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 / 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...)

Distractions and General Laziness

I have been both lazy and distracted by other things today, and not taken any photos. I shall be back tomorrow with crafting 365 pics and some snaps of today's distractions, including some newly-thrifted lovelies (I do like a nice bit of second-hand shopping). Happy Friday to you all!

365 / 185 - Odds and Ends and more Flickr Love

Day 185 was a day for odd chores and finishing little bits and pieces of crafty projects. I re-worked the packaging for my remaining music notecards & envelopes (minus my branding) ready to be stocked in a local shop. I rescued some pincushion pieces from the depths of my "in progress" box and started turning them into actual pincushions (almost a year after the pieces were cut out, tsk tsk). And then whilst tidying a few things I found a stack of old, outdated calling cards that I'd been keeping to re-use them as little cards to send out with orders and instead of putting them away to be used another day I dug out some paper scraps and some glue and got stuck in:
The blue and white polka dot ones turned out particularly well, I think. I love those little dots - they're the insides of envelopes, my very favourite envelope pattern (my second favourite is when they make a pattern out of little envelope shapes).

Then late in the night I wrote rather a rambling blog post! As promised though, some reasons why Flickr is "awesome"...

It connects lonely felt-obsessed little me with so many other like-minded crafters, like the fantastically talented lilfishstudios whose attention to detail is seriously impressive - check out her great packaging idea for her recycled felt bird pins:It helps me stumble upon the work of awesome (there I go again) artists like well.ill.be.darned who has managed to bring a delicious sweet charm to a church refreshments list:
It is an almost endless collection of pretty, pretty things, like the ultimate glossy magazine full of pictures of whatever I'm obsessing about at the moment (currently retro-inspired modern interiors and retro crockery collections). One of my latest Flickr faves comes from H is for Home, a colourful 1950s biscuit tin design: That image is retro (always good), it's colourful (always great), it used to hold biscuits (always yummy) and it's covered in birds (always my favourite). What more could you want? Actually, for the retro-loving bird-obsessive H is for Home has plenty more - check out this blog post!

Above all though Flickr has made me see the sheer fun you can have with photos, and no-one in my contacts seems to have more fun with theirs than Kezzaroo whose "fancy dress Friday" pictures always make me smile. Her Wizard of Oz picture is one of my favourites: You should check out all her pictures though, so much fun! Make sure you don't miss the great manipulation Miss Bunny did of the Kez-as-Dorothy and the Seven Deadly Sins series Kez and Bunny did late last year. Awesome.

365 / 183 - French Fancies and Finishing Things

I am determined at the moment to do two things. Firstly I need to properly restock my designs (many sold out in November and have not been made since! dreadful!) instead of getting distracted by shiny new stuff all the time. Secondly, I need to actually finish the things in my big box of half-finished projects. The shoes embroidery was rescued from this box a couple of weeks ago and now it is the turn of some fake fondant pincushions...
As you can see, three yellow ones (the yellow ones are the yummiest) finished and some pink ones in-progress instead of just in pieces as they have been for many months. Someone bought me a box of the real ones last week and I thought "oh, I must finish those pincushions! then I can use these as props in the photos" (I'm loving props at the moment). Of course the cakes didn't last the week, but at least I've now finished some pincushions. I think it's best to wait until the pink ones are finished and ready to photograph before buying another box of cakes, as I will seriously be unable to resist eating half the box and those things are not cheap!

Oh, and last night I also finished the jammie dodgers from the night before (still no photos yet) and the little batch of foxes which sat without faces for a few days. Lots of sewing, most wonderful. I've also been doing a few sweet-tooth-pleasing sketches for new designs, but must resist trying them out for as long as I can or all these projects will get abandoned again... Want a hint? Well, check out the awesome wedding cake I stumbled upon whilst doing research on Flickr:

365/164-170: Things Conspire Against Me!

I am back with a working internet connection (wonderful, magical, marvellous) but now I am ill! Rubbish! I am itching to write about this week's crafty goings on, but my witterings will have to wait. In the meantime though: photos of my crafty output over my internet-free days... I was rather productive without the delights of the web to distract me!

