6th and 7th Etsy sales!

I'm a total nerd as you've probably already gathered, but I just had to share with you my new idea for packaging my Etsy items. It's only for the photos and postcards I've got on there at the moment, but it's pretty darn cute all the same!

I just made my 6th and 7th sales to the lovely Letha Colleen of ...the pursuit of happiness. Besides giving me some invaluable advice about my postage costs, she also bought 2 sets of my vintage sepia postcards. I was thinking I should wrap them up nicely somehow to help protect them in the post but also to make them look more professional when they arrive. I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but good packaging definitely helps I think.

Anyway, without further ado, here we go!



And the 2 sets of postcards she bought from me:





Of course everyone is still getting their paypal receipt and one of my business cards all wrapped up nicely in hand made magazine/book pages envelopes:

First attempt at card craft

Apologies for the orange tinted photos, I had to take a quick photo of the cards before they were wrapped up and posted off for Kathryn and Owen.

Owen's present was blogged about over here, but I don't think I've mentioned Kathryn yet. She recently gave birth to a beautiful little girl, Charlotte Lewis, and since I promised months ago to knit her a tomato hat, I got t'knittin'! I also bought a hat and jumper set for the princely sum of £1.50 from Cancer Research, hand knitted and everything, but foolishly forgot to take a photo of it before I posted it off today. Sad face. Hopefully Kathryn will be forthcoming with the photos of Bean modelling them herself!

The cards:


The tomato hat:


And here is the little lady herself, Charlotte (Bean) Lewis *melts a little inside*

A work in progress

It's my friends Owen and Carolyn's wedding in a few weeks and sadly I can't make it. I was busy yesterday making their wedding present and it's nearly finished!

I've made them a set of 4 cushion covers like the ones I blogged about over here, it's the first time they'll be living together so they're in need of all the normal household things.

I was just given this lovely book for my birthday, Handmade: Gorgeous things to make with love. (courtesy of Vicky!). It has lots of lovely suggestions for handmade cards and wrapping paper and since I've never really tried paper crafts before, I thought I'd give it a go. I've ordered 10 pre-cut and folded cards with matching envelopes off ebay so once they've arrived I've just got to decorate them. I'm seeing felt hearts with hand-sewn buttons but we'll see what happens once they drop through the letter box.
In the meantime though I've been playing around with potato prints! I haven't done this since primary school but I'm pretty pleased with the results. The hearts on the right and left edges will be hidden when the present is wrapped so I experimented on those bits before printing the main body of the paper. It's just ordinary brown postal paper, 99p a roll from the Post Office. I'm really pleased with the results, I'll never be buying normal wrapping paper again!



The cushion covers, just waiting a card and some wrapping paper:

Another long gap...

Apologies stalwart blog followers, it's been too long (again). I'm not going to give you the normal set of excuses beyond I suck at keeping a blog.

Anyway, I've been busy collecting data for my research project on racehorses and it brought me last week to Perth race course during the Perthshire Showcase. This is a new idea where local business people are invited to set up a stall for free at the race course to try and raise awareness of their independent services. There were all kinds of craftsters there, including some lovely ladies from Artspace Scotland.



This is "a socially engaged, artist-run, charitable enterprise delivering a fully integrated, outstanding education and outreach programme; changing lives through artistic challenge and opportunity. I caught them just as they were closing down and bought this lovely pottery ornament that I'm putting away for Andrew's stocking, I buy or make him a Christmas decoration every year for his stocking.