day 11 :: birthdays

photo found on flickr :: here

I spent today with my niece. Whilst her Mum and Dad cooked up a feast, decorated the house, prepared games and prizes and party bags we had fun!! We played with lots of toys, decorated some fairy cakes (dolly mixture smiley faces, not quite as good as the pic above!!) and had a lot of fun. I left before the party kicked off (3pm) but I'm sure they will have a fantastic time :-)

day 10 :: packing and wrapping

The wine went down very nicely, thank you :-)

In between sips I spent some time on the computer making packaging for my little things

I'm using good old cello bags, for ease and price, and adding a cardboard header with some information on. The back has my website address on it.These are made with paper, just a quick print so I could check if I had made them the right size or not. I'm quite chuffed with them !!!

I also did some wrapping of presents for my niece :: tomorrow is her 5th birthday party, and I can't wait!!

day 9 :: kits completed

Last night I packaged up some brooch making kits. All the pieces were ready to be packed and it was quite therapeutic spending the evening doing something a little different.

This evening I shall be having a therapeutic glass of wine or two :-)

day 8 :: progress so far

One of THE best things* about having a craft blog is being able to look back in time to see how far you've come. To revisit all those awful ideas that just didn't work, to wonder how on earth you thought that idea would work and to see how your designs change over time. I also like to look back in time to see, actually physically be able to see what I have done!! So consider this a bookmark. As of today the photos in this post are the sum total of stock for my 2 day craft-fair. I have 8 days left to make more items, 2 of those I will be at work, 1 of them will be spent at my niece's birthday party.

I wonder how much I will get done?

*obviously The Very BEST thing about having a blog is all of the fab people you meet :-) but you all knew that, right???

day seven :: WIP wednesday

Today is very definitely a Works In Progress day.

I have been cutting out felt for the past few evenings and now have piles to sew and piles to turn in to brooch making kits.

I like cutting out but this much in one go makes my arm ache!!

But today, at last, I feel as though I am making good progress for the craft fair. I have ordered in the supplies I need and hopefully I will see my stock pile growing every day!!

I found a couple of flickr groups that show off other crafty peep's craft fair displays... very good ...eye candy :-)

Day SIX :: smile day

hehe I've been tagged !! Thanks Sam :-)

I've picked 5 (just 5, so hard!) blogs which make me smile too

1 :: cupcakes for clara

2 :: i'm a ginger monkey

3 :: monda loves

4 :: monkee maker

5 :: steven's happy accidents

but it seems i picked 5 twice LOL ::

1 :: fluffy flowers

2 :: m.patrizio

3 :: pretty little things

4 :: wawaya

5 :: soto softies

So go and see them and see if they can make you smile too :-)

day five

Today I want to show you a brooch my friend made for me.

Such a sweet friend who kindly sent it to me so I could wear it at the funeral...how thoughtful is that???

Thank you Sarah, it's beautiful.

day four

I love Sundays.

I had a little lie-in after a late night in the pub, browsed around the Internet for a while, did a little bit of shopping (toothpaste, shampoo, lipsalve and groceries, nothing craft related was purchased today), bumped into someone I used to work with and caught up with all the gossip, had a BIG bacon sandwich and THEN I did some sewing ::



The trees are all sewn and finished, and I have another pile of pieces ready to be sewn ::

I hope your Sunday was good too :-)

day three

Last night I was a busy bee and cut out a pile of Christmas Trees.

This morning I was up bright and early and managed to add a couple of pages to my website. One is showing my lavender bags and the other is to list all the craft fairs I plan to do. I'm enjoying preparing for this one so if all goes well I plan to do more.

I've only just got home from work and boy am I ready for my weekend :-)

xxx

day two

The thing about blogging every day means I need to take photos every day and that means I need to be super organised and take photos before I go to work and blog when I get home.

I managed it today!

Today's photos are of the happy trees that have been in progress for a while now ::

There are 42 in total, all I need to do now is add a hanging loop and a little bell and a label. which is actually quite a lot, but they look finished!!

November has 30 days

If any of you are popping by today to hear news of this months freebie then I am sorry but I have decided to give it a miss this month. I'm sure next months will make up for it though :-)

I have decided to join Amanda in her quest to blog each and every day of November. I'm hopeful that I will be successful but we'll see !!

So here goes, Day One of my quest ::

Today I finally completed an order that's been in the pipeline for a while. It first started in the summer when I was contacted and requested to make some samples of ideas for

Mr and Mrs House and the order was finalised last month. I've been working on it for a while and today I did the finishing touches.

The designs are exclusive to Mr and Mrs House and they are slightly different to normal because they are quite large and they are filled with Lavender. Cute AND smelly. Perfect!! LOL

They'll be on his website soon and I am going to put a link from my website too.

It's fun to work with someone else on a project, I'm looking forward to the next one ;-)

silliness

*hahahahahaha*

how cute is this?

This picture is from one of my absolutely-have-to-look-at-every-day blogs
Cute Overload.

Only go and look if you think you can handle a LOT of cute !!

the start of a new week

Grandad's funeral took place on Friday, 26th October.

Friend's and family all gathered together and celebrated his life and I was told all sorts of stories about things he had done. As you can imagine a lot of tears were shed and a lot of hugs were shared.


