Forecast... Cloudy!

It may have been a sunny, 28 degree average week... but at the Buttonfactory table, clouds were abundant!

These are my new cloud pins! I had a lot of fun creating all these, and as you can see they come in 8 wonderful colours!!!

And seeing as clouds were on my mind so much, out came this new notecard set too! (the colours are so much brighter in real life, my bad photography makes me sad!) The set comes with 4 different designs, 2 of each design, for a total of 8 note cards in a pack! They're just printed on paper, as opposed to card. I'm still considering making the switch to a light-weight card though. Thoughts??

Also on the note-card front is another set (my personal favourite)... the fat bird note-card set!!

Aren't they cute?? I really enjoy the colours, and the fat-ness of the little birds. This set will be in the shop soon... I just have make sure I get my printing right with these, as so far I've failed a little...

Finally, some new brooches are filling my basket of creations (I actually have a basket filled with the stuff I make, I'm not just saying that in a figurative way...)

These are a little bit different... I'm really happy with the direction the posie brooches are heading these days :) A bit of tulle, a petal-istic scalloped edge, extra layers... the newest posie brooches are definitely developing more and more!

Sadly though, you won't be seeing these in the Etsy shop. I've got a craft fair at the end of the month, and I'm busily preparing. In fact, I guess I won't be listing many new products at all until after the craft fair :( But it'll be worth it. And what's left after the fair will of course go straight into the shop. So yay!

In other news, I'm 'working on an assignment' today. It's been the least productive day ever. Other than grocery shopping, laundry, and dish-washing, I'm ashamed to say I've done nothing. Not one word of my 2000 word essay. No craft. I've been procrastinating on the assignment by browsing the net. *Sigh*. What a waste!!

It's A Public Holiday!

Thoughts from my long weekend:

- Puppies are so adorable, so crazy, so funny... and sometimes just soooo annoying!
- Butter cream frosting is almost too sweet
- It is WONDERFUL to have my husband back on Parmelia soil... even if he's been asleep pretty much since getting home!
- Sister sleep-overs are good stuff
- Choc-chip pancakes are also good stuff
- Cakes that take 1-1.5 hours to bake? What is that???
- Weekend time travels way, way too quickly
- People can be very creative in the ways that they wear their scarves, although I think that a scarf worn as a (rather bulky) G-string is just too much!!
- Sometimes you HAVE TO have McDonalds for lunch. It's the law.
- My sisters' shower kicks the butt outta my shower. Heavenly!
- I need to pick up my feet and start working on the house & garden again
- Elsie has the same colour in her kitchen that I will have, as soon as I get round to buying the paint
- With this recession, we might be living in this house for a long, long time. And apart from the things we need to fix up, I'm OK with this (but I can't wait to someday build our own place)
- Gossip Girl is OK. The clothes are the best bit.
- This is my first post in a while without a picture. And I am sort of accepting of that.
- Chilli con carne is fast becoming my favourite dinner ever! Bring it on... tonight! Yum!

Oh Yay!!!

Sale # 2 and a blog feature were the happy news that greeted me when I checked my email this morning!!

The item to sell was this tan posie brooch:


I am so so pleased. It's nice to sell a brooch, because I soooo love making them!!
And the lovely girl who bought it made a rather flattering blog post about me too :)

Yay!!

Sold!

I made my first sale last night...!!! How happy I am!

Augustus is heading to his new home in Michigan first thing tomorrow!

This Weekend... (How I love my digital camera!)

I feel like this a great, productive weekend. With so many things to post about, and for organisation's sake, I'm going to do it list-style. Good stuff.

1. Long-lost fabric returns to me!

When I was 16, my family did a big trip around America. My Mum was really into quilting, especially quilting fabrics, and so we made a lot of stops of quilting shops. Being a crafty girl myself, I made the most of these stops and began to show a keen interest in fabrics too. I came home with a crate FULL of fat quarters, purchased from all around the states. Once home, I made 1.5 quilted squares, then promptly lost all of my fabrics.

My Mum's turning my old bedroom into a craft room, now that I've moved out, and the other day I was in there looking at the family's hot new computer. And just sitting there was... my crate of long-lost fabrics! Eeeeeeek!!

(Sorry for the blurry picture). The colours are so vivid and stunning. I'm thrilled beyond words. With not a lot of extra money floating around, craft spendings are taking a real dip. But now, all is well with the world. I don't need to buy fabric for a loooong time! Yay!

2. Masquerade party

Last night was Sarah's 21st Masquerade Party, so in the afternoon I whipped this up:

Yep, I used some of my American quilting fabric for the main part of the face. Love it! It matched my dress perfectly :)

3. I have a new stuffy!

This is Estelle the show-pony, a brand new Button Factoy design, and my first-ever double-sided stuffy! I'm really happy with how she turned out. She was freakin' hard work, and she's a lot bigger than any of my other designs. I love her.

4. New mossy posie brooch

This is possibly my favourite brooch I've made so far. I'm nuts about the colours.

Unfortunately I made one teeny mistake, and am therefore offering this brooch at a discounted price. Basically, I sewed the back layer on, forgetting that I had not sewn on the quilting fabric layer yet. So the front looks perfect, but the back is covered with ugly stitching. No one will know except the person wearing it at least :)

5. My puppies are the cutest in town.

We had a photo shoot this morning, so I have evidence:

That's all for today. I have the next 2 weeks off uni, so am planning on treasuring my Mondays like never before, and really using the time to get busy creating (and ummm... maybe doing a few things around the house. Maybe??)

Guess who's old/21?

Yep, 'little' sister Nahn is 21 today! Nahn sounds a lot like Nan, so it works.
Happy birthday old Nahn. Yep. Old fart.
(At least she makes a pretty old lady)

This Makes Me A Saaaaad Panda!

Pretty sure this project is the ultimate wet-panda-hug to the crafter's heart....

(Wet Panda Hug = the sloppiest, biggest waste-of-time, barely there obligatory hug. More like a mutual soft touch to the shoulders between two people who are awkward with each other)

Panda is based on a pattern from the Pretty class. Panda was adorable. I can vouch for that (if he wasn't, he never would've gotten to the stuffing stage!) He had a beautiful, full round face. Yet somehow when I stuffed him, it got squashed in. He now resembles a hammer-head shark! And I have no idea how it happened! Nobody else's pandas have squashy heads! And my THING is making felt toys!

His one saving grace is the little heart on his butt:

I guess he has a somewhat artistic charm about him...? But my husband snickered when he saw the finished product.

It reminded me of the time I had a terrible haircut, ran to him at work with tears in my eyes and wailed "They gave me a mullet!" and he responded with a laugh and said "Oh wow. They did!"

Basically I'm looking forward to take #2 of the panda project... *sigh*