Dinosaurs

This week has been all about dinosaurs (well in crafting land anyway)! This week in 'real life' has been jobs, stress about jobs, lots of work, cleaning, Christmas decorating, more thinking about jobs, woodland walks, more cleaning and more Christmas decorating. Its been nice in places but mainly just bit exhausting, so I've been very pleased to spend time in my crafting corner later at night working away on my final few pre-Christmas makes...and that has been all about dinosaurs.



This custom made crown is on its way to its owner today and several sets of dino bunting will be making their way this week too. :-)



I have to admit I find it really gratifying when I have a design that people really like (to a point anyway). The dinosaur crown gets a good few likes on Thisel & Bean' etsy store and after selling a set of the dinosaur bunting recently, I had a run of other people wanting it too which has been awesome! Hilariously (well actually not hilarious at all) someone liked the design that much that they copied a photo of the bunting and posted on their Facebook page as their own work! Grrrrr! They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but I cant say I'd ever imagined someone actually trying to copy my work! Anyway, that has managed to take the shine off the dinosaurs for me a bit. It also means that I am having to think a bit more about how I present my photos online. I have a watermark that if I remember to I'm going to try to use. It annoys me a bit to be honest as it makes me feel a bit suspicious about peoples intentions when I know that a lot of the online crafting community is lovely and friendly and wanting to help each other out rather than anything else.

Speaking of lovely communities I'm linking for the first time in a very long time with Handmade Monday held on Lucy Blossom Crafts

Feeling full of spring

Its been a funny weirdly up and down week: feeling much less tired then last week and so far migraine free (yay!), a trip to A&E with Owen (boo!), considering applications to craft fairs (yay!), overtime in the day job (boo!) and my first 'real' sale on Etsy (the first person to buy from me without knowing me from Adam anyway!) (EXTRA yays, woops and other happy noises!!!).  

Amazingly quite a lot of crafting took place too. My main show and tell for this week is the floral crown I was working on last week. 

I wanted to use some of the gorgeous Pantone colours (see below) that are out there at the moment and I quite like it. Its a bit different from some of the others I've made so far.

 (Image from here)

I used the closest felt colours I could get to Placid Blue, Radiant Orchid and Freesia.  It was tricky doing the colour matching and even trickier to get the colours to come through in the photograph. Taking on some internet advice I threw together a couple of Amazon boxes and some white card and have created a rather unwieldy item that currently masquerades as my 'light box'. What do you reckon?

It actually seems to have helped with the pictures I've taken so far, but now my challenge is to choose a consistent time of day and position in the house to take the photos and stick to it! I need to see if I can get some consistent results which represent the 'true' colours of what I'm photographing.

Anyway the crown is now nestled comfortably in my Etsy shop here. I'm not entirely happy with the title I've given it though: I started out thinking of it as a spring crown (and that's how its named), but the colours say 'summer' to me much more than spring. Hmmmm...it may change yet!

For lots of other crafty folk head on over to Handmade Monday

No tantrums, just tiaras

I was going through my crafty supplies the other day with a view to having a bit of a clear out. To my surprise I came across a few bits of sparkle tucked in away in one of the boxes that I had totally forgotten about. My first inclination was to put them straight into the 'freecycle' bag (I'm not much of a bling girl) but I got distracted by something else just in time. When I came back them a bit later, they'd been deposited next to a few other odds and ends which prompted a light bulb moment. Half an hour or so later, I had created my first felt tiaras (with sparkle)!

Ta dah!

I have to admit I tried using a bit of bling when I first started making my crowns last year. I thought it would almost be an essential part of the decoration, but I got into a huge mess with it. They just didnt feel like 'me' and I love the simplicity of just the felt and ribbon that I use. So the sparkles got shelved...unitl now. For these little tiaras I think a bit of sparkle works perfectly!

pic. my little helper very begrudgingly modelling the first Tiara!

Joining in with Handmade Monday

Hmmmm...

Whilst Mr T. took the lad out for some play time this morning, I foolishly made the decision to clean an area of the kitchen that hasnt seen sponge in a long LONG while. I could have been crafting instead, but I managed to convince myself that I'd get more time later when the boy was napping or something.

