the felt has taken over ....

My BIG felt delivery arrived....and it seems to have taken over my lounge!

Not a very glamorous craft area...just a couple of foldaway tables, completely covered with rainbows in the making...

The pictures are on my flickr with loads of notes if you wanna see more :-)

freebie winners

Our monitor is on the blink and everything is a funny pinky colour, so if the following photos look weird you know why!!!

I have had great fun reading everyone's comments and following links and looking at pictures...so much so that I am going to post all about them next week, a post a day, Monday to Friday...there are some great ideas so hopefully I'll see you next Monday for Day One :-)
But back to the winners......all the comments were printed out and popped in a jar ::

and I picked three winners at random and they are ::

Tara, (prize one)

Julie (prize two)

and Ciyou (prize three)

Sorry if you didn't win this time round....the next freebie is the first Thursday of December :-)

november freebie

In preparation for the Christmas season I decided to focus my November giveaway on supplies and people still having enough time to make a few gifts.

I think (and I know a lot of you agree!) that handmade gifts are much more special than shop bought gifts, whatever the level of skill the maker possesses.

With this in mind I have a selection of freebie prizes (the photos are all recycled from my website because it's too dark for photo taking!)

The prizes are ::

prize one :: 1x make-your-own flower brooch kit AND 1x ribbon pack

prize two :: 1x make-your-own owl kit AND 1x mini felt rainbow

prize three :: 1x make-your-own robin kit AND 1x bag of buttons

To enter :: leave a comment on this post telling everyone what gifts you are planning to make this Christmas season, better still leave links to tutorials, or your own blogs. It's the time of year where inspiration is more than welcome, so feel free to comment more than once but if you do each new comment MUST have a different link to a tutorial or idea....that way if people don't win a freebie they still get loads of new ideas!

Rules :: any one can enter from anywhere in the world BUT I must be able to contact them via the comment left.

Winners :: will be picked out of a hat at random

Closing Date :: end of Tuesday 11th November 2008

Winners announced :: Wednesday 12th November 2008

Good Luck!

**I will follow up this freebie with a list of all tutorials or blogs listed in the comments, so remember to pop back for some Christmas-y/Crafty inspiration**

catching up

phew----eeee I've been busy!

This weekend I had a rush order for 16 owl kits, to be couriered to Bermuda in a super quick time, ready for a crafty birthday party!

Today I have been trying to sort out my website...unfortunately Mr. Site. has broken (don't ask me !!) and two of my orders have got *lost* I have a paypal confirmation, but no details, so have no idea what the customers have bought! I spent a while chasing Mr. Site. on the phone but think they have more important things to fix before they find my lost orders!!

In the end I have emailed the people in question and asked them to email me their order..very unprofessional, but I don't have another option!

I've also been busy cutting out for my next batch of goodies....both my trays are full, one with mini fabric boxes in the making and one with more Christmas decorations.

Tomorrow I'm off work so can catch up with some sewing, and planning Novembers freebie, which has come around fast!!

flowery packages

The most frustrating thing about working and fitting paper-and-string around my job is the time it takes to finish a project...over the past 10 or so days I have been busy re-designing my brooch making kits...snatching time here and there to cut flowers, order bags, count brooch pins and print and cut lots of card :-)

'Tis hard for an impatient person like me!

But finally *yay!* they are finished....the end result is a pretty generous kit....enough supplies to make 5 brooches, and the finished brooches are made from 3 layers of felt and have that nice, heavy-good-quality feel about them...

I've made 12 different colourways and they are all listed here

hard at work

I spent yesterday tidying and stock taking

(boy, I know how to have fun....I also went to Argos and bought a clothes airer, but that's WAY too exciting to talk about on this post!)

It's something I have been meaning to do for AGES (the stock taking, not the clothes airer shopping)...hopefully it will mean that I'll be super organised, with full up shops from now on...I don't know about you but I can always find time to make things, but the photographing and listing of them sometimes gets put off!

So I updated my website, etsy and ebay shops, and many many things are now back in stock, hurrah!

Oh, and my see-through bags arrived so I spent a while putting my new *much-better-even-if-I-do-say-so-myself* style brooch kits together, this is the new package design...

...I'll show you the rest tomorrow :-)

the right time

The past couple of weeks have seemed a bit wonky ... I'd been waking later then normal and generally mornings seemed harder, I'd put it down to post-holiday-getting-back-into-a-routine thing BUT this morning I awoke before the alarm, enjoyed getting up in the morning sunlight and I feel back on track and ready to start my week.

