Dreamy

Penny from Pocket Carnival on etsy has featured my Come Fly With Me brooch in her latest treasury called Dreamy. Thanks Penny!

EDIT: the treasury made it to the front page of etsy! Thanks again Penny

New Old Buttons

I have a few new vintage buttons to add to my stash this week. I just love the designs you get with vintage buttons. A lot of modern buttons seem very plain in comparison.

Finished Bird Cushion

I finally have a finished bird cushion in my etsy shop.

I just got the hang of photographing my brooches and now I have to learn how to take good cushion photos. This one's not so great but I really wanted to get it listed. Taking good photos is one of the hardest things about selling online.

I have fabric to do about 4 more cushions so this week will be getting the screen out to have another go screen printing on the linen. I have bought a smaller squeegee which seems to have helped when I did some practice on calico.

New Bag Pattern

I have been working on a new bag/pouch pattern and after a few tests this is the finished product.

It's a really simple design and folds over to close with a magnetic catch.

The chrysanthemum design on the linen has been screen printed by me in a slightly too bright green. It wasn't quite the green colour I was after but I was trying to keep the screen printing process simple so I used an off the shelf colour from Permaset.

I am going to have to get myself a colour mixing chart and have a go at mixing up some colours.

Little Titmouse

My first purchase on the new look Made-It was Little Titmouse by Matou en Peluche. I was very excited when the little print arrived in the mail. I just love the touches of colour made with pastel.

Sam behind the label does retro/art deco drawings, prints and cards in charcoal and pastels. You can take a peek at the rest of her Made-It shop here, and also her etsy shop here.

I am off to find a little white wooden frame to put the print in.

Made It Relaunch

For those of you who love to buy local handmade (ie made in Australia), Made It have relaunched their website with new a new fresh look. Along with the makeover are brand new features such as feedback and the ability to mark favourites.

It’s still a work in progress. The hardworking team behind Made It are still adding features and ironing out kinks but the good news is you can still buy while they are doing that.

One of the great things about Made-It is the currency is in Australian dollars, which means no converting to US dollars like you have to do on etsy.

I have set up my shop on Made-it with brooches and very soon will be adding cushions and purses so stay tuned.

Sunday Stash #13

This is another Kokka fabric that is destined for cushions I think.

I Won.....again!

Well I guess I can't say I don't win anything anymore as this is the second blog giveaway that I have won this year. This time it was the Valentines Giveaway on Modish and the goodies arrived in my mail box on Friday which was pretty exciting.

The items are from Lexy Art and Flower Press who are both Australians, so I guess it was fitting for the competition to be won by an Australian.

The items are all lovely. I have a thing for birds, puppies and red shoes so there is three ticks. I also love the tea towel from Flower Press and I am feeling the urge to cut it up and make it into something as it's a little too nice to use as a tea towel.

My Come Fly with Me brooch seems to be popular at the moment. The brooch made it to the front page of etsy on Sunday and I was lucky enough to see it for myself.

This brooch has been on the front page before. It is interesting finding out other peoples likes and dislikes when it comes to my stuff because they don't always correspond with mine. I have sold more of the bird brooch than anything else. And while I like it, for me it isn’t close to being my favourite at all.

Sunday Stash #12

This one is curtain material I think. It has a slight sheen to it.

New Stuff

New brooches with vintage buttons which is something I plan on doing more of.

And the award goes to.....

Proximidade is described as follows: This blog invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes for self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!' The rules are: This blog award should be sent to your favorite eight bloggers and they, in turn should forward to eight of their favorites. You should include the text for Proximidade (above) in your announcement blog.

Over a week ago Jan on her blog In my spare time made me one of the recipients of this award for helping out with the OZBushfireAppeal shop. Thank you Jan! Although I have to say I do feel a little unworthy.

Anyway I am meant to pass on the award to 8 other people, but I am going to break the rules and pass it on to a whole group of people - the DUST team. For those of you who don't know DUST stands for Down Under Street Team. We are made up of Australian etsy sellers and if you want to find out more about us you can check out the DUST website.

I am giving the award to the DUST team as a whole because of the way everyone has banded together to set up the Bushfire Appeal store and help raise money for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

As well as Emma and Carely who took the main responsibility for running the store, there were DUSTers helping to list the items, donating items, marketing the store to everyone they knew and of course buying all the lovely products. It was a great team effort and wonderful to be part of it.

