Supplies For New Projects

I love when the postman arrives with exciting new crafty things in the post. I ordered this bunch of goodies only last week from Karens Craft Supplies, and I'm, delighted at how fast they arrived. I had ordered ball chain a couple of times before from other shops but I got what I paid for by buying cheap supplies, so third time lucky I got a good quality chain at a reasonable price. I'll definitely be going to her again.

I also thought I would expand my ever growing shrink plastic range, I already make earrings, necklaces, brooches, and rings. I ordered 60 shepherd hook bookmarks which I'll attach my illustrations too. I also ordered 10 pairs of cuff links, I don't have that many products for men. I thought it would be fun to make hipster cartoon cuff links, for guys in their 20's and 30's.

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Magnet Paper Polaroid Project

I love taking a wander through the pound shops( I still can't make myself call them eurostores!!), and seeing the array of weird and wonderful tat that is for sale. Sadly the glory days of Mary's of Limerick are gone, but we have the €2 Store, and a few other cheap as chips household shops on William St. The other day I stumbled upon this great magnetic paper. You get 2 sheets for €2, which is a pretty good deal if what your printing is small.
Ages ago I saw a link to a tutorial on how to make little wooden polaroid magnets, I loved them but I knew I would never go through all that work. When I found these sheets that project popped back into my head. I googled the dimensions of a polaroid and set up my template on photoshop. I added an outline of shadow around the edge that would go over the images. I looked up some kitsch and quirky images on Getty Images and within an hour I came up with this nice selection of pictures. I used the paper in my domestic printer, and then chopped them up with my scissors. I love the results! They are not a very strong magnet though so I don't think I'll be selling them. I may include them free with my online orders....or just stick all of them on my fridge and then smile! John came up with a good idea of somehow incorporating them into my handmade cards, that people get a card, but then a magnet that they can put on their fridge too...interesting, I'll have to figure it out.

New Fabric from The Limerick Quilt Centre

In my mad busy stage that I just went through I didn't get to show and tell all the lovely supplies that I bought in the Limerick Quilting Centre. I've known about this place for a few years but I've always avoided going knowing that I would spend a fortune the day I warily put my foot inside the door. I meant it to be a flying visit to pick up some horse fabric that my friend Toni had told me about, but and hour and a bit later I walked out with an empty wallet and a bag full of goodies.

I really thought I had been restraining myself and only buying what i really needed. I think the key is to walk in with an idea in mind or else the shopping list would get as long as my arm!!As you can see I got my intended equestrian fabrics,and also some thread, die cut hearts, bicycle fat quarters, scissors fabric,  and some really yummy floral prints. The shop is pretty amazing when you consider all we have here in Limerick is Hickeys which is over priced and under inspired. At first when I went in all I saw was very traditional quilting fabrics but after a few minutes I spotted dozens of fabrics I adored. It was really hard to leave the shop, but a tight fiscal and time budget meant that i came away without selling my soul for fabric.

I also got some amazing trimmings from Hilary at the Friday market but I used them the day that i bought them and didn't have any time to photograph them before going to the show in Dublin. She sells her haberdashery supplies on Fridays and some Saturdays at the Milk Market. She has wonderful neck pieces and trimmings that are ideal for customising evening wear. I'm a regular customer at Hilarys stall, often buying fabric and trimmings off her for my clothes that I sell in Avaluk. She has a facebook page, but mostly I would recommend going in on a Friday and having a good root around.

Badge Book

I was delighted when my friend Lorriane from Elalgallery gave me this amazing book on badges the other day. It's packed full amazing designs and ideas. After spending hours trawling through it I spent ages making up some new funky designs, which you can see here in my facebook album.

The other great thing about the book is that it give the websites for all the designers, so when I was finished dissecting the book I was then able to go online and drool a little bit more.
Here are some of the best links
Prickie
Eboy


Mark Pawson

New Fabric in my Shop

I took the plunge this week and I bought lots more of the African fabric that I first listed in my shop last week. I have 7 different prints, and I'll be selling them by the meter for €10 and Fat Quarter for €3. I think they would make amazing cushion covers, really brightening up a room, especially an eclectic bohemian house. If they starts selling I'll get some more patterns off her, but I'm going to have to make back some of my investment before I pour more money into this venture.

At the weekend I also came across another amazing find, lots of vintage fabric from a factory that had closed down in Brighton. I got a good deal that I couldn't resist, so even though I was not planning on investing so much money in one week on new supplies I couldn't say no. I was kept in a dusty room so it means I'm going to have to wash it all which will be a big undertaking. It will be another while before I have these prints listed in my shop. There is a mix of cotton, upholstery fabric, weaved, and floral chintz.

