Surprises in the Post

I don't normally do much swapping, but recently I've traded some stuff with Lucy of Summersville and Sarah & Jon of The Lapwing Printworks ... and both their parcels arrived this morning!

Jon & Sarah sent me a set of gorgeous bookplates which will soon be adorning some of my boyfriend's many books (they were even kind enough to personalise them for him). Plus they included two surprises, sweet printed notecards and a handbound notebook:
I took rather a long time choosing just one of Lucy's screenprinted fabrics, but I eventually chose a piece of Twist in rose pink and very yummy it is too.... but she also sent me a print of the Plantlife pattern she's been using recently for these pieces. *Swoon*Such a nice way to start off the weekend!

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

Yesterday it was so dark and so wet and so miserable. I did my best to fight it with sunny yellow felt (preparing to make sunflowers) but it continued to rain...Today though there has been at least a small bit of sunshine. And my swap partner got her parcel, hurrah! Here's what I sent - a little cherry blossom trio brooch:

Social Sewing and Secret Swaps (C365/305)

Last night we went round to a neighbour's house for drinks and a nice friendly chitchat, so I took a little sewing kit with me and worked on some bluetits while we nattered...
It is still raining a lot here, very miserable. Lovely cheerful post this morning though: my secret swap parcel arrived! A gorgeous tea-cosy and terribly Cath Kidston pot holder from MadebyCara:Lushness. Check out the sweet tag that was attached to the wrapping, too - a little bundle of sweet supplies and a very friendly note (though my name's not actually Lucy, hehe), those buttons match the spotty fabric so well:
Thanks so much to Cara and also to ColdCell for organising the swapping! I just hope my secret swap partner likes what I've sent! *crosses fingers*

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 / 178 - Tea Stuff, Tidying Stuff, Free Stuff

I'm in a bit of a rush today, cos we're having a "free stuff" party this evening and I've got to tidy the house and set everything up ready for our guests... A free stuff party is basically a big swap party, where everyone brings things they no longer want and leaves with exciting new things! The leftovers then get taken to our local charity shops. They're always lots of fun, and it encourages us to have a big spring clean of our junk every time we hold one - and that's got to be good, right?

So, quickly, here are my 365 pics from days 177 and 178 - finishing off all those pink badges, and making some pink and "sponge cake" ones as well:
They'll be in my shop later in the week once I've had a chance to take more photos.

I've not been up to much sewing-wise the past couple of days as I've been trying to tidy up my sewing things and also my half of the spare room which now looks like this:
Bit of a bomb site (terrible light up there, too!) but getting there... (click through to see it larger and with lots of notes if you're interested!).
Major achievements include clearing out some of my University notes:
(the pile of paper on the top is going, the rest is staying for now), deciding to get rid of this sewing box which is nice but acts as a black hole and is totally impractical:
And admitting to myself that I really have no need for nor the space to put this typewriter:
Free stuff party ahoy!

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

365 / 64 - some sewing and some secrets revealed!

Yesterday I was feeling tired and sleepy and a little bit grumpy so I took the opportunity to curl up with my sewing and totally ignored my to do list in favour of some soothing stitchery. I made six little plush bird brooches (the seventh you can see in the picture was made the other day, a test bird!), cut out the final finishing teeny pieces of felt for my work-in-progress moth brooches, and did most of the work on two little cherry blossom pins. Here they all are, in the bright sunshine:
The cherry blossom pins are part of the secret I have been hiding from you. My secret swap partner (who has now received her gift) was the lovely greygoat who said she liked corsages and is known to love Japanese things... so I decided to make her a Sakura (cherry blossom) branch out of felt, an appliqued corsage. It ended up so large that it has two pinback fastenings stitched on the back to keep it in place, and took rather a while to sew... but I'm really very pleased with how it turned out:As I had a few of the little pink beads left over (they really are just the perfect beads for this, lovely pale pearlescent things with dark pink insides) I decided to use my new cherry blossom pattern to make pins for my shop...
They are really enjoyable little pins to make, I love adding the beads and the little embroidered details, and making them has allowed me the chance to try out some of the alternate solutions I had for the main corsage (darker thread for the central embroidery, not stitching the darker pink felt onto the backing to make it stand out more). It's lovely to have made a flower that actually resembles a real flower instead of a stylised retro "flower-type" shape like I've made previously. I'll hopefully be finishing the in-progress pins this evening, and I am going to try and finish at least one of those darn moths! They've been sitting around unfinished for far, far too long.

365 / 62 - printing, sewing, and another secret thing

Last night I made another secret thing which I cannot yet show off - it's a small something based on the secret swap item I've just put in the post, so it will have to stay hidden until the swapping is complete! I also printed off a few business cards (I've been out of them for ages, so I really need to restock) and made His & Hers lucky pants badges - destined to be a wedding gift for some friends of my sister...