365 / 163 - From Sketches to Patterns to Prototypes

We had a super-slow day at work yesterday and I spent rather a lot of time sneakily sketching British butterflies:
Of course, I was then so excited at how well some of the sketches had turned out that I had to try some out the moment I got home...
... the yellow one is a Brimstone butterfly, the blue one is Adonis Blue and the in-progress white and orange one is a species called Orange-Tip. I also tried out petal shapes for daisies, and (seriously thrilling) made a prototype Bluetit which is on the wrong colour background and lacking an eye! The idea for the bluetit (and, in fact, for a whole range of British garden birds) came when I was idly sketching possible shapes for a robin back in December, and it is wonderful to have fully realised the idea. Here's a shot of all the sketches I made - initial robin sketches, a sketch working out how to represent bluebird markings, and then a neater drawing to base a pattern - along with the pattern pieces and prepared felt shapes:
Then here's the final drawing and the finished applique for comparison:
He's turned out to be rather a cutie I think, and I'm very glad as the bluetit is one of my very favourite birds. The pages of my bird books will be well thumbed over the next few weeks I think as I'll be adapting the pattern for all sorts of different species....

There won't be any more 365 photos from me for a little while though, as I'm going away for a few days (leaving the boyfriend to fend for himself, haha). I shall still be blogging though, continuing my "featured crafter" series showing off some of the amazing talent in the Crafting 365 group.

PS Yay! My pansy pin got a mention in an Etsy article posted today about Colour Theory - apparently I "used the split complementary color scheme of green, purple and yellow to create a balanced color contrast". This is news to me but lovely to get the mention - particularly amongst so many lovely featured items! I have a sneaking suspicion that my pansy was on the Etsy front page with those items the other day but it sold and I missed it... ah well. Nice to see it turning up on the FP this afternoon anyway:

365 / 150 - lines and circles

Last night my crafty task was to finish sewing all the pastel circles together for the mobile strands I'm working on. I thought I'd managed this but as I was packing up I found a sneaky little set of circles that had hidden from me, so one more still to go before I can sew everything together. I made a start on the embroidered lines on the oak leaves, too. Such an enjoyable process...

I am determined to get lots of sewing done this afternoon & evening instead of being distracted by housework or the internet or any of the many things on my to do list, so just a short blog post today. If all goes to plan though I shall be back tomorrow with lots to report! :)

Stop Press: Crafting 365 Article published, yay!

Just a quick (late night for me!) post to say hurrah hurrah the article I wrote about the Crafting 365 project has appeared on Etsy. Please do go check it out, and follow the links at the end to some lovely things made by the group members (some seriously talented guys and gals).

365 / 147 - oak leaves and featured crafter Ladyfort

Here's my workbox from last night...
... I finished the batch of large green oak leaves and made a start on some brown ones, including finally using the sketches I made in the autumn to make patterns for smaller leaves. All lovely relaxing stuff.

I was supposed to be taking pictures of my new moustache pins this weekend, ready to list them, but did I remember yesterday when it was sunny? No chance. Now today my camera is refusing to focus and the pictures I have taken are "servicable" but no more. Oh well. Here's the new design, anyway, embroidered to match my moustache disguises & with proper brooch backs instead of safety-pin fasteners:

Time for another featured crafter...
Ladyfort aka Sallyent aka Tinkering Textiles is a lady of many alias and many crafty projects, including founding the Manchester Craft Mafia and just this week starting an Etsy UK group on Flickr. She describes her work as "textiley things with an eye for detail" and her pictures are always full of delicious fabric prints, gorgeous vintage buttons and inspiring crafty magazines. Her love of detail extends to her packaging - this is one of her Etsy parcels...
... where else could you order something and have it arrive looking so beautifully presented? Just lovely. Her recent 365 entries are a great example of how through the 365 project you get a sneak peek at the development of other crafters' projects. On day 91 she showed us supplies for a new idea...
... and on day 92 we saw the idea take shape:
(I rather like the version on day 93, too, great fabric choice).

Sally's own thoughts on the 365 project? "Crafting is something I do for me - and that's why it always come bottom of the list! So being part of crafting 365 just gives me that extra push to get something done when I sit down of an evening. Seeing other people's process bit by bit helps me think about different ways of doing what I do. And I love the support we all get when we are in danger of lapsing!"

365 / 145 - more moustaches & another featured crafter: Paperbluebird

Last night I finally finished the batch of moustache disguises and pins I've been working on. Rather slow progress as I was doing my sewing whilst watching many episodes of Doctor Who (the most recent series, staring David Tennant), and what began as "a bit of filler in the background" soon became totally absorbing. I'm not quite an addict yet but I'm sure I will be soon...

