365 / 235 - Orchids

The lovely x-stitcher suggested making orchids as part of my design-a-day challenge and after much pouring over photos, and sketching feverishly I eventually worked out how to make them:
I couldn't decide whether to make a pink one or a white one so I made both. Much more fun to make two, I reckon! They're about 7cms (2 3/4 inches) across, so quite a nice size.

As with the day before, I didn't have time to get them quite finished (no brooch backs etc yet) and the photos are rather grey... we went to IKEA today and missed the decent light in the process (oh well). I will try to get all these new designs finished, properly photographed and listed over on Etsy by the end of the weekend: so keep an eye out if you're interested. It will be lovely to freshen up my shop a little! I have rather been neglecting it with all this decorating, etc. Must try harder...

365 / 228 - Sailboats and Cupcakes

Last night I watch some episodes of Doctor Who (very excited about the new series!) and made sailboats and cupcakes...
The little seagulls were my mother's suggestion. My mother is not only good at suggesting things like that, she is also a tea-fuelled painting machine! This is very lucky as the bathroom we're painting is large (almost as big as my previous flat, haha), none of the walls are flat (very old house) and the room is full of fiddly bits, weird doors, edges, pipes, all kinds of funny things to paint very very slowly... but it's pretty much finished now, hurrah:
The white looks lovely and crisp against the light wedgwood blue (it is a wedgwood blue, I promise! the photo isn't great) - how I thought it would in my head (phew) and perhaps even better. For my first ever bit of decorating it has gone quite well, I think. Now if only we can get rid of that awful frilly lightshade! It looks like the skirts of those frilly women people put over their loo rool and it is sort of welded onto the fitting having been there for (literally) decades. It will not budge. I may throw a small party to celebrate when we finally manage to get rid of it!

I am of course now itching to paint everything in the house, and am already casting my eyes over aspirational design blogs and delicious shops like H is for Home for just the right accessories for my dream retro-modern look... Shopping aside, an important part of this look is having much less junk than I do now: so I am doing my best to spring clean, giving things away and swapping them via the UK Etsy swap group. It's great clearing stuff out and knowing it's going to a new life in another crafty home! Ooh, and thinking of swapping things, before I sign off I must show you the truly delightful bird brooch I got in a trade from fellow Etsian Guerilla Embroidery:
I can't wait for the warmer weather so I can wear it out on my spring jacket. Too awesome for words.

365 / 225 - Pinkness and a Nice Start to April

Last night's craftiness: a pink version of my little poppy pin...
... my very favourite shade of pink! Medium and large pink poppies to follow. I wear a lot of pink and purple so I think these will become staples of my wardrobe before long.

Today is the first day of my "Design a day" challenge - thanks for all your great suggestions (no more, please!) - so hopefully there'll be lots of fun new things to show off to you all everyday this month. April has certainly started off well, with my rainbow circles artwork turning up on the Etsy front page today and getting about 1200 views in the process! Just staggering. Thanks so much to SarahLousieDesigns for the screenshot.

UPDATE: My poppy design is now available as a sewing pattern! Visit my shop to see all my printable PDF patterns

Always Remember to Charge Your Batteries

My camera batteries needed charging. I didn't charge them. What an idiot I am...

So, no photos from me today and instead a double dose of 365 fun tomorrow.

In the meantime though, if you have an Etsy account please head on over to this forum thread and vote for your favourite entrant in the UK Etsy "sweets from your childhood" challenge. Everyone has been really inspired by this month's theme, and the entries range from jewellery to ceramics to art to soft toys... there's even a pair of knickers! The votes will be counted at midday GMT tomorrow (Sunday 2nd March), so please get voting...

Here are just a few of the entries (sneakily including my dolly mixture brooch, bottom right)
1. (39/ 365) crafting / Vintage sweet notebook Uk challenge entry, 2. sweet bag with sherbet pips, 3. candy bracelet, 4. Last three toffees bowl, 5. Meet Fizzy!!, 6. Flying Saucers Necklace, 7. Crayon Roll and Notepad, 8. the last one..., 9. Dolly Mixtures brooch

