Phoenix

As promised, here is what I've made for darling husband for his birthday. It's a picture of a phoenix, a firebird that dies in fire and is then reborn from ashes – to symbolize picking oneself up after various life difficulties, such as grant rejections, bad reviews, etc.  The Russian equivalent is Жар-птица, so I used my memories of beautiful pictures from the fairy tale books (although I haven’t heard any stories about Жар-птица burning and being reborn, but never mind).

 

The picture is not very big; the frame size is 25 x 25 cm. The felt that was used for the bird is from the Fabric Guild; as far as I remember, it contains some wool, but mainly viscose. I am definitely going back for more, as I found it much easier to work with for an applique than the acrylic felt from Hobbycraft and the eco-felt from Kunin (actually, from Coventry market) that I mainly used before.The black swirly-whirlies, which were to fill in the empty space around the phoenix, are made from the abformentioned acrylic felt from Hobbycraft. In my original drawing the bird looked peaceful and serene, but here it came out... different. It's interesting how a fraction of a millimeter difference gives a face a very different expression. Something to experiment with!  

Brooches, brooches, brooches

Another family birthday is looming, now it's my husband's – tomorrow! The present is half-finished, still some work to be done. It is meant to be a surprise, so everything I can say now is that it is made of fabric and felt. It's not going to be easy to finish, since it's Sunday today, and everybody is home. I think I will enlist the childeren's help – to raise alarm if he is coming into the room. After the finished «product» is officially unveiled tomorrow morning during the celebrative breakfast (croissants, as we do for every birthday in our family), I'll post the photos here.

I've been watching Etsy Success videos while crafting, and the most frequent advice to improve the sales is to add more items to the shop. So I decided to make a stock of my most popular flower brooches: 

They are available to buy from the shop.

Still more to cut and sew. I am also trying new colour combinations: 

A month ago I had my first experience of selling at a crafts fair. It was terrifying, I was so nervous! As probably with anything that one does for the first time, it was far from a smashing success. But luckily, it was a small local crafts fair – perfect for practice, I think.  I made lots of girly brooches for that fair, and I just realized that they never made it to the blog. So here they are:

Most of them are now available from my shop.

Yesterday I asked my girls if they would like to be models for the owl and girly brooches. They were thrilled! So one day soon we'll organize a photoshoot – looking forward to that.

A night owl's diary

One evening a couple of weeks ago I got such a strong itch in my hands to make something RIGHT NOW that I couldn't get to sleep. A picture of a city at night came to my mind, something one would see out of the window. And it was partly inspired by the recent Venus-Saturn display:   

Although I don't live an a city anymore, I thought I would combine my rural view from the window with the memories of the city: 

 This is what came out of it:

It is a cover for a diary or a journal, A5 size. I've got a stash of very nice hardcover lined notebooks with ribbon bookmarks, so this is what's inside the cover. Once I finish with this post (and, judging by the time, with the dinner for the family), I will list it in my Etsy shop!

Doorstop "Poppy cottage"

The party weekend went well, everyone seemed to have enjoyed it, especially the birthday girl. She received a crafts kit as a present – to sew little bags and purses out of foam sheets. With the help of her sister, all the projects were done in a couple of hours. The next thing I saw was them carefully arranging and taking pictures of each of the pieces they made. I am really happy they are picking up crafts skills – whatever they do in life, it's very satisfying to make things with your own hands!

Now back to my unfinished projects. A friend of mine asked me to make a doorstop for her in a shape of a house. The house was to be with poppies, to match her favourite tea set.

I started with cutting out and machine-stitching together «the walls» and «the floor». 

 After that it was the time for the windows and the door. I really enjoyed making them! I tried different colours of felt for what would be the inside of the house as seen through the window. Black didn't look good, light grey also didn't really create the right impression, so I settled on mousy-grey. Next layer - white curtains, and on top of them – brown window frame, machine-stitched to keep everything in place. The door was made as a real door would be assembled from wooden planks, except instead of wood and nails  I used  strips of brown felt and machine-stitching.

 

Then, of course, there was the turn for poppies: the flowers and leaves were cut out of felt and glued onto the walls,  and the stems were embroidered with a chain stitch. 

Next – the inside. I looked for the cheapest clean sand to buy in reasonable quantities, and the best price I found was from Tesco - £2.26 for 10 kg. The sand in a bag was wet, so it took several days for it to dry before I could place the fabric bag with sand into the doorstop.

