Folksy Friday

Never done one of these before but had to start to enter Sam's excellent giveaway!! It may become a regular feature.

Ladybird, flower and dragonfly themed selection :o)

Ladybird fabric buttons by Incy Wincy Stitches; Ladybug, ladybug onsie by My Pipsqueak;

Huge resin rose ring by Pennydog; Turquoise clutch by Hooked Yarn;

Sugilite dragonfly necklace by The Whimsical Wren; Dragonfly purse by Sabine Cornic

Box and card designing

I had a productive day yesterday. Wed night I didn't sleep particularly well so my mind started thinking about my folksy shop. I think I'm going to have the posher jewellery bits there and the cheaper bits in Stu's shop. I decided that I need packaging if I am to be posting things off though. I like pillow boxes so thought about making some of those. I also pondered business cards. I've seen that a lot of people use the mini moo cards. I have looked in to it before but have decided its a waste of pennies when I have all the bits to make my own here.

So, after a couple of buckets of tea and a bowl of cornflakes I set to work. Rather than make my own pillow box net I thought I may as well look around. There's no point reinventing the wheel after all. Found this site with a few box patterns on. I thought I had already made up my mind on a pillow box but loved the curved box pattern. I printed off both designs on cheap paper just to have a proper look at them and make them up. Well, nice though they are, scoring curves is a pain so I had another think.

In the end I went for a basic cuboid shape with semicircles on the top. I planned it on squared paper first then transferred it to the computer. I then added damselflies and printed onto A5 glossy thick paper; tweaked; printed; tweaked; nearly cried when psp crashed (because numpty here hadn't been saving); restarted; printed final design. There was also a bit of space at the bottom of the A5 sheet so popped on a couple of one sided mini moo sized cards. The idea is that the jewellery will be wrapped in lilac tissue paper and the box tied with lilac ribbon. I don't have any at the moment but pics show the gist. What do you think?

I then started to think about the mini cards and how it would be great to have them double sided. The A5 glossy paper I was using looked like it would print on the back as it looks like normal paper. So I tried it out and it did. Yay! I can fit 14 cards on one sheet of A5. Not sure if I'm happy with the final design- the front looks a bit sparse but The print template and layered design is saved so it wont be difficult to change. Here they are. The one on the left is the single sided one.

I also spent a bit of time hammering and soldering some bits for the shop. They went in the tumbler early eve but I went out last night (to Talking Heads in Southampton and saw some great bands- Mash Attack; Knock Out; Sonic Boom Six) so the bits aren't finished. You'll have to wait to see what I've been playing with. I may get them finished today depending on how time goes. Or I may lie in the bath for a couple of hours instead!

First commission finished

I got my first 'proper' commission last week. Well....kind of. MIL ordered 4 pairs of earrings for the cruise she's taking in a couple of months. But it is a proper commission because she's paying me more than the cost of the materials....right? It counts, yes?

Well if it counts or not I finished them today. Taadaa!

Kitty swap goodies

Yay! The postman delivered my kitty swap goodies from Jo this morning and look what I got.

Lots of purply goodies (my fav colour is purple); sticky pearls; cheerful ribbon; a colourful hama bead coaster; and the gorgeous Tinkerbell! The hama bead coaster is now sitting in my conservatory. A sunny coaster for a sunny room. The other goodies will be added to my card making stash. Very useful bits there.
Look how cute Tinkerbell is. She's sooooooooooooo soft too!

Thanks muchly Jo!

The kitty swap goodies I sent up to Jo have also arrived so I can show you all what I sent her. She doesn't have a cat so the goodies were all for her. Her main present was a pair of leopard skin agate silver earrings.

The design is based on the type I made for me for my wedding.I plaited three different lengths of silver wire and popped the beads on the ends. I had pearls not leopard beads though! Leopard skin agate is so unreal. Its hard to believe that nature can create something like that.

