Line up

No, my house isn't on fire, I think I must need to clean the lens on my phone camera.  I'm trying to do a quick post a day to take advantage of the fact that my phone and iPad both have cameras and it's pretty convenient, the only problem I'm finding is that most of my crafting is done by night.  While it's been sunny in the day time since the start of the year, I've been wrangling a toddler so taking photos is at best inconvenient, or when we're out and about, can be a bit dangerous.  This is a last set of notecards in this style and colour, which are on their way to London as I type. 

I don't have any more of this particular card stock left, but I do have more cards already made up in a postage stamp and security envelope patterns, made with this lovely grey card that came from deadstock in Arizona.  I'll have to get the security envelope bunting ones in the shop asap - another thing for the 2013 to do list!

Birthday day out

For my birthday, back in the Easter Holidays, Amelia and I took a little jaunt to the Lake District to catch the World of Wool exhibition at Rheged.  Rheged is a strange beast, kind of a glorified service station, with shops selling lovely little things by local and national designer/maker types (including the lovely Julia Smith Ceramics), a soft play centre and outdoor play area (a lovely surprise on arrival) and a few different coffee bars.  There's some office/meeting space and also a huge exhibition space on the top floor.  It looks a bit hobbity from the outside, too.

As well as having been keen on visiting the exhibition for a while, we also had some friends in town from overseas with their new baby, so it was definitely worth the trip!

After an hour or so in the soft play, making friends and riding foam horses, Amelia seemed to enjoy it too. 

Amelia doing incredibly well not to touch the lovely tactile display

I didn't get to take photos of everything, what with the child wrangling and the don't touch policy, but my favourite part of the exhibition were the handmade houses with stories of the inhabitants.  I love the idea of building a whole new world out of just needles, yarn and imagination.  There's a pun about spinning a good yarn in there, I'm sure, but let's just gloss over that...

Some well known names like Emily Peacock and Donna Wilson were on display, alongside more local and less well known exhibitors.  Sadly the exhibition finished last week so I can't tell you all to go and see it.  Unfortunately, since I got my iPad and traded in my laptop, blogging has become more of a challenge, so hopefully someone can improve the blogger app soon and I'll get back to more frequent blogging. 

I loved the handmade brochure and had to buy one as a souvenir - it is even handbound with local wool.  Just perfect!

Upcycling hits the mainstream

A cardboard hopper of Johnson's baby wipes caught my eye as I rushed out of my local Asda the other day - the magic word 'upcycling' caught my eye! Find out more on packagingnews.co.uk (oh yes!) and find out how they are reusing their packets before they hit the rubbish bin.

Ella's Kitchen and Kenco coffee are also running similar schemes, which involve consumers returning the packaging to the manufacturer after use. Of course this involves expense and further resources, and that's before you get started on the remanufacturing process. I would love if these companies could look more closely into biodegradable or compostable packaging (like our preferred tea bag brand, it's great to throw the empty packaging onto the compost heap when we're finished with it). There are only so many wipe clean reusable shoppers that you can get through in a lifetime, and if the brand is plastered all over it, then it's not really for me. But it's a step in the right direction, and it just goes to show, there are so many more things out there that you can get an extra use out of before it hits the rubbish bin.

Vintage shopping

A recent arrival in our home is this amazing wooden hippo piggy bank. His little leg pops out of its socket so you can retrieve your pennies!

Amelia is totally spoiled rotten by her grandparents in terms of toys, books and clothes, so I wanted to pick up something for her first birthday that she can treasure for years to come. It's robust enough to stand up to a bit of childhood rough and tumble (obviously it will be staying on the high shelf for a few more years to come) but delicate enough to be taken good care of.

Happy Birthday, little one.

Teeny tiny shiny envelopes

Aren't these tiny sparkly glittery envelopes cute? They're just 3cm square! They come with their own matching white folding cards, that you can customise to your heart's content. I am sure you can do a far better job than my sad attempt!