I've still been bumbling away in the background, spending 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there and actually I have got quite a bit done! It didn't feel like I was achieving anything much but when I took the photos this morning I was pleasantly surprised!!

First up, a photo that's been on the camera for a while ::

my Nan started to knit these little hats for Innocent whilst she was sitting in hospital and Grandad was sleeping and WOW did she do a lot!! She's keen to get started for next year too so if any one else knows if it is going to happen again next year, or if there are any other knitting projects she could join in I'd love it if you would let me know :-)

I printed and made more stationery ::

address labels ::

and the new swatch cards ::

and the pile of happy tree decorations is nearing completion ::

This evening I got home, packaged up some orders, visited the post office and went food shopping and now I'm cooking a roast for our dinner :-) and if I read that on another blog I would think 'she's super woman' but I'm not, I'm just filling up my time and working my way through it all :-)
Thanks for being the best blog reader's EVER xxx

keeping myself busy

I have spent a great deal of energy over the past few days concentrating on keeping myself busy.

I have spent time with family, in person and on the telephone, talked and hugged and got drunk with friends, cried until it hurt, gone down memory lane quite a few times, slept at weird times of the day, eaten when I've remembered to, picked packed and posted orders and of course sewing and crafting.

All of the above have helped as did all of your comments. I was so touched that people took time to leave me a comment and to send me kind thoughts and wishes. Thank you so much to every one who sent a comment or email. My Mum & Dad (Grandad was Mum's Father) sat and read them too and were equally touched. So a BIG thank you from us all :-)

I'm afraid that the photos I have just taken are all a bit dark and blurry but I have uploaded them anyway!!

The monkeys were half made sometime last week and I finished them off recently, as were the happy trees (still not completely finished) The brooch pins I ordered a while ago and spent time bagging them and doing the packaging (that got me through a good 2-3 hours)

And I have a lot more planned to keep me even busier :-)

Thanks for being there, it really has meant a lot :-)
xxx

Grandad

I've been putting a brave face on things for a while, Grandad has been poorly and was diagnosed with Lung Cancer on my birthday. He was due to return home yesterday, all the special things he needed had been organised and delivered and my sister, neice and John & I planned to drive to Devon today so we could spend some time with him, but sadly Grandad didn't make it home. My wonderful Grandad passed away yesterday, aged 79.

Rest in Peace Grandad, I love you very much xxx

It's only taken 7 hours

I think my eyes have turned square! I have been updating my website for around 7 hours and it's exhausting, I've just finished and after I've written this I think the computer will be turned off for a little while :-)

There is an extended Kawaii section ::

and I've added the new felt too, much easier to have everything for sale under one roof, so to speak!

I have 45 colours now, and my fingers are itching to cut them up and start sewing.

If you take a peek and spot any mistakes please let me know :-)

A minute to catch my breath

Everything is happening very fast around here.
:: Orders are piling up ::
:: my website is becoming very empty ::
:: the new felt has arrived ::
:: the new cram cream order has arrived ::
:: my craft fair is in exactly 1 months time ::

And you know what? I LOVE it !! I am having so much fun in this crafty little world, I just wish I was brave/mad enough to do this full time!

Maybe next year, eh?

It's a bit dark and dingy here to take photos but expect some colourful goodness tomorrow....

my postman is back :-)

Hooray for postmen!!

Yesterday my postman bought me a lovely parcel from Japan, from everyone's favourite japanese fabric shop Nuno.

I have a couple of really big deliveries due next week, hopefully they will come by courier and not be late !!

If you are waiting for a delivery from me please be assured that I am posting as normal and they are getting to their destinations, it's just taking a little longer than I would like!

organised crafting

Today I have had a day of sorting out and organising. I have turned my little writing bureau into my packing area. It is everything I need right where I need it! Pens, scissors, tape, deco tape, moo cards, order forms, gift tags, swatch cards, ribbon and stuff! Such a novelty to have it all together, rather than spread all over the living room!! The best bit? I used it today and there was plenty of room and it still looks tidy :-)Next job on the list was to make some swatch cards. I bought these divided trays at hobbycraft and they are perfect for storing the swatch card colours.Finally, I printed and cut and assembled some new packaging labels. I made 20 so that should keep me going for a little while.

Yesterday evening I did do some actual sewing, trying to sort out the robot's neck ::

see how it's all lumpy and weird ??

well my next bright idea made this ::

and the neck looks better ::

BUT now I have another problem...it's a new-ish disease for robots,

called floppy-metal-disease ::But he looks really cute looking at his robot-made cupcake ::which ever way you look at it the robots seem happy ::

I have another bright idea so maybe robot number 3 will have a perfect neck :-)

Order Completed

I finished my order at the end of last week, but I couldn't post about it because the freebie was running.


Please ignore the flash !!

If you find yourself smiling back at these happy trees you are not alone!

Yesterday I had a spring clean of my bloglines list (link on the right) and have put all 210 fav blogs into folders. I split them into countries of the writer, I wanted to spilt them into the crafts people did but that was too hard, everyone does more than one craft!

I miss having my blog-roll though so think I will re-instate it one day in the future.

I also added a map, it shows where people are when they look at my blog. It amazes me that people all over the world are popping in and looking at my felt goodies and listening to my ramblings!

I'm off to re-do the robot, his neck and chin are a bit weird so I'm going to sort it out !!