Then the roof trouble began. I made it by stitching four triangles of brown felt into the pyramid shape – that didn't take long. But then I couldn't figure out how to attach it to the walls. I thought and thought about it, and looked at it, and turned it this way and that way...

And so the house sat on my table for weeks, waiting for my engineering eureka moment.

This is a lesson I've learnt from several of my previous projects: it's better to let it sit and wait for the right technical solution, then to rush and finish it in a way I am not entirely happy with. 

Finally it struck me (luckily, it always does, eventually!). So today I cut out an additional part for the roof, stitched everything together, stuffed it, and voila – it's finished! 

I am considering using this process to make my first proper tutorial, with patterns and photos of the process, so any feedback on how useful this would be is very welcome!

Georgian cross part 2

 I finally managed to finish the purse with a Georgian Cross motif. 



 Making the lining was infuriating, with threads from fraying edges all over the place. Melting them slightly with a candle helped. Another difficult part was to get the size right for the lining – it came out too large first, so the purse looked like in was stuffed with brown fabric, and nothing else would really fit. But eventually it was all put together, and I am very pleased with the result.

An overexposed photo to show off the lining - my pride and joy!

  Now I really have to keep myself away from any crafting activities and from the computer (which will take some self-restraint) and get on with preparing for Anastasia's 6th birthay party tomorrow. Normally, we draw with the girls as to who makes the most mess in the living room, although I tell them off, but they don't tell me off – life is unfair, really!

                                                                                                                    

Georgian cross

A friend went to Georgia recently, and brought some beautiful souvenirs for his daughters: a bag and a purse made of hessian fabric embroidered with traditional Georgian crosses. The hessian was darker brown than what I've seen for sale here, and the colours of embroidery were also dark and earthy. My first thought was – I want one of those! But then creative process strayed, as usual. I had a piece of plastic canvas lying around, so used that and acrylic yarn in «autumn» colours. Here I found a collection of beautiful patterns of Georgian traditional embroidery – thank you to Natia! http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/natikodiz/album/76500

And this was something to help creative process along

After one pattern was ready, I couldn't decide for some time what to do with it. A coaster? Or a bag? Finally, it progressed into being a purse. I had to make another large side and the three narrow strips to add width. Now I have to dig up leftovers of brown lining fabric, which I know I have somewhere, and find a suitable brown zipper. Will post pictures when it's ready!

Resolutions

It is three days as my Etsy shop is officially open. As of today, it has got 27 items in it!

I hope that this signifies the beginning of the new stage in my random crafting activities.

Therefore, here are my 9^th of June 2012 resolutions:

1. To blog.

For the last few days I’ve been battling with myself. Isn’t blogging really like writing a diary – which is something really private, and then making it public? Br-r-r-r, this feels really uncomfortable, like stripping in public. On the other hand, I love making things with my hands, so why not write about it? No reason, my analytical abilities do not detect anything embarrassing here. So here it goes. My 9^th of June resolution regarding the blog is that I write here at least once a week, and that I don’t delete the entries fifteen minutes after posting just so that no one finds out!

2. To do business properly.

My dream is to have a profitable crafts business. Somehow, despite growing up in a communist country (and I was at my most impressionable while it was still on) and the Christian messages about the unimportance of material wealth, I really want to make money with my crafts. I believe that the money reflects value to the other people or society (within reason, of course), so I want to make something that other people will find valuable enough to pay money for.

To motivate myself, I use a book that my mother gave me: “Make your creative dreams real” by SARK. Highly recommend! I just pick it up once in a while, open at a random page, look at all the messy writing and think: if her book can be so messy, than I am not too bad either.

 
Several other books were also inspirational – I am a big fan of libraries and self-help literature! - such as “Handmade marketplace: how to sell your crafts locally, globally and online” by Kari Chapin, “The kitchen table enterpreneur: an inspirational guide to turning your hobby into a profitable business” by Paul Power (!), “Starting your own online business: all you need to know to start and run a successful business online” by Kim Benjamin and, importantly, “Teach yourself: Small business accounting” by Mike Truman and David Lloyd. Yesterday I took an A4 red lined book and made it into a cashbook! In June, nine entries for “Money out” and one entry for “Money in” – hmm, something to work on…

Also, I AM going to register my business. But I am still hesitant about spending a big chunk of my redundancy pay on registering the trademark. I'll give it another few weeks, I think.