365 / 186 & 187 - Pincushions, Sweet Treats and Thrifted Lovelies

On Thursday I wasn't fantastically awake, so I sleepily stitched together the last of the flower pincushions - here they are with the two leftover green ones finished last year:
I do love those bright spring colours! Friday's 365 picture is even more of a riot of colour though, look:We went shopping yesterday you see and I bought myself lots of things! (well, technically the boyfriend bought them for me as it was his money... and he carried most of them home.. hehe). First up I remembered to buy the latest copy of Craft, to have a copy of the Etsy ad in the back to show my mum:
If I sell any moustaches because of that ad (which I rather doubt I will) I've already spent the profits from them as the magazine was rather pricey... oh well. In contrast, I then got a serious bargain in one of our local charity shops: a set of 4 adorable vintage childrens books for 50p (US$1). I don't really have any kind of use for them, but I just could not resist all the darling illustrations like this one:
How cute is that? I also bought what I am beginning to feel is the most awesome picture in the world, a giant owl print:Not the best photo in the world, but you get the idea I hope. His bright yellow eyes are particularly fab. The frame needed taking apart and cleaning, but I've done that now and I think it looks rather spiffy. It's going to get hung up in pride of place in the kitchen, replacing the omnibus picture which is one of my favourites so it needs a new home... I was thinking about hanging it under "Keep Calm", what do you think?
In the foreground is our kitchen table, which is where I work, currently covered in dishes as we're spring cleaning the cupboards, then there's the funny little room with the china cabinet I blogged about the other day, our other china & glass cabinet and then on the right is the breakfast bar and my new "office" shelves. The bus picture is the same width as the keep calm poster, and would fit beautifully with the retro vibe eminating from the cabinet...
I was a little worried after all that shopping etc that I wasn't going to get up to much in the crafting department yesterday but late last night I made this lot:
I got a lion pin finished after their manes have been cut out and in my wip-box for a couple of months, and tested out a few brooch designs... I'm very pleased with the liquorice allsorts, and the dolly mixtures will look great with a bit of tweaking, but the iced gem biscuits need to be reworked as they look a little odd to me at the moment. A different layout and a darker background perhaps? The dolly mixtures and liquorice allsorts are my entries for this month's UK Etsy Challenge - I've not taken part for a while but I couldn't resist this month's theme of "sweets from your childhood". I'm illustrating the battle between two warring sweet camps: allsorts vs dolly mixtures? whose side are you on?
(I've always preferred Dolly Mixtures myself...)

365 / 152 - Felt Doodles

I have been doing lots of crafty stuff but have no time to blog about it all as we have people coming round for dinner and I have to tidy up asap!

Quick 365 photo though - a rather low-quality scan in fact - of some speedy little felt "doodles" I did last night for Bunny & Heidi's Doodle Challenge. Each little felt picture was made by cutting out felt pieces freehand (no time to make a pattern) and stitching rather speedily, they took between 10 and 15 minutes each from start to finish:
They're illustrating "How big is a tiger?" (he's just a fat kitten), "Spork attack!" (an aggresive spork), "Snug as a bug in a rug" (or on a cosy velvet cushion), "No place like home" (which makes me want to make a whole series of felt houses) and "If I won the lottery, the first thing I would buy..." (would be a very fancy mug for my tea). They'll be one of a kind badges for my shop sometime soon. Right, gotta go and tidy things...

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!

Trying to get organised

Oh to be organised! At the moment, I'm really not. I flit from one project to another leaving a big fat mess in my wake and the house is starting to look pretty shoddy because of it...

So at the moment I am trying to tidy up, to finish things, to store things better and to have a clear-out. All at the same time, whilst trying to crack on with some sewing too. Lots to do...

I'm currently finishing a load of map tags that have lain unfinished for a couple of months...

... a big stack of wildflower envelopes that I cut out ages ago but never stuck together...

... and lots of things involving felt!
Trying to get my shop nicely stocked, too, which is being slightly hindered by Etsy being a bit lame at the moment (running very slowly, items apparently taking days to show up in searches etc) and also by the overcast & rainy few days we've just had (that sort of weather makes all my pictures turn out blue).

Oh, and I had an idea for this month's design challenge (Fairy Tales) but I doubt very much that I have the talent to actually make it turn out how it is in my mind's eye! Ah well, I shall give it a go anyway.

Inspiration & Happiness

First up, the Moviestar design challenge results are in and I came third, woohoo! Blogged here. I went with the cute felt badges thing again (I really cannot get enough of those things at the moment) and made a whole bundle of little pins...

First off I just kept thinking about stars all fortnight & ended up making a pile of simple star pins. They're not quite how I wanted them to be (I am still vaguely mulling over ideas for how to make what I actually wanted) but they are still quite cute. I loved the comment from someone (I forget who, sorry!) that they reminded them of fireworks:
Secondly, I was thinking about old fashioned moviestars and how modern actors and actresses are "celebrities" not "stars", they're just part of that big mass of "famous" people who are in the papers all the time. This rather made me think about all those 9 or 13 year olds who don't want to be nurses or teachers, astronauts or zookeepers, when they grow up but instead declare that they want to be "famous". So I made these:
Thinking about these different interpretations of the theme, and then seeing the other challenge entries and how everyone else had been inspired to go off in widely different directions from the same word "moviestars"... well, I have been thinking a lot about inspiration lately.