Naturally, that didnt happen! So whilst I feel super virtuous about the cleaning (even though no-one but me will know its been done), I'm now feeling frustrated about not being further ahead! In Homer Simpson's words 'Doh!'.

With the scraps of time I did piece together I managed to finish my more russet coloured Mr Fox (left)

and gave him a new friend - Mr Badger

(and yes the two foxes on the left of both photos are the same colour. The photos were taken seconds apart and inexplicably the light/colour is entirely different. And no, my camera isnt sorted yet!)

I have to say that I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed by both them. I feel like Mr Fox has lost something something of the essence that his red counterpart had, and the badger (which should actually have round ears I've just discovered) needs something too. A natty green bow tie perhaps?

At least someone had fun with them!

I have managed made up a couple of the crowns but I'm even less enamoured with those than with the puppets (hence no picture)! Hmmmmm!

I'm hoping that maybe I'm suffering with a lack of sun or something (has the weather been as awful with you as with us?) and that my enthusiasm will come back shortly. In the meantime I'm joining in with Handmade Monday to get a little dose of cheerfulness from all the lovely things everyone else has made this week.

Woodland WIP

I seem to have a few things on the go yet nothing complete this week, but am joining in with Handmade Monday anyway.

The main thing I'm working on is some crowns to go with the woodland creatures puppets i made a few weeks ago.

My current thinking is that the crowns need to be relatively uncluttered so the woodland creature of choice gets most of the glory. I've been mulling over colour combinations of both felt and ribbon for what seems like days: plain ribbon looks too plain and any woodland ribbon I find has very different looking creatures to mine on it which just won't do. The woodland colour green and brown felts just look TOO 'woodland' *sigh*. So I've ended up going for something totally different and have decided to clash things a bit instead of trying to get them to 'go'. It remains to be seen how well they turn out...

Also on the table are a badger puppet, a slightly more russet coloured fox puppet and some Spring/Easter headbands and bracelets. I'm still mourning the loss of my camera though (I think both the lenses and camera need repair) so no photos of anything else. I don't know what has happened but it is seriously caput! Hopefully I'll have chosen between costly repair or costly new camera by next week.

4/52

"A portrait of my little boy, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Killing two birds with one stone this week as I'm joining in with the 52 Project on Practicing Simplicity and Handmade Monday on Handmade Harbour.

This photo (please excuse the detritis from the junk room spare room) was taken in the middle of a rainy, lazy Sunday afternoon. I was sorting some washing, when Owen got involved and all of a sudden we were playing shop through the clothes airer. He was very entertained by the whole process but I felt I could make the experience a bit more exciting, so I grabbed a few bits of felt i had and not too long later we had a jaunty looking shop front (with added post box ... just for fun). 

Better photo of the shop. He LOVED it! So simple but so effective.

Sadly again using camera phone pictures (and even a borrowed one - the portrait).

Small steps

I'm in this funny place between selling a few things/enjoying it/ having a paying day job that would be very difficult to leave (financially) and desperately wanting to own my own business/ actually wanting to DO something with Thisel and Bean.

I've been dancing arouond the issue for months wondering what to do, when do i register myself, is there any point if I never sell anything?!? For now I've decided that it doesnt need to be all or nothing, small steps are good! I'm going firmly down the middle of the road: I'm going to make when I feel inspired to, sell online as I've started to, keep my records and do a couple of craft fairs to test out what potential customers think/build a bit more of a client base. Then I'll see how it goes...

So I was thinking ahead to an Easter fair I'm looking at doing, trying to work out what I'd stock in addition to my main felt bits, and I decided to try out a few hand puppets. I started by sketching out an Easter bunny and an Easter chick (seemed seasonal) but when i sat at the workbench to make a prototype, somehow my mind had drifted and what I ended up making was a fox and an owl! Still not sure how that happened. Anyway they took hardly any time to mock up and I love them so they came with us to the woods yesterday to have some photos taken in their natural habitat! :-)

















 Introducing Mr Foxy and Mrs Wise Owl
















  

Someone else quite likes them too!

The photographers assisstant


Is anyone else in a similar position with their craft? What steps towards your own business are you taking?

Joining in with Handmade Monday on Handmade Harbour