Find them in my shop and snap them up before they're gone, as they are upcycled from one piece of sturdy gift wrap there are only 16 of the little blighters in the whole wide world...

New in the shop!

These gorgeous little envelopes and matching embellished flat cards are available in the girlindustries etsy shop right now! At $4 for a set of 5, they come in at a dinky 7 x 11cm, or 4 1/4 x 2 7/8 inches.

Upcycled from a day to a page calendar, each set of five notecards includes a variety of cats and background colours in each set.

PIF of the week and a zines update

As I clear out my craft room I've found a lot of projects that I simply ran out of steam with, and decided not to continue. It's all good stuff that I've put time and effort into, so I've decided to offer it in my Etsy store as a PIF of the week. If you haven't come across a PIF before, or you have but don't know what it stands for, it's Pay It Forward, and it means that the buyer only has to cover P&P and your Etsy listing fees to take it off your hands. So I'll update you here every Monday about forthcoming PIFs of the week, and hopefully you'll find a bargain that's just up your street!

First up is this set of hand-cut upcycled luggage tags. I was originally going to use them as part of my packaging, but changed my plans once I realised no two of my sales were alike, so different packaging solutions were called for every time. The tags are unstrung, blank kraft on the reverse and are just shy of business card size - around 3 x 5cm

More sale-type action can be found over at Pushpin Zines with a special offer on the Answers on a Postcard series - with THREE new zines added to the series. The new issues are exclusive to Pushpin until the end of August so grab them while they're hot! Find out more about the new questions and answers over at Pushpin by clicking on details of #9, 10 and 11.

Lavender cats are back!

Back in the Girl Industries etsy shop and new to the folksy shop, too! New colourways will be coming soon, as I'm down to my last dozen of these handy little scented cats.

Squeak squeak!

Check out my mice! I wish I could keep them, but they're a present for my sister, made from my niece's baby clothes. I wish I could claim credit for their all-round awesomeness, too, but they are made by fellow upcyclist Lucy, via her Etsy shop LuLuHopping. Not only do they look great, but they are exceptionally well-made, and Lucy turned them around in about four days for me, great service!

Now to keep them away from those pesky cats until I travel to Manchester next week...

The world's least exciting make-along... Part 1

Excuse the not very dramatic photo, but we have a drafty front door. As I'm not back at my day job until July, we can't afford to replace it, and kind of want to replace all 3 of our external doors at the same time anyway, so an interim measure was called for. The husband put down some draft excluding tape stuff in the gap at the bottom of the door, but frankly, its insulating properties are debatable and it keeps getting unstuck and tripping me up. A solution was needed, but what?

Around the same time as I was mulling over what we needed, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 where a new challenge was issued to clothing manufacturers. Basically, the guest pointed out that while the success of polycotton is in its durability and easier care, it also means that once polyester is bonded with cotton, it never dies, it never degrades fully and it's an eco disaster waiting to happen. He encouraged all of us to rethink the way we buy clothes, and to buy classic pieces that last - we'll look better, and less with go to landfill. Now, of course, this isn't news to probably most of the people reading this blog, but it reminded me of something I'd been meaning to do for ages - reuse a duvet cover that got ruined by a project involving superglue being spilled on it, and also to reuse a fleece blanket that was attracting too much cat fur to be sanitary or nice to look at or touch - case in point illustrated by Clyde here.

Ordinarily I'd just give the fleece blanket away, but this is a fleece blanket with history - bought while this commotion was going on in the background. I am sentimental about silly things like that. And glad I was buying synthetic fabrics that day.

So I measured up the door and here's the fix I came up with. More to come next week, as I'm having to work around unpredictable naps!

I cut down the blanket and duvet cover to the size of the door frame, long enough to cover the letter box. I didn't do it full length as the blanket and usable portion of the duvet cover wasn't big enough, and the main drafts come in at the windowed portion of the door as well as the letter box.

