Thinking about Work

I've been thinking lots of big thoughts lately about money and work and happiness... about my plans for my business (and my life!) for the next few years ... and about how I can make as much of my working life fit into the middle of this Venn diagram as possible :)

Big News: Farewell Felt Squares

I've got some (slightly sad) news to share today: I've decided to stop selling felt squares & craft supplies in my shops.

I've really enjoyed selling supplies - especially all that colourful felt! It's been a big part of my business identity for years now, and I've loved sending parcels out around the world and seeing what people have been making with the felt, etc.

But it's been increasingly hard for me to juggle the handmade side of my business (and my writing work) with the demands of running the supplies shops. My parents have been helping out in busy times this past year but I really need my business to be something I can sustainably run myself as a single lady without making myself nuts from overwork.

And while I currently have the space to store lots of felt squares etc because my parents are letting me run my business out of their spare room...  I'm not likely to have that space for much longer. I'm not sure exactly what my life is going to look like in the next few years, but I definitely want it to involve moving out of my parents house and into a shared flat or a small place of my own and needing space for loads of felt & other stock definitely makes that plan a lot more complicated (if not impossible!).

I'd been thinking about this stuff for a while and had been planning on gradually putting more time and energy into the other parts of my business and then winding up the supplies side of things in the next year or two, but in recent months the cost of my supplies have gone up and there have been some quality issues... and then the Royal Mail announced their new prices, and it turns out that the majority of supplies-filled parcels I post will be more than doubling in price from April (the rate for that size & weight category is going up by almost 110% which is just crazy!)... so, well, it just feels like a good time to make a change.

So, if you want some bundles of felt or any of the other supplies I've got listed, grab them while you can! The biggest selection is available in my Big Cartel shop, HERE.

I'm sad about saying goodbye to this bit of my business, and I'm sorry to be disappointing any of my regular customers...  but I hope you guys will support me while I make this leap into new things! And once all of my stock has sold, I'll be doing a post with lots of links for alternative suppliers for felt squares so my old customers can find new supplies shops to buy from.

I'll still be blogging and crafting and making handmade items and writing tutorials, and when the supplies shop is closed I'll have even more time and energy for all that stuff (hurrah!)

This sort of change is scary, but exciting too and I have lots of fun crafty things planned :)

Turning Over a New Leaf

A bit late, I know, but I've been thinking about my New Year's Resolutions... and (rather appropriately) embroidering some leaves at the same time:
(most of those are destined to become hairbands like this one).

I went back and read last year's resolutions and was astonished by how I'm thinking along almost identical lines this year! I think I did quite well at sticking to last year's plans, but plan on upping the ante a bit this time round...

1) I want bigger and better things for my business, to be more professional about everything I do and not be scared to try new things or invest in important things like business cards, large amounts of packaging materials, etc.

2) Last year I started making things in batches, but this year the batches have to be bigger and more well planned (test if it sells first, then make a batch of it!) and I definitely need to be better prepared for Christmas! Experimentation and fun new designs are still very high up on my agenda, but I want to have a nice little "collection" (gosh that word feels pretentious!) that I can make in batches, sell in all of my shops, and also have available for wholesale.

3) My 365 project is over but the daily craftiness must continue! I've been loving all the tutorials I've written in the run up to Christmas, and very much plan on continuing these - I don't know what I'll end up making, but it will be wonderful to make things that have nothing whatsoever to do with making money but are just for fun and for sharing. I am also determined to learn how to knit "properly" (using proper patterns and more than one stitch) and will keep you all updated on my progress.

Last year I also wrote that "2008 is also the year of getting our flat sorted out" and that "one of the first household tasks "to do" is attending to my potplants, giving them some love and attention and potting up some cuttings I've been rooting on my kitchen windowsill in teeny little herb jars" ... and very embarrassingly I have to admit that this year, yet again, there are some neglected cuttings on my windowsill and our flat is still a big unfinished mess! Never mind, eh?

Beating the Winter Blues...

