. The one at the bottom will probably be an ornament because the other one I made has already sold & I would like to be able to list a pair of them. I will hopefully have some more interesting crafty news in a day or two as I have a custom order to work on - I will have to carve out a large portion of my time for sewing etc, I am very much looking forward to it!

Crafting 365 / 27 - my house is now a card factory

Well, it feels that way anyhow! I have been doing an awful lot of "cutting and sticking" as we used to say in primary school. The guillotine (a swap from greygoat) is my friend!. Lots of notecards featuring my mother-in-law's artwork (she was very pleased with them when she came round for lunch yesterday) and various pictures taken by yours truly. Here are some of them:
I have to go buy envelopes this afternoon, and then I shall have the fun of sorting them all into sets (mostly they will be in sets of 4, I reckon). There are a fair few still to make, too, as last night the boyf found the long-lost CD of his mother's artwork (note to self: must tidy the spare room!) ... so we've got a few more designs to work with.

Crafting 365 / 26 - printing out lots of notecards...

We went out for dinner last night, so I was deprived of my usual time for curling up with my sewing so: time for some printing instead. I have been nagged a bit over on Flickr to make some notecards of the wip shots of my mobiles, and also had a few images I've been meaning to turn into cards for just aaaages so lots of printing to be done!

Bit of an incident with the flash printer though, as the ink cartridges needed changing and (clever old me) I put the wrong colours in :(
You'd think I'd be able to put the yellow cartridge in the yellow compartment and the blue cartridge in the blue compartment but it would seem that this is beyond me. I was so sure I'd double-checked it! Ah well. All the colours went mental with my first lot of printing and then when I switched them into the right places for some reason everything printed in pink, thus:
(very acid trippy, that image isn't it?) ... but it all sorted itself out in the end (thank goodness!).

Here's a small peek at some of what I have been printing out:

In particular I have printed LOTS of the cat pictures so that my mother-in-law can have some sets as a promotional tool (they're her paintings) and perhaps even to sell if she wants to try. She is coming round for lunch today, actually, so I'd better go tidy up and get the vegetables on...

Crafting 365 / 25 - butterflies

We watched "Metro" starring Eddie Murphy last night. Rubbish! & not even in a good way, either, just total drivel. Oh well. I did get quite a bit of sewing done in front of it though... this is what the table next to the sofa looked like at close of play:

Then this morning we had a nice lazy start, lots of cups of tea etc and much lazing about... so I sat with my tea and finished the four butterflies I have been working on. I've gone for two different versions, one with purple detailing (like the original which I've replicated - shown with the others for comparison, can you spot it?) and another with pink. Two are brooches and the other two a pair of ornaments:

I'm really pleased with how they turned out (although one of them wasn't quite as planned it still looks nice). The moment all the details are stitched on and the sequins added they just pop out at you, and I don't know that it would be possible to take a bad photo of them cos they are so shiny and the colours are so strong.

I'm hoping to make some more in different colours (probably something with blue) but these will do for the moment - I've got four more to finish, anyway (two more brooches and two more ornaments). I hope I have enough sequins left - I'm not yet at the stage where I have stocked up on certain colours or types of sequins, so I'm still rummaging through the assortments I have left-over from the crafty projects of my youth!

Crafting 365 / 24 - a finished mobile! woohoo!

This morning has again been one for photos - not as good light as yesterday but perfectly serviceable. I did have to drag my kitchen table all the way across the room to sit next to the window in order to take some of my pictures as my windowsill was insufficiently large. I currently cannot reach my oven, but it was worth it to be able to take photos of this which I finished last night:
Ah, it is so satisfying finishing those! They always look so different, and the colours are just YUM, I cannot stop taking pictures of them. Close-up shot:
I have also been taking pictures of some ornaments ready to list (lots of little birds) and two sets of map notecards that I made a few days ago but hadn't sorted into packs yet. Here they all are on the kitchen table:

Oh, and yesterday was a rather good supplies day as I popped into work to say hello on my way to the Post Office and my lovely boss had brought in another bag of assorted wool (her brother runs a charity shop and they find it hard to sell) to donate to my Big Knit hat project. Lots of lovely colours now, I shall be able to knit some very stylish little stripey numbers when I eventually get started on this! Tucking the new balls of wool away in my crafting cupboard, I was thinking how really I need a nice bag to put my knitting in... which I realised would be an excellent excuse to treat myself to this - so practical! so crafty! so awesome!
Is it bad to want to learn to crochet just to make it okay to buy that bag?

Some thoughts on product photos...

Having spent a lot of time this morning taking photos of assorted cards, I then spent almost as long sitting at my computer tweaking, cropping, and then (oh dreaded chore of chores) naming each picture and filing it in the appropriate place on my computer. Whilst doing so, I realised how many of my photos have been just shoved in random folders and set about tidying them up a bit, naming lots, re-filing many and deleting several.

I also found a whole load of VERY old pictures, taken way back in January when I'd first started with the whole Etsy lark and was taking pictures of some cards to list.... and looking at them I realised just how much my photos have improved in the intervening months. There were even some photos of the same cards as I'd photographed today (not that stock hangs about in my house for ages, no no, not at all) and the direct comparisons were pretty interesting. I don't think by any means that my photography nowadays is any good, but I'm getting much better at picking the right kind of light to photograph in and I'm learning with practice how best to use my camera (and the image-processing software that came with it - nothing fancy but everything helps!).

