Wordless Wednesday - Rainbows

I'm starting a new theme which I know a number of other blogs do, called Wordless Wednesday (so after this one they'll be wordless!) and I'll be sharing some of my favourite photos from around the webisphere.

This week is one of my favourite topics - Rainbows, more of which can be found on my Pinterest Board

Source - Meditation Temptation Tumblr

Source - Most Beautiful Pages

Source - Imgfave

Source - The Fox Is Black

Felt Rainblow Cloud Baby Mobile Pattern

I am taking part in the Etsy School SEO Month at the moment. As part of that, we have to look at the stats that Etsy provide for us sellers and disseminate them into something meaningful, about what works, what doesn't, where we might be able to improve, etc.

One of the things that I noticed was that my two most popular items in the last couple of months are these two (click on the pictures for links to the listings in my Etsy Shop):

The multi cloud mobile is actually the more popular of the two, but in order to turn that one into a pattern I'd need to provide instructions for making the hanger, which at the moment is the weak link, in that I get a friend to make them for me!

So onto the 2nd most popular item, the wall hanging.

This was much more straight forward to turn into a pattern. So last week, I locked myself away for a couple of days and....... Voila!

Making a pattern is a funny thing. You know exactly how you make something you're familiar with, but designing a pattern is quite a different thing. You need to be sure that the order you're giving people is actually the most sensible, because whilst I might be able to sneak something to an item after I've supposedly finished an hide the evidence that I did it that way, it's not ideal to suggest other people do it!

You also need to take good clear photos and label them all... this takes a LOT longer than I'd like, but as they are essential to my patterns, they're a necessary evil!

You can find the pattern in my Etsy Shop and also on Craftsy, along with all my other patterns for sale.

Any of the finished items that I make are potentials for being turned into a pattern, so if there's anything you'd specifically like to see, please feel free to shout out suggestions!

And the Winner Is........

Drum Roll please......

Congratulations Carol Massey!

Your very own cuddly rainbow will be winging it's way to you tomorrow.

Thank you so much to everyone who entered - it's been a real pleasure running this giveaway as so many people have entered and left such lovely comments. So I thought I'd organise a little treat especially for those who entered... keep an eye on your inboxes tomorrow!

Spring Giveaway - Felt Rainbow Plushie Cushion

It's HIGH time I organised another giveaway, I thought to myself last September (and even more so when I made this).... and, erm, it would now appear to be March! Whoops!

Which could make me any of these:

Hehe, only kidding... but I was playing about with the letters and these were the, ah, more polite versions of the silly words I was creating!

Anyway. As I failed miserably last year, I'm giving away one of my newest and most favourite creations to one lucky winner:

It's a cushion, a cuddly toy or a wall hanging, depending on how you want to use it! But it brings smiles to everyone's faces and it could be yours!

It measures 12" (30cm) wide by 10" (25cm) tall (not including the ribbon)

The competition runs from midnight tonight (Sat 15th March) until Midnight on Sunday 23rd March and is open to entrants worldwide (includes free P&P)

To enter, follow the instructions below, but as a hint, you'll need to have a look round the Etsy Shop

To give you an idea of the size - here it is being modeled by my 5 and 3 year old's

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Creating Felt Baby Mobiles

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have joined with a group of other UK based artists, designers and creators to try and highlight the quality of Handmade products in this country. The new website is called Uniquely UK

We have started a blog, to try and raise the profile of the site and I recently wrote a piece about the process of creating a bespoke item for a customer.

The item in question was 3 enormous cloud baby mobiles, definitely the largest things I'd ever tackled!

If you want to hear more about the steps I went through to get to this point of having a 3.5 foot wide cloud hanging in the only room in my house with a high enough ceiling to take a decent photo, have a read here

Tutorial: How to Ladder Stitch - The Secret to Hidden Sewing

I've been thinking about how good demonstrating ladder stitch would be for my first video tutorial and for anyone who's seen my Facebook posts this week will know that I've been manically producing large rainbow coloured raindrops for a collection of huge baby mobiles that are due to be sent off tomorrow to The States.

So I've created the following video to show how to sew up a stuffed object (such a soft toy, a cushion, part of a baby mobile like this) without your stitches showing. Ladder stitch is a wonderful took, that once learnt will make all your stuffed plush creations look so much more professional.

 

 Feel free to leave any comments below, especially if you have any questions. Hopefully as I get more practice at making video tutorials they'll get a bit more professional too!

 Thanks for watching :-)

We're all going on a summer holiday...

.... Okay, now I'm showing my age with that title aren't I?!?! (Or I could just blame it on my Mum's love of Sir Cliff!)

We're off to Ireland tomorrow to visit my lovely 'out-laws' (don't quite know why my hubby's wonderful parents have always been called that, but it's stuck now!) and I honestly don't know who is more excited... me & Brian or the kids :-)

Brian & his brother Tony braving the sea last summer

Seren & Patrick refusing to leave the blanket!

I've got a ton of sewing to take with me as I'm doing a summer fate when we get back - anyone local to the Forest of Dean if you're around on Sunday 29th July we'd love it if you'd pop in and say hello. I've been so busy with orders that I've not had much chance to build up stock for things like this (which is great in one sense!) so this fortnight is going to be a nice change for me.

The other thing I've been working on this week (and it was a last minute request, so scuppered my chances of blogging for an evening or two!) was a Christmas Wreath which had been asked for by the Etsy UK Publicity team for their 'Christmas in July' event, which is held to promote a select number of UK based Etsy shops to journalists and publicity types in the hope that they will use some of the items in their festive shopping guides!

I was OVER THE MOON to be asked to participate and this morning I sent off my Christmas Wreath:

It is listed in my Etsy shop already because a lovely customer asked me in May (I dream of being that organised!) to put together a wreath for him to send to family in America and I am so pleased now that it was done in time to get into the Christmas marketing timescales.

The other thing that's been quite fun this week has been an order of rainbow VW Campervans:

Lastly I just wanted to finish with an apology... when I started this blog I intended to write a new post at least 2-3 times a week... well I've failed miserably on that score. So my mid-year resolution is to post more often when we get back from holiday (starting with the pre-requisite holiday snaps!)

Hope you have a good couple of weeks with some sunshine!!