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 / 99 - fresh from the felt laboratory

Last night I had the house to myself for the entire evening so I covered the coffee table in supplies, got some dvds out of the cupboard and bought a nice bar of chocolate and spent several hours working on new felt projects. I know that I need to work on batches and building up my stocks and things like that, but the temptation to try new things is just too great to resist and whenever I'm working on something new it doesn't feel like work at all but purely pleasurable "me" time (I rather dislike that expression but it is so very apt).
I worked on cherry blossom pins, made a little lion brooch, started work on a slightly nutty felt beard (the natural complement to my moustaches but I'm not sure how it's going to turn out!), and appliqued some holly (perhaps to be brooches and perhaps ornaments) and a ridiculously intricate but quite pleasing (to me, at least) branch of felt mistletoe that will have a ribbon loop for hanging in doorways etc.

The lion design is adapted from a cushion I made about a decade ago (nice to know my style has evolved so much, haha) for a school project - his nose is not quite right but he's still quite cute:
Oh, and these are the beads I've settled on for the new cherry blossom pins:
You may notice that yesterday was day 99 of my Crafting 365 project, making today day 100. I am so pleased to have reached 100 (with only 3 or 4 missed days inbetween), it feels like such a huge number and the thought that all those days involved some crafty goodness is a very satisfying one. Miles and miles better than the feeling that originally inspired the 365 challenge, when I looked back over my summer and realised how little I'd made and how much time I had spent being busy and stressed and devoting my days to housework or filing or other dull things. Even on the days when I squeeze in a teeny tiny bit of craftiness I feel better for it - actually, those busy days are probably the ones on which I most need to accomplish something simple-but-satisfying, to relax and take time out from everything!

Sewing etc is relaxing, an escape from chores etc, but it's also increasingly becoming "work", too and it has been so exciting turning something I love into a business. My productivity has been HUGE, I've made just so many things this year and my ideas have just been tumbling out. The more I make the more I want to make and that's a lovely feeling. The crafting 365 group and other connections I've made through this daily blogging has proved a huge source of inspiration. It has been wonderful seeing so many people's works progress, their working methods and how they fit their creativity into their everyday lives. It is often a battle, but it's one worth fighting for sure!

Thinking about all this, I was utterly delighted to find a my blog being discussed in just these sorts of terms... lovely to read about someone discovering felt as a grown-up and genuinely creative medium, and I am in love with the little felt garlands that first inspired the re-discovery. A great little tutorial and the finished project is just gorgeous and the garlands fit so well with my current obsession with strings of felt circles. I have been turning over in my mind ways to adapt my abstract mobiles to be garlands for trees, or necklaces or other accessories (schemes you will hopefully see the fruits of in the spring!) and it's causing me to see felty circles wherever I look. Fitting in perfectly with this, my current "I want this so bad but I can't buy it" item is a circley scarf made from wool felt (wool makes me itch like the devil but also I have resolved to buy no more scarves as I have about a million already). Here are two awesome ones on Etsy (the blue one is sold but the seller has more in other colours) from two different seller but both recycled wool sweaters. Awesome huh?
PS my moustache cards showed up in a great selection of moustache-themed items here this week.

365 / 78 - satisfying tasks and a secret revealed

Last night my crafting tasks were deeply, deeply satisfying as I got to Actually Finish Some Things instead of just doing odd bits of works in progress. Here are the things I have finished (along with some things I almost finished)...... a batch of teacup pins, a batch of plush birdies and also some apple pips pins.

Ah, it is so wonderful lining all those finished things up in a row like that (mildly obsessive? moi? surely not).

Today I have been busy with blogging tasks - I am still very behind on updating the UK Etsy Sellers blog, but I have at least now brought the shop guides up to date... They still need a bit of work as I need to give a description of contents for many of the shops, but I've done some of them at least and all the empty shops have been removed and the new shops added (thanks to the sterling work of Kezzaroo updating the UK Etsy sellers list every month).

I have also been uploading photos to my flickr, of the secret item I made way back on day 39 of this crafting 365 project. It's a felt version of a comic strip creature? character? monster? not sure what to call him, but he is called Space Owl:
Today has also included a memorable trip to the post office (after which I realised I had been undercharged! I actually got to send a free parcel, it was rather marvellous), talks with my landlord about plumbers (our boiler and water tank and so forth may need replacing - doom!), and a lovely tea-break catching up on Storque articles wherein I spotted my moustache pins in a cute set of spy-related items in one of their How-To pieces, hurrah!

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!

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

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.

Eek, what a neglected blog!

Okay so first I was busy sewing things... and then our whole county got flooded and we had no electricity for 24 hours and no running water for about 2 weeks (all fixed now though, hurrah!) ... and then I had to help my Mother-in-Law move house (not fun)... and then our neighbourhood hosted a massive choral festival... and now I am recovering from all this! Basically I have been a little busy and muchly neglecting my blogging and crafting :(

Hopefully things will be back to normal soon and I shall have lots of new pretty treats to photograph and blog about! I have been greatly inspired to Get Crafting this week cos I have been on the Etsy front page on a most miraculous TWO occasions.

First up my "I love TEA" pins were featured - very exciting, my first ever bit of Etsy front page glory - thanks to the lovely heidiburton picking them in her treasury list.