Sample pictures taken for super-old listings... a shot of the set (as it was then) of cards...
... nice and dark there, weird blue tissue paper backdrop (hmm). And that was probably the photo I used in the very first slot! mmm, tempting! I think not. Oh and here's one of my detail shots (better than some I found!) ...
... taken in not the best light (on my kitchen table with a lamp if I remember correctly) and this may have been before I noticed that handy macro button on my camera.

Now this is the same card photographed today, with the same camera, on my kitchen windowsill (slightly overcast but natural daylight) ...











I took one of it inside its cellophane wrapper, too, and took a cropped shot of the felt square. I shall use the middle one as the first (thumbnail) photo I think even thought it's not as in-focus as I would like. Any improvements between the January batch and now are mostly a result of setting, trial and error, and lots and lots and lots of practice!

I have run out of things to say now. I think I shall go delete the rest of those photos...

Crafting 365 / 23 - finishing touches to a mobile

I got to do my happy dance yesterday (luckily no-one else was in the house at the time because it is rather a silly dance) as my abstract mobile finally sold after over 3000 views! Hurrah! Of course now I feel very silly for having not got around to finishing the other one... so my sewing task for last night & today is to Actually Finish It. I'm currently half-way through attaching all the discs to their ribbons:

In an ideal world I would get it done in time to photograph later this afternoon but as the light is going quite early at the moment and I also have lots of parcels to prepare for taking to the PO, I think the chances are pretty slim.

I have been taking advantage of being in during the daytime to take some photos of my as-yet-unlisted stash of cards. It's actually great light for photos today, overcast enough that there's no glare or bleaching of colours or (horror of horrors) shadows cast from my windowframe (my kitchen windowsill is my photo studio, you see) ... but bright enough that the camera can focus properly and white doesn't turn out blue (the curse of a cloudy day). I think I only had about 1 photo with a blue-ish tinge, out of about 147, hurrah.

I didn't have 147 things to photograph, you understand, but I was taking insurance shots (ie two of everything) and mucking about taking lots of fancy angles like this:

Crafting 365 / 22 - wips that are still wips

Not much time for the old crafting lark last night. Much tidying was done and I was left with a couple of wips (works in progress) neatly arranged on trays. I got a little bit of sewing in (during an episode of the West Wing, marvellous stuff) and then had to tuck the trays away somewhere out of sight as the house needed to be made presentable and "presentable" is unfortunately not the same as "covered in felt".

So, I still have a little pile of biscuits, pants badges and butterflies that are being gradually finished.

It's very satisfying making things in little batches but it does seem to take forever sometimes! I'm trying very hard to make as many things in batches as possible so I have stock ready to sell off-Etsy (instead of deleting listings when items sell) or to re-list should they sell on-Etsy. It suits my sleepy late-night crafting habits, too, as I'm often not awake enough to make decisions (which colour? where does this go? etc) but sewing the same thing over and over is perfectly manageable!

Crafting 365 - day twenty-one - lots of felt lovelies to finish

I have been talking a lot about being over-run by half-finished projects and I thought my kitchen table today demonstrates pretty well what I mean...
Slightly blurry photo there but you get the idea!

Clockwise from top left:
A box lid with in-use cottons, my big box of felt (including the 21 sheets I bought yesterday having gone down the market to buy 2 sheets of the pink stuff), to do lists, packing tape (sending out swap parcels today), tiny offcuts of felt (I'm keeping a lot of these for a project), a bag of little plastic bags (swiped from work where they were just going to go in the bin), my workbox full of projects, box lid containing ornaments that need photographing and felt for butterfly-backs, a finished order of biscuits and pants badges (finished last night), a tray of in-progress party biscuits and pants badges, butterflies and moustaches cut out and ready to sew, and a big wooden box full of things I have started but not finished (I shall take a photo of the contents of that box one day!). And that's just the stuff which is out at the moment...

It all has to be packed away later as we're having people over, but I shall do a bit of sewing when I get back from the Post Office and I shall make up a neat tray of things to sew this evening. I am thinking more biscuits, more pants badges and making a start on those butterflies (at least getting all the small detail pieces sewn on so I can pack them away.

Oh, and these are the badges I just finished - sending them off in the post this afternoon...

Crafting 365 - day twenty - sewing as a form of tidying up

Sometimes it seems like my whole house is full of half-finished projects. I have boxes of the things as well as an elaborate system of trays and box-lids containing all the things I am "currently" working on. This evening I shall be trying to get lots of these half-finished things sewn together so I can pack away some of the trays (and the big pile of felt still sitting on our kitchen table from yesterday) and make the house feel a little tidier. I have a custom order of party rings and pants badges to finish as a priority tonight (bought the final missing supplies at the market today so I can finally get them made), and also lots of birds and butterflies and other felt pretties.

I shall likely be camped in front of some film or other. Here is what my "workstation" looks like at the minute: a sofa, a small table (inherited from my grandmother, actually) and a tray covered in felt! Biscuits now, other things later...

Oh, and my Crafting 365 group (set up yesterday) now has an awesome 142 members and lots of great photos already. I'm really excited that so many people have joined (lots of my lovely crafty Flickr contacts and many lovely Etsy people), I can't wait to see lots of peoples craft projects develop.