Black Birds

I'm back to full time work this week which is such a change. I'm still going to bed late, but I have to get up early. Tomorrow the real stuff starts. We got new Tablet Laptops at work which is exciting. They are smaller than laptops which is annoying, but you can write on them. There is an art program that lets you "paint" and creates a texture like oil paint. I'm interested to see how they print out and when I get one on my desktop I will post it. I don't think it saves in jpg format, so I'm hoping I can transfer it to photoshop without too much hassle.

New to the etsy shop is this black tote bag with the white birds printed on. These ones are coming off the edge of the bag. Black bags are good because they are a little plainer, but with the white and then green polkadot fabric inside they create a lovely contrast.

Booties

I made some booties using the pattern from Heather Bailey. They ended up taking a little longer than I expected, although I did hand stitch the whole thing. I think next time I will use a machine for the inside seam.

The thing I like best about them is the Japanese print on the soles and the fact that they are cushiony due to some batting between the felt and cotton.

The decoration is pretty basic, next time I would like to go a little more advanced. They are for my boyfriend's niece Abigail.

Plump

My sister Eliza has a new shop on Etsy. It's called Plump and features PMC pendants.

This is one of her Pendants featuring "The Wave" by Katsushika Hokusai and the pendants come with silver chains.

I took some photos of the City, from Victoria Street in North Melbourne when I was taking stuff to Kids In Berlin. I thought I might turn them into more silhouette two colour images with the blue and orange. Gareth suggested I do a white and dark green one, and I had a play around with a few other colours. I love the shapes the tram wires create against the sky.

Swinging Birds

I'm taking some new stuff into Kids In Berlin and Meet Me At Mikes this weekend. I decided to make some new swingtags after a little brainstorm. It went from sticking things onto the swingtags to scaning in fabric and cut out images and printing it out. The birds are from a old childrens I got at an Op-shop and the background is muslin with some scraps of printed cotton on the side. The thing I like about them the most is the texture the muslin creates when it's printed out.

These little pouches are some of the items I'm taking in, as well as badges and some tote bags. I am enjoying using the two bits of fabric and I'm thinking of making some little wallets this way as well.

Coats And Coins

My sister got me this fabric just before Christmas and thoguht it would be good for coin purses. I hadn't made any for a while due to a few disasters, however my pouch sewing skills had improved so I thought I would try making one. The red and white colour combination looks very romantic and the inside features red and white polkadot fabric. It also fits my mobile, keys, money and some cards, so I think I got the size just right for all the important things.

Anomaly

I got my order finished for Anomaly in Geelong. There will be four bags, four pouches and five badges available there soon. If you're in Geelong go and have a look, the address is:

Anomaly
3/186 High Street
Belmont 3216

Here is one of the bags that will be available. This is the first tote I have made with black fabric and they look quite striking with the white ink. I also thought about trying green ink to see how strong it would be against the black fabric. I should have a new black bag with white birds in the Etsy Shop in the next few days.

Orange and Blue

I took these photos today with the zoom lens for my digital camera. I have not used it much before because I mainly got the camera to take pictures of my products.
I like taking photos of things like trees and telephone poles against the blue sky.

After I took them I put them in Photoshop and digitally coloured them. I thought the blue sky would be bright enough, but it ended up looking dull next to the orange, so I changed that as well. I have seen others use this colour combo and I like it because it almost hurts your eyes it is so bright.

Market

Here I am at my market stall on Saturday. The weather was pretty bad, humid and muggy and raining so I am hoping it was just a slow day for markets. My sister and I sold a few items, she had some earrings and PMC pendants which looked great and lots of people oohed and aahed over them which was great to see. I also was able to meet Sarah from 9 Coaches Waiting and it was great to meet a fellow Aussie selling on Etsy. I had to put all my items from Etsy into edit mode which took a lot longer than expected. They are all back up now (minus the items that sold) and I have lots of new stuff to list. I made a lot of felt badges, all with little stories, so I am looking forward to putting them in the shop over the next few weeks.

Lookalikes

Someone asked me if I could get my badges to look like people. I told them I couldn't. I tried, when I first started making badges to make one of Jim and Pam from The Office and it failed. I thought I might have a picture of it, but I don't, showing just how much of a failure it was.

However every so often badges come out looking like people. Today when I was photographing them I noticed a bit of a resemblance between a badge and Marcia Cross, famous for playing balding phsyco Kimberly in Melrose Place, and I guess for that other show she is now in.

Tomorrow is the Rose Street market, if you're in the area come and say hello. It's in Fitzroy, between Nicholson and Brunswick Street. I will have lots of bags, badges and pouches, and of course Marcia!

Stamps And Swaps

I have been getting lots of lovely parcels in the mail of late. I lot of business cards for the market coming up and some lovely items from some swaps I have done.

The first is a lovely scrabble journal from Little Put Books. Ryan had a very smart idea of doing a swap before her birthday so that she would receive a lot of surprises in the mail. I was lucky enough to get this, which arrived today:

I also did a swap with Uschi, who is an artist from The Netherlands. I got this lovely painting, which arrived yesterday.

I also ordered some stamps from Dial A Stamp in Brunswick. I got a wildebeest and some text with my URL. I am really happy with them and have been stamping all sorts of things. They are so handy for making quick business cards or swing tags or stickers. I need to get some colourful stamp pads because I only have blue at the moment. I think I might end up with a stamp addiction because I am thinking of all the possibilities.

