ooohhhh .... shiny new toy.....

We have needed a new printer for a while now and this weekend we finally got one!

It's an Epson DX7450 and it's FAB!

It prints, copies and scans and I just wish we'd bought it sooner...

I've been busy printing some stickers ::

As much as I love Moo I think their stickers are a weeny bit small for my needs, and now I have a fancy-schmancy printer I thought I'd give it a go myself!

They are just perfect to stick on my parcels!

uuummm I'm stuck on Christmas !!

I think it may be out of my system ....for now ... but I just have to show you one last Christmas Idea :-)

He thinks he's cute...

... and I think I agree!

He's a snow lovin' Eskimo with little mittens and a scarf :-)

The original Eskimo can be seen here when I tried to make a fabric version...I gave up on that as it was too hard to sew on the machine...I re-found this pattern last night and I'm glad I did!

blinking computers!

So (get ready for a long post!) this morning I made a present for my friend, then set up my table to start taking photos of all the new things I had made.

I received an email from a customer via Etsy who couldn't purchase from my website because MrSite are having *troubles*

The troubles involve the words Trojans and Disappearing Websites!

SOOOOoooooo

BIG re-think. No big website update for me today!

All SALE items are now on Ebay

and some new goodies are on Etsy

One day soon-ish everything will be in one place ... just not today!

Now I don't know about all you other crafty peeps but I find this time of year quite quiet shopwise. It happened last year and I filled the time with all the normal things...bbq's, friends, etcetc but come September I was kicking myself for not using the time wisely.

So this year I intend to do just that and have started to get ready for CHRISTMAS!!!

I KNOW!!!

I couldn't quite bring myself to start making reindeers and snowmen BUT I could start sketching new ideas ::

the left sketch turned into Santa::

and the right hand sketch kinda evolved at the cutting out stage and ended up as a fir tree (of the happy variety, obviously!)

They take a while to make because of all the layers

but as of now they are my new favourite thing I've made :-)

finishing the WIPs

In case you can't guess from my *inspired* title I have been finishing off my piles of WIPs.

I seem to remember doing this a few months back and making a pledge to curb my WIP keeping....seems like that didn't work!

I've combined my days off with a holiday day to create a nice long weekend, John and I spent Saturday and Sunday with friends, food and wine and we had a lovely time...as you can see from the photos I managed to squeeze in some sewing, it looks like loads but most of it was almost finished!

I'm not back to work until Wednesday and I've got a lot of sewing planned along with some laundry and a little housework ... and it looks like I've been lucky with the weather too :-)

Hurrah!

thinking

Yesterday was my day-off the day job and normally I'd be found trying to do 101 things all at the same time :-)

But yesterday I came to a natural standstill.

Time to spend some time thinking about things.

I decided to make some fun non-taxing items and made more of my scrap circles, this time with vintage buttons from my collection.

This one is my favourite ::

So what have I been thinking about? Well everything paper-and-string related really!

Thinking about account keeping and filling the shops and doing wholesale orders and all the new ideas buzzing around my head. I'm working on some new (exciting) ideas and am very much looking forward to the next half of 2008.

So if you fancy sitting and thinking, grab a cornflake cake and join me :-)

hoot-hoot

I love making these owls ::

They are such fun to do ::

and I get to use all my favourite things:: felt, ribbon and Ric Rac...who could ask for more ;-)

crafting John style

John has been busy on my behalf...turning a rusty old set of metal drawers into some felty craft storage for me!


He came shopping with me after work today for the top coat of paint (a minty turquoise colour) but he's super-busy tomorrow so it may be a while before it's complete ... I'll definitely show you when it's finished :-)

Winners Announced

John and I are feeling a little delicate today...yesterday we went to a great friends 40th birthday party and somehow partied until 4am!

Lets just say the party was a good one and we had loads of fun :-)

Enough party talk though, lets get down to business ::

I have used the handy number generator and the two winning numbers are ::

30 and 18!

30 is ::

ro said...
simply adorable! my favorite crafts include paper and felt. i like making anything cute...food, gingerbread men, etc. ^_^

18 is ::

Anonymous said...
my favourite crafts are (1) watching the children i teach crafts, making their funny little stuff out of felt..and I like rubber stamping love jade xxj********e@hotmail.com x x x x x

CONGRATULATIONS!

