Moving On

I hope a post here is not going to come as too much of a shock, and I apologise for having failed utterly at keeping this blog up-to-date. I hope you will understand how madly busy I have been on my course and forgive me. These are just a few of the things I have made...

I have enjoyed (nearly) every minute of it and (only now as I am nearly at the end) I finally feel that I can organise my life to fit in the art that I want to create. And I hope to be organised enough to be able to share some of it with you on my new blog http://thiscraftinglife.blogspot.com/ - I hope you will join me there.

Here Goes!

Some of you may know that I am starting an Art & Design foundation diploma on Monday. I have been through the whole range of emotions about it - from really really excited to absolutely terrified to completely numb... now I think I'm just impatient to get going. I am reasonably pleased with my holiday assignment - I found the brief really challenging and I have no idea whether I have satisfied it - but I did my best. And I got back to my sewing machine for the first time in ages and really enjoyed that. So, a picture...


It is a drawstring style backpack with added wings, the patterning on the wings inspired by peacock feathers. I'm not sure whether it is flamboyant enough, but then not many people (over the age of 7!) walk around wearing a great big pair of wings, so maybe it is.

I challenged myself not to buy any new fabric - although it wasn't too much of a challenge since I have quite a collection of scraps... there is an old shirt in there too... I love to use different fabrics under layers of different sheers so that the result looks different depending on the light and which way you look at it - difficult to capture in a photograph though.


So, fingers crossed!

What shall I put them in?

Since I have been making my flowers I have developed a bit of a thing about vases. The ideal for the flowers is about 6" (15cm) tall and not too wide at the neck - often these are called bud vases. I have been scouring Etsy looking for the perfect vase - I thought I'd show you some of my favourites.

First is a lovely simple vase from mrhstudio - at 6" tall it would be perfect for a single flower.

I love the colouring on this vase from boneyardpottery - it would look lovely with some creamy coloured flowers

Finally, I think this one from Claygrl is so different and a brilliant idea. And these are just 3 I have found - there are plenty more where they came from!

Spoiled for Sunsets

I really don't seem to be very good at the regular blogging thing - I hope you will bear with me, I will try to improve! My excuse is that I have been a bit preoccupied lately assembling a portfolio of my work to take to an interview at a local college. Well, it was worth it and I am thrilled to say I will be starting the Foundation Diploma in Art in September. I am ridiculously excited!

After pretty changeable weather here this weekend, this evening was lovely and still (and not raining!) so we went for a walk along the beach. And for once I managed to take some half decent pictures of the sunset.


We are spoiled for beautiful sunsets here; this was quite an ordinary one! Whenever we are away and someone points out a lovely sunset my children can be heard to mutter 'not as good as the ones at home'.


I am still thinking about those random facts about me... maybe next time?

Eco Daisies

I did say to myself when I started this blog that it wouldn't just be 'look what I've put in my shop' but I'm so pleased with these I just have to mention them...


So, what do you think they are made of? Can you guess? They are so bright and cheerful aren't they? (It does help that the sun was shining with all it's might today...)
Alright, I'll tell... they are made from strips cut from plastic carrier bags - in particular the flimsy white ones which usually have a broken handle by the time you get home with them.
I try very hard not to collect carrier bags when I go shopping but there are always days when you buy more than you intended to - or those days when the heavens open just as you leave the paper shop... And despite my best efforts, other members of the household never manage to take a bag with them when they pop to the shop. Now I don't have to hide these bags guiltily at the back of the kitchen cupboard anymore!
So I spent the afternoon scouting round the house looking at bags - there's a good white one full of old yoghurt pots in the kitchen, along with several orange ones from a well known supermarket, a lovely lime green one full of stuff for the charity shop in the hall... now where are my scissors?


I have been tagged by Jackie - I have to come up with some random facts about myself. I shall have to think about this...

The origin of ffflowers

Lots of people have asked my how I make my flowers - it is really no great secret, I use a flower loom - there are plenty of tutorials and how-to videos around if you want to go looking for them. So I was thrilled when I spotted this in bythewayside‘s etsy shop the other day - truly the ancestor of my flowers!

To square or not to square?

There has been a lot written about taking photographs for etsy by people far better qualified than me, but I thought I would add my bit anyway…

A common piece of advice is ‘crop your photographs to be square’. I have to say I disagree with this; I never crop my main picture to a square, and I’ll show you why. I sell flowers which I display in a vase, making a tall thin subject for the photo. So instinctively I would want to crop the picture to a nice close square like this…

…flowers nice and central, not too much background, a good picture, a great square thumbnail. But then I look at my shop in gallery view and the thumbnails are not square. This is important because these are the thumbnails which appear in treasuries and are your chance of appearing on the front page. And my beautifully composed square picture looks like this…


Not so good, is it? So, I crop my pictures to a rectangle wider than it is high. I use Picasa (easy to use and free to download!) to crop my pictures; it gives you various set shapes you can use for cropping and I find the 4:3 rectangle works best. I like to place the subject slightly off-centre in the picture, it just looks more interesting that way, but still leave enough space to the side so the picture looks meaningful when cropped to a square – like this…


This method of cropping gives me the most control over that all important potential front page image.

Having said all that, there are occasions when I think it would be better to crop the picture to a square. Say the subject of the photograph is low and wide instead of tall and thin - perhaps a cute dachshund plushie with his nose at one side of the picture and his tail at the other. He would fit beautifully in a wide rectangle

but he would then look rather sad when this picture was cropped to a square.

So in this case, crop to a square and the part you lose top and bottom when etsy crops to a rectangle is just background.

Cute dachshund courtesy of niftyknits.

I hope I haven’t confused you even more now! It is just best to bear in mind that the treasury view is the most important and that is roughly a 4:3 wide rectangle. A few subjects need to be cropped to a square; annoyingly these are the ones which fit just nicely into a rectangle. If you want to use a tall thin rectangle then save that for one of your alternative pictures; don’t use it for the main picture.