Next step - iron the duvet cover inside out so the seams sit nice and flat - using two of the seamed edges already on the duvet cover means more chance of my edges being nice and square.

With the duvet cover inside out, pin together a duvet cover and blanket sandwich. I sewed all around the edges, leaving a hole just bigger than my fist on one edge, for turning.

I also made a pair of tabs for hanging the draft excluder, these were sewn into the shortest edge. I sewed along three of the edges of a pair of fabric rectangles (right side together), then turned them inside out. Then realised I only needed to sew along two edges but it was quicker just to keep the needle down and turn.

I really do struggle with ensuring that my fabrics line up in the corners and that I end up with straight and more importantly, level, lines where I need them. Especially when working with a stripy fabric! This piece of thin MDF makes a great template for use with tailors' chalk. The weight in it ensures the fabrics stay put, too.

After letting loose with the sewing machine, I remembered to trim out the bulk at the corners as well as all around the piece.


So my tabs work perfectly and my door is technically covered in all the right places - with the exception of that droopy bit in the middle. It looks a bit meh, though, definitely still recycle and not upcycle quite yet... I have my thinking cap on for how to make it a little more interesting and I'll bring you an update soon!

Over the border in Fife

I live about three miles away from the border of central Scotland with the Kingdom of Fife, which is home to a new Etsy shop I discovered this week, Ziggy and Friends. Jay, the artist behind the shop, creates the loveliest illustrations, ideal for a nursery or just for fun.

Jay was kind enough to feature me in a treasury on Etsy this week, go and have a look by clicking this link. While you're there, all you need to do is click through to order your own set of upcycled mini tags... market season is coming!

Armchair travelling

I use a nifty little widget called Statcounter to see how many people are reading my blog, and whereabouts in the world they're checking in from. As well as seeing lots of familiar names of places I've been (Brooklyn, Ards, Sheffield, Munich, Eugene, Madrid, Providence, Dundee and more), there are a few places on the list that are new to me, so I thought I'd do a bit of armchair travelling and find out something new...

First up is Curitiba, Brazil - one of the cooler places to visit in South America. Not just because of its relatively mild climate, but also because of its enviable and sustainable public transportation. Local Etsy seller GlassGift is one to watch, too. Look at this fantastic sushi set, it's making me hungry...

And where better to head next than Shizuoka, Japan? In the shadow of Mount Fuji, the scenery here seems so much more dramatic than the Ochil Hills behind my house! This stunning photograph is by Altus, on Flickr.

Next stop on this impromptu world tour is Castellon, Spain. It turns out that this is pretty close to a part of Spain I visited in 2006, when I attended the famous La Tomatina festival, near Valencia. Here's a photo of one of my favourite prints at home, which reminds me of Bunol, Eivissa, Palma and just about every small Spanish town I've visited. If you like it, go to Blancucha's Etsy shop to get a copy for yourself.

I visited some pretty interesting places when I lived in New Jersey, but I don't think I ever made it to Verona. It's home to the charmingly named Kip's Castle Park, which was restored recently after falling into disrepair. The photo comes courtesy of The Keystone New Jersey, where you can find more information about the history of the house and the grounds.


Staying in the USA for the last stop on today's itinerary, we're heading west to Granite Bay, California. Notable as home to Eddie Murphy, I thought that a little look at the local real estate would be in order. I wasn't disappointed. For just under $4m, look what Real Estate Ground want to sell me....

Quick, someone, buy 5 million upcycled envelopes from me and help make my dreams come true!

Houses

We're off to take a look in Habitat shortly, and have been browsing the Crown website this morning (yes, things sort of changed for the better with the house situation, phew!), so I thought I'd take a quick browse of some fun housy-type things on the internet.

First up, via the popular lifestyle blog A Cup of Jo, this fantastic bedside table:

Not quite a house, but I expect at least one room in our new place will be quite industrious, I'm delighted to see that Pearson Maron have a sale to celebrate their third Etsyversary. And I just had to pick up my own miniature factory what a lovely thing!:

I've been busy starting to make change of address cards using these fantastic and repurposed house stickers from Answers on a Postcard contributor, Swirlyarts. I just hope I can find my address book once we start to unpack!

