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

Felt Christmas Gift Guide - Issue 3

This is likely to be the last one of my Christmas Gift Guides, but I don't see why I can't continue these Gift Guides next year. It is a great excuse for me to browse through the Felt website and drool over all the goodies I want!

So here it is folks, my last Christmas Gift Guide for the year :)







 









I couldn't decide on just 6 this time... so popped in a few extras for a last little burst of Christmas Spirit :)

Happy Shopping x

Loving the Sunshine

How awesome is this weather? I am completely loving it. Summer just puts me in an extra good mood and helps motivate me to get things done. And that is exactly what I have been doing this week — getting lots done! (Warning: The Chrissy Decorations that I made for my ornament swap are in this post... so don't scroll down too far if you don't want to see them!)

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to get along and see the Dalai Lama talk in Auckland. Whilst he isn't a public speaker as such, he is an amazingly insightful and down to earth guy. His philosophies are truely wonderful, yet are so simple. I left the talk feeling very enlightened and positive, so it was a lovely start to the weekend.

The wonderful Dalai Lama

You may have seen my blog last week about my little melt down I had, when my 160 pendants that I had coated with my new brand of lacquer failed to set, leaving me with 160 unusable pendants. I was worried that they wouldn't be able to be saved BUT yippeee... they have :) I was frantically researching alternative products to use to make the pendants completely waterproof rather than just splashproof. I came up with a couple of options and reluctantly decided to give resin a go. I am very pleased with the result and although they are still drying, I am confident that they will all be completely set and sealed by Friday (just in time for Crafternoon Tea on Saturday!) I had heard some really scary stories about resin like the toxic fumes, making sure the mix was accurate and thoroughly mixed and also about the bubbles it is prone to getting. Thankfully aside from being a bit of a messy exercise to begin with, I eventually got the hang of it and spent quite a few  hours carefully coating my pendants. I'm very excited that they are now waterproof too :)

I was very excited to receive another Christmas decoration in the post yesterday. It was a lovely beaded snowflake (I think!) with a sweet little angel hanging below made by Helene of Mira Design. It's going to look great on my Chrissy Tree.

Thanks Helene - it's lovely :)

As I mentioned at the top of this post, I finally managed to get my decorations finished today and in the post. They took me ages, as they are all hand sewn, but I am pretty chuffed with how they turned out. I used a variety of materials to make them — fabric, ribbon, buttons and freshwater coin pearl. I made a couple of extras for a gift and for my own tree. Here they are...

Little Handmade Tree Angels

Another busy night tonight as I am cutting out fabric ready for assembly tomorrow. Want to make sure I have my new products ready for Crafternoon Tea this weekend. Very excited about it — it's going to be a blast. Looking forward to seeing all my crafty buddies and selling lots of goodies to Christmas punters :)

Enjoy your evening x

Felt Christmas Gift Guide - Issue 2

Wow - it's Wednesday again already! How quickly time flies... Here are my Felt picks for this week :)

Hope everyones Christmas preparations are coming along nicely xx

Shopping, Wine and Good Times

This week has been a very crafty community week for me. On Sunday I popped on down to Kraftbomb with Jess to have a browse and do a spot of shopping. Of course, I was meant to be shopping for Chrissy pressies for friends and fam, but it ended up all being purchases for me. I picked myself up an adorable wee owl from Purrsie — I'd been eyeing these up for a while now and when she mentioned on her blog that stocks were low, I grabbed one quick smart! My other lil purchases were some super cute badges from Nut and Bee and an adorable little spotty ring by Leila Loves Handmade.

My wee purchases :)

On Tuesday night I was lucky enough to be able to head along to the Lucky Penny Crafty Club in the city. I was supposed to have my final class that night (I've just completed my Small Business Management Cert - Go Me!) but it got postponed until this evening, so my Tuesday was freed up. If you are ever free on the 1st Tuesday of the month, I highly recommend coming along to one of the Lucky Penny evenings. They are great fun, and a good excuse to drink wine, eat cake and talk craft (couldn't get any better really!). It was the first one I have been able to get along to, and it was great to meet some new crafty peeps. There were a few pics taken, but alas none by me, so hopefully they'll make their way to fellow crafters blogs soon.

This week I also received my first "Christmas Ornament Swap" in the mail. I just love getting packages in the post. It's a hand felted mini stocking with my name on it and was made by Peach of Twohand Jewelry.

I really need to get onto making my decorations to send out, I just can't decide what I want to make. Think that might be a Friday night project for me.

On a final note, I have been having a nightmare of a time with Pendants this week. The supposed "new and improved" lacquer I purchased to coat my pendants with has turned out to be far from that. So I've been frantically researching a better alternative to re-do them in time for Crafternoon Tea next weekend. Here I was thinking I was being super prepared getting them ready the last couple of weeks, only to discover a week before the market that they need fixing - eek! I'll be fine though, just maybe a tad busier next week than anticipated!

Hope everyone is getting themselves all prepared for Christmas... I know I'm not ;)

xx

Felt Christmas Gift Guide - Issue 1

If you have been checking out the Felt Forum recently you will have seen a very nifty idea by Supervery — Our own Gift Guides for Christmas. Here are just 6 of my Christmas Pressie recommendations from Felt for this year.

Of course, I wanted to put WAY more items in here, but 6 a week will have to suffice.

Happy Christmas Shopping x

Crafternoon Tea is Tomorrow

And although I won't be attending this one, I highly recommend you pop along to do some chrissy shopping. There is going to be loads of talented crafty peeps there selling their wares, and you are sure to find the perfect gift for just about everyone. My pal Jess is debuting her absolutely gorgeous new cushions and I am sure there will be lots more new goodies available from plenty of stall holders.

As it says in the poster above, it's at the Trinity Methodist Church Hall in Kingsland from 10am to 2pm. So go grab a coffee or brunch at one of the Kingsland Cafe's and then mosey on down to the Crafternoon Tea.

It's sure to be fabulous.