... with reds and greens and pinks and purples and a whole rainbow of colours!
I got a big order of felt in from my suppliers yesterday and had a huge amount of fun playing around with colours: just the ticket for a grey, dark day. What did I come up with? Well, you'll see after Christmas but the above photo is a big clue :)

PS now my felt has arrived I will be restocking the packs of mini squares as soon as possible. They'll probably reappear in my shops at the end of December, but I'll announce their return here on my blog.

Recharging My Batteries

Boy am I tired. I've been crashed out on my folks' sofa all day, even out-snoozing the cat!

I definitely needed these few days a way to catch up on some sleep & generally get a bit of rest & relaxation.

It's also (already) nice to be thinking about my crafting without being able to get on and do it, if that makes sense. I can make plans, but there's no pressure to get started on any of it cos all my supplies are elsewhere and I can't access my files or my photos or my accounts or anything like that. It's just me, and my head, and thinking about things. Which is rather nice.

Two things have come up already:
1) how much time supplies selling has taken up over the past couple of months (and how much space it takes up in my spare room!)
2) how many designs I have sketched and scribbled on scraps of paper awaiting sewing

These two do seem to be vaguely related. The supplies thing was a bit of an experiment and I definitely want to make being creative my priority, devoting as much time in my week as possible to actually making stuff.... so I think I'm going to cut back on the felt squares available in my shop sometime soon. I'm definitely going to carry on selling my 60 mini squares packs for the time being because I love them, but the 9 inch squares will probably disappear once my current stock runs down (I'll put a proper announcement about it in my shop & my felt listings soon). I love sending out little bundles of colour to crafty people, but I have to be selfish and make my own crafting a priority.

Crafting-wise, I have been sewing together a bundle of bird ornaments that have been in my wip box for at least a year I think. Three of them won't be coming home with me as my mother has already nabbed them for her tree (an early Christmas present!). I've also started turning lots of those roughly scribbled designs into pattern-ready drawings to work from when I get back home.

Oh, and one of my brooches was on the Etsy front page last night (or was it early this morning? while I was asleep at any rate). Thanks so much to lazygiraffe for including me in her sunset-inspired selection and to fivedot for letting me know & for the screenshot!
(oh, and belated thankyous to Munieca and Bombus for sending me screenshots of previous front pagers - lovely Etsy people one and all!)

365 / 133 - sketching new ideas

As yesterday was my 1 year Etsyversary I spent much of the day musing on the past year, the progress of my business and craft and the plans I have for the year to come. It was my New Year's resolution to set up shop on Etsy in 2007 - a resolution made almost on a whim after finding Etsy via Flickr during a dull few days last Christmas. I don't know that I've ever had a resolution that's changed my life more.
This time last year I was unemployed, bored, not sure what to do with my life, making stuff occasionally to while away the hours... and now here I am with my own little crafty business, 133 days into my daily crafting & blogging project and with my house overrun with felt...
In 2008 I hope to be more serious about all this - to be more business-like (setting up a proper office space, doing my accounts etc) and less lazy in promoting myself. I'm only just starting to become confident about saying to people "this is what I do, look", don't even do simple things like wear one of my brooches on my lapel, and have been out of stock of my business cards for months so there is lots of room for improvement! I'll no doubt be wittering on about all this over the coming few weeks and months so I shall shut up about it now.
I am very excited about the plans I have for the New Year but above all I'm excited about turning all my sketches and schemes into real felt lovelies. It is just so awesome taking an idea in my head, drawing it over and over until it's just right, and then sewing it together for the first time. Lots of my ideas are still secret works in progress, but as I did a whole bundle of sketches yesterday here's a sneak peek:
I'm working on a range of English Woodland items, you see - botanical stuff to go with my oak leaves etc but also lots of cute woodland creatures. As you can see, this will include a slightly crazy-looking fox!

365 / 103 - secret schemes!