I have been spending a lot of my tea breaks looking at wonderful things on Flickr, and on Etsy and following up links to peoples blogs and online sketchbooks. I'm starting to think about my bookmarked blogs and "favourited" (what a non-word!) flickr photos as an online version of the scrapbooks of gorgeous and inspiring things I have been keeping for years.

I have never been able to throw away pictures, quotes and other oddments that fascinate me and I am in turn fascinated by how these things lodge themselves into my brain. Years later I remember a picture and dig it out from the appropriate scrapbook and it's just how I remembered it. I don't know that bookmarking etc can work in the same way, but I guess its fludity means I can keep track of the things I am currently interested in and watch them develop a little? Oh, I don't know. It's nice to think about these things, though.

Some blogs I have been looking at lately: Create Fabric Art (in German - my German is rather rusty - but the pictures! just wow); Medieval Silkwork (great historical textile stuff); Cupcakes for Clara (just the cutest things, found via flickr). I haunt an awful lot of textile-related groups on Flickr, too. Needlework & embroidery & all that jazz are easily my favourite crafts, they are perhaps even taking over as my favourite arts interest - I had far more moments of awe and engrossed contemplation at last year's Art of the Stitch than I've had at any art exhibition in a long time.

I've also been reading Maile's new blog, Breath by Breath & she has been making me think about happiness and contemplation, and because I'm not so good at thinking about more than one thing at once these ideas have been muddling themselves up with my musings on inspiration. Okay, so some of my flickring is just time-wasting when I don't want to do chores or reply to my emails or whatever... I will happily admit to this!... But:

I don't like just rushing around doing "stuff". I like to sit and think about things and look at things that are beautiful or fascinating, and I think of flickr etc as a part of this contemplative process. It's inspiring in the sense that it's refreshing and reinvigorating to see new things or to think deeply about something, but also in the sense that it gives me a lot of creative focus. Whenever I take the time to think about what I'm interested in, and what I've seen lately, and how these things might be connected, my brain just explodes with ideas as all these things combine. All these things help make me happy, too.

For example, I am totally in love with plants at the moment. I moved to a flat with - joy of joys! - sunny windowsills and have filled the house with plants. Watching them grow and planting seeds and bulbs and seeing them turn into seedlings and beautiful flowers is just so wonderful. Planting them and tending to them (well, trying to stop them dying) is in itself a very soothing process, but then I find myself looking up gardening groups on flickr and reading gardening pages in magazines and oh! so many wonderful plants!

Seeing everyone else's seeds makes me want to plant even more of my own (I am even trying vegetables now - fingers crossed!) .... and lots of flowers have been cropping up in my crafting lately (many blogged here), I've been loving flower-themed items everywhere, and the colours of spring have been haunting my colour choices in crafting & also in clothes. The time that I've been taking to quietly try and grow things has caused these ripples of happy flowery loveliness to flow through my life in these small ways, it's really rather marvellous.

I am going to shut up now though because (my goodness) I have really waffled on this time! Here are some pictures instead (spring bulbs on my balcony, and herbs & a tomato plant on my windowsill):

I am now famous

Well, not quite. I have been featured on someone's blog, though. Hurrah! The blog in question belongs to the lovely Angela of Ambient Design & you can read my interview here (if you want to!). It's a bit weird seeing pictures of my stuff on someone else's blog, but weird in a good way :)

Over on Etsy, the Ninja Challenge entrants have all been voted for & the grand winner is Kezzaroo who made just the sweetest pink plush naptime Ninja (complete with cute little onesie). 2nd & 3rd place has yet to be announced but I will link to them when they are. There were all sorts of different items made for the theme, including a greetings cards & a purse & some earrings. I voted for Alicub's hilarious and sweet Wizard of Oz ninjas watercolour - the lion in particular made me smile so much!

The next challenge theme? Moviestars! It's cool to have a broad theme like that after the quite specific one from this fortnight. I already can't wait to see what everyone makes (deadline is 2pm Sunday 15th April) and shall have to give lots of thought to my item & how to interpret the theme.

Oh, and the UK Etsy Sellers grand Spring Sale began yesterday. Running until 8th April '07, there are just sooo many bargains to be had as over fifty sellers have joined together to offer a great range of deals. The list of sellers can be found on the UK Etsy Sellers blog. All this week anyone who spends over $5 in my store (excluding shipping) will receive a free small spring flower pin, spreading springtime happiness all over the world (hopefully...).

Ninja Attack!