Overhaul in My Supples Shop

I've been very bold over the past 6 months or so and I let my supplies shop die a death. I've decided to restructure my shop and my pricing, I have too many buttons to be selling them in such small quantities, so over the next month I'll be phasing out my small bags of buttons.

Yesterday I added large bags of buttons to my shop, these are from a suitcase of mixed vintage buttons that I have. I'm going to photograph the sets individually, meaning that what people see, they get. This is more time consuming but it really annoys me when buying sample vintage buttons, but what you get in the post in something else entirely. The bags, depending on the size of the buttons are 140-180 buttons, and they are €7. I thought about what kind of imagery would appeal to a button fiend like me, and I went for a vintage fabric background while still keeping my white canvas.

Also I listed some African block print fabric in my supplies shop. I want to expand this range in the near future to about 8 different prints, and if it proves popular I'll invest some more money to vary the choices of prints. So if you are interested in seeing more prints in my shop please leave a comment here. I'll be selling them by the meter for €10 and fat quarters for €3.50...and down the line bundles of fat quarters too. I love the vibrancy and design of the fabric, they would make amazing skirts and dresses, the hard part will be not to use the fabric while I wait for it to sell!

Handmade Stickers

Recently I was having a wander around the 2EuroStore recently when I stumbled upon these pretty cool sticker packs. Basically they are glossy sheets you can use in your printer, then cut out the shape, et voila you have stickers. At long last a decent way of getting interesting stickers without having top pay a fortune for them.

You get 10 sheets for €2 and I fit about 10 designs on each sheet, which is 100 stickers! I printed the first few at home but saw that it was quickly eating up my ink. I then took a stroll down to my local printers where he printed the 10 sheets for €3, which is fantastic value. I may not work out being a huge amount cheaper than buying stickers, but it's more the flexibility of design that I'm interested in. For example I was able to make mothers day stickers for my cards after I wasn't able to find any in my local craft shop.

I was thinking it might be worth making up some designs and selling the stickers on Etsy for other people wanting to make cards. It wouldn't be a huge amount of work to do the designs but I think it would be quite a unique thing to sell. Yet again I have another idea that I'm totally distracted by, in my head right now I can hear Johns voice telling me to focus my business on a few things. But where is the fun in that???

Polka Dot Ribbon Supplies

Sometimes impulse shopping can be really great, last week I was browsing through the new 'activity feed' feature feature on etsy that shows all the items and shops that people in my 'circle' have recently liked. It was there there that I spotted these ribbons at a crazy reasonable price of 5 yards of polka dot grossgrain for less than a euro in the clearance section!!I then discovered that Kinderklipz has a good secondary shipping price, so I loaded up my shopping cart and bought all this booty for about €20, remember that all of these bundles are 5 yard lengths of ribbon. Lately I've been using my more expensive satin ribbon on my handmade cards, which is a total waste as they are pretty pricey. So it was really good to find such a cheap source of super cute ribbon, perfect for the card I'll be making over the next while!

I'll definitely be back for more, especially since her shipping was lightning fast too!

On a complete side note, I've a lovely hour singing along to Gemma Hayes (night on my side)while cleaning my house. I'm not a good singer by anyones standards but I love singing really loud while nobody is home.

New Supplies from the US

My friend Orla just went to San Francisco for a well deserved holiday. The fantastic thing about it was that I gave her €100 before she left to buy as much paper as possible. I am able to buy American paper here but it costs between €20-€30 per 12" x 12" pad, it's also possible to ship it in from the US but the import tax and shipping makes it just as expensive. I knew I would get value for money but what I failed to factor in is that Orla is the best bargain hunter I've ever met!

She bought some beautiful sheets from Graphic 45 which is very pricey here, which is exactly what I asked for. Where she really excelled was getting pads that were $20 reduced to $5, and a few of them! The most impressive paper was a pad of 360 sheets for $20, and it's really beautiful paper. She really paid attention to the paper and patterns that I love, and shopped accordingly. We estimated that she got €260 worth of paper for about €100. I'm delighted with my stash, but now I'm daydreaming of winning money and flying over to buy paper, stamps, embellishments, dies.....sorry I got lost there.

Now that I'm making way more cards these days I've had to speed up my system. Firstly I pick out loads of paper I want to work on and then guillotine them into 5" wide strips(the width of my cards), I get 2 of these per sheet with some leftover. I then cover a large amount of blank cards with this paper using my glue gun, cropping off the leftover piece. When I have a stack of about 50 covered I then use the left over scraps to embellish the cards, going through them in themes of colour so I'm working with the same papers all the time. When I get new stamps I stamp them out on blank paper and keep them in a box, so that at this stage of the card making process I just have to go to the box rather that spend time inking up. This method of production line working has really helped speed me up, and also saves on wastage as all my scraps are used up on the cards.

