Keeping Busy

I might have finished my Crafting 365 project, but the daily crafting habit is a hard one to break! Here are a few of the things I've been sewing over the past week or so...
... lots of almost-finished things, poppy brooches, little robins and fox brooches. I've also been re-stocking lots of masks and beards and working on a few new things which I'll be revealing soon!

In other news, I am giddy with excitement today as my copy of Little Thing arrived today - all the way from China and complete with a free brooch:
So thrilling! It's interesting to see the small differences in the layout from the pages I was sent, and I'm glad to see all my moustache models are still featured. You can read my interview in English here if you want...

I Love My Customers

All my customers are awesome. Truly. But some make me smile more than others, and the ones who send photos of my items in use make me grin for whole days! The latest wonderful, grin-inducing photo comes from Jessica who is so lovely that she blogged it too:
You may notice that I've added quite a few links to my "interviews and features" section down on the right there in the last few days, as I've been busy compiling a proper scrapbook record of them all. It's taken me a while having lost lots of links etc during our last batch of internet browser issues but I'm getting there... As well as having guilt at using up all the ink in my dad's printer making said scrapbook, I'm embarrased to discover that there are so many kind people whom I neglected to give a shout-out too! Please accept a belated THANKYOU! for your sweetness, one and all. I will try harder in future I promise :)

It's the Little Things...

A little while ago I did an interview for a fantastic new Chinese magazine called Little Thing and today I got to see what my pages look like!
It's my very first mention in real live print, and seeing my work amongst features of awesome artists like sushipot, jengsshop and kjoo (whose work you can see on the final spread) and the most gorgeous, whimsical fashion shoots ... *sigh*
I love what they've done with all my little pictures (especially the teeny tiny bluetit next to my web address). I'll put the English text of my interview up sometime soon - in the meantime see if you can spot the snippet of it here:
I am so excited about this, and have spent the whole day with a huge grin on my face. I'm even excited about appearing on a contents page! Right, calming down for a moment I did manage to take my 365 snap: On day 363, lots of lovely autumnal-looking poppies! I think "to poppy" is practically a verb now, I am so obsessed with making these. I poppy, you poppy, he/she/it poppies, etc. On second thoughts, perhaps not! Too much excitement for me today I think...

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

Lovely Features

UPDATE: want to sew your own felt bird masks? You'll find the tutorial for these over on my Patreon page.

Subscribe to get instant access to a growing library of PDF embroidery patterns and craft tutorials, and updates when I add something new!

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Last night I started work on some more bird masks... I've been finishing them today, and pottering about the house feeling a bit stuck indoors as we've had a workman in (sent by the landlord to fill in a hole in the wall - yes, really). I have been greatly cheered up though by a couple of lovely features. First up, my tea addict brooch got a kind mention by Anna, and then the sweet people at Folksy have made me one of their featured sellers! They have three sellers featured at the moment (myself, spugmeistress and sally) , and we rotate at random on their homepage and also at the side of some pages, tis very interesting (well, interesting to me at any rate!). They also included my violets brooch as one of their "top picks": The site is still only teeny tiny, but I'm still dead chuffed to have been picked. Folksy is awesome. Spread the word! Also pretty awesome, did you see the new Dawanda widget I put up over there? ---> Fancy, fancy pants.

Lazy Sunday

I have done nothing today. Nothing at all! I have sat on the sofa eating jaffa cakes and watching episodes of "Germany's Next Top Model" on YouTube and generally slobbing about being lazy. I like to pretend that the subtitles mean I can't really get on with anything else and that I just have to sit there gawping like a goldfish doing nothing whatsoever, but really I just want a lazy day today and gosh darn it I shall have one! I'll do my chores tomorrow, I swear...

I did at least post the first Featured Seller interview over on the UK Etsy Sellers blog this morning - Anna of SakuraFubukiDesigns is the first featured seller, answering lots of my questions like the sweetheart she is. When she sent me her answers she attached pictures of the second necklace she made using the beads I gave her via the swap group, another gorgeous piece inspired by characters in Arthurian novels:
Having read a lot of that sort of fiction when I was younger, and also done a whole course on Arthurian Literature at university, I can really clearly imagine the type of characters that would wear these pieces. Both the necklaces have such strong auras about them now, I am so delighted to see the beads given this exciting new life. She also sent pics of the half-dozen other pieces of jewellery she'd made since the beads restored her "creative mojo". Hurrah!

