Eurpoean Kids Etsy Team - Beautiful Collections

Yesterday, one of the teams that I'm part of on Etsy was having a Blitz, or Treasury Day. This is where all the members of the team who have signed up, making collections of things that interest them from their teammates shops and also from other shops on Etsy with items that fit into that theme.

Here are two of the three I made:

'Snuggly Kids' by GracesFavours

EK Team Blitz - number 3

Slouchy hat // Kids navy hat... Ingugu $25	European Linen Scarf, Scarf... Beccatextile $86	Blue hooded baby coat / Hand... GeraBloga $74	Toddler boy baggy pants from... kandatsu $33
Red fox scarf - Children kni... TreMelarance $55	Snail / mushroom hoodie - re... BarvitoPosito $35	Stuffed Bunny Stuffed Animal... Fuzziggles $35.95	Dragon kids hat, dinosaur ch... PABUITA $24
Bunny rabbit pillow stuffed ... HandyHappyTedd... $18	Fox baby booties knitt grey ... Tuttolv $18	Newborn-Adult Flower Headban... BabyLoveUK $5.5	Grey Felt Bear Ring - Needle... RebeccasEmpori... $8
Monkey Snuggles by Mama Bots... MonkeySnuggles... $11.99	Girl purple hooded towel, be... LilyLouLou $25	Lilac Fingerless Gloves, chi... Christinescraf... $6	Newborn Layering Blanket- Po... LittleLovesDes... $29.95

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'Autumn / Fall Colours' by GracesFavours

EK Team Blitz - 2

Knitted baby autumn hat dark... Tuttolv $25	3 Crochet Pumpkin cake toppe... YarnBallStorie... $14	Autumn fabric bunting, Fall ... AislingDezines $18	Owl hoodie - reversible, red... BarvitoPosito $35
Autumn Trees Photography Pri... domatoma $10	Dinosaur wax crayons, set of... ColourMeFun $5.5	Orange Brown Yellow Headband... SweetLittleAle... $9.95	Owl Doctor Felt Brooch - Cut... daydreamsbymer... $20
FREE SHIPPING! Cherry Blosso... NinuMiluBagDol... $84	Womens Gloves - autumn handw... TheFeminineTou... $16.5	Baby Boy or Girl Autumn Stri... mamarunswithsc... $37	Vintage Child's Shoes, B... WillowsRoom $22
One Pumpkin Loopy Puff Bow f... MySweetieBean $6.95	Baby bib - white cat on blac... accidentalvix $9	PRINT ~ of Painting by Poxod... poxodd $25

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In each of these, I've selected 6 of my fellow European Kids Teammates to feature in the treasury. The rest is made up of other items that fit in with my theme.

The other ones that I came across yesterday and really loved are these 3:

'Love for my baby' by worksy

European Kids blitz :)))

Crochet Heart Brooch - Playf... domatoma $16	Red fox sweater baby outfit ... Tuttolv $39	Love Brooch - Love Pin - Cro... daydreamsbymer... $20	FREE SHIPPING! Phone case, s... NinuMiluBagDol... $44
Love Bird Handmade rustic gr... 5lovebirdsnest $13	36 Red Heart Stickers / FREE... knotandbow $4	Matchbox doll miniature felt... atelierpompado... $20	Girls Ladybug Shoes, Childre... boygirlboygirl... $28
Baby Booties - Red & Grey Fe... GracesFavours $15	Red leather belt, ecological... KnitwearFactor... $18.9	Lollipop bobby pins, felt fl... RedPepperHats $7.5	Small Red Felt Heart. Weddin... WhisperOfThePi... $1.8
Big kid bandana bib - scarf ... SweedieKids $14	Red apple sculpture, ceramic... ArktosArt $48.95	SALE: 50% OFF!! Red crochet ... fancyloopslj $9	Red cat brooch, Needle felt ... CreativeAtelie... $14

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'Say BOO...' by ilkayider

Enjoy!