Not a proper blog post today (Wednesday) sorry and no photo yet because yesterday (Tuesday) I was working on sketches for secret schemes and they are not ready for showing off just yet. All will be revealed soon, I promise! :)

365 / 82 & 83 - brooches, moustaches and an oak leaf

I am sneakily combining two days into one blog post again, not because I am lazy (though truly I am) but because it was so cold here yesterday that we had to flee to someone else's house to enjoy the pleasures of their central heating... thus allowing no time to sit at the computer and write a blog post! Our new boiler is being fitted at the moment and apparently we will have working heating tomorrow, hurrah, but until then I am typing this wearing fingerless gloves and more layers of clothing than can possibly be attractive.

So, the craftiness...

The day before yesterday (day 81) I worked on tea pins, a second batch of poppies, some moustaches and a couple of other brooches that needed making...
Then yesterday (day 82) I finished lots of moustaches. I also found the perfect oak leaf on the way to work and spent a fair bit of time at work planning how best to use it! Here is the lovely leaf itself, my sketch of it and the felt I am thinking about using (I'm worried it's a little pale but I think it will be okay)

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

365 / 79 - apples and teacups

Last night we went out to dinner so I only got to do a little bit of sewing - half-finishing a new batch of little teacups, and sewing together the apple pins I'd almost finished the night before:
(please excuse the terrible light!)

I have been getting a bit bored with all this batch-making - it's very useful and important, obviously, but it gets a fair bit dull after a while and I have been itching to try out a few new ideas (lots of new ideas). So today I have been trying new things. There will be photos tomorrow, hopefully in half-decent light so I can get my new pretties listed in the shop tomorrow evening.

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

365 / 57 - Doodling

No genuine crafting for me yesterday evening as I wasn't feeling very well - very frustrating as I had some lovely soothing sewing bits planned. Ah well. I did manage to get some more doodles drawn during a slow patch at work (I say "slow patch", my boss says "when you were slacking off") so I guess that's something:
Some of those little scribbles are ideas for felt things, and some are just little scribbles (I was a bit bored). Not my finest artistic hour in either case!!

In other news: one of my moustache disguises was used in the October newscast from The Storque, the Etsy newsletter. I wouldn't really recommend watching it, it's a little bit lame. Jam packed with what my dad sneeringly calls "undergraduate humour". I do love Etsy, but that newscast was not their finest hour. Oh well. It was nice to see the moustache getting used for larks and japery though!

Other moustache-related news, thanks to the lovely heidiburton my moustache disguises were on the Etsy front page yesterday afternoon as part of a selection aimed at 8-11 yr old boys. Most marvellous. I even sold a couple of them, placating my boyfriend whose usual response to my gleeful "I'm on the front page! Yay!" is "yes but have you sold anything?" :D

Trying to get organised

Oh to be organised! At the moment, I'm really not. I flit from one project to another leaving a big fat mess in my wake and the house is starting to look pretty shoddy because of it...

So at the moment I am trying to tidy up, to finish things, to store things better and to have a clear-out. All at the same time, whilst trying to crack on with some sewing too. Lots to do...

I'm currently finishing a load of map tags that have lain unfinished for a couple of months...

... a big stack of wildflower envelopes that I cut out ages ago but never stuck together...

... and lots of things involving felt!
Trying to get my shop nicely stocked, too, which is being slightly hindered by Etsy being a bit lame at the moment (running very slowly, items apparently taking days to show up in searches etc) and also by the overcast & rainy few days we've just had (that sort of weather makes all my pictures turn out blue).

Oh, and I had an idea for this month's design challenge (Fairy Tales) but I doubt very much that I have the talent to actually make it turn out how it is in my mind's eye! Ah well, I shall give it a go anyway.

Birthday Post

Birthday shopping is great, especially on the internet cos then you get post as well! Lots of fun. It's still not yet my birthday but my post yesterday was particularly awesome cos I got all of these wonderful things!
A gorgeous shopping tote from LAMdesigns (perfect for my tea and crockery obsessions!), "Fluke the Mutant Cardinal" postcards from BirdNerd and an awesome special birthday suprise from Jane aka Memake:
How lovely is that? Don't know yet what I will sew it to, but I am sooo pleased with it, it is so nice and it was made just for me! I feel so special :D

In the meantime I got crazy gifts from the boyfriend (who will be in Wales on my actual birthday), and presents from my family when they visited yesterday - my dad bought me a fancy printer! We've been stuck with a doddering old black&white effort so I am delighted to get my hands on an all-singing all-dancing PSC machine.