I was so thrilled when I found the new home stamp at my local Hobbycraft because our new house has three storeys, so it matches perfectly!

The range of non-human houses on Etsy never ceases to amaze me. We can't have birdhouses in our garden because of the furry predators living in our house, but if I could pick one, it'd be this work of art from Reedsbeachbirdhouses - I almost want to move in!

And let's not forget dolls houses - I'm more used to Barbie's pink plastic dreamhouse, so I would have loved to have had a friend with one of these amazing creations from Adobedollhouse's shop instead. What a sense of place and history in this perfect scale model!

Him indoors is really looking forward to having a shed again, so I'd love to invest in one of these mugs for him to take with him while he's doing whatever men do in sheds, from British artist Esther Coombes:





Esther uses ceramic paint and her modern urban illustrations to add new direction and purpose to her charity shop finds. She takes custom orders and I'm really enjoying her style, so maybe she would take a commission for a set based on the front of our house...

I'm off before I get started on decor, wall art and furniture. That's a post for another day!

Hot news about Hatastic!

Chloe Hayward designs chic, wearable and eco-friendly millinery pieces for a range of occasions - going by the name of Hatastic! I first heard about Chloe via Handmade UK and was thrilled when she agreed to answer some questions as part of the Answers on a Postcard zine project.

I'm excited to hear that Hatastic! is making its catwalk debut in the next 24 hours, so if you're in or around London, head on over to Spitalfields to see these beautiful pieces up close and personal. You might even snag some goodies if you're an early bird!

Full details are available on http://www.alternativearts.co.uk/, or hear hot news from the horse's mouth at www.twitter.com/hatastic, and you can snap up your own showstopper just in time for wedding season in the Hatastic folksy shop.

More info:


HATASTIC!
DEBUT AT

ALTERNATIVE FASHION WEEK
19th APRIL 2010

ALTERNATIVE FASHION WEEK
presented by Alternative Arts
19 - 23 APRIL 2010
Spitalfields Traders Market, Crispin Place, Brushfield St, London E1 6AA (Liverpool St Station)

HATASTIC! the home grown label from Surreys own Chloë Haywood (launched in March 2009) has been selected out of hundreds of applications from independent designers, to show her first collection on the catwalk at Alternative Fashion Week on Monday 19th April at 1:15pm at Spitalfields Traders Market accompanied by The Really Tight Corsettes a live contemporary Jazz band.

THE COLLECTION is called RECREATION and as is typical of AFW, original and recycled textiles are a major feature. The collection is 10 headpieces/fascinators made out of old games such as playing cards, jigsaws and even lego!

HATASTIC! a label aware of the environment and therefore is an eclectic range of unique handmade hats, fascinators and hair accessories inspired by the beautiful bits and bobs sourced from remnant boxes and junk shops. Elegant, witty and timeless - everything a hat (and a woman) should be! The bridal range is also incredibly popular. Bespoke service also so COMMISSIONS WELCOME!

ALTERNATIVE FASHION WEEK is where all the best new designers are to be discovered.
It provides a genuine alternative for them to present their work directly to the press, public and the fashion industry. Designers come from all over the UK and other parts of the world including Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Serbia, India.

THE FASHION MARKET that surrounds the catwalk from 11am to 5pm each day is a shopping sensation with stalls selling an exotic range of clothes, textiles and accessories.
Hatastic! will be there all week, and will be able to get a LIMITED EDITION Diamante Domino Hairclip until stocks last.

Pay it forward - The Other Mousie

I set my deadline for the PIF project to be the end of last year, but oops, I just didn't make it. I'm pleased to let you know I'm trying to get things finished and in the post now, so if you haven't received yours yet, don't worry, it's nearly there.

