A Blog Hug, Sharing the Love

I was kinda wondering what to blog about today when I popped over to Decor8 where she suggested that we show the love to all the bloggers. It's baffling when you think of the millions of hours spent writing content, mostly for free, by and endless amount of bloggers, just because they love it. Some of it's good, some of it awful, a lot of it is boring, but a huge chunk is really inspiring, quirky and creative. I am guilty of popping into a blog, reading and running away without saying hi, I'm a sporadic commenter at best.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to some blogs that I read that I may not have mentioned before. If you want to pass on the love, tweet or blog about your favourite blogs. Decor8 has asked to use #bloghug if you are tweeting about it and she will Pin your blog post.

ReFashionista

This lady does some pretty wacky things with upcycling clothes, not all of which turn out fantastic, but I always learn a lot from her techniques and to be honest I'm astounded at how many pieces she does. I pop in now and then and catch up on old posts, and I'm sure to really like about half of them. If you are in any way into thrifting and upcycling clothes then this is blogger gold.

The Vagenda

I think The Vagenda is one of my favourite blogs at the moment. It's topical, funny, and written by women who have a real voice for other intelligent women(and men). If you hadn't guessed already it's a feminist blog that talks about the media, women's portrayal, and curent discussion for a feminist point of view. It also questions what it means to be a feminist, and how it's become a dirty word. This is one of the few blogs that I regularly comment on, becuase it makes me angry, starts discussions I care about, or just makes me laugh a lot.

Punk Projects

Other people astound me with the rate of their productivity, they also make me feel a little lazy. Punk Projects is one of those blogs. Katie does tonnes of really different craft tutorials, I like her style and the how-to's are easy to follow. Just a darned good craft blog.

Eclectic Micks

This is such a simple idea, six graphic novel artists do a blog post each for every day of the week (I'm tempted to do a when Harry Met Sally quote here, 'They don't make Sunday, because, you know, God'). They just show what they are working on at the moment, sometimes it's a work in progress, sometimes it's a tiny sketch like this one. It's a fantastic look behind the scenes. I've been reading it for years and it's great to see these guys work progressing.

Bonkers About Buttons

Lastly, but probably not very surprisingly a blog dedicated to button love! She doesn't post all that often, but I do love them when they pop up on my news feed. A happy place for all button addicts like me!

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Limerick Graffiti Artist LUAS

Do you like my new piece of art? I love it! I bought it for myself during Christmas at the Milk Market, it was a steal at only €20. It's by Limerick based graffiti artist LUAS(Limerick Urban Art Stencil). You can see lots of his work dotted around the city, but he also sells his works on canvas and card at really reasonable prices in the Milk Market.

When I fist saw his work it was mostly one colour like the Walt(Heisenberg) piece below(which I very nearly bought. But to be honest I much prefer his new work in which he layers really garishly coloured textures and scratches back into them. I fell in love with this Wonder Woman piece as soon as I saw it, I'm a firm believer in buying something nice for myself each Christmas(I figure I work hard enough, I deserve it!).

LUAS Facebook Page

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1" Badges Coming Very Soon!

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I've been toying with the idea of getting a 1 inch badge maker for ages now, pretty much since I got my 2 inch one. But I was always put off by the extra investment; it's a whole new machine, cutter, and set of parts for a the smaller size. Even though the larger badges sell well as party favours, and they do pretty ok with my own designs too a lot of people wanted the smaller ones. If I'm totally honest I agree with them, in my heart I love the original 1 inch design, it's small, elegant and much more wearable, especially in multiples. Because of the the limited space it forces you to make an immediate impact, kind of like a haiku poem, short but effective. 

After much hemming and hawing I took the plunge and ordered my machine! I got 1000 badge parts, and also a new range of 1 inch earrings and rings, which I think will be loads of fun to play with. Looking at the maths I won't make as big a return on them, but I'm hoping due to popularity that they will sell better. I also want to sell them in themed sets like the ones below. A lot of people tend to wear them in grouped sets on their lapel, this way I can design and sell them in groups- also I think the packaging looks super cute!

