Unhealthy obsession

So I have mentioned yet my obsession? It's only a small one, I do not (as yet) collect newspapers or cats, although I do worry about MWH (my wonderful husband) who has put rather a lot of flooring down in our roof so he can keep his collection of school and uni notes, clothing worn when he was a lot younger & fitter, records (that's "LPs"), spare chairs, old suitcases... need I go on?

My obsession is frogs, I have no idea where it came from but the shape, colour and general cheeriness of frogs is what I like. My all time favourite came from my wonderful Aunt, and is made of Welsh slate. I have them in everything from wood to stone, to plastic, glass from Venice and brass from India... and now I've started making them in some of the scrap fabrics I've bought on Etsy.

Do you know about Etsy? I feel I should apologise for introducing people to Etsy, because it's become a bit of an obsession for me, at first I just wanted to buy things (lots and lots of things) but then I became very keen on the idea of selling something I really love to like-minded people!

Well, then I started casting (sorry!) about for yarn, and at the same time I was talking to my good friend, who happily is lulu carter's mother, about her lovely blog ... and Etsy came up in conversation. Anyhoo, long story short... now I'm sewing things to sell. Actually, I'm giving away a bunch more than I sell, but lavender bags make great gifts, especially if they're in groovy funky channel 27 type fabrics... (sorry, that's a Red Dwarf reference, go look it up) and then it dawned on me - I could make frogs! I could sell the frogs! I could combine the groovy fabrics on the frogs with the lavender!

Man, I was off! Safety eyes, fabric scraps, a kilo of lavender from Young, NSW (which is gorgeous), yarn, assorted christmas bits & pieces, stuff for kids, stuff for grownups... anyway, the frogs had to go through a few iterations before I got them to the point where I was happy with them. They were listed, delisted, and now are listed again. I've even made a bride frog in figured satin, with nice smelly stuff in a pouch inside, so the lavender didn't show through the satin. She has a nice tulle veil, held on with pearl buttons (completely obsessed? Yes, possibly).

Anyway, judge for yourselves... and if you have the name of a sympathetic shrink, don't tell me!

And then...

My friend Sara Lum, who is very clever, took some fantastic photos of my froggies. I made these a while ago to sell on Etsy (http://www.isabellagolightly.etsy.com/) but I wasn't very happy with the photos I took, and removed them all from sale. Sara has now inspired me to have another go at it, and her photos are great! Check this out!

Warning: Rant in progress

So, can anybody explain to me why things coming from "OS" (that's 'overseas') if you happen to be reading this from there, sometimes take 7 days and sometimes take a month? I'm pretty sure all my suppliers send their stuff Airmail, yet there seems to be a huge diversity in arrival times. I think I need to start keeping track of where these things are coming from - could it be that the mail system on the western seaboard of the US is incredibly efficient, and the eastern is incredibly inefficient, or vice versa? We shall see, heh heh, we shall see...

Anyway, in the middle of all that raving, I made some stuff...

Creative genius at work

Well, more creative than genius, but it's all good fun. I've gained myself a commission to make 70 lavender bags for a girl at work who's getting married, (yes, you did read right, 70), and we took ourselves off to Lincraft to purchase supplies. Quell horreur, Lincraft in the city is closing down, and it was an absolute zoo in there, but I did manage to snavel myself 5 (count 'em, 5) new blades for my rotary cutter for the bargain basement price of $30! Wonderful.


Anyway, armed with a metre of pink satin, 10 metres of pink ribbon & a whole heap of other goodies (bias binding maker, new cutting out board for a Christmas gift, and an entire roll of iron-on interfacing, I staggered home to start cutting out... my wonderful husband (being the compleat IT nerd) put a spreadsheet together for me calculating the most effective way to cut the material contingent on the