Flickr Faves

I don't do Flickr Faves too often any more, but I do like it, and when I read one of Mitsy's twitter posts this morning, it reminded me... so here it is, in all its Autumny-orange glory- a completely subconscious choice which I wasn't aware of until I looked at the finished mosaic!

1. Surprise in the Tree: cute cats, 2. love chart pouch, 3. small embroidery book, 4. Retro Glasses Frames, 5. Angel Suzie, 6. Helichrysum 'Burnt Orange' Strawflower (Macro), 7. Paper Butterfly Earrings, 8. class, 9. Love is All Around Us - detail

Some very inspiring photo streams to be found amongst this lot. You can play along too at Art Mind, and be sure to check out La Pomme! Some very cool stuff to be found there as well!

Goodnight!

B.

Because paper letters are nice

And ink-jet printers are great! You can download this little letter set here, it'll be in the sidebar under 'freebies' from now on. The size is A4, but if your printer doesn't have that setting, just set to US letter, and it'll scale it down ever so slightly to match your paper.

Enjoy, and thank you for all your lovely comments and emails all the time! I read them all!

B.

Even Better!

Picture by Pocket Canival

Wow! After some tummy churning decisions and serious negotiations with friends, market neighbours, and market organisers, I have a new plan. I'll be doing Glebe every second week in my regular spot under the COLA (covered area) for the next little while just to see if this extra time allows me to do all the other things I want to do. I must say, I am a little relieved, I have come to love all my new creative friends, and I really love treats such as the one I had yesterday, which was being opposite the most beautiful fabric I've seen in a long time-- it was from Senegal, and it came in yardage, it came in dresses, shirts, baby clothes... it was lovely! And things like that inspire me.

Funnily enough, instead of having the next weekend off, I'll be doing Surry Hills Market with Riyo, which I am very enthusiastic about, and I always like spending the day with Riyo!

So this is the schedule for the next little bit:

April 3: Surry Hills Markets
April 10: Glebe Markets
April 24: Glebe Markets

Hope your Sunday is good to you!

B.

A New Chapter

picture from bubbo-tubbo.

I've been doing lots of thinking lately, and the truth is that doing the markets every week is driving me slightly mad. I'm caught in a never ending cycle where all I really do is make blinkies, which I like to do, but frankly, I like to do other things as well. I have numerous half-finished projects, which I begin each Monday, and have to put aside each Wednesday because the Friday night deadline is always looming. My Fridays are dedicated to odds and ends related to the markets, my Saturdays are the markets, my Sundays are simply spent recovering from the markets, and balancing the books, which don't always balance.

The markets and associated costs such as petrol and all that unavoidable snacking-- which I promise myself each week that I won't be doing-- is my biggest cost. It's about 30% of my expenditure, and I'd rather be giving that 30% to shops who can sell for me despite the weather conditions, who have a larger window of opportunity than just 10am-4pm on a Saturday, and where I don't have to be the one doing the selling.

So, things are changing around here! I'm not going to be a regular at Glebe anymore. In fact after tomorrow, I'll be going pre-paid, which means that I'll just book ahead for when I want to show up, and pick a stall number on the day, maybe once a month. And I'll be doing some big markets here and there along the way, but regular markets where I'm competing with loads of imported items are just not so viable, and neither are craft markets where I'm competing with drastically underpriced copies of toys from the Softies books.

On the up side, the markets were GREAT for me. I made friends and contacts, I got to learn lots from those people, and from my customers, I got to see what people responded to, and what they didn't, and I got to practice my skills, and I must say, that I'm a pretty confident doll making lady these days. A year ago, I would have been too modest to say that, and when people complimented me on my skills, I used to think to myself 'wow, she must be a bad sewer if she thinks I'm any good', but I've come to see that growing up around people who sew things with as much ease as the rest of drink water, might have confused my idea of what good sewing was!

Anyway, I feel like an infinite number of good things came from the markets, it's just time for me to move on!

Hope you have a great weekend!

B.

Small Faces

Well, not small faces exactly, but small facial features is perhaps more precise!

I've been having trouble with felt again, I find it REALLY hard to get decent felt in Sydney or Wollongong and my chasing it on the net hasn't exactly yielded the best results. As much as I actually loathe my local Spotlight, they had the best stuff, it was a poly-wool blend that stayed firm enough to embroider, and which was soft enough for soft toys... however they have stopped stocking it. The sheets they sell are too chunky and course, and the stuff they have by the metre isn't strong at all, it comes apart like polyfil... and there are pieces of small cardboard (or goodness knows what) blended in through it, which I find myself picking out with a needle and smoothing over.

I have been buying felt here, and it is lovely felt, but for my purpose it is too soft and flimsy. It is is hard to embroider and hard to sew onto the doll's bodies, either by hand, or by machine... however, yesterday I had a small breakthrough which makes using this beautiful feeling felt in this context, a little more workable.

I have some very fine double-sided-interfacing my cupboard, and when you iron it, it gets much firmer, not stiff, but it helps fabric hold it's shape as it's used for the inside of shirt collars. My breakthrough is that I've started attaching the faces to the fabric with this interfacing and it looks and holds so much better! You just need to cut the interfacing slightly smaller than the face, line them up on the doll body, and have them facing down on the ironing board so that you can iron the wrong side of the body fabric, and ta-da, the face is attached, and a more peaceful type of sewing can begin! I also pin the legs of the blinkies up at this point so that they are not dangling in my way.

As for the small facial features, they seem to be a necessity with such fine felt, anything too big looks silly and awkward, so I'm sticking with it as an aesthetic choice for the while, but I think it is working.

Happy Sewing! I'm hoping to release an add on blinky pattern soon-- with lots of extra faces and ears to work with, so stay tuned!

B.

Ready!

After much photographing and resizing, description writing and the like, the earrings are up in both my Etsy Shop, and my Big Cartel Shop. I also made up some little cards with names, likes and dislikes, and I think they are rather sweet, from top to bottom, left to right, we have Leia, Shauna, Arianna, Miriam, Hisako, and Ramona. I think Arianna is my favourite-- gotta love rainbows! I had them at the markets on the weekend, and I think they thoroughly confused most people... lots of curious looks, questions and explanations! And "yes, they are from my drawings" was said over and over!

 B.

Laminated Love:

If I sit here sewing non-stop, I go a little bonkers. My shoulders start hurting, my right foot gets sick of the pedal, and my fingers are already so tough, I can stick a needle into one, and feel nothing. Drawing keeps me entertained when sewing is too much... but what to do with all these little doodles...

I've been wanting to make some laminated jewellery for a while now. I first saw some at Mathilda's back in November, and have since noticed it popping up all over the place. It's all pretty straightforward, and so I made some:

They'll all have names and stories too!

B.