Halloween card Trick or trea... AvenirCards $4.25	Black cat kids sweater Size ... Tuttolv $55	A Piece of Autumn Found in S... domatoma $10	Halloween Oversized Cowl. ch... OkBee $55
Pumpkin Halloween Mask, Felt... GracesFavours $12.5	Black Bat Suncatcher - Full ... Nostalgianmore $24	Witch Costume toddler girl d... PABUITA $52	HALLOWEEN decor garland bann... HeartyGift $28
Sweet Ghost Applique PLUS Ma... FiveStarFonts $7.99	Pumpkin - Crocheted playfood... YarnBallStorie... $6	Black scary spiders - spooky... BotanikaStudio $19	Fatsy Petsy Banditto Pampkin... HandyHappyTedd... $29
Black Cat Ring. Halloween Ri... JujuTreasures $15	Halloween Home Decor Print I... BarbaraSzepesi... $25	Coin purse - coin pouch - fe... AgnesFelt $28	Halloween Favor Tags Hallowe... WhenItRainsSho... $6

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' For Kids' by rasanenart

Enjoy!

Boys hat, slouchy beanie hat... yellOkids $14	Lavender baby jacket with ki... Tuttolv $42	Boy in the Window original d... marina826 $40	Felt flower hair pins, felt ... RedPepperHats $6
Titmouse Bird Print - Gray a... cathysavelspai... $16	FREE SHIPPING! Japanese Doll... NinuMiluBagDol... $84	Baby Girl Nursery Art, Orchi... handpainting $28	Girls Elephant Hat, Baby Gir... TORYmakes $24.5
Girls autumn mushroom, bee a... BarvitoPosito $25	Nursery Art Decor, Pink and ... vtdesigns $9	Baby Rattle Toy Flower Croch... domatoma $13	Purple and gray Baby nursery... GalerieAnais $42
Boy nursery decor Nursery ar... PrintableChang... $5	Small Scottie Dog Plushie To... creationsbyjdb $10	Large Wall Art, Fine Art Pho... ColorWorkStudi... $40	Personalized Monster face ki... MonsterOrphana... $30

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I love how many of these collections were Autumnal as the weather is definitely beginning to turn here.

If you want to have a look through the rest of the collections, here's the link to them:

European Kids Team Treasuries

International Talk Like A Pirate Day - round up of great Pirate Patterns

Ahoy ye land lubbers! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day on the 19th September and I thought I'd do a quick round up of some cool Pirate Patterns from me and others:

Starting from the top right:

- Free Pirate Eye Patch Tutorial I designed last year, which can be found here,

- Roger The Pirate Softie Pattern, designed by Abby Glassenberg, which I featured on the blog a couple of weeks ago (here) and can be bought from Abby's website While She Naps,

- Then there is my son's favourite - the Pirate Sword, which is another of my free tutorials, found here,

- Next up is this seriously cool Pirate Hide Out pattern, by Miss Pretty Pretty on Etsy and can be bought here,

- The crochet Pirate Ship Pattern is amazing - I just wish I could crochet! It's by Sky Magenta (also on Etsy) and can be found here

- And lastly is the Pirate Treasure Map that can be found in my Etsy shop here

Hope you have some fun making Piratey things this week and that your little ones enjoy playing with them!

How To Make Ribbon Storage For Your Craft Room

As you might have noticed, I like to use ribbons in quite a few of my items:

Rainbow Hanging Campers, Christmas Wreaths, Name Banners, Nautical Bunting, Weather Hanging Plushies, Poppy Keyring, Rainbow Plushie, Wedding Cuddly Camper & Huge Rainbow Cloud Mobile.

However, I have, like most of us I suspect, been battling with how to store my ribbons effectively and tidily.

They had got themselves (nothing to do with me, of course!) into this pickle:

In fact, that was only about half of them - the other half took me a long time to untangle!

I've had an idea floating around in my head since I saw this on Pinterest:

I liked this idea, but firstly I don't have a basket with holes in the sides and secondly I wanted to keep a lid on the ribbons to stop them getting dusty.

So I came up with this:

To Make a Ribbon Storage Box - You Will Need:

1 Shoe Box (or similar)
1 pair of Scissors
1 pair of jewellery making pliers (optional)
Rolls of Ribbons

Instructions:

Using the scissors, make a row of holes along one side of the box and one, by one, feed the end of a roll of ribbon through each hole.