After I'd made the earrings I decided that they weren't "kitty enough" so I decided to crochet an amigurumi cat. I'm only a beginner at crochet so I didn't make up my own pattern. I found a great, free, simple pattern online. Its by Suzy Alise and can be found here. I intended to crochet out of fluffy yarn for a fluffy kitty but it went horribly wrong! Turns out I CANNOT crochet with fluffy yarn! I'm on a lavender kick at the mo so popped some lavender in as I was stuffing it.

Seen as though I couldn't crochet a fluffy cat I thought I would send Jo some fluffy yarn. I also sent her some brightly coloured pipe cleaners and some ribbons. Hopefully she can find a good use for them in her sock creature creations or something.

I really enjoyed making the bits for this swap so thanks Jo for being a great swap partner and thanks Chrissy (aka Spoitpig) for organising it. Spoiltpig has also set up a blog post that we can all share our links on here and a flickr group here if you want to see all the wonderful kitty goodies that have been exchanged.

I'm getting addicted to swaps. Not got any on the go now though. Anyone heard of any good sign ups? Until I find a new swap I am thinking about joining in this project to crochet/knit/sew a mini-me for the London Science museum.

Kitty swap sent

I've sent my kitty swap off to Jo (as organised by Spoiltpig). However I'm not showing you any pics yet as I don't want to spoil the surprise....so to tide you over until the parcel arrives at its new home...some cat pics. These big cats were taken by my Dad last year at Marwell zoo. If you want to see other pics he took or these pics in higher quality then pop over to his website.

They are: amur leopard; snow leopard; amur tiger; and cheetah.

Pincushion swap goodies

Yesterday the postman arrived with my pincushion swap goodies from Vonnie. Yay! The timing was almost perfect, in that I was just about to leave the house. Good in that I didn't miss the postie and bad because I didn't have time to open it before I had to go off to tutoring! Arrrgh!!

But a couple of hours later I was back and tearing open my exciting packet! I'm such a lucky girl. Vonnie was so generous!

Here's my wonderful pincushion. Its so me!

Look at the pins too. Aren't they cute :o)

Vonnie also sent me this stunning needle case. Its so amazing! The work she put into it. Look inside too! Cute little buttons, pins and some needles in the back.

She also sent me a piece of Alice in Wonderland fabric. I love it! How shall I use it? Hmmm.....

Not just all those lovely goodies but even more. I also got some funky over knee socks and some yummy chocs (that are being eaten right now as I type). The biggest question is, do I add the socks to my ever growing pile of over the knee stripy socks or do I save them and make a sock creature out of them?

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you Vonnie!!!!

Now for the goodies I sent Vonnie (her parcel arrived yesterday too). I made a patchwork tortoise. He ended up a bit big so I hope Vonnie has LOTS of pins. I popped some lavender in to. Maybe a bit too much actually as I kept sneezing when I was sewing him up! I also sent her a pack of pins&needles, some random fibres and buttons from my stash and of course, some chocolate too.

Close up of the tortoise. I popped in some green pins too.

I had great fun in this swap. Thanks again Vonnie for being a fantastic swap partner and thanks Claire for organising the swap. If you want to see what Vonnie thought of the swap then check out her blog post here.


Oh and if anyone is interested I could probably be persuaded to write up a tortoise pattern. Let me know if you want one. I wont bother if not though!!

Earrings galore

Been making silver earrings to put in Stu's (bro-in-law) bookshop. Have to think about prices now. Do you have a favourite? My fav are the textured triangles. They may not make it to the shop as they may hide away in my jewellery box.

Left to right, top to bottom

1. Pink crystal glass drops    2. Textured tiangles    3. Smokey quartz drops

4. Craked rock crystal    5. Lava rock    6. Ceramic colourful circles

(If you want to see bigger pics, head to my flickr pages.)

Seriously?!?!

Tweaked the blog to make it fit more into the style of my (still empty) folksy shop. Just showed Phil the new changes. His response, "What?" He couldn't see any difference!!! Hence my post title!!