365 / 60 & 61 - finished pastels, a secret treat, and lovely post

On Friday (day 60) I finished the pastel mobile I've been working on. Here are lots of lovely pastel photos:
It's very interesting (to me at any rate) to see the familiar mobile shapes in unfamiliar, softer colours. Sewing the finished discs onto the ribbons was a different process to normal, too, as they were single-sided (it's to be a wall-hanging) so the back looks like this:

Yesterday (Saturday, day 61) saw the arrival of some Etsy post (photos coming soon) and my secret swap package from the lovely Ally of AughrasLair... THE most gorgeous tote bag (great colours, great fabrics, I love owls, I use a tote bag most days) and a cute matching plushie:
I am just in love with that bag and cannot wait to show it off to everyone. Its arrival also prompted me to finally make the swap item I will be sending out... and because it is a SECRET there will be no photo until it has arrived at its destination.

I should have made it last week or even the week before that but I've rather been letting things drop while I've been unwell and working out the pattern etc for this item actually took a bit of brainpower (shapes to be drawn! colours to be chosen! decisions to be made! etc). It's 95% finished though and just in time for the end of the postal strike, hurrah! Just the last few finishing touches to add and some nice wrapping to attend to and we'll be sorted. Naturally as with all these things I have a few improvements I would like to go back in time and suggest to myself (darker thread there, perhaps? this colour instead of that, maybe?) but overall I am pleased with how it's turned out and I'm also very pleased that it looks how I imagined it in my head (sometimes this really does not happen). Fingers crossed that my swapee likes it too!

Crafting 365 - day nine - parcels in the mail

I have to get this out of my system before I can write a sensible blog post - my moustaches are on the Etsy front page! Hurrah!!! I am just so, so pleased. My family members are starting not to believe me when I say being on the front page is special and supremely exciting, cos this is the 4th time it's happened to me in about a fortnight (only the 4th time ever, I might add). I actually let out a small yelp when I saw them there today - loads of lovely felt things on the front page with them, too. I do rather love felt & all the awesome felty things on Etsy are just so inspiring.

Right, now I can get on with my blog post :)

Today I have been doing efficient and purposeful crafting in order to get some things finished and in the mail. I had a custom order for a notecard (made from a map of a particular place in France) and also had to finish two moustache disguises to finally be able to send them to my volunteer models (the lovely gemmafactrix and lazerbeanz). Here is the card atop the parcelled-up moustaches...

The map I used for the notecard actually came from the UK Etsy swap group, from the lovely seaurchin and I think the stickers I used on the parcels came from there too (tho I forget who sent them)! I love decorating my post with stickers - dull parcels depress me and the women who work at my Post Office seem to be cheered up by it if nothing else!

Small bit of other news: I have been blogged by the lovely Wildcat Designs, here.

UK Etsy-ers Business Card swap...

Photographic evidence of the giant bundle of cards that arrived in the post for me this week:


So much fun looking through everyone's cards (and I am spending all my tea-breaks checking out everyone's shops in more detail now, too). I am now up to 16 items sold on the old Etsy, so had a chance this week to send out some cards with my packages. It's nice to be spreading the Etsy love... Here are a few of the cards that really caught my eye with their loveliness (although all of them had something quite charming and different about them, which I really was not expecting):

I especially like the cool rounded corners of Nonsuch's card (all of her things are so charming) and the presence of the oh-so-British postbox in the photo on the DitzDesigns card. Other cards pictured: cool felt work from Jenny Pepper , a very stylish jewellery photo from Kezzaroo (who also now makes the most mental little felt people), gorgeous textile artwork from Rachel's Melted Fabrics , crazy knitted birdies by Kool Kooky Kreatures, and the loveliest textured card from Tiny Island ... I may have to do features on most of these sellers in future as I am in love with the UK Etsy crowd's work!

The Item I got sent in the Uk Etsy Swap

Lovely earrings from Numpty over at Etsy.com

The Item I made for the UK Etsy swap

Apologies if these pics show up twice, they seemed to not want to load last time I tried it.
This is the flower brooch I made for onefourzero

UK Etsy Swap...

Over on Etsy, the UK sellers have been getting very organised and have updated the UK sellers list in the forums (under Street Team) and are planning a UK Sale (1st - 8th April 07) and are in the middle of a business card swap AND a secret-santa-style item swap. For the latter, I had to make something for onefourzero - she had some floral stuff in her favourites and said she liked jewellery, so I made her a pink flower brooch (rubbish blurry picture taken in a hurry with my dad's camera before posting) . Then a few days later, in the post came my swap item - 2 pairs of gorgeous earrings from Numpty (inspired by my loves of baking and trees & leaves). I am already ordering another pair of the baking ones for a friend (won't say who though, shhh).