It's easiest if you use something to poke the ribbon through the hole - I used a pair of split ring jewellery pliers:

And you end up with this gorgeous and tidy collection!

I'm very pleased with the outcome and it's already come in handy for the latest candle mat I'm making (more on that in the next post)

This will get added to the Tutorials Page on the blog, where you can check out the other tutorials you might like.

Pirates Ahoy! More Pirate Patterns - Pirate Treasure Map

Ahem. I know you probably all think that it's me that's the pirate addict in our house, but I promise it's not - it really is Patrick, actually and Seren... Oh go on then, and ME!

We all love Pirates and a while ago I was badgered to make Patrick a Treasure Map:

This was to go with his Pirate Sword (tutorial here) and his Pirate Eye Patch (tutorial here)

And after a slight time lapse (good intentions and all that!)....... I have finally made the Treasure Map into a PDF pattern which can be bought from my Etsy Shop here

Whilst creating this pattern I discovered that by fantastic coincidence the lovely Abby Glassenburg, who writes the gorgeous blog While She Naps was also creating a Pirate Pattern - for Roger the Pirate, a soft doll, who looks SO much fun! You can buy the pattern from Abby's website here and how cute is he?!

Picture by Abby Glassenburg - While She Naps

I think as soon as my two see this chappie, I'll be dispatched to make them both one of these too!

How to Make a Star Badge (Happy St Seren's Day!)

Hello lovelies,

We're still on our annual Irish pilgrimage (i.e. staying with my lovely out-laws) and decided that we should hold a St Seren's Day celebration while we're here as Seren, our daughter, has always felt a bit put out that her younger brother has St Patrick's Day to celebrate his name, but she didn't have a Saints Day... so we made up one for her!

The little star brooch Seren is wearing is now the official symbol of St Seren and this year has been done in the Wexford colours of Purple & Gold and was really easy to make.

I've not done a template for them, but a little pictoral 'how to'.

You will need:

Small scrap of purple felt

Slightly larger scrap of yellow felt

Brooch back or Safety Pin

2 strands of purple embroidery tread

scissors

star shape - you can either draw around a cookie cutter or make a template freehand

How To:

1. Cut out a star shape from the purple felt and sew it onto the yellow felt using 2 strands of purple embroidery thread. I used running stitch, but you could also use back stitch or whip stitch:

2. Flip the yellow felt over and using the same purple thread, sew on a brooch back or a safety pin if you don't have any brooch backs.

3. Tie off the thread on the back and then carefully cut round the purple star, leaving a 0.5mm gap around the egde. And voila! You have a star brooch:

We chose stars because Seren means star in welsh and it's the emblem we use for our Seren whenever she needs a theme, but you could do this with any shape and contrasting colours.

Happy Sewing!

5 Essential Things to Focus on in Quiet Times.

Quiet times. We all have them.

What do you do during a lull in your business?

Getty Images Stock

Do you panic? Do you take advantage of it and spend more time with your friends & family? Or do you use the time wisely?

I do a bit of all of them if I'm honest.

Here are a few of the things I do, to ensure I'm being productive during my quiet moments:

1. Update my Etsy & Folksy listings. Adjust the tags and descriptions to make sure they describe the creative process, the advantages your product can offer the customer, fully detail the measurements, cleaning instructions, restrictions, etc that are needed for your products.

2. Get my accounts up to date. I know, I know, it's a boring job (for everyone except those funny accountant people who enjoy all that stuff!) But it's one that has to be done to keep on top of your business. I just keep a simple spreadsheet with incomings & outgoings, and a front page with tables tallying up month by month, how much I've made & how much I've paid out. It means that come tax return time I'm much more organised and don't panic quite as much!

3. Make extra stock. This is something I do in limited quantities as most of my items are made to order, so it's difficult to know how much of any items to make and in what colours, but there are certains items, like the Campervans, which I know will remain popular all year round, year after year, so I do make some of those when I have the chance to.

