Catching up: days 111-115

So, five whole crafty days to catch up on, and some Etsy shop news too!

Wednesday (day 111) was mostly spent tearing my hair out at the mess created by the plumbers, and moving everything back into the spare room after they'd taken up the carpet. I did manage to squeeze in a nice soothing bit of craftiness before bed though: cutting out pieces for making lots of poinsettias...
Thursday (day 112) we were still tidying up and also doing a bit of spring cleaning (prompted by seeing just how much stuff actually was in our spare room!) but after lots of hoovering and moving boxes and other such tiring chores I curled up and cut out lots and lots of pieces of felt to make poppies of varying sizes. Here they are a few days later when I'd sewn lots of them onto their black backgrounds:
Friday (day 113) I stitched a few poppies whilst watching an episode or two of Jeeves and Wooster and I also went shopping for a few supplies:
Black thread (always useful), black seed beads (for poppies), suitably festive felt (for poinsettias, mistletoe, holly, etc) and matching ribbon. The ribbon comes from just the most awesome cake shop in town. I had never really thought of cake shops as somewhere to buy ribbon but I couldn't do without it now. They have a whole wall of the stuff in amongst their cake-baking and cake-decorating supplies and you can basically take any colour in and find a near-perfect match for it, it is rather wonderful.

Saturday (day 114) I made a start on a new design, doing lots of cutting out of pieces during a lazy morning of tea drinking and biscuit nibbling and then sewing away like a crazy, er, sewing-person during the evening (while watching the 5th Harry Potter movie for the first time). I have decided to send one of them as part of the UK Etsy Christmas swap, so I can't show you pictures just yet as it's meant to be a surprise for my swappee. Here's a sneak peek at the back of it, work-still-in-progress:
Then yesterday (day 115) we had people over to stay so I only managed a quick bit of poppy-stitching during coffee, and in the afternoon I made a few festive thankyou cards to pop in with my orders:
I in no way snuck out during dinner (just before pudding) to check my Etsy shop and reply to customer emails, not at all, would I do such a thing? How rude I am! Haha.

Other news missed out over the past few days - one of my items was on the Etsy front page as part of a Storque feature on items from the UK (part of their "shop local" series), and I hit two very exciting numbers during the week: 500 items sold and 2000 hearts! Much celebration in my house.

Also, some shop news: a few of my designs are currently not in stock because I have sold out, but I am planning to do lots of sewing over the next few weeks and the Christmas hols so most things should be back in stock very soon. In the new year I will be concentrating mostly on my feltworks (LOTS of new designs due in the spring!), so most of my paper goods are now on sale and will not be relisted when they're due to expire.

I've also been thinking long and hard about the amount of love and time that goes into my pieces and as a result I have decided to put some of my prices up in January. If you want a bargain buy it now, hehe :P

UPDATE: My poinsettia and poppy designs are now available as sewing patterns! Visit my shop to see all my printable PDF patterns