For this fortnight's UK Etsy Sellers design challenge the theme is Ninjas!
The entry deadline is 2pm today so lots of great Ninjas are being posted to the flickr group, and will hopefully be voted for in the Etsy forums later on. It is great seeing everyone's Ninjas, each one is so different & they are all just hilarious.
These are my Ninjas - they have cunningly disguised themselves as brooches but we are not fooled! There are Ninja Babies (ninjas-in-training), Ninja Kitties (cute but deadly!) and Ninja Bunnies (ready to kill you and steal your Easter chocolate) :
Inspired by the idea of Ninja accessories - items for the stylish Ninja about town! - I also made this rather goth Ninja Corsage (black felt layered on top of more black felt, with a black button centre). Perfect for Ninja Grad Balls or Proms :)

My whole house is covered in felt!

The little offcuts fall on the floor, stick to your socks and then turn up everywhere! The same goes for small bits of sewing thread... and then of course there's all my tins of finished goodies, my work-in-progress boxes, and my ever-expanding stash.

No matter how much stuff I make, I am always thinking of new things I want to get started on & am forever finding secondhand stuff that inspires me and gets added to my collection to do "something" with "sometime". I have:
- a box of beads and ribbons and things like that,
- a whole load of wool that's gradually being knitted into blankets (in a suitcase under the bed!)
- a fabric box that's bursting at the seams with vintage finds & other useful scraps,
- a big pile of vintage maps and books that I have projects in mind for,
- a bag of fabric squares that are in-progress quilt cushions
- a stack of old sweaters waiting to be turned into felt
- a box under the bed that is full of old embroidered linens and tablecloths that I'm planning on revamping into bags and cushions and pincushions and all sorts of pretty things
- and, of course, large quantities of felt!

Ah, how my boyfriend suffers.

In other news: I am rather pleased this week to be up to 49 Etsy sales, and 105 "hearts"... It's nice to be making some progress with it, and to have done rather well this week just when I'd been feeling a bit downcast. I have finished my items for the Ninja challenge & am already getting excited at the thought of what we might do next fortnight... Can't wait until Sunday when all the Ninjas will be revealed! I have been sewing lots of leafy brooches - autumn and spring leaf trios cos they are so pretty - and working on the mobile I am making for a friend. I am also thinking long and hard and developing my designs for tea-party-themed items and am determined to get some French Fancy pincushions finished this weekend instead of just sitting around eating lots of them instead :)

Busy busy busy

I continue to do lots of sewing. Unfortunately I have also had lots of housework etc to be doing, and there are really never enough hours in the day (or enough felt in my stash) to do everything I'd like to... but I have been making some progress, at least.

My whole sewing box is full of "in progress" items, lots of lovely coloured bits all cut out and ready to get sewn together... Of course I continue to start new things all the time, too. Today I have finished some more spring flowers, made a start on my Ninja-inspired items for this fortnight's UK Etsy Sellers challenge (I don't think it would be giving much away to complain that there is black felt fluff all over the place now, darn it!)... and I've also made some more little pants badges because they were just so much fun:
Oh, and I was featured on the Etsy Greetings blog the other day - they are featuring a random card-seller every day and my Autumn Leaf cards got showcased on the 24th.

A New Blog!

This week I have set up a blog for the UK Etsy Sellers crew/gang/team/club/posse - call us what you will, we have an exciting blogspot blog now which I shall be keeping updated with featured sellers, press & other news. I shall also be writing up all our charitable efforts for Comic Relief in a bit more detail than I managed here, the Great Pants Challenge, and our new (and really rather exciting) fortnightly design challenges. This fortnight: Ninjas! Check out the flickr group for our challenge entry photos, Ninja pics to be posted on April 1st.

In other news, I have been making lots of leaf, pin & flower -decorated pincushions and needlebooks, more Felt Fancies (pink ones to add to the yellow), lots of little spring flowers (some with little yellow button centres too, very cute), and until I can get my hands on some biscuit-coloured felt to turn the biscuits into brooches I'm working on plans applique them to things (needlebooks, for example) and turning them into a selection of cards (they would make great party invitations or birthday cards, I reckon). I am also hunting out marzipan-coloured felt so I can make mini slices of Battenburg cake cos it looks just so delicious! ... oh, and I'm working on some patterns so that I can make specific flowers and turn them into brooches / put them on pincushions, etc. Pansies, roses, tulips, etc etc. Lots of sewing!

I'm also trying to generally build up some stock because I have a lot of things selling out and I'd like to be able to sell more of them, or have them in different colours to offer people (the birds in particular need some stock built up for this reason)... or wear them myself cos I actually rather like a lot of the things I am making, you know :) I have been wearing a little trio of the small flower pins on my sweater for the past couple of days and am delighted with how sweet & pretty they look. They have really been cheering me up a lot...