Saltaire

Saltaire = very good and well organised

Customers = lovely and thanks to all those who came and said hello :)

Sales = very good too!

Lynsey = very tired so I will be back later in the week

Getting ready for day three at Saltaire

Wow! I am having a great time at Saltaire - lots of like minded stall holders and lots and lots and lots of lovely customers :) I'm just popping in briefly to show you my bargain basket which will be at Saltaire with me for the final day (tomorrow Monday 30th) Everything in the basket is half price or less so if you are coming then you could grab yourself a real bargain!

There are some peg bags, envelopes, gift tags, chickens, notecards, decorations, brooches - all sorts of things :)


P.S. Please ignore the dodgy photos - it's late and I'm tired!

Don't forget

I'm at Saltaire this bank holiday weekend so if you are in West Yorkshire then do pop along and see me. I am in Victoria Hall with lots of other talented makers. Do say hello!

What we like to do in the rain

We like to grab a quilt/blanket and sit in the doorway and watch the rain. Sometimes if it's cold we have a hot chocolate too to keep us warm :) Try it, it's fun but it only really works when it's pouring down. Good job we live in one of the wettest parts of the UK!

My Creative Space

My space today is dominated by the need for me to get everything done and dusted for Saltaire this weekend.

These chicken have eyes but need their stuffing and then need sewing up - luckily it takes about 5 mins per chicken!

These pincushions and doorstop chickens need their eyes and stuffing and in the case of the doorstops, zips in their bums :)

And this little lot needs sorting into the correct boxes. I also only have 4 book cover notebooks at the moment so I will need to spend most of tomorrow making more notebooks!

Fun times! More Creative Spaces over at Our Creative Spaces.

Swirlyarts on the Folksy blog!

Eeeeeeeek! I'm thrilled to featured on the Folksy blog this morning in the Shop Talk section.

There's lots of information about me and what will (hopefully) be my next steps in building up the Swirlyarts brand.

Pop over and leave a comment and let me know what you think :)

I like....

........ big beaks and I cannot lie!

Hee hee :) I've been singing it ALL day!

Lets not sing a song about the next drawer along though, OK.

The drawers are from my set of chicken bits and bobs that lives on my desk.

Exciting post huh? :D

Saltaire Arts Trail

I am thrilled to be exhibiting my work at Saltaire Arts Trail Makers Fair this coming bank holiday weekend, Sat 28th-Mon 30th May. As you can see from the above picture, there are lots of lots of things to do as well as visiting me! You may have guessed that it will be held in the World Heritage site of Saltaire that was built by Sir Titus Salt. We will be in Victoria Hall.

Feel free to drop by and see me!

Chicken invasion!

Sorry if I scared some of you yesterday with my post but not to worry - the chickens are not being discontinued, just the fabric I made my very first commercial chickens with has been used up. To prove that I am not discontinuing the chickens then look below...

30 were sewn this afternoon. They still need their eyes and stuffing if they are pincushions and a zip in their bum if they are doorstops. I know what I will be doing for the next few nights!

End of a Swirlyarts era

This chicken was the first ever chicken I made for sale in my brand new Etsy shop when it opened in January 2007. The fabric is fabulous so I decided to make my first commercial chickens from it (I'd made lots of practise chickens before this from naff fabrics!)

It's the end of an era as my last ever chicken doorstop made from this fabric is up for sale here. I do have just enough left to make a pincushion which will be listed once I have made it!

{This Moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.
Inspired by SouleMama.

My Creative Space

Well this is what it was going to be but Tara has been sent home from school so I may only get a small chance to do anything!

I was planning to finish off these tags, photograph them and get some of them listed today. Instead I might have to move onto plan B which was to create some space (see what I did there!) in Taz so we can get all the stuff that came out of Bumble away. Tara might like doing that as she has a special cushion for Taz and we can then put it away in the right place :)

For more Creative Spaces head over here.

Knitty things

Some new knitty things have been added to my Folksy shop. I'm getting a lot of use out of that vintage knitting book as there are lots more things waiting to be added to my shops!

Fair Isle mini envelopes

Spotty notecards

Some more mini envelopes

A new family member!

A new member of the Swirlyarts family arrived at the weekend - she is called Taz and is a beauty :) Want to see some pictures?

See I said she was a beauty :) She is a 1999 T4 high top campervan and she now belongs to us! Although we love Bumble (our 1988 yellow campervan) so much, he is not right for our family any more and so he will be going to a new home (hopefully soon!) If any one wants more details about him then leave a comment and I can pass on the details of the garage who now have him. Want to see some more pictures of Taz?