In the meantime, here's a little teaser so you can see something suitably mousie and definitely upcycled for Sarah of The Other Mousie, and do stop by her latest creative venture, Cirque de Chaussettes.

My main excuse for the delay on this one was that I knew what I wanted to make but had to wait for my green handbag to become past its best so I could upcycle it into something new!

Etsyversary and Etsy Holiday Sale

In a fun twist of fate, Etsy have announced a brilliant weekend of sales from 27 to 30 November! It doesn't just coincide with my planned etsyversary sale (I've been using Etsy for two years on 29th November), but it's also the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the US. It's a great time to get ready for the big end of year holidays, including Christmas and New Year, and gives everyone a chance to shop in plenty of time.

I have a great selection of special offers to bring to you - all my handknit and handmade holidays items will attract free shipping for the period of the etsy holiday sale, and commercial as well as upcycled supplies in my shop will attract a buy one, get one free discount. It works in the usual way, get the cheaper item for free when you pick two things out of my shop. There will be a 20% discount on every other item in my shop, as well! Woo-hoo!

If you convo me first (or email me at katy [at] girlindustries dot com) I can set up a custom listing for you to make sure that your discounts are included on your invoice. If you add the items to your basket, your discount will be refunded to you via PayPal. Most of the things I have available in my etsy shop are available in larger quantities, so if you want two reels of the same ribbon for your deal, just convo or email me so I can check stock levels and set it up for you.

Even better - once the Etsy Holiday Sale is finished, I'll be continuing with my own little sale from the 1st to the 5th of December - come back to the blog to check for more info!

Exciting times, eh?

Festive shopping

Would it disgust you to know I've completed my Christmas shopping? Admittedly, most of it happened completely by accident due to browsing at last month's Handmade Haven. But! I have picked up some fantastic things from Sarey Poppins.

Without giving the game away, look at this perfect idea for a Christmas pressie...

I even picked up a top tip, if you pop one of my lavender sachets inside, your bedding smells all dreamy and relaxing as it heats next to your hot water bottle.

And how about an unique and original little something from embroidery genius Angharad Jefferson?

I know a telly addict who'd love one of these...

I was asked to make a Christmas stocking for a little one I know, but thought that Rikrak has it all under control in her shop.

Wouldn't you love to wake up with one of these hanging on the mantelpiece...

You can find the perfect gift wrapping embellishments in my etsy and folksy shops, and watch this space for details of how to make your own! Or pick some up in person from the Girl Industries stall at the Dennistoun Craft Fair on Saturday 28th November, or at Inver Cottage with the Glasgow Craft Mafia on Saturday 5th December.

I'm in a book!

So this is big news!

My black damask envelopes have been featured in this awesome book. Lots of the projects in 1000 ideas for creative reuse (by Garth Johnson) are a familiar sight from Etsy and Craft, but there is plenty in there that is more on the the art side than the craft side, and it's a lovely book to browse through and be inspired by. Garth's blog, Extreme Craft is also well worth a read, I love the fine balance between cutting edge ideas and traditional techniques.

One of my favourite things about the book is that each page is organised by colour theme, making it really easy on the eye. I also like the way that everyone is properly credited, by name, by company and in an easy to read index that identifies each contributor and his/her/their item. After being misquoted, falsely attributed and altogether omitted by certain other publications over the years, it's very refreshing to see that someone is capable of doing it properly.

Christmas parcels at Shop Handmade UK

Oooh, I've been featured in a number of special gift packages curated by Shop Handmade UK. I especially like Rose Pink Gift Box Number 2, which also contains a What Would Delia Do? tea towel made by Miso Funky, and cute little ponytail holders by See The Woods, who keeps me entertained over on Twitter. You also get a keychain notebook from Girl Industries in there, too, you lucky recipient!

The gift boxes represent really good value for money, and are on sale right now, via Folksy.com. They will also be available to ooh and aah over, and to buy, at the Handmade UK market in Oxford on Sunday 29 November.

What a lovely gift!