Chiyogami Challenge

When I was out this weekend I picked up this little package of paper.  Have I mentioned I'm a sucker for anything tiny?

And the marketing is good too - you don't want to be stranded without some chiyogami! LOL


Coming from the Japanese Paper Place I knew there would be beautiful paper inside (plus I undid the package and had a peek in the store... shhh) - and there was!

So I have now challenged myself to come up with 24 different projects to use these tiny pieces of paper.  No deadlines, just 24 beautiful projects to accomplish when I feel like paper crafting!

Buttercup Bag

I'm sure some of you are familiar with Rae's Buttercup Bag pattern - it uses fat quarters, is quick, easy and free!  It's been on my informal to do list for a while and this spring I found the perfect fabric for it!  Actually when I bought the fabric I considered making another Birdie Sling but since I have 2 already I thought I'd go for something a little different.

I love it!  Big bags are nice for carrying a water bottle, camera, umbrella, etc. etc. but sometimes a girl needs something a little smaller.  Especially when wearing a summer dress (which it is finally warm enough for - hooray!).

And since turquoise is my favourite colour it will go with a lot of my clothes (um, and shoes & jewelry, what can I say, I know what I like!)

I made a few changes to the original pattern:

• Interfaced the whole thing to give it more shape-holding capabilities.
• Adding piping between the two outer pieces.
• Made the inside pocket more rectangular & less square.
• Made the strap wider (which I was able to do since I was working with yardage and not a fat quarter).

The pattern is great and I'm sure I'll be making more of these!

We have a winner!

First of all, thankyou so much for all your lovely comments!  I read each & every one & really enjoyed hearing how near & far everyone is from.  Because I'm a bit of a geek I'll probably count all the responses and make some sort of chart or something.  Bet you're excited about that one!

Anyways let's get on to the main show here - declaring a winner!  I plugged the numbers into the True Random Number Generator (sorry commenter #236, I got your comment minutes after doing this!) and the end result is that redzshadow from Charlottesville, VA is the winner!

I'll be in touch by e-mail for your shipping details.  Thanks again to everyone who entered, reading your comments really made my day(s).

News Flash!

Drumroll please... I'm excited to announce my Etsy store is now open!  More items to be added later this week but I thought I would let you know.  Plus if I waited till I had time to list all my items it would never happen.  If you'd like to visit, here's a link.

If you're here for Giveaway Day please go to This Post.

Thanks!

Giveaway Day!

I love Giveaway Days!  They're really a win-win situation.  You get a chance to win really cool stuff (last count I heard had over 300 bloggers giving things away!) and really cool blogs get new readers.  What's not to like?  Anyways, I know you're busy checking out all the neat stuff out there so I'll get down to business.

My giveaway is a rainbow zippy pouch like this:

And a set of 4 recycled cards, like this:

To enter please leave a comment telling me where you're from.  I will pick a winner with the wonderful random number generator on the evening of the 25th and ship the prize by the 30th.  International entries welcome, I will ship anywhere!

P.S.  If you don't win but would like a rainbow zippy pouch or some recycled cards come back in a few days for my Etsy shop opening!

I (heart) Mail

What could be more wonderful then getting something in the mail? 

Receiving an envelope with beautiful vintage stamps on it! (Can you see I was too excited to open it nicely and ripped it at the top?)

They're super cute in the package.

And so much fun once they're out!

My problem now is deciding who to send these wonderful stamps to.  Someone who would appreciate them of course. Although I'm having a little trouble letting go (isn't that girl watering the tree lovely?) so I'm seriously tempted to ask them to send them back to me instead of throwing them out.  Consider this your warning - if these stamps end up in your mailbox don't get too attached!

Want your own awesome stamps?  Jaime at Send More Mail is the lovely lady who assembles these packages - each with enough stamps to send a letter in Canada.  (Sorry everyone who lives elsewhere!)

I'm Excited About...

• This masking tape revamp on How About Orange.

• Giveaway Day on Sew, Mama, Sew.

• These forest stamps from Canada Post.

Mother's Day - Crafts, etc.

Mothers are always appreciative of gifts made by their children, right?  This year for Mother's Day I painted a mug for my mum.  A love of sailing (and canoeing!) is something we have in common and it was something different from mugs you'd see in shops but still within my artistic capabilities!

The first boat turned out so well (surprised myself actually with how good it looked) that I did two more, on the other side.

The colours on the handle are how I had imagined the whole mug looking - more blendy and Impressionist.   I would say now I know how to do it for next time but I'm not sure really how I got that look!

I couldn't resist putting something fun inside!

More painting for the card.  Sometimes things just work out well!  I'd actually planned to do something different but this materialized and I'm very happy with it.  Plus it was a chance to use washi tape!!

This afternoon my mum, sister & I sat down to this delightful tea!  Yum!  My tastebuds are happy just thinking about it.

I hope you were able to do something special today too!

First Craft Show!

If you're wondering how my first craft show went - this picture says it all:

OK, not really.  But it was rather slow so I had time to fold all these stars while I was not talking to customers or friends who came by.  Huge thankyou to Maria who suggested I bring a craft to work on during the day!  As someone who rarely sits and does nothing (even when watching TV I'm usually knitting or something) having stars to fold made my day much better!

Even though there wasn't much traffic (or many sales) I had a good day.  It was exciting to be selling at my first craft show and I was thrilled with every sale.  This is how my table looked (note: the hats behind me are part of the booth next to mine!)

The display ended up being the mirror image of how I'd done it at home because I realized after getting all the table cloths in place I wanted the deeper one on the side with the box/riser and it seemed easier to set the display up reverse rather then move all the table cloths around.

These next pictures give a closer-up look at how the table was set up (comments & suggestions welcome!):

I'm so glad I did my first show close to home - for many reasons:

• You don't have far to go so you don't need to wake up extra early!
• You don't have far to go so it doesn't cost much to get there.
• A lot of friends I invited were able to stop by as it's close to their homes too!
• People I know but didn't invite came by - nice to chat to those I hadn't seen in a while.

Thanks again to everyone who came by yesterday - I really appreciated the support!

Now that I've done a craft show and realize I like it I'm excited to do more!  One of the great things about doing a show is talking to people, including other vendors who give tips of good shows to do!  I'm looking into a few options right now, hopefully I can find another show (or two or three!) in the next few months.

And maybe I can return to non-craft show related posts here!  I have a bunch of fabric waiting to become garments that I should really get at...