Today I couldn't take a photo of said moustaches as the weather has been completely filthy the entire day (and now it is both dark and still filthy). I decided to hole myself up indoors where it is warm and dry and get some work done, but all of this rain and lashing wind has made me rather restless. So instead of sewing or filing or whatever, I have cleaned, tidied, ironed, and laundered. I've also started putting my "art collection" (in no way as impressive as that phrase suggests!) in frames ready to work out where to hang everything. Only cheap clip frames but it's great seeing beloved pictures finally behind glass and ready to go on the wall - though the boyfriend would disagree! (he thinks my taste in art is "mental", ah well).

One of the newly-framed pieces is a lovely Zinnia card by paperbluebird, who happens to be today's featured Crafting 365-er... Paperbluebird makes deliciously-sweet embellished bird ornaments (mentioned on this here blog many months ago), and striking modern paper goods many of which are gocco-printed from papercuts like this one:
It has been great seeing her crafting 365 photos, etsy-related and other projects like this crochet blanket, and I especially love seeing work-in-progress shots of the birds which I have admired for so long...
Her thoughts on the Crafting 365 project? "I check in on the new pics posted to the site 3 or 4 times a week - I've loved the project because it has made me realize that crafting doesn't have to take all day, and I don't have to wait until a project is finished to post pictures. I love seeing the pics of people working and creating in their homes, and I've really enjoyed the supportive nature of the group. Flickr groups in general are great, but I really like the sense of accountability in this one (even if I sometimes skip a week and pick up where I left off... I do come back!) and the way that I've gotten to know certain people's work and style. It's really inspiring - I'm so glad you asked me to be a part of it!"

365 / 144 - moustaches, plus! Featured Crafter: CharlotteNarunsky

Last night I did a little bit of moustache-embroidering, and then I did a little happy dance as my grey squirrel pin was on the Etsy front page! Hurrah! Thanks to Bombus for the heads up and the screenshot.
Here for your visual pleasure, some embroidered moustaches ready for being turned into disguises and pins and today's lovely Etsy post - parcel 1 of 2 from ouou, note the lovely packaging and the printed cuteness on the envelope:
In other news: I have decided to do a series featuring members of my Crafting 365 group, finding out how their 365 project is going and showing off a few of their photos. I find their work fascinating and hugely inspirational and I hope you will too!

The first featured 365 crafter is the lovely CharlotteNarunsky, who blogs here. Charlotte has a great eye for colour, mixing patterned fabrics together quite beautifully in her quilts and bags.
She also makes needle felted flower corsages, created somehow (by magic perhaps) from materials such as these:
Charlotte writes: "I have found the crafting 365 challenge to be incredibly helpful to me, largely because my obsessive nature means that I can't bring myself to miss a single day! I have been so much more prolific since I started, and have also become more creative because of it - making the same thing for 365 days would not be much fun at all! It has been inspiring to see the work that others are doing, and I feel like a little less of a freak in the crafting wasteland that is my home town!" - I am so with her on that last point! Not very much going on round here for the crafting-obsessed...

365 / 143 - tidying up and getting nice post

Yesterday I was determined to tidy up the spreading mess I've created over the holidays. When I started yesterday morning my sewing, filing and packaging debris covered the coffee table (and part of the lounge floor), the kitchen table (and part of the kitchen floor), my dressing table and our breakfast bar. It's nowhere near being actually tidy yet, but it's getting there! I've tidied out a new little workbox for myself now, complete with useful box-within-a-box for the circles I'm making out of my felt offcuts and last night's sewing: moustaches and oak leaves...
As I have no dedicated workspace where I can spread my works-in-progress out and come back to them, I am forever taking things out and packing things away. I'm gradually developing a working system but it's taking a while to work out how best to do things, and where to put everything when I've finished. I shall take photos when it's all organised, I promise.

Now here's a much more interesting picture (though still taken in a terrible rush so not too exciting I'm afraid), the lovely Etsy post I got this morning!1) Fabric from ALittleGoodness - gorgeously wrapped in that blue paper and including a lovely bit of free ribbon which in my photographic haste I forgot to include. The fabric is just darling and the service that goes with it is always impeccable.
2) "Package 2 of 2" from OuOu - including lovely mini cards, a sweet little note and a set of cards as a free gift cos I was lucky enough to buy her 100th item. I doubt it will be long before she sells 100 more, her illustrations are cute as a button.
3) Not from Etsy but still good - crazy felt coaster (one of a set) bought from John Lewis as a late Christmas present by the boyfriend (what a sweetheart). I don't know that it has fully dawned on him that he now has to give these house-room, but I'm sure he'll get over it...