Photography Studio Investment

I bought this home photography studio the other day in Maplin, if you are looking for one online click here. With the horrible dark weather lately and the short amount of daylight hours I was finding taking photos for my etsy shops very difficult. I found I was having to photoshop the pictures too much, which was both time consuming and also it was starting to disrupt the image quality. I heard through word of mouth about this great offer in Maplin and I went halves on the cost with my friend Branden.

It was €65.95 and worth every penny as it comes with a tripod and two daylight lamps, the lightbox is fantastic as it can be used at any time of the day. I was very frustrated by only being able to do my photography early in the morning, which sometimes is really inconvenient. Now it can be 10pm and I can still take perfect shots.

So far I've only used it once, but I'm sure as I get more used to it I'll get better and better shots. These ones were taken using a very basic camera, the Canon IXUS 95 IS, I was surprised to see such good results, I'm looking forward to using my housemates camera and seeing the difference in quality.

Sterling Silver Crosses

I added a new range of sterling silver crosses to my supplies shop. I've had a bunch of them in my studio for a while (it's long story!) and it never occurred to me that I could sell them. But after doing a bit of browsing on Etsy I saw that other sellers had them listed as supplies. I'm not really sure how that works,because by just adding a chain makes them a necklace, so it's not really a supply, but other sellers seem to be doing so I thought I would hop on the bandwagon. In any case it looks like it's allowed if it's tagged correctly under supplies, rather than handmade. If they ended up selling well I would be chuffed as I have quite a few of them and it would be great to get some money for them.

Supplies Shopping

Oopsy, I was bold! While I was in Msigns buying myself some elastic so I can make more button rings I spotted this lovely A3 cutting mat. My old A4 one looks like it's been mangled by a rabid glue gun. I decided to spoil myself and start this new year with a much deserved cutting mat. I also picked up some 300gm card for a Valentine's project that I'm working on...I'll keep you all posted.

Recession...what recession?...My Confession of a Supplies Splurge

This is the scary time of year for me when insane amounts of money are being spend on supplies but most customers are saving for Christmas and not spending very much. In my mind I know it will be busy and that I'll be glad I bought and organised all this stuff early..it's just kinda hard to remember that when I look at the bundle of receipts. Recession...what's that? My inner craft nerd doesn't seem to have heard of it. Here are just a few of the supplies I've been stocking up on...Yesterday I went to Cork to go to Cork Art Supplies, I was there earlier this year and was really impressed with their paper selection. I really had to restrain myself in the shop this morning,and make myself just buy Christmas papers. But in the blink of an eye I spent 80 quid, having said that I'm delighted with what I picked up, and I know I'll make that stretch really far, saving every scrap of unused paper for a later project.

I then popped into Vibes and Scribes to pick up some material, they didn't have exactly what I was looking for but I picked up these fat quarters at 2 for €5 and a couple of meters of this super cute stars and polka dot material.

Also the post man has been very busy lately, my delivery of 500 velvet bags for my pocket mirrors arrived. I was really worried that they wouldn't get here on time for the Christmas rush as last time the took 2 months to arrive! I ordered in a large amount as I think I might be selling them in my shop for people who order custom made mirrors. I have looked into selling them in larger quantities but it would mean ordering them in the thousands per colour, an investment that I may have to forgo until the new year.

Lastly I was really surprised to arrive home to see that my Shrinkles had arrived already, I only ordered them a few days ago so I was chuffed to see them here so soon. Since my last post on Shrinkles I've expanded my line to include Shrinkles brooches, hence the fact that I bought 200 sheets. I'll be posting some photos of these later in the week.

Ps: on a personal note, last night for the first time I got to use all my letters in a scrabble move, I've always wanted to do this! It was a word score of 81 and the word was stringy...so satisfying

Discount Code for my Online Shops

Just a small note to say that I have availed of the new coupon function on Etsy. The code 'NICEDAYDISCOUNT2010' works in both of my shops and will get you a 10% discount on any of my items.

I also wanted to post this to gush about how great Craftopolis is, when I was using it a couple of years ago you could check your hearts and also if you were featured in any tresuries, which was handy but I soon got bored of it. But I was just on the website now and it allows quick edits on listings (which I've always found very clunky on etsy) and also I was able to import my google analytics and see how many people are viewing my shop daily. On top of all the extra handy tools I can also see my monthly sales and hearts. I can see myself definitely using the site way more, and if other Etsy sellers are thinking the same then maybe I might purchase one of their ad slots in the new year, a good time to be advertising supplies.

