I think I have blogged before about my love for Spoon, saw them earlier this year in Camden and in November we will be in the plushness of the Shepherds Bush Empire to enjoy them again! You may wonder then what any of that has to do with this,

this is my latest bag front, I’ve wanted to do a silver birch design for ages, have tried and failed before, because I guess on of my inspirations has set the target quite high, and this is where I come back to Spoon!

We have a lot of painting, photographs and prints around the house, and screen printed gig posters are a lovely thing to have, wonderful art, and your favorite band. So when I discovered this,

I bought it, but not for us, for our best friends, who also love Spoon! So we then bought this,

and this,

So now do you see where I’m going with this!? I love the colours, the design, and the first one, the one we don’t have, I simply couldn’t shake it from my head, and of course I see it every time I go to their house! So now at last I have taken that love and used it in my own style, I hope you like it to.

The designer behind all the prints above is StrawberryLuna, and amazingly talented lady, and maybe one day I will pluck up the confidence to see if she can re-print the birch version for us : ) Thanks for inspiring me!

the last batch of bags I finished was a breeze the ideas and designs came quite freely, but the next lot, well they are sitting there, or the desk opposite, and I’m sitting here, thinking….

trying to get some ideas….

I know they will come, but I don’t like the wait : (

I do love this colour : )

shame I don’t have much more of that fabric, but back to the desk!

On other matters, I currently find myself quite smitten with Tom Hardy, seen as Eames in Inception,

it is totally his character in the film I’m smitten with, as I haven’t seen him in anything else, as yet.

And on that happy note I will leave in a haze of mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……..

at last, I have updated my Etsy shop with all my latest bags, phew!

I am working on more new ones, but these will not be in the shop for at least 2 weeks, as I have lots of other things going on, where I’ll blog about later.

Really pleased with these bags, some are based on old designs, but mostly they are all new, and a few are very different to things before, I hope you like them all : )

really I have updated the shop! Can you believe it!

Lots of new designs, and some old favs too, and totes and across the body ones too!

phew, need a lay down now : )

and it’s nice : )

very pleased with how my ideas are working out, especially this one,

the second one isn’t finished yet, but it is a slight change of direction, using the embroidery in a slightly different way and in doing so giving myself more scope, I hope!

also, I have a SALE section in my Etsy shop, please go and have a look, and buy! I really do want all of this stuff to go, and soon, so if there is something there, that you like, and you want to make me an offer, please let me know via Etsy, or here, and I’ll see what I can do : )

that’s what it feels like, over the past 6 months I have barely blogged, didn’t use my sewing machine for 5 months and making felt seemed like a long way off.

So even though I’m not doing that much, I do feel like I’m picking up speed!

I bought some tiny mother of pearl buttons,

they are teeny tiny! And more importantly I have put my Etsy shop back online, and filled it with stock I would like to sell to clear the way for new designs. So I have a summer sale! Whooo!

Today I want to make/create, work on ideas, and do some of the boring sewing stuff, but definitely moving forward!

On another matter, we went and saw Inception a couple of nights ago, and blimey charlie it was AMAZING!!! I want to try and go and see it at the IMAX cinema in Southampton this week, I can’t wait!

…but with a twist, I guess!

Onto that in a minute, but firstly stuff about the shops I run online : )

Etsy has been wonderful for me, I have sent my items all over the world, to places I can only dream of going, and to have a little piece of me in these places fills me full of joy! However there are limits to the power of Etsy, especially in this country, I want to sell more items here, and if many people haven’t heard of Etsy, even fewer have heard of Folksy : (
But now I have my Not on the High Street shop which has opened up some new opportunities, including a slightly different way of selling my items.

In the past I have made bags of my choice/design, then listed them on Etsy, and hope they sell, for some this has been great, other bags not so good! So with NOTHS (sorry I simply cannot write it full length again!) I will be making bags to order, and with customers able to have bags with their choices of base fabric, and the colour of the embroidered pattern, here is an example,

It is this design, but now on denim, and I think it works really well! So what I will be offering for this design is three or four different base colours with the same number of different colour choices for the berries, does that make sense?