A tower of Campervans

4. Research. Be it researching suppliers, retailers to approach, design methods, packaging & postal methods or how to divide your marketing & advertising budget... All and any legitimate research is good for your business. I say legitimate because it's easy to get distracted from your purpose and get caught up with looking at shiny pretty beads, for example, when they have nothing to do with your business. (Yes, I am speaking from experience!) Even if you aren't in a position to buy, change suppliers, branch out into retail markets, pay for any marketing, it will be useful to have some knowledge for when you are ready to take that step.

5. Design new items. Now this is something that I would like to spend ALL my quiet times doing, but I've put it last because although it's the point I like the best, if I started off on this one, I'd never get numbers 1 - 4 achieved! I'm one of those designers who always has ideas racing round my brain and rarely have time to get even half of them down onto paper.

I find I quite often have to refer back to this list when I hit a lull as although I know what I need to do, re-reading it afresh always helps me to focus.

On that note, I'm off for a couple of weeks on holiday with the out-laws and will be doing plenty of number 5, with a little bit of number 4 thrown in for good measure!

PS. If you want other posts along the same lines try these:

The Reality of Being a Work At Home Mum

5 Mistakes Most Businesses Make Using Facebook

Should I close my Shops for the Summer Holidays?

School holidays started here yesterday and my two little munchkins are very happy to have 6 weeks off:

Yesterday we ran some errands in Gloucester (and had Slush Puppy treats) and went to the local open air swimming pool:

Both of which were fun and lovely, but it did mean that there was very little 'work time'

What I wonder is whether it would be better to close up shop(s) completely over the summer holidays and just concentrate on being a Mummy and enjoy the time off, or whether, like most self employed parents, to struggle through and do as much work as possible in moments, like now, when the little darlings are otherwise occupied (mine usually in front of the telly!)

What do you do?

Last summer, I put all my shops on vacation for a month before doing the Harrogate Home & Gift Fair

So after that had ended, which coincided with the school holidays I felt I needed to re-open my shops and get going with some work. I don't remember struggling too much last summer, which is good. I do remember spending a good portion of the holidays in the swimming pool with my two little fish!!

This year though, we will be going away for 2 weeks over the holidays, so I will have to make a decision.

I hate the idea of all the hard work I do during the rest of the year, building up followings on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogger, Google+, etc all dwindling down to nothing if I go on radio silence for 6 weeks and then having to really work hard again in the run up to Christmas, typically my busiest time, to build up interest again.

BUT.... I don't want to end up stressed out completely because the kids want to do stuff and I'm trying to manically keep up with everything. That leads to  A LOT of Mummy Shouting (we've learned the hard way!)

I think for this summer break I'm going to take it as it comes and if I'm struggling too much then put my shops into 'vacation mode' for a couple of weeks.

Maybe I'll just concentrate on getting some more patterns in the shops and then deactivate everything but those (as they don't require any input from me)

Decisions Decisions!

I'll let you know when I decide on anything!!

In the mean time - enjoy the sunshine!

Headscarves for little girls

You might remember that I've posted before about going into Seren's class at school to help when they're having arty crafty days...

Well, I was asked to do something a little different a couple of weeks ago. Seren's teacher asked me if I'd make a handful of headscarves for some of the girls in Reception as one of the little girls had been off school unwell and one of the results of her condition was that some of her hair had fallen out. This little one was coming back to school, but in order for her not to feel left out, the teacher asked me to make a special headscarf for the little girl who'd been ill and also some for the other girls to wear.

I was so touched to be asked to make these headscarves, so I made a really pretty one with flowers and the little girl's name.

Here's my favourite of the plain ones:

And here's a photo of Seren & her friend at their school sports day:

I had actually googled to see if this sort of thing existed quite a while ago, when I thought about making myself one after I sunburned my parting one very hot day (don't ask!) but there wasn't anything very pretty or fun at the time and certainly not for kids, so I really liked the challenge of making these.

Not only did I need to design them (without pinning the material to Seren's head this was a bit of a challenge at times!) but also as it was working with cotton, not felt.... most of you will know that one of the main reasons I like working with felt is that it doesn't fray!!

I think it's quite good to come out of your comfort zone every now and then.... it makes you so proud of what you can achieve!

What have you done recently that was out of your comfort zone? And if you haven't... what could you try? You might just surprise yourself!!