Typically, I was just as pleased with the paper things came wrapped in as the gifts themselves (I am such a paper addict) - the three on the left are from IKEA, apparently, and the fourth is from wherever my friend Pip buys his wrapping paper :) The pattern on the blue is silver (the picture doesn't show it too clearly), just gorgeous.
Other than opening presents and generally being quite thoroughly spoilt, I have not been doing very much. I did manage to finish my first set of little felt ornaments...
... and I made a start on my first ever beaded brooch:
I don't know yet how the brooch will look when it is finished, but I'm very pleased with how the beading turned out. I have a few more of the beads left so will try and do something with those (and that lovely minty green felt that matches them so well) in the next day or so. I need to get my secret swap item sorted, too... Ah, the housework it is going to be so neglected! :D

Intentions and Internet Searches

Brr. It is ridiculously cold here. It's Bank Holiday Monday so naturally is is freezing cold and absolutely tipping it down...

If it stays cold this week, I shall be curling up under a blanket, drinking lots of cups of tea and attending to my sewing. I have lots of brooches and mobiles floating around in my brain that I want to get made, and I also have yet to make anything for this month's flower-themed UK Etsy Challenge. The deadline is 1pm on Thursday so only three days away, so I don't rate my chances at having anything finished! There are already loads of great entries, it is going to be so difficult to select a favourite to vote for :)

Oh, and I have found out who I am making an item for in the UK Etsy team's secret swap. I've been given a few clues as to what they might like, and I do have a couple of ideas, but as the item has to be in the post no later than 10th June I had better get cracking. I must admit to having a small bit of performance anxiety though, not least cos the person I am making stuff for makes THE most impressive things.

In all this rain I have been sitting on the computer idling my time away and I discovered yesterday that my entry for a previous challenge, the pants challenge, has been used over on Gizmodo Japan to illustrate anti-fart pants!
The lovely Anna translated the article for me: "If you've let off a smelly one these will make it like it never happened. Gas-medic pants which absorb 99% of the smell of your fart have arrived. The secret is the scientific film with enough layers to cover 10 football fields which instantly absorbs the smell of the fart. It is perfect for normal farts but also great for those who suffer from stomach problems. All we need now is something that stops the noise of the farts then it would be perfect." Ha ha ha.

Searching for my stuff, I also found that my colourful mobile has been featured on the awesome Softies Central blog. That blog is just so inspiring and generally amazing, I am sooo pleased to see my stuff on there!

Felt!

Back from Hobbycraft with my felt SCORE. Went via the market, too. Basically I now own ALL the felt. In the world. Ever. Oh, and also two reels of lovely thread, and a small embroidery hoop :)
Hurrah for half price offers, I say. Oh, and buy-one-get one free on the patterned stuff, too. Again I say hurrah.Patterned felt is totally fascinating stuff. The camo pattern came in handy before when I made a custom army bear for a friend, & I've just started making something with the blue polka-dots as part of my current blue & green sewing madness. These three are all destined to be brooches:

Post, Glorious Post

I have been getting an awful lot of nice post lately. This is mostly due to 1) the fun and frolicks that is the supplies swap group and 2) my continued birthday shopping on Etsy.

Over the past couple of weeks I got all of these delicious goodies through my letter box:
... a floral fat quarter & vintage embroidery transfer from rosehip71 (and two of her lovely collage postcards), mini zips from snowberrylime, and lovely bundle of luggage tags from thedevilswallpaper. Oh, the things I will be able to make using these! I can't wait.