Some colours will be limited, as I will not always be able to source some of the linens, but I want to give some more choice and also potentially some level of personalisation as an optional extra.

I’m still going to use Etsy, but I will be selling on there my one-off pieces, as I’m not going to stop doing what I like as well! I’m going to use Folksy I think as my shop for selling old lines/seconds if that makes sense. That way I can hopefully keep my head sorted for all the designing and making I love to do!

Any feedback would be much appreciated : )

So this is the fourth time I have come into the New Year with my blog, seems like only yesterday that I was starting to write it and not knowing what to write about : ) Hmmm is now really any different?!

I have been looking back over what I have done, and what is coming up, and I realised that I forgot quite a major thing from last year, namely Handm@de Winchester! I really did enjoy organising it, even though I didn’t sell that much, I think because I looked like a startled bunny for most of the day!

My current dilemma over running it again in July is time, I will have to be spending a great deal of time over the next few months on getting Edward a place at the right secondary school for him, rather than the one we have been offered.
So what do I do? I want to do one in the summer, and then one in November, but will I have the time/energy to do it properly? Any feedback would be much appreciated!

I also now have 2 online shops to maintain, Etsy and Not on the High Street, and potentially Folksy : ) So time is becoming much harder for me to manage, so I guess this explains the recent lack of posts on here and in general online, so sorry about that.

In previous years I have made hopeful predictions on my sales, 2009, was not as good as I hoped it would be. Though the fairs I did in the lead up to Christmas I sold more that any previous year, so that was good.

So this year, no predictions, that way I can’t beat myself over it, I have the figures if I need them, so it will stay that way : )

So one last Christmas thing,

This is one of Williams Christmas presents! A Gingerbread Christmas Tree to make, including sweets, icing, base, well everything! Daddy and William loved making it!!!

So I hope that over the next few weeks I can start designing and creating some great stuff again!

well I like to think I am, but I know looking at photos of myself I’m about as stylish as a cat in a top hat!

But I wasn’t talking about me anyway! I was talking about these,

What do you think, I made some last year, but only three pincushions, this year there are six pincushions and matching needlebooks, very smart, just right for the man who sews I feel : ) These will not be in the shop until after Handm@de this coming weekend!

Currently listening to Zbigniew Preisner, which is very lovely, and soothing. Found out today that next year I will be seeing Calexico in May, which I am very very excited by, so much so when I found out I rushed upstairs to John office at work and squealed!! Very excited by music at the moment, going to ATP in 3 weeks, and also seeing Spoon in February, whoooo!!

Hey, look two posts in two days, but don’t expect it to carry on!

and two craft fairs, book group, and lots of work!

I had intended to try and step up my blogging, but I have found it very difficult, and I guess one of the main problems has been to do with taking photos : (

The natural light in our house at this time of year is not good at the best of times, but added to that we have had horrid weather, and I don’t seem to have been at home when the sun has cracked through, but enough of excuses, here are some shots!

I’ve been working on new pouches as the first batch had proved so successful, so the next few images show all of them : )

John took these photos both for me to show on the blog, and also for my records, as I only finished them on Saturday morning and by the end of the fair on Saturday I had already sold five.

So I needed to have some record, as I knew they would never all get as far as my Etsy shop : )

As you can see, I hope gone for three shapes, all tree type shapes, and I think this works well. I have really enjoyed making them, and I will be doing more, but if I’m honest, probably not this side of Christmas, so once I have taken part in Handm@de Oxford this coming Sunday I will try to list all that are left.

I have also made some more pincushions like this, and now they have needlebooks to match, yay! These will be available to buy at Handm@de before they go into my Etsy shop.

As I mentioned I have already had two fairs, and both of them have been better than expected, so fingers crossed for Oxford, this week I need to finish off some new bags, and prepare for other very exciting things, which I will be sharing next week : )

I will try to blog during the week, but as you know, that probably is not the most reliable comment to listen to!