Sickness, Storms and Screenshots

I am still ill. Ugh. Despite sickness, I had to go to the post office so I braved the stormy weather and went into the town. I am now up to date with my shipping and am the proud owner of a variety of exciting new envelopes for shipping out parcels of felt. Hurrah. Unfortunately I am very sleepy and not able to blog properly today. 365 pics will return soon I hope!Before I go curl up on the sofa again, a quick thankyou to the lovely Kala who took a screenshot of my oak leaf brooches on the Etsy front page this morning:(Kala sells lovely things, you should go check them out - particularly her handmade journals
and this astonishingly beautiful peony print).

365 / 202 - Sleepy Teacups

I've been feeling a bit under the weather for the past few days, and am wandering about the place in a bit of a daze. When I'm worn out I have to be very careful when cooking (or I'm likely to wander off and leave pans bubbling away on the hob, forgetting that they're there!) and I also have to pick crafty tasks suited to my limited concentration....

Now is not the time for trying out new designs, for example, or working on the kind of brooches that involve lots of different pieces all carefully layed out and stitched together just so. Instead, I must pick simpler projects from my work-in-progress pile. Yesterday's choice? Embroidering some more teacup brooches:
Following along the outlines of each teacup is simple enough that I can't get it wrong, and absorbing enough that I don't get bored: perfect!

Now for some (fairly random) news...

I sold my first pack of mini felt squares today, so now I'm officially a supplies seller!

The views on my Custom Mobile shot up this week because it got a mention on a truly lovely crafting blog, a post about making cheerful mobiles for spring. The butterfly mobile shown is quite delightful (I love the idea of taking a basic shape like that and embellishing each one differently but in the same colour palette - such a great crafty project) and the blog itself seems packed with fun projects and inspirational crafts. Lovely to get a mention!

Unfortunately I also stumbled upon a blog post elsewhere that took my mobile as a prime example of how overpriced things on Etsy can be. I know that handmade things can be expensive (and I know that my mobiles are not "cheap" by any standards, especially in a marketplace like Etsy where "luxury" is classed as anything over $100) but it does make me a little sad when people don't appreciate the work that goes into handcrafted items.

Oh, and this reminds me - check out the trailer for Handmade Nation (due out 2009), especially the bit about 5 minutes in when Jill Bliss talks about how people are starting more and more to understand the rationale behind handmade (hurrah!).

365 / 201 - Trying New Things

2008 is my year of trying new things. Thinking "oh, maybe I could try that" and actually doing it instead of just thinking about it... I'm starting up new shops on Dawanda and Pink Doodle, and back in January I submitted my work (after much nagging by friends and family) to a local brick and mortar shop selling locally handcrafted items. I got my rejection letter yesterday, oh well (at least the nagging will stop, haha). This is all part and parcel of trying things... some things will work, others won't, but if you don't try then nothing will happen to you at all!
My latest "new thing"? I'm going to try selling felt squares in the supplies category over on Etsy. It feels rather like when I first set up shop on Etsy - "will anyone want my stuff?" "how do I take a picture of this?" "how do I work out postage" and so on... but with a bit of trial and error I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. If I don't, there'll be very little harm done as felt doesn't have an expiry date and I'm bound to use it all eventually :)

Yesterday's craftiness was devoted to sorting out my felt stash... picking 60 colours, sorting them, labelling them, naming them, making a colour chart, and generally sitting about in my pajamas surrounded by piles of felt for most of the day. Here's the finished chart (click on it to view it larger) ...
I'm going to be selling 9 inch (23cm) squares, and also packs of 60 mini squares, one of each colour. Buying felt online myself I would love to be able to buy a pack like that from the retailers I've shopped with as colours vary so much on monitors and their colour charts sometimes bear very little relation to what you actually receive (I am super-fussy about what colours I use in my work). I also would pretty much have killed for something like that when I was a kid, I'd love to be able to post one back in time to my 10 year old self!

365 / 200 - Distracted by Teacups

Oh, it feels so good to have reached day 200!

Unfortunately I wasn't feeling too well yesterday. Luckily I had plenty of cherry blossom brooches to finish (nice simple task for the sleepy-brained), and plenty of Poirot dvds to watch (great stuff). I tried to make a start on clearing out some random crafty supplies from the spare room (you know, to make room for all this felt I keep buying) but instead got totally distracted...

I found an old tea-towel which I'd thrifted aaages ago for crafty purposes and just shoved in a drawer. I thought "I really ought to actually use this instead of just putting it back in a drawer again", took it downstairs and began to turn it into embroidered brooches:
I've stitched round all the cup and saucer outlines, "quilting" the images I guess, although they're sewn onto layers of felt not fabric and wadding. Each brooch is rather large (the saucers are all about 12 cms across), making them seriously striking, and each teacup is different. I love teacups so much that it will be very hard not to keep them all for myself, but I will try to be strong and start listing them in the shop very soon.