Cooking

Anya really wants to help out with cooking at the moment - I'm obviously exploiting this :)

More charity shops

These things were actually bought before the boots last week but I just hadn't got round to showing you!

I found a bag full of Barbie clothes for the girls for £1.50 - they were particularly pleased with the mermaid tails!

I got a cute Monsoon top for Anya which will be perfect for next summer.

Just a few buttons! The whole tub was £3!

And a lovely buckle which really doesn't show up well here - trust me, it's pretty! It was on top of the tub and when the lady assumed it was part of the buttons until I pointed out the 20p sticker on the back. She told me that for being honest I could have it for free :) Karma people, karma!

Mmmmmm apples!

This is  the result of foraging in my in-laws garden last weekend - yummy apples being turned into stewed apples to freeze so that we can dig it out later in the year for crumbles!

Apples - from the lovely in laws
Pan - from a fabulous brocante just down the road from where we stay in France!

Changed plans can be very good!

I was planning on going to meet up with other like minded crafters this morning at a local(ish) craft group I attend but then one of the mums at school said she was going to Blackburn to go and visit Primark and did I want to come along? It took me about 2 seconds to say yes! It also meant that I got back earlier than I would have done from the craft group so I have had time to get things organised for half term. Anyway, we parked in a nearby supermarket and on the way into Primark passed 3 charity shops - it's only just across the road too! Well it would have been very rude not to call in! And this is why changed plans can be a very good thing.....

I spied these boots from across the shop and knew in that instant that they just had to be mine! And so they were. Only when I got home and googled Yohji Yamamoto did I realise how much of a bargain I had got! Mr Yamamoto sell flip flops for $94!! And these beauties cost me £8.50 :) Bargain city but I would have liked them even if they were originally from Primark - I'm not a charity shopping snob!

The colour is off in the photographs - they are more lime green than in the picture but not a hideous lime green, more of a darker and more subtle lime green. And did I get anything in Primark? Of course, but that's for another day!

Gallery order

Is all done and delivered too :)

 46 sets of gift tags, 15 recycled cards and 16 sets of envelopes! I'm hoping to get to the exhibition when it is set up so I can show you my things in situ in the shop.

What I did on Sunday

We took an impromptu trip to the in-laws on Saturday and I hastily grabbed some tags to make that are due to be in the Arts Factory shop (part of the gallery) in Keighley soon (eeeek*!)

I made this little lot (15 sets so 150 tags in total) on Sunday morning while everyone else was out at church. I already have about 10 sets of tags ready to go and have about another 15 sets to make! Saturday evening I made 10 sets of envelopes too. Why do I leave everything to the last minute??? I was like that at school too and when I was a teacher....... You'd think I would learn!

*The eeek is for 'shit, I still have a lot to make and it needs to be done by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Shit!'

New gift tags

I have hundreds of things going round in my head that I want to share but I literally haven't got the time to write them down! So you will have to see some gift tags I have just listed on Folksy instead. Hope you like!

Sorry to post and dash but there is another post being written that will be up tomorrow. Not much more content but at least it will give an indicator of how busy I am!

Custom chicken

A lovely lady called Clare (who I met through a local craft group) asked if I could make her a chicken with some fabric she had. I readily agreed and asked to swap some of her fabric patches for my, yet to be started, patch covered wool blanket - kind of like a camp blanket if you ever went to Guides as I did!

These are the patches I chose and you can get them from Clares Etsy shop.

And this is this chicken she got in return. Isn't that fabric brilliant?

I have another custom chicken to make soon so I will show you that if my customer allows it. If you ever want some special fabric turning into a chicken doorstop or pincushion/paperweight then do get in touch.

My Creative Space

Today I will be continuing what I started the other day. A lovely lady contacted me and asked if I would like some brochures that she had from fabric companies - of course I jumped at the chance! My favourites were these ones and as soon as I saw them I knew what they would be used for.

Can you see why I was so pleased?

Out came the pinking shears. I do have a set just for cutting paper with that I got at a Vide Grenier in France for one euro. They couldn't cut fabric if they tried hence why they were one euro!

And here is what I made!

Some greetings cards. The colours aren't as wishy washy as they look here in the photographs. I made them by turning the 'squares' into stickers and doing a fake running stitch around the edge. The flowers cards I make sell really well at fairs so I'm hoping these go down well too. If not then I have some fancy cards to send out to people :)

For more Creative Spaces (who might have less wishy washy photographs!) visit the lovely Kirsty.

This amused me!

This is what I saw last night when I went to my Folksy front page. It looked like the tweed chickens (doorstop and pincushion) were squaring up to each other and about to break out into a fight over the envelopes in the middle! Who do you think would win? My money is on the little one :)

Tara on a motorbike!

Looking rather cute!

The video is only 17 seconds long and is quite cute so if you have 17 secs to spare then I would watch it :)

As you may have guessed I am very busy at the moment - I'm normally busy but this is busy to deadlines and they all seem to be coming up at once! I am also trying to restock some of my stockists which takes up time and of course we are entering the time when people are starting to think about Christmas so keeping my shops stocked up is another thing! I am taking a few pictures as I go about my days and hopefully they will be coming to the blog soon.