My machine should be arriving in the next few days, eek!! You will find me surgically attached to my computer coming up with lots of new designs. I'm still deciding on pricing, the norm seems to be €1 each and  either a deal for a set of 3 or 6. After I do more research I'll figure out my wholesale prices too, but for the moment it's all about making pretty badges.

It's at this moment that I'm remembering my 16 year old self who went shopping every weekend in Dublin, drooling over the oodles of 1" badges, and adorned my army surplus jackets with them. I think my younger self would be rather pleased that I own two badge makers and a t-shirt transfer machine, and that I make some sort of a living out of it.

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Doing my Accounts

Source Deco Deli

I'm doing my accounts all day today and tomorrow. This is my definition of hell! I have a box of receipts, bills, and my market notebooks and it's in complete chaos. I am not an organised person, I've just about trained myself to be disciplined enough to run my business, but my Achilles heal is the financial side. I always put it off to the last minute, and then each year I promise myself to have a better system, to not do this to myself again next year. 

Oh well, I'll just have to get on with it, wish me luck!

(At least the dulcet tones of Dominic West are keeping me company as he reads The Remains of the Day)

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New Steampunk Inspired Cards

I'm having a card making week this week. After the Christmas I've been pretty much left with nothing and it's time to restock. There is nothing like new supplies to get the creative juices flowing, so I ordered a bunch of paper from Cork Art Supplies. I found myself drawn to  all their antique and Steampunk style paper, I got this beautiful library themed pad, this old letters one, and vintage emphemera one too.

I make all my cards as 5" x 7", I used to make other sizes but I found that people got a bit ratty about the prces being the same, so I thought it wasn't worth the hassle of weekly pointless arguments, it also makes things easier for me. Now When I get my pads of paper I guillotine them all into strips that are 5" wide, I get two of these per sheet with a little left over.

I then cover all of my blank cards with double sided tape. For about a year the €2 shop was selling this really cheap but a couple of months ago they stopped stocking it so I may need to readjust this part of my ssystem, as tape from the normal craft shop is prohibitively expensive. This is a pretty time consuming boring part of the process but it saves me loads of time down the line.

I then use one of each of the strips(there are two of each pattern) to cover my blank cards. If I was to choose each sheet individually when making every card I would spend loads of time faffing about. Since they will all get used eventually anyway this system just makes it easier and saves time. I trim off the excess with a scalpel. This means I am left with a 5" x 5" cut off, and the second strip of 5" x 12", plus the 2" x 12" left over cut off. I use all of these pieces to decorate and layer my cards, because they are all pre-cut to 5" wide it makes the whole process much faster. This may seem like a bit of a souless way to make something creative but I look at it as my prepping stage. From this point onwards is the fun bit when I get to play with ribbon, paper punches, ink, stamps and stickers.

Here are a few I've made from this paper already, I better get back into the studio and make some more for the weekend at the market!

Ps: Funnily enough my friend Dave sent me this article on how Steampunk is set to be the big trend, just a few days after I made these cards. I had noticed this on Pinterest about 6 months ago and it appealed to my inner teenage goth. Then just yesterday I met a friend for tea who showed me a load of really beautiful new Steampunk jewellery that he had made. You can say you heard it here first, Steampunk is gonna be huge!

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Stag Party Designs

As I said yesterday I wanted to work on some new stag party designs for t-shirts (but these images can easily be adapted to badges too). No sooner did I finish the post than I started doing a bit of online research. To be honest it was all a bit tame, I thought there would be far more boobs and slander, apparently it's only the ladies who like to be crass for their prenuptial shennanigans. I've only done a few designs, and I would definitely like to do some more that are little edgier, but it's a good start.

I saw lots of the boring bride and groom cartoons with Game Over written underneath, which I thought was pretty funny, but I wanted to do something fun with the image. I found a regular picture of Mario and Peaches and with the magic of Photoshop I managed to put a tux on Mario, and change her dress to white. I'm really surprised at how convincing it looks, it's definitely my favourite design so far. I might even do a series of computer came ones, Mr&Mrs Pacman maybe?

Please note the website address at the end of the image is just for online purposes, in case it get's shared without a credit on Pinterest etc. But it will not be on the final t-shirt design.