Thanks to everyone who entered, it was great to read about your favourite crafts :-)

Toadstool Touchdown

**If you're looking for the freebie post it's here.**

Yay! My toadstool swap partner, Claire, has received her package so now I can show you pictures of what I made ::

It's a toadstool house!

The shutters match the front door...

...and the garden is planted with lots of flowers...

..and this is Mousey, he lives there...

I had SO much fun taking part in this swap, I think Claire and I were paired perfectly!

Thanks Claire :-)

and thanks too to LucyKateCrafts for organising such a great swap!

I'm clicking over to flickr to check out the Official Toadstool Swap Pictures :-)

Blog friends are the best!

The other day a lovely lady named Emma emailed and asked for my address for she would like to send me a little something. I fought the urge to be all polite and say no, there's no need for that etc etc and emailed my address...how exciting!

And look what popped through my letter box this morning ::

It was in an envelope but in my excitement I tore that open before I remembered to grab my camera ;-)

I first 'met' Emma through this blog and the lovely comments she left, then she bought a bit of felt...and some more...and some more (I'm helping to create felt addicts worldwide!) and we've emailed a bit in between as well!

I want to share one bit of Emma's lovely letter here because it made me proud and when I'm having a BAD craft day (we all get them, I know) I can click back here and re-read this::

'...thank you for your little corner of inspiration (your blog) ...you really gave me the kick in the rear end I've been needing for a very long time!....I have met so many lovely crafting people but you are definitely the most inspirational'

wow!

As you can see Emma is a bag maker extraordinaire and as chief Fabricator her choice of fabric is just great, she makes it even better by adding some extra sparkles too.

Thank you Emma. It's very kind of you to send such a thoughtful gift, you're great :-)

In this photo the sparkley bits were making nice bright patterns on the black tissue paper but it was hard to photograph!...you can almost see them!

If you're looking for my freebie post, it's here.

freebie day is BACK!

Hurrah 'tis freebie day again!
I have been inspired by the toadstool swap (I posted my parcel off today to Claire)
and have included materials to create your own toadstools, should you wish to do so :-)
There are two packages which look like this ::

and each one contains this little lot ::

Two pieces of felt, a fat quarter of toadstool fabric, two lengths of grosgrain ribbon some felt ric rac and a cute little iron-on patch.

All you need to do is answer the question below in a comment on this post and make sure I can contact you, either through your blog or an email address. Any un-contactable entries shall be disqualified (because it makes me sad when freebies have no home to go to!)
FREEBIE QUESTION :: what is your favourite craft?
for me it's hand sewing felt, but I guess you knew that right?

PS the question is just for fun, I will pull two winning names randomly from the hat on Sunday :-)

what a day!

I spent today with John and our Classic Saab.
We left the house, complete with picnic, map and camera at 6am, drove for 4.5 hours to get to Corby (near Northampton) and John's lovingly restored Saab 96 starred in a photo shoot for a magazine...he was very much in the role of proud father !
There were seven cars there in total and John's was by far the best....but I think I'm a little biased ;-)
We were at the location for near enough 6 hours and then drove home...which took just 4 hours because we didn't get too stuck in traffic! (I SO do not understand how people drive on the M25 twice EVERY day!)
And now I'm knackered! Time for a shower, a glass of wine and then The Apprentice Final on TV.
See you tomorrow for freebie day :0)

sick bed shopping :: part three (the last one!)

Some stationery this time ::

Close up on the cute ::

all three came from one of my favourite designers ever.

I first found the blog, then the Etsy shop THEN a link to FunTote bags

Hurrah!

sunshine, sewing and food

I had a day to myself yesterday because John went off with some other car-mad people and took part in a small car show.

**felt storage buckets, now listed on Etsy**

So I caught up with lots of little jobs, a great big pile of laundry, listed a load of new items on etsy AND did a little sewing too!

**flip flops, sewn yesterday in the sunshine**

When John did arrive home we had ourselves a nice little barbecue in the garden, and we've planned to have another one tomorrow! YUM :-)

sick bed shopping :: part two

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!





Now I'm feeling 97% better (still got a sniffy nose!) it seems like being sick was fun...I think it's all the shopping that's arriving making me think that!