This is where the girls will sleep in the high top part of the van (Bumble has a pop top meaning that the roof pops up whereas Taz's roof is always up) We have bought them a new memory foam mattress for up there and as Taz is fully winterised they will be nice and snuggly :)

This is where we will sleep - on seats that turn into a bed :) As well as being fully winterised there is a diesel heater so with those two combined we should be able to make more use of Taz throughout the whole year rather than just when it is warmer - yeah!

The seats when up - they have the addition of full 3 point seat belts too which is always a bonus - Bumble had lap belts for the girls.

Part of the kitchen view and you can see why she is called Taz with the red sticker :) We'll have to You Tube videos of the cartoon so they girls know what we are waffling about when we sing the theme tune!

Another view

View of the fridge and bed when down from out the back of Taz.

And a better view of the kitchen area. All of these photographs have been taken by the previous owner as a) it has poured down since we picked her up and the light has been crap b) she is full of stuff that has moved over from Bumble and c) we haven't had time to put all that stuff away as we are still deciding where to put everything!

Taz also has a bike rack on the back and a rack on the side of the high top for a surfboard. I'm planning on using that in some way to get extra stuff back from the brocantes and vide greniers of France but don't tell Matt, ok?

Why I shouldn't be allowed in WH Smith by myself!

I seem to have bought a few magazines! Private Eye, Handmade Living and Mollie Makes which are both new craft magazines, Simply Homemade and Vintage Life which I haven't seen before and Easy Living which has a free Cath Kidston bag :)

I'm not going to be allowed out myself!

*This post was due to go up on Friday but due to the Blogger outage it has been stored in my draft posts instead. Hopefully it will show up today (Monday) rather than on Friday when it was supposed to show up. I won't know until it is published :)

Race for Life

It was Race for Life day for me and Anya today (Tara's little legs wouldn't have got her round the 5k but she might do it next year)

Obligatory 'hold the camera at arms length self portrait'

Anya warming up. We couldn't see the warm up lady on the stage properly so we made up our own moves!

Anya with owl - we had to bring some sort of soft toy with us!

Part way round. As you can see it was gorgeous scenery at Towneley.

This was the first marker sign we saw to show us how far we had gone. One of the ladies to the right of Anya's head is one of her teachers. Hi Mrs G! :)

Only 500m to go! Anya was starving at this point and I had to ration the small pack of biscuits I'd brought!

At the end! Anya doesn't look happy here as she didn't want her photo taken when lots of people were around whooping and cheering!

And the time we did it in - not bad with a 7 year old and an impromptu loo break thrown in!


So far Anya has raised £195 (on and offline) and I have raised £20 - people wanted to sponsor Anya more than me which is fine. I am so proud of her for raising so much money :)

Sneaky peeks

Some sneaky peeks of new crafty goodies. Let's hope blogger doesn't eat this post too!

These are 6 of 75 photographs I took yesterday of new stock - I won't be listing them for a few days but if you desperately need to have a card with a knitted motif of a soldier (part of a set) or some smiling vegetable cards then let me know :)

My Creative Space

Today I have been working on the girls crafty table in the front room. It makes a great space for photographing my work and things just tend to stay there to be honest! The girls have been banned from it as I have several sets of similar gift tags that aren't strung yet but need to be kept separate from each other. I'm hoping that by tomorrow they will have their table back!

There are stickers and gift tags waiting to be packed up and the stickers are waiting to be photographed too. The pile to the right of the table is stock waiting to be put away.

And this pile of pages is waiting to be turned into envelopes :)

More creative spaces over on Kootoyoo's new blog just for Creative Spaces

New Rule*

*self imposed and may be hard to stick to new rule but hey, the thought is there!

Tee shirt from here

Yesterday instead of getting straight on the computer as soon as we picked the girls up from school I sat and did some work. I got a little bit done - not much as we were all watching Dumbo and I had to snuggle my sensitive girl during the sad bits. But I also got the tea ready at a reasonable time, tidied the kitchen, made the lunches for today, sorted some recycling and hoovered the floor - mopping is for another day. I am very busy with work stuff at the moment so the house stuff is slipping and it is driving me mad as I just don't have the time to sort it all out. So I am thinking that between 3.30pm when the kids get home from school and 7.00pm when the kids go to bed, I won't even pick up my computer. I can do work as long as it's not computer work. Sound good? I think so and so does my sofa in the dining room that is drowning under a huge pile of clean clothes that are waiting to go away!

New things

Finally you can get a glimpse of some crafty happenings around here!

A set of gift tags upcycled from a vintage Mabel Lucie Attwell book.

Some cute teeny tiny envelopes :)

Not much evidence of work but there has been lots going on. It doesn't help that my motivation has just gone out the window even though I have piles of stuff waiting to be photographed or that is half made and needs finishing. I also have a 3 day fair at the end of the month so I really should be getting my arse in gear for that but aren't. Any ideas on how to get myself organised and motivated? I can't even be bothered to go to charity shops so my motivation/energy levels are kaput!