Today this huge bundle of parcels arrived at my door:
... how exciting is that?? Inside parcel no.1 was 15 more swapped chandelier crystals from greygoat, so I will be able to make just loads of mobiles (hurrah!). The crystals came parcelled in an old brown paper shopping bag (with handles still in tact) which she apologised for but I love quirky recycled packaging ideas and may well steal that one. This tumbled out, too...
Such a sweet touch! Parcel no.2 was also from the lovely Kate, aka greygoat: oil pastels (probably going to be used by my very talented sister, soon to be selling her art via my Etsy shop) and a guillotine (which was totally on my wishlist, so I am rather pleased to be able to pay for one with swap points alone!).
Parcel no.3? Swapped stickers from thedominoeffect - and yesterday some stickers arrived from craftyannieUK, too. I've not managed to take pics of these yet (my camera battery died before I got a chance) but I will do soon. They are all very fun outline stickers that I'll be using to make more little thankyou cards and to jazz up my recycled packaging. I love to send colourful parcels.

Finally, parcel no.4 contained a genuine bonafide purchase. As part of my Etsy birthday notecard shopping spree, I succumbed to the irresistable charms of bunny's "Octogirl" notecards. Printed with her new gocco printer, these are just gorgeous (if she gets very busy with that gocco then I fear for my bank balance in future, I really do).
Bunny's attention to detail is wonderful. All the cards are beautifully wrapped, first in ribbon and then in cellophane secured with a little octogirl sticker:
... and she included a proper (and very lovely) thankyou card, too (pictured here with a bundle of her business cards, so I can pimp her wares in my own Etsy parcels).
Marvellous stuff.

We (the long-suffering boyf and I) are off to Hobbycraft this afternoon as rumour has it that there's a 2-for-1 deal on felt, and how could I resist something like that? So hopefully I will return later with another exciting crafty haul. Once my camera batteries have recharged, I will take pics of all the great stickers I've received & also some more work-in-progress shots of what I am currently sewing (little felt ornaments and some embellished brooches).

Lots to look forward to, ha ha.

More Sewing & Some Shopping

I continue to ignore the housework etc in favour of sewing my current projects, and am beginning to have a rather satisfying little heap of finished items in lovely blues & greens. I've done so much sewing, in fact, that I have completely finished the vintage reel of "light kingfisher" thread I was using.

I've an awkwardly coloured cardigan that needed thread matching to it so I could sew some runaway buttons back in place, so a trip to the sewing machine repair shop with its rows and rows of lovely sewing thread seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, they turned out to have shut because of a fire! So, I went to the market instead and bought...

... thread to match my cardigan...
... new thread for my exciting schemes (pictured here with the old empty reel)...
... and just THE most exciting haul of felt:
Gorgeous rich red, soft blue, lovely dark purple (I am ALWAYS trying to find nice purple felt and failing), lovely strong pink (ditto), marzipan for Kezzaroo, turquoise (of which I'd just run out), yummy lilac, and TEAL! Hurrah! I bought one sheet of this ages ago and have been using it soooo sparingly and was mourning its loss yesterday when I used the last of it for my current projects, so finding it restocked has made me a very happy bunny. See how well it matches the ribbon I am currently using? Just brilliant.

What did I use the very last of my prized sheet of teal felt for? The wings on this, actually (meant to be a dragonfly but slightly wrong proportions I think, maybe some kind of dragonfly / butterfly cross-breed?) :

Here he is in situ, with the final blue & green mobile that I'm making this week (plenty more sewing to do, but no more mobiles for now)...

Sewing Like Crazy

Screw the chores, all I want to do today is sew! I popped out to the cake shop round the corner to buy some ribbon, and have (rather overexcitedly) been putting the finishing touches to some of the things I started yesterday. Lots more to come, but before the light goes completely here are the two things I've finished so far...
Two dangly mobile thingummies, one long and one short, both featuring the ace crystals I got from Greygoat via the swap group (please excuse our 1960s kitchen carpet!!).
The moment I saw those crystals I wanted to do this with them, and I think they've turned out rather well!