YAY for putting the clocks back an hour!

I used my extra hour wisely yesterday, I've tidied my stock shelves and re-stocked on stationery that I print myself. I have also been working on my brooch kits and have re-jigged the contents and design of them. I just need to wait for the bags I pack them in to arrive and I'm ready to re-launch them!

rambling on

I really am enjoying running my paper-and-string shops. Sometimes it seems hard fitting everything in around my day job, and sometimes I wish this WAS my day job (well, actually I wish that a lot, but I'm not ready yet!) but mostly I love the challenges each day brings, and all the things I am learning along the way.

I love that there are so many hats that I must wear...sometimes my book keeper hat, sometimes my post master hat, or my designer hat, or sewer's hat. On Wednesday I had my Kit-Maker's hat on and I had fun, I was able to use my teeny-tiny amount of computer art skills to make the instructions, pattern and the cover, it didn't all go smoothly but I got there in the end! And last night I wanted to do something different.

So I did.

I made a monkey :-)

quite frankly, any job that involves making a monkey must be amongst one of the

best-jobs-in-the-world !!

and a job that makes me happy :-)

Kit number TWO!

I made another kit!

This one is perfect for Christmas, either to make yourselves or to give to crafty people
These Robins are quick and easy to make so I've included enough materials to make two Robins
For the moment they are only for sale on Etsy but after my next day off (Sunday) they'll be in all my shops :-)

deliveries

Look what the girls at work bought me for my birthday ::
It was ordered ages ago but was out of stock but, WOW, I love it so much!!

Under the monkey cup is a little bowl for biscuits...perfect :-)
On Saturday the postman also bought my package of brooch backs, which were fast running out, but now I have loads again :-)

At the moment I am working on my next make-your-own kit, hopefully *fingers crossed* it'll be ready after my day off on Wednesday....

finished order

There is nothing I find more satisfying than completing a large order and seeing everything together ::

I like to imagine that the recipient of the parcel gets a big smile on their face seeing all these happy faces looking at them from inside a box!

Plus, making so many items at once is a fantastic photo opportunity!

Lovely!

name in print

Pictures just like that one seem to be popping up all over blogland, the excitement for a new sewing magazine has been extraordinary and I am extremely proud that one of my felt designs was asked to appear ::

I made my sample, wrote my instructions and kept quiet (which is very hard when you have a blog!) but the wait has been worth it to see my name like this ::

The only surprise was that the article/pattern didn't have the name paper-and-string anywhere near it, and that surprised me. Come on, be honest...who knew my real name?
There was this advert for my website though :-)

Thank you to everyone who has sent messages congratulating me for this xxx

routine changes

I have SO many things to blog about but no photos to accompany my ramblings!

I simply cannot get my head round the fact that by the time I get home from the Post Office, it's too dark for photos!

Autumn has just plain snuck up on me!

So it's time to shake up my routine and start taking photos BEFORE I go to work. Except I forgot to charge the batteries this morning and I only managed just one photo!

So here it is ::

a great big mountain of mini rainbows waiting to be wrapped in tissue.

I'll be back tomorrow with magazine news.

progress

I am really enjoying sewing this order together...progress is good and hopefully the order will be complete tomorrow...all I need do is stitch round the edges and stuff with fluff!

chop chop chop

I've been busy with my scissors!

Lots of little piles of pieces ready to sew together for an order from a shop in Plymouth.

circles in boxes

Today the man from BT came and fixed our phone. We haven't had a phone since our return from Dorset, although the broadband worked fine (I have no understanding how that works...I did ask, he said some words, I nodded and I still don't know!!)LOL

I also spent a couple of hours doing my paper-and-string sums, I normally try to do it every week but somehow managed to put it off and hadn't done it for four whole weeks!! oops

I also sewed up all the circles that I cut out and showed you yesterday, but I guess you knew that because I showed you pictures!

scissors and winners

Going back to work after a holiday always seems hard....I've had loads of extra things to do but not a lot of inclination to do them!

Things are gradually getting back to their routines though...including me finding lots of time to cut out felt and make lots of nice piles :-)

In freebie news I have used a *ahem* new version of the Random Number Generator...he's called John (he also doubles as the best boyfriend ever!) & I asked him to pick a number between 1 and 52 and he said NUMBER :: 21....which means that Rachel who owns super-cool blog Owl and Robins is the winner :-)

Well done Rachel, please email your address and I'll send your prize on it's way