I haven't made anything in ages, so was quite pleased yesterday to have to help the boyf make thankyou cards to various Liberal Democrats... Not the best things I've ever made, but fun to do and great to just get down to making stuff. Here you can see the logo I enlarged from their website, the piece of greaseproof baking paper I was using to trace with, and the three different versions I tested.
The top version was a sponge-printed stencil that didn't work too well because I couldn't get my acrylic paint to a controllable consistency - too thick and it wouldn't work with the sponge and too watery and it leaked everywhere and was far too messy. Definitely need to test this one out again though cos if it worked it would look great. The second was painted with standard acrylic paint straight from the tube (much too dark), and the third was painted with watered-down acrylic.

I went with the third option, and am quite pleased with how the colour is spot-on and how even though they're all a little rough around the edges they don't look too bad. The water has rippled the card a bit but not hugely. They will do, anyway, and the big pile of them is rather satisfying. Here are just some of the finished cards:

Great Etsy Finds: jewellery

Generally I tend to find my jewellery second hand, in charity shops and vintage stores, but I may have to start buying some on Etsy soon because there are just soooo many great jewellery sellers on there. The shopping options locally for me are currently pretty limited - the basic highstreet chains, a few charity shops with slow-moving stock - so the amount of choice available on Etsy is super-appealing.

One of my favourite Etsy jewellery sellers is Elizaveta who creates just the most awesome, cool and crazy necklaces adorned with toy tea sets, fake fruit, mix tapes, all sorts of wild stuff. Not something I could ever see myself wearing but I still adore her work and thoroughly intend to stick her necklaces in treasuries whenever possible!
Also on my treasury-pimping list is yasminbochi whose matrioshka jewellery looks almost edibly delicious. I am especially in love with these earrings, which I intend to direct my earring-loving sister towards to see if she likes the look of them...
I discovered Yasmin's work when one bored afternoon I (rather foolishly) posted in the Etsy forums offering to give compliments about peoples Etsy shops and was totally overwhelmed by volunteers! I did end up discovering some rather awesome shops, including jkziel who makes great handbags from old books, my fave being this (now sold) "how to get what you want" bag:
... and also TheLolaCollection who makes cute jewellery but also the most incredible collaged plates, like this delicious one, entitled "Flower Bomb":
... great jewellery finds from my compliment-giving adventure were these two incredibly cute pins, the first from twistednortherngal and the second from happyone4ever (how cute are those little scissors?)Looking at all these pictures, I think I may be developing a bit of an obsession with pink stuff!

The Etsy seller whose jewellery I'm actually eying up for myself is paraphernalia. Her necklaces are just gorgeous, so pretty but also so eccentric and fascinating. I love the weird collections of childrens clothing, but my favourites are this sweet bird and awesome goldfish:
... the latter is a very firm favourite and is sitting right at the top of my Etsy birthday wishlist. (Is it bad of me to have already started Etsy shopping for my birthday even though it's still almost a month away?)

Great Etsy Finds: Badges

I haven't done a Featured Seller, er, feature for a while so I thought instead I would go crazy and mention a whole load of great Etsy shops & lovely items I've discovered recently. I will try to restrain myself and only mention a couple at a time though, so as not to end up with the neverending blog post.

As I'm getting a bit obsessed with making the old felt badges at the moment, I thought I should give a shout out to some actual badge-makers whose stuff always makes me smile.

First up, Kate Sutton who makes sweet and charming things like these "look at nature" badges... and also this ace "tea badges" set.
I love Kate's cute illustrations and the fact that these badges are actually tea-coloured. There are so many great tea-themed things on Etsy, if I bought them all I would be so very impoverished but I'm hoping that my birthday money will at the very least help me aquire a set of these. Kate's website is really very much worth checking out - so many great projects and her sketchbook almost makes me want to weep it is so cute and beautiful.

I also have my beady birthday eye on these punk rock crafting badges from the sweetie pie press (from their "women's work" series)
... but there may be paypal-related issues preventing me from laying my hands on a set of these (I will do my best not to sulk).

P.S. great tea-related coolness over at CoolHunting today.