This is what they look like:

Socks and Sandles

I've been tagged by the lovely Lara from Kirin Notebook. Like Lara I am a tag virgin.

The rules go something like this:

1. Someone tags you,
2. You post five things about yourself that you haven’t already mentioned on your blog,
3. You tag people you’d like to know more about.



1. I tricked a boy in Primary School into liking me by pretending to have a cousin called Lisa. I took photos of myself, tarted up with a foundation line and off the shoulder top and wrote love letters to him in a strange handwriting (he compared it to mine). He fell for her, then for me and I got scared and didn't go to the dance with him on the Bus Tour '91.

2. The last market stall I had was in 1993. A list in my sickly smelling diary of products we sold include:
-Manure
-Recycled Cards
-Wrapping Paper
-Lucky Dip
-Crafts (Bookmarks, Bathpacks)
-Origami Sets
-Invitations
-Face Painting

3. I dated a boy in 2000 and I cannot remember his surname. It was the only boy I ever dated from 1980 till 2002 so I should remember, even though it was only 2 weeks.

4. When we first got the internet at school one of the people I emailed was the boys on CheezTV. They wrote back and I thought it was pretty cool, not that I liked or watched their show.

5. I played two seasons of cricket for Edinburgh Cricket Club. My top score was 16 n.o and I took two catches.

Now I tag Shell





These are two new drawings, the man in the socks and sandles is special. He is a little ladylike in the face.

Orange you glad?

This pouch is new to my Etsy shop and very bright and orange. I used the same tree print as other pouches, but the print I did on the orange ended up with a strange faint mark. I decided then to make a pouch half the size as normal with the fabric going all the way round so the bottom has no stitching, it's just one whole piece of fabric. I was happy with the results and it is nice to see my pouches getting better.

I have been coming up with new ideas to perfect making them, one of them being zigzagging the zip into place, then straight stitching it. This makes it far easier to stitch it straight against the zipper rather than worrying about keeping the whole thing in place and then worrying about a straight stitch. I don't use a zipper foot either; I can place the foot right against the zip and then move the needle so it is only 4 or 5 mm away, making it much easier to control.

I’m trying to make a nice variety of things for the Rose Street Market on Saturday, which I am nervous about. If anyone has any advise I would love to hear it!

Red Tote

I am going to be expanding my current brick and mortar stockists to a shop in Geelong called a-nom'-a-ly located at 1-3/186 High street Belmont. If anyone is down that way go and have a look. They only opened recently and they also stock Little Red Pear's stuff, so you know it must be good.

This is one of the totes that will be available there, but I made two so one is up on Etsy. The red and white colour combination is still going strong, and I think it looks good as a tote because there is more red love to go around.

Hungry

Here is another artwork I drew then coloured in Photoshop. I coloured in sections of it with a marker, making it difficult to colour in with photoshop, however it created the texture on the jumper which I think makes it look woolen. This guy reminds me a little bit of Napoleon Dynamite and he is obviously ready for some steady dating. Hot stuff. A larger view is here at Flickr

Artwork

I'm hoping to start listing some artwork on Etsy soon and I have been doing some drawings and paintings. I seem to get stuck in a trap where I don't like what I make. I find that as soon as I start drawing on the "good paper" it looks rubbish, but when I am just doing stuff in my sketchbook it is random and interesting.
Here is one I am somewhat happy with. I scanned it and coloured it using photoshop. Normally when I do that the fill tool leaves a thin white line between the colour and the border, but this time is was much cleaner. I liked being able to play with the colours and try different things, particularly with the boys uniform. You can see a larger version on my Flickr account.

I also just listed a new pouch using a design I have previously used. I got the fabric to mainly use as lining, but realised that it would look great with some screenprints on it.

Black & White

I did the print for this pouch last night. I got some acetate to use as a stencil rather than paper. They turned out better than I expected. Although some had small amounts of bleeding, they all didn’t look that bad and the fact that I can reuse the stencil over and over is a good thing. This pouch has bright green polka dot fabric inside. I love green and black together, although it was difficult choosing what lining to put in with the black and white colour combination.

Three Little Maids

My shop is well stocked with little felt ladies, although two went on a trip to Reno, NV.

I'm now getting ready for my stall at the Rose Street Artists' Market on Saturday 20th of January. If you're in Fitzroy come along and say hello!

Red Square

I did some more prints using white ink on red drill. This one is a simple overlapping sqaure pattern. This pouch ended up a little smaller than the other ones, but the size is still good for fitting in all the good stuff. The only problem I have with the white ink is it's sticky and ruins the stencils I make. I am going to have a look at making them from plastic rather than paper as maybe they will last longer.

I've listed a few more badges on Etsy, although a couple of them are on there way to Reno. The guy at the Post Office was quite impressed. The people at my local post office are lovely. I often read about surly postal workers, but our local one only has lovely, friendly people.

Today is brought to you by the letter A

I have listed quite a few little felt badges since Alice in the post below. One of them was feature item as well, which was a surprise. This new one is Alexandra and she has quite a large head of hair in a big beehive.

I also got a lovely surprise in the mail today, my artworks from Matty Cipov. I can’t wait to get them into frames and hanging up together.