I've been experimenting a little with the finishing-off of the mobiles, trying out different ways of doing the last bit of stitching. The small piece pictured above was stitched with slightly hidden plain stitches as in this first photo (and like the last mobile I made)...
... and the larger was stitched with more decorative & visible stitching as seen in this second photo. I don't know yet which I prefer. Hmm.
I still have lots of blue&green bits and pieces to finish, including something involving this...
Trying out lots of ideas, lots of fun! - more photos to come tomorrow, hopefully!

Some Actual Sewing! Hurrah!

As may be gathered from the title of this blog post, I have managed to get some sewing done. All this mucking about with lovely papery things is all very well and good but I have so many sewing projects rattling around my tiny brain, it is so frustrating not to be getting on with any of them! ... and consequently so delicious to be wielding a needle & thread again. I have been cutting out felt like a mad thing, getting lots of stuff ready for relaxing evenings sewing pretty things.

Sneak peek at what I am working on at the moment (featuring lots of peacock-like blues and greens, but no actual peacocks)...
Note the experiments with patterned felt at the bottom there (above)... and the yummy reel of vintage sewing thread I am planning to sew all this together with (below) ...

Oh, and this is my workspace at the moment, complete with felt-based mess, the magical box that houses my felt stash, and a trusty (and excellently co-ordinated) mug of tea :)

My Other Lover...

Oh, how neglected this blog must feel! I have been off lavishing attention on the UK Etsy Sellers blog all this week, leaving this little fellow feeling all lonely and unloved. Oh well.

I've been tweaking the UK Etsy Sellers blog quite a lot, getting the big fat list of UK Etsy Shops up there (all neatly divided into categories as blog posts I'll keep coming back to an updating) and starting to get their little shop blurbs written. A long list of shop names under a category heading isn't much of a help when shopping, so I'm gradually working through the shops listing what they sell and adding their little promo blurbs if they have any. I'm also making sure that everyone's moments of fame last that little bit longer by highlighting shops that have been featured sellers (either over on Etsy.com or on the UK blog) and also the most marvellous winners of our design challenges.

Finally got all the categories up there now (from accessories to supplies & tools) and blogged about the new exciting secret swap that Askey is organising (much as I have been blogging to avoid the washing up, cleaning the fridge etc, so she seems to be organising a swap to avoid doing her coursework!). I've signed up for the swap already, the last one was so much fun!

So, what have I been failing to blog about lately?

Lots of action over at the swap group this week. I've sent out some more stuff, and received a few more exciting parcels. When it stops being so overcast I'll take some pics and do a proper swap update - the list of swapped items is growing very rapidly and there are some awesome things on there.

I'm still neglecting my sewing etc, either too busy with other (rather dull) things or just not in the mood to settle down with a needle and thread. Far too many days have passed when the only thing I've made is dinner, and that just sucks. (Not having made stuff but also my cooking, frankly!) So I am trying to dig out other planned projects and find something I do feel in the mood for. I've started making a batch of envelopes from an old guide to wildflowers, and a big pile of notecards using this great charity-shop find:
Work-in-progress shots or maybe even finished items coming soon!

Thankyou Cards

Glued though I was to the delights of Germany's Next Top Model, I did somehow manage to tear myself away long enough to get some little thankyou-cards made. During my spring-cleaning this year I stumbled across a leftover bundle of mini cards I made one Christmas to send in letters, attach to presents etc.
These have been just perfect for scribbling little "thankyou for your order!"-type notes to include with my parcels, especially the airmail ones where weight is soooo important.

So when I saw BlueMarmalade offering these great outline stickers up for swapping on the UK swap group I immediately asked if I could have them, as I thought they would be just perfect for making some more mini cards.
And this is the result: eight little folded cards...
... and 30 little flat note cards (business-card size)...
All with such lovely golden stickers, they look so great against the white, and they're so detailed they work so well on their own:Not the best photos in the world as it's so overcast here today but otherwise: Super! Sexy! Toll! (a bit of GNTM sneaking in there, sorry).