Christmas Card Supplies

I've been doing a crazy amount of supplies shopping lately for the build up to all my Christmas markets, ans the scary thing is that everything has to be bought in bulk. From the 2000 brooch backs, 1000 badge parts, 1000 magnets, a mountain of felt, and then a bit more felt..the list goes on and on. Yesterday was no exception, popped into Silkes in town to get some blank cards and came out with this lot:

150 Blank 5x7in cards

250 3-d glue dots

2 sheets of foam glue dots

A round edge cutter

2 packs of xmas brads

2 packs of paper frame shapes

1 set of xmas stamps

1 black ink pad

Also next week I think I'll be making a trip to Cork to go to Cork Art Supplies to get some of their paper as the selection here in Limerick is frustratingly small. In the past few days I've made about 50 cards and I plan to make lots more. Also some time over the next week or so I plan to print my lino cut Christmas card sets. Luckily I have the blocks already cut from last year, but the printing is still pretty labour intensive.

It's all go here at the moment, lots of preparation, lets hope it all pays off!

New Fabric to Brighten my Gloomy Day

I woke up this morning feeling really rotten, my mini cold had transformed into an energy sapping beast. But sometimes you have to just suck it up and keep working, that's the joy of being self employed nobody is going to pay me sick pay. So I shuffled down to the market looking like a member on the undead.

Something that did brighten up my morning was this delivery from Seam Star, I got this beautiful fabric and lots of lovely polka dot ribbon. I stumbled upon them the other day through a facebook link. I totally fell in love with their fabrics and I couldn't leave the site without buying something.

I'm going to retire now to the sofa and nurse my aching bones and sporadic sniffles.

Button Press Machine Has Arrived

At long last my fantastic button press machine has arrived! I'm so excited I've been saving for this for months at arrived yesterday morning. This now means I can produce my own large badges, pocket mirrors, magnets and beer bottle openers instead of ordering them from the US as I've been doing for the past 2 years.

It was funny timing for the arrival of the machine, the courier landed on my door just before my Dad, sister and her 2 daughters. I was torn between ripping it open, and doing some last minute house sprucing/cleaning. It turns out my nieces were delighted with the contraption and were fascinated by the idea that we could make a badge together. My father was even more intrigued, and I think he was rather sad when we had to leave and he couldn't play with it anymore!!

I already have my first order to do this weekend for The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra, as they have ordered badges to sell during their upcoming nationwide tour. This evening I listed in my etsy shop listings for 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000 custom made badges. Fingers crossed the orders start rolling in soon!!

The Urge to Shop

Yes yes I know i shouldn't be buying more supplies when I'm trying to cut down on the amount of stuff I have in the studio, but I just couldn't help myself. I'm like on of those designer shoe junkies, I walk into a supplies store and I want/need to have everything! I restrained myself and only bought one pack of paper, one which I bought before and I've pretty much run out of. I also got these buy 2 get 1 free canvases, for when I get the urge to do some more painting.

Lastly I bought these address labels for my return address stamp, I've tried stamping it on my padded envelopes and it doesn't really work. I should have measured the stamp as the stickers are too small to fit the button picture, but at least the address fits. As with all my other stamps I got it from Jlmould, I had gotten so sick of writing my return address on things I bought this stamp while I was ordering the large ones for my paper bags.

New Supplies and Custom Orders

As I mentioned before we went to see Twilight the other night, while I was out in the Crescent Shopping Centre I popped into the art and hobby shop. Usually they have lots of lovely paper but I was a little disappointed to see their tiny selection. It's like there is a city wide nice paper ban going on at the moment. While I was there I did see these two nice packs though, even though I'm don't really need any paper at the moment I picked them up anyhow. They were pretty reasonable at about 14 quid for the pair of them. I'm a sucker for nice paper and I feel compelled to buy any pretty ones I see, it's like buttons, or material! I'm some strange female anomaly, I can walk past designer shoes or dresses, but when it comes to lovely supplies I can't resist myself.

At the weekend I also got a couple of custom orders done. Val from Vals Kitchen asked me to make a bee brooch for her, which was loads of fun to make. I spent a while sketching on paper first so I could get the shape of it right. Also Magatha-Mag is an avid archer and she asked me to make a target brooch for her. I think this works really well as it looks almost Modrian-esque in it's minimalism, but to archery people it's a fun in joke. I have another order to do this week which is a cheese slice brooch for one of my fellow stall holders, I think she is going to wear it as part of a uniform, which I think is adorable!