The OZBushfire Appeal shop has stopped taking donations and will now run until the 31st March. So far the shop has raised $15,000 for the Red Cross Bushfire appeal which is an amazing effort. There are still 216 items in the store to sell so the final money tally will probably be higher.

Etsy Down Time

Just letting you know that if you try to go the Bushfire Appeal shop or my shop from this blog you won't get very far. Etsy are doing site maintenance and won't be back on board for at least another 3-4 hours.

It a good time for me to get some actual work done with no distractions.

Messanger Bag Project

Here is a project that has been in the works for a while. It’s a messenger bag I made for someone, to their specifications and using their fabric.



I did a mock up in calico first to test whether the bag was going to work and iron out any problems. Force of habit, we always had to test our patterns in calico at TAFE and then make adjustments. Of course that was for garments and we called them “toile's” but I do the same with whatever I make.


Bags can be pretty complex and there are always layers of fabric to sew through. Luckily my trusty Consew can sew through just about anything and this time I needed it to. I had interfacing and fusible wadding in the main bag to give it some body and webbing straps to sew through as well.

I only had a small amount of fabric to work with. It took me forever to work out how I was going to line up the stripes o the front of the bag and somehow get the little frog in a good position. I only seemed to have one repeat of the print, and half of it was a mirror image of the other so it was a little difficult, but I managed to pull it off okay in the end. If you look closely you can see a climbing frog on the upper left and lower right corners.

Latest Listings from the OZBushfireAppeal Shop.

$12,000 Raised So Far

In a little over a week the OZBushfireAppeal shop has raised $12,000 for the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

That's an amazing effort for everyone involved.

feliciafairy and vanillapixe are putting in a mammoth effort running the shop and are being helped by members of the DUST team (including me!).

It is not only Australians who are donating items and buying, but also people from overseas which is really heartwarming.

False Start

This week, I attempted to do my screen printing for real. Yes, no more practising. I am talking about printing on real fabric to be sewn up into real cushions that I can sell on etsy and madeit.

Unfortunately it didn’t quite go to plan. The first print was perfect. No problems there. The subsequent prints didn’t work. If you look at the photo you can see that the ink wasn’t coming through the outside lines of some of the flowers. I kept trying on new pieces of fabric, thinking that all I needed was a little more pressure in those areas. But every print after the first had that same problem. In the end I gave up printing on my linen as it was just wasting fabric. I had a few more goes on calico but nothing I did seemed to fix the problem.

It was extremely disappointing. And because I don’t have much experience to draw from I can’t quite work out where I went wrong. I guess I will try again this week, starting off on calico and see what happens.

Sunday Stash #11

So, I bet you are wondering why I have a picture of plain old linen for my Sunday Stash. It's not very exciting you might say. The thing is I was quite excited when all 4 meters of it arrived at my door. I am finding it almost impossible to track down quality natural coloured linen that isn't $50/m in Melbourne. Maybe I am just not looking in the right places. Anyway this linen comes all the way from Bunbury WA, courtesy of my mum. It's the last of the roll too so I am going to have to keep looking for a supplier in Melbourne.

OZ Bushfire Appeal shop

The OZBushfireAppeal shop on etsy is up and running with permission of etsy admin. You can find an article in their blog about it here.

ALL proceeds from the shop go to the red cross and will help those affected by the Victorian bushfires.

Items have been generously donated by etsy sellers from Australia and the rest of the world. All the items have free International shipping and in many cases free shipping for within Australia.

Now is the chance to buy something for yourself and not feel guilty about it because the money is going towards a worthy cause.

Funds raised will be sent to the Red Cross every Friday and you can keep updated here.

Victorian Bushfires

I guess I am feeling like a lot of Aussies at the moment when I say that I am shocked and saddened by the devastating effect the Victorian bushfires have had on the community. It is heartbreaking to see houses and whole towns turned to rubble and hear peoples stories of loss and tragedy. So many people have lost their lives.

If you would like to help out the people affected by this there are ways to do so here.

Another way to help is by buying an item from OzBushfireAppeal on etsy. Products have been donated to the store and ALL proceeds will be donated to the Australian Red Cross. So you can shop and not feel guilty about spending money because it is going to a good cause.

Edit: the OZBushfireAppeal shop is temporarily on hold as we are waiting for permsision from etsy admin to continue with it as it violates some of their Terms of Service. Lets hope they see sense and let us proceed.

Update: Etsy admin have allowed us to carry on with the shop so it is up and running and being stocked as we speak.