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Hen and Stag Party T-shirts and Badges

It's definitely coming into hen party season, I've just spent my morning emailing bridesmaids about lots of custom order hen party badges. About a year or so ago I made up a catalogue of designs for people to choose from. It's great to have the images already there and the names, dates, colours etc can all be changed to suit.  Lots of people still send in their own images, but I think this option helped a lot of people who really didn't know what they wanted. I tried to cater to all different style and not just the cliche pink garish ones. They are just €20 for 20 badges plus €3 P&P within Ireland. To look at the full selection of designs please click here.

Now that I have a heat press machine I can now do t-shirts, which might be more popular with the stag night crowd. I did a little research online and the range from €10-€30, which seems like an insane amount of money since they will probably be only worn once! I'm gonna sell them at €10 each and see how it goes. As with the badges the image and text can be altered to suit the customer, so if they have a really ugly photo of the bride or groom that they want on it I'm delighted to help them! I also make canvas bags (€5 each) which would be handy for giving out goody bags/survival packs.

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Do it yourself hair do

My new do! Sorry for the cliche iphone pic

As you probably already know, I'm quite the fan of being frugal, not out of meanness, it's usually because I'm broke to be honest! For years I've been cutting my own hair, it all started in college when I was too poor to maintain my short hair. After one major disaster when I bleached my hair, dyed it purple and loads of it fell out it's been plain sailing since then. I even shaved my head for about a year too, which I loved, but sadly everyone thought I was gay; nothing wrong with that except it led to a very uneventful sex life. I actually grew my hair back out of sexual frustration! 

The day I handed in the keys to Limerick Craft and Design I came home really angry, I was filled with energy, and I didn't know what to do with it. Punching a wall just leads to a sore hand, and drinking it away just leads to a sore head. I had been toying with the idea of doing something a little different with my hair, but over Christmas I didn't have a spare minute. What better way to deal with anger then to get a new hair do, usually people do it after a break-up, but in many ways the shop closing felt like one. 

My hair before(credit to Claire Waters for the photo)

Cutting your own hair is not as hard as you think. The key is to be brave and accept that you are willing to get it fixed by a professional if it all goes arseways. You'll need a comb, a good scissors, two mirrors and a steady hand, oh and a pair of balls too! I'm happy with the result, although I am tempted to go shorter on one side, maybe even an undercut, but since I'm visiting lots of auctioneers at the moment that probably isn't a great idea.

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I Have Returned!

I'd just like to reassure you all that I'm not dead, just newly resuscitated. It was quite a grueling Christmas for me, I think the busiest I've ever had, imagine fire juggling and plate spinning at the same time and you might come somewhere close. I very stupidly decided to run two market stalls and a a craft shop over Christmas, oh and don't forget making all that stock too; complete insanity. If I plan on having the same lapse in judgement next year I will need to start making my stock in June! So hence the fact that this blog was completely abandoned for the past two months. 

I would have come back sooner after the festive season except I got some really bad news. You know the shop that I spend nearly a year working on, yep that one that was only open for a mere seven weeks? Well it closed on Christmas Eve. Part of the deal that we got always had the risk of someone coming along and renting the space at full price, we just never expected it to happen so quickly. We had great sales for the time we were open, and there was an amazing response from the public; people were delighted to see that kind of shop open at last in Limerick. But sadly after a two day break at home we had to come back and pack up the shop in just a mere few days. To be honest I found the whole process quite heart breaking and wanted to run away from the world. I'm generally not a grumpy person, but I've been no fun to be around the past few weeks. But I've started looking around auctioneers again and we've come up with a couple of promising places to restart the shop again. Next time we will definitely be asking for a minimum contract, we have to safeguard ourselves against that happening again. chin up, onwards and upwards and all that other stuff....

To help myself get back to some level of sanity I started painting again, after the rush for Christmas I didn't have any inclination to make my own crafts, I'm a bit sick of looking at them at the moment. I wanted to make something just for me, that was about selling, or a profit margin, that wasn't commercial, just making something for the heck of it. I spent a couple of days in the studio just painting, with no particular goal in mind, and was really lovely. It gave me the head space to feel positive again, it allowed me the time to blank out the rest of the world. They are both at the early stage, and I'm not sure where I'm going with them, but I like that i don't really care. Here's to feeling sane again!

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