This is a rubbish screenshot I took of my front page moment:

And these are the pins themselves - they are first up on my To Sew list this week as a couple of them very happily sold :)

Then today I logged on during my tea-break (a small break from dull Saturday chores like ironing and washing-up) to find myself on the front page again, along with lots of my fellow workers-in-felt from the UK street team! (Screenshot courtesy of Siansburys and lovely felt treasury selection thanks to KoolKookyKreatures).


The abstract mobile got over 1000 new views during the time it was featured on the front page and my "hearts" (people marking my shop and/or items as a favourite) have rocketed accordingly which is most flattering. Hurrah for lovely Etsy!

I'm off to get started on the sewing now...

Swapping Swapping Swapping

So over at the swap group we have been swapping quite a lot of supplies.

So far we have swapped: 1 mystery beaded thing, some vintage bits, 1 pile of felt, 1 pendant, 1 set of brushes, 21 sets of beads (crystal, plastic, wood, glass, all sorts of things!), 1 devil duck, 1 piece of driftwood, 2 packs of sculpey, 2 reels of wire, 3 tubes of glitter glue, 30 chandelier crystals, three balls of wool, 1 length of bead elastic, 1 necklace, some fibres, 4 card blanks, 3 packs of card and paper bits, 2 packs of children's playing cards, 4 sets of buttons, 3 zips, 24 pieces of fabric, 3 bundles of stickers, 1 heart toggle, 1 pack of seashells, 1 set of wavy straws, some velcro, some eyelets, a pack of click fasteners, some cord, 2 agate slices, some fake flowers, 3 wooden cotton reels, 2 bundles of chains, some pegs, a bundle of mohair plaits, some sea glass, a crochet magazine, an old brooch, some luggage tags, a pack of magnetic paper, some keyring bits, 1 design CD, an assortment of embroidery threads, a badge, two pieces of ribbon, three packs of sequins, some silk tops, a pack of snap fasteners, 3 bundles of assorted jewellery findings, two pieces of pompom trim, some bias binding, 1 piece of beaded fringe, gold leaf, a book about bead weaving, several papier mache boxes, 2 glass rings, 1 embroidery transfer, some rolags, a pack of funky foam, a belt buckle, some handmade ceramic cabs, some metal powders, two sets of rubber stamps, 1 set of paints, a guillotine, 1 pair of shoes, a pack of oil pastels, some raffia, some silk paint, some feathers... and a piece of driftwood!

Just a few things, then! :)

Birthday Shopping part one...

I have been Etsy shopping for my birthday and having sooo much fun doing it. Narrowing down my vast list of favourites and fancied items to a likely list took bloody ages though as there are just so many nice things to choose from!

I have stumbled across the annoying fact of lots of US-based Etsy sellers not shipping abroad though. It drives me a little crazy as an "international" buyer to see US-only shipping, especially as there are very few things that I am enough in love with to go out of my way to email a seller and ask if they could ship to me, please? I want to shake them all and tell them how many sales they could be losing out on! Ah well.

But what have I actually bought? My first bit of shopping was for awesome greetings cards... I always hope that my fave artists will start doing greetings cards or postcards cos I hardly ever buy art for my walls (even less frequently now it has to pass the boyfriend-approval test if it's to be hung anywhere other than the spare room, hehe). I do however believe that you can never have enough nice stationery, and I send an awful lot of letters and bits of crazy post to people. Also cards are a perfect "useful" purchase - and if something is "useful" it is practically a necessity in which case it is almost free, you see.

I still have my eye on some other cards (I intend to continue birthday shopping for weeks - my birthday is still over a week away and then there may even be some birthday money to spend...) but for now I have treated myself to this kickass stash from Askey and The Devil's Wallpaper

I was grinning like a big idiot when those arrived in the post! I am super-pleased with them, and keep getting them out of my stationery box to look at them.

I have been in love with Askey's shoes prints for months. The titles are just darling, too. This one is called "I like your shoes":
Her art is so deliciously crisp and modern whilst still being jam-packed with quirky character. All her prints have a really distinct feel to them, and yet they're so recognisable (to me, at least) as being her illustrations and no-one else's. Oh, and her sense of colour just slays me.

It's great having Askey's cards in a box with the ones from The Devil's Wallpaper (DW for short). It has made me start thinking about how cool it would be to do some kind of UK Etsy sellers collaborative project - maybe a box of Christmas cards with one from each artist? Everyone has such a distinctive style - so much mass-market stuff is so samey, especially when one sort of thing becomes trendy and the same stuff shows up again and again in all the various shops.

It's great seeing artists & crafters being able to make stuff that appeals to them, crazy oddments inspired by their obsessions and interests rather than being forced to tailor-make a neat commercial "range" of similar items. DW's shop is just perfect for this - so many different, awesome things! I really like DW's paintings, but I feel almost unhealthy levels of desire for her paper goods... I want to stroke them, they are just delicious and they are going to help me pretend to be very chic and sophisticated!Her descriptions make me smile every time, too. She is a very funny lady. I've just interviewed Askey for the UK Etsy Sellers blog and DW is the next-but-one interviewee and I can't wait to ask her some questions :)