Lisa's birthday bag

So I should be revising Immunology but as we all know, sewing is a much more interesting procrastination tool!

It's my friend Lisa's birthday tomorrow, she's from Cape Town (though Britain originally) and her Mum owns an animal rescue centre. I'd love to go out and visit her one day, sometime in the next 50 years when I have enough money after paying off my student debt...

Anyway, I made her a bag, complete with 'Handcrafted by Amy' label. It's being modeled by the latest addition to the Taylor-Dyce household, Veronica, my Toile mannequin. Isn't she pretty? I opened her at Lindzie and Jess' flat this morning (2 more vet friends and their sparkly new flat) and we dressed her up instead of studying. Ahh, good times.





Veronica being introduced to clothes by Lindzie.

Plastic bag holder

A classic example of how crafts can enter every aspect of your life. I told Andrew I was making us a plastic bag holder and he looked at me with that, "oh my goodness, how did I end up with this one?" look he does from time to time. He pulls that look out when I declare things like, "I think I'd like to run a marathon" or "I thought 'cinco de mayo' meant 5 jars of mayonnaise".

Anyway, here it is, the plastic bag holder! And my oh my, how useful it is. I can't believe we ever managed without one. I might knock up a couple of these for Etsy.

Camera case

I'm totally in love with felt at the moment. I love the process of popping an old jumper in the washing machine and it coming out all felted and ready to sew! I'm planning on making myself a pair of slippers today, if I ever make it through the studying I'm supposed to be doing...

Earlier on in the week I knocked up this little thing. I'm thinking of listing it on my etsy but I'm not sure it's good enough really. I've been really struggling to get good photos this week as well, I've listed up another couple of vintage scarves but they've come out pretty dark so I think I'm going to have to redo them when the sun finally decides to shine. It's been definite April showers over here, even though it's May.

In good news though, I've passed 6 of the 7 exams I've sat in the past 2 weeks! I won't get the results for the last one back until the start of June so I've just got to concentrate on the 4 more to come.

Etsy and trading, it's been a good old week

Well, I'm officially in the middle of exams. 3 down, 7 more to go!

In other more exciting news, I now have 3 more items in my Etsy shop!.

I've been thinking for a long time about whether or not to sell these scarves. They were my Granny Dot's, she died about 18 months ago. Mum gave me a whole pile of them when we were clearing out some of her things and I've picked out the ones I really like to use myself.

The rest of them have been languishing in a drawer ever since. I love having them because they were Granny Dot's, but to be honest I have no specific memories attached to any of them, I don't remember her wearing them. I mean, I remember her wearing scarves, but I don't recognise any of them as being hers.

I sorted through them the other day and there's about 8 that I know I'll never wear myself. They're so pretty, it seems a shame for them to just sit there so I made the decision to sell them. Gran would have loved that I have a little pet project like Etsy, even though she probably wouldn't have had a clue what I was talking about!

These are the 3 that have made it up there, the rest will be following when the light is bright enough to get a decent photo.







In other more cheerful news, I just completed a lovely trade over on Thriftstore. I'm swapping handmade 2 cushion covers and some pyjamas for a lovely green necklace and a pair of blue vans...check out the photos...

The cushions:

Cushion cover

I just whipped this up for a girl over on Thriftstore, who was rather lovely and paid me for it, huzzah! I'm using the money to buy a vintage skirt off another girl on the aforementioned site (no, I don't have a problem) to wear to Owen and Carolyn's wedding this summer and Frances and Mark's wedding next Easter. Just got to find some shoes and a top to match...

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out though. It's larger than my normal cushions, being 50 x 50cm and I wasn't sure how the combination of fabrics would look (her choice) but I'm pleasantly surprised!

I might make a few more of these soon, see if I can't buy an entire wedding outfit using crafted money!

First Etsy listings!

It's all very exciting over here at Second Fiddle, I've made my first Etsy listings! You can check out the shop in all its partly-finished glory over here, I ordered some business cards the other day as well so it's all finally coming together! 2 years in the making...

Anyway, here are the items I opened the shop with (to end a sentence on a preposition there, poor show Amy, poor show *shakes head*)

I went through a phase of making these, I sold a couple on Thriftstore and made enough money to buy myself a vintage Jaeger jacket, I was quite pleased! It's a pin board in case that isn't immediately obvious!



A recent charity shop find, 3 Parisian prints of glamorous ladies



A roll of vintage floral wallpaper, very Laura Ashley



A vintage hand knitted sweater vest



Thrifted French dress that came to me via Vicky and I altered into a rouched, strapless affair



Hand knitted blue sweater



Vintage hand knitted mustard cardigan. I traded for this one on Thriftstore.



Set of 2 vintage wind up alarm clocks

Ballet box

I made this an age ago, sadly recently it went to the Big Craft Pile in the Sky, but it was awesome whilst it lasted. I got so many compliments using it and actually made a second one, which I sold on Thriftstore. It was a ballet box with a sticker of a ballerina on it that my gran bought for me when I was about 6 and did ballet. I dug it out of the attic one summer, bought two single vinyls for 50p each from a charity shop and superglued them on each side. Super simple, I'm definitely going to make some more of these for my etsy store if I ever see any more in car boot sales or charity shops!