365 / 142 - essay crisis

Yesterday I wrote an article about the Crafting 365 project, and nearly broke my brain in the process. It's due in draft form tomorrow and writing it felt like the worst kind of essay crisis, having to mention all my points and get them to link together, including quotations (from Crafting 365 members) but not letting it be swamped by them, all the skills I supposedly developed during my EngLit degree but have clearly lost already! I have to pick photos and add links and credits for them today (which feels rather like getting my references and bibliography right!) and proofread it properly but otherwise it is finished, hurrah!

Here is my scribbly pencil draft (staring at the computer was giving me a headache) and the tiny bit of sewing I got done afterwards, to wind down a little after deadline-induced stress...
Another one of my recent Etsy purchases arrived yesterday, some cute little buttons from Merchant of Kismet which I have hastily photographed in the bag (in the palm of my hand) as it was too breezy outside this morning to risk tipping them out!
Not sure yet exactly how to use these in my work but I couldn't resist them! They arrived in a very satisfyingly speedy fashion, too. If anyone ever spots teacup or teapot shaped buttons please let me know and I will love you forever :)

365 / 141 - moustaches and musing on rewards

My crafting 365 photo for today is a total cheat, as it wasn't taken today or even by me! It's one of the awesome shots taken by the LazerBeanz team for use in my moustache disguise listings:
How great is that?

My crafty efforts yesterday were totally moustache-based, but piles of moustache-shaped felt makes for a very dull photo especially when said photo is taken in the evening with a flash because I was busy all day (oh well).

Adding new listings for the disguises - now listed by colour instead of as one "pick your colour!" listing (because many people never did) - I have been rediscovering the delights of these model shots as well as those contributed by Gemmafactrix and Knithappens. I've also been really lucky this past month to have been sent lots of great photos of people enjoying the things they bought from me (search for "lupin" and "etsy" on Flickr and you'll find a couple), they are just so great to see. I think am going to introduce a sort of rewards scheme to encourage (and, er, reward) these sorts of photos but it needs a little more thought before I announce it anywhere. Thinking moustaches on!

365 / 140 - not doing much, but still getting things done

Yesterday was one of those days on which - were it not for my Crafting 365 project - I would have done nothing crafty whatsoever. I did some housework, pottered about a bit not really doing anything interesting, and really wasn't "in the zone" for sewing. But Crafting 365 called so I looked round for something simple to do while listening to a Hercule Poirot mystery on BBC7 (rather a rubbish one as it turned out) and found I had some brooches that needed sewing together...So without planning to do much sewing, I managed to get 11 brooches finished (that final stage is sooo satisfying) and then I was finding the simple sewing so relaxing after my dull housework-y day that I cut out some light green oak leaves and started to stitch them to their brown backgrounds (eventually they will end up like this). Lots more oak leaves to come, I think. They are so enjoyable to make. After my sewing, I added a few new things in the shop last night, and restocked the lucky pants badges too as I found a stash of them that I'd quite forgotten about lurking in one of my boxes (note to self: organise box contents better!).

Oh, and I did a totally self-absorbed bit of google and technorati searching and found a couple of recent mentions of my work ... Jenygwen picked out one of my mobiles as a new Etsy find, and Rowdymouse created what must be my first piece of "fan art" copying one of my poppy pins. My recent Etsy shopping spree has been blogged, too, how funny is that? Charliemotel mentioned me buying her "tea makes everything better" notepaper, and the lovely ouou (whose cute cards were part of my spree) wrote the sweetest post about my shop, and how one of my items actually inspired the teacups in the cards I bought from her! Awesome :)

365 / 137 - an army of squirrels

Cute as they are, I wouldn't want to mess with these little guys...
... especially as there are four more of them around here somewhere (I'd temporarily misplaced them when I took that picture this morning!).

As you may guess, I made lots of squirrels yesterday (soon to be lots of squirrelly brooches). Wonderfully, there was just enough light outside this morning to take pictures of them and my other new designs. Unfortunately it was so cold (doing its best to snow) and windy that I only managed to get half my pictures taken before I had to come indoors again and warm myself up. Brr! If you want a squirrel of your own they'll be listed in the shop this evening, along with all of this lot: