Time Flies

I cannot believe that we are nearing the middle of January already — where has all this time gone? I guess I should firstly wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, as I just realised it has been almost a month since I last blogged!It feels so strange (and perhaps a little difficult too) getting back into the swing of things after a lovely break over the festive season, but I am very excited about what this year will bring.

The end of 2009 was a quiet one for me, with Love Handmade market being the last crafty event for me for the year. Unfortunately it was not very fruitful, but as always, it was lovely to chat to fellow crafters.

L to R: My Table, the lovely Bronwyn from R.W.Scissors 

and the ever sweet Jess from Bam Bam Creative.

Christmas was very low key for me — I only managed to take 3 photos the entire couple of days surrounding Christmas! Although it was a quiet one, it was very enjoyable and it was nice to be able to relax. Over New Years I went away camping with a big group of friends for a few days out at Murawai. It was a fab few days and I managed to soak up lots of Vitamin D (possibly a little too much on the first day!).

Left: The view from our campsite.

Right: A pretty 2010 dusk sky.

(Photography by one of my best friends... the talented Miss Baines!)

So far 2010 has been busy with lots of planning being done for Skipapple and lots of work and planning being done on the Auckland Craft Collective. Jess and I decided the old look of Auckland Craft just wasn't quite fitting, so we have had a revamp ready for the New Year.We re-did our logo and have just about finished the website. All we need to do is put in some finishing touches, and it will be online and live this week! I've also surprised myself this weekend and gotten pretty savvy with Blogger by creating a new blog template for the Auckland Craft blog so that it ties in nicely with the new website. Of course it's not up just yet, but will be up at the same time as our new website.

As for the plans for Skipapple... you'll just have to wait and see! I'm designing a pattern for a new product at the moment, and am deciding on another style of bag to make. I've also got a couple of other accessories lined up to add to the label, but I plan on trying to only work on one thing at a time this year (we'll see how that goes!)


xx

Sawing, sanding and a broken camera

Okay, so although the title suggest my broken camera was something to do with my own doing, that is not the case at all ;) Last week was a crazily busy week preparing for the Crafternoon Tea market (as I am sure it was for many people) and thinking that I had all the time in the world to prepare, I decided one of my first projects would be a couple more displays for my pendants. My first was another smaller version of my earlier created display and the other was the snazzy creation pictured below. Such a cheap but rather effective display (if I don't say so myself). I wanted to add more depth to my market display and make it more visually interesting so I decided to create a display for the pendants without them being on individual cards.

I had some left over board from my first display so decided to put it to good use. I purchased some wood for the legs, a couple of hinges and then a stack of self tapping eyelet thingamajigs (yes, that's their technical name) and got to work. I actually cut this board using a stanley knife as although it takes longer, I find it gives a much cleaner cut than using a saw. Plus it means a LOT less sanding once you've cut it. My main aim when creating displays (apart from them displaying the product well of course) is to make them easily portable which is why I put the legs on hinges and the crossbar bits with hooks so they can unhook and fold flat. I am really happy with how it turned out, and it not only saved me a lot of room on my table, it looked pretty effective too. AND it only cost me about $9 in materials. It was wins all round really ;)

My snazzy new pendant display

So as you can tell, no cameras were harmed in the making of this display. However my camera did leave us last week, on the day that I planned to photograph all my completed pendants, and a day before the Crafternoon Tea — typical. I was more angry than sad about it dying, as I wasn't overly attached to my 18 month old Fujifilm (NEVER buy a Fujifilm, they are rubbish!). It was only a cheapy at the time so I shouldn't really be surprised that it just stopped working one day, but still... it was rather inconvenient! On the bright side however, I managed to use my FlyBuys points to score myself a really snazzy compact Olympus in a sexy Pearl White colour. She's such a little gem and I'm looking forward to using her!

Anyway, Crafternoon Tea on Saturday was a fabulous market and I really loved the Mt Eden Normal Primary School hall. It had a lovely vibe to it and felt very welcoming. Although it was a fairly quiet day I think Luisa and Trent did a fabulous job advertising it as best they could — Kudos! I had a wonderful day chatting with my fellow crafty peeps such as the lovely Jess and Bronwyn and to top it all off it was a successful market for me. I am really looking forward to the next one in January, back at it's regular Kingsland location.

My table with my new displays at Crafternoon Tea

I've cut 3 more bags ready to sew for this weekends Love Handmade market, and I have cut out 6 *new product alert* 'Obi style Belts' which I will be launching this Saturday — exciting stuff! I'm also getting ready to snap (with my sexy new camera) all of my pendants and start uploading them to my Felt shop over the next week.

Chat soon x