Rhymes, raps and poems

This was the theme for the 'end of book week' dressing up day. May I introduce Mary Mary Quite Contrary.

She is a very stylish Mary too - check out the Curly Pops brooch. She has a bunch of silver bells, cockle shells and pretty maids (which we interpreted as flowers)

We also had Cat in The Hat! We couldn't see Thing 1 and Thing 2.

I think the Cat has found Thing 1 and Thing 2 on her gloves and Mary is busy watering her plants :)

My Creative Space

Is a thinking space today as I am looking after a friends little girl today - hence the lateness too! What am I thinking about? These gorgeous items below that were given to me by a different friend who has been collecting them since she was 11! And she gave them to me!!

Gorgeous gorgeous buttons! Close ups below!

 

Aren't that little boy and girl just adorable??

I'm thinking hard about these buttons as I want to do something special with them but I'm not sure what. Maybe a button brooch for some of them? What would you do with them?

Facebook is great!

And I'll bet that Kirsten would never have though she would hear me say that!

I was having a good old nosey through Facebook last night when I saw that Alex had liked Art Exchange Studios so I went to have a look. It turns out that they are taking over the LET shop in Burnley for 4 weeks and were looking for people to come and fill their walls with artwork etc to make the shop look more colourful etc. So to cut a long story short I was there this morning handing over some of my mixed media artwork (and chickens of course) to be put onto the walls. Want to see?

If you happen to be in Burnley then the shop is opposite McDonalds near to the bandstand (it's the old car shop) There are lots of activities going on over the next 4 weeks and there are activities for kids in half term too - you can see all the events here. And while I was there I had a good chat and had my hand painted with henna.

Isn't it fab? I'll link to the lovely lady who did it when I find her on Facebook!

The power of Facebook eh?!

Meet Fred, Ginger and Mr Leaves and Berries

Wow - I must be on a roll as 3 chickens have been listed today :) One in each of my shops.

Meet Fred and Ginger - two buttontastic chickens who really like dancing :) They are in my Folksy and Artfire shops.

Can you guess what Mr Leaves and Berries favourite season is? Yep - Autumn! He is currently hanging out in my Etsy shop and he has just come to realise that Americans say Fall instead of Autumn. He has much to learn!

More buttontastic chickens will be coming soon hopefully!

Mr Beige has a new home

Mr Beige was up and about early this morning as he was desperate to see who his new owner would be. He insisted on helping me with the random number generator and in counting the comments. He was very excited that 11 people wanted to give him a new home.

 

He carefully typed the numbers in and pressed generate and was excited to see that the winner was comment number 3 which is Aneksi Designs! Here is the comment from Beth.

Alice thinks that Mr Beige looks very nice and deserves to come and live with her and CuddleBunny, in a flat with lots of weetabix and flapjacks. She would like to call him CuddleNum. 

Mr Beige loves the name CuddleNum and likes that there is a child who might give him cuddles - the human children here don't pay him much attention! He also loves flapjack so watch out as your cupboards might be empty soon!

Beth, if you click on my profile you can send me an email with your address and I will get CuddleNum in the post soon :)

What I made at ballet this morning

The girls have ballet and tap lessons on a Saturday morning that they love but the lessons stretch over 2 hours hours as they are in different classes. I can't sit for 5 minutes without having something to do so I always make sure to take something to make while we are there.

 And this is what I made this morning. 4 pincushion chickens (and the eyes were sewn onto a 5th one) and a few business cards were finished off. The chickens will make it into my shops as soon as they have had their individual photographs taken but as ever, if you spot one you like then do shout!

 I had to sneak these young whipper-snappers past Mr Beige as I don't think he would have liked them at all. Don't forget you can win Mr Beige just by giving him a new name :) You have until midnight tonight to enter!

Happy October or Worlds Most Boring Blog Post!

I tend to write my blog posts the night before they go up so I'm typing this whilst feeling sick (and having been sick once - blurgh) I'm hoping by the time you read this in the morning I will be feeling better as I have a huge day of work planned.

What we have here is my google analytics page for all of my sites - look at the second to right column - they are all green which means that visitors to all of my sites are up :) I haven't seen them all green for a long time - 3 would be green and the others would be red! I think that if you click on the image it will open it up as a larger image for you - if you are interested that is! My Folksy stats are up 221% and I know a lot of that is down to participating in September Stars. I'm ready now for the October listing club! If you don't have google analytics set up then you should do - it's really interesting to see where traffic comes from and there is lots of information out there to help you read it and see what all the different bits actually mean!

Sorry if this is a bit of a boring post but as I said at the start I am not feeling well and the thought of editing pictures to add to this post makes me feel even more unwell. I'll edit this post in the morning to let you know how I'm feeling :) If you are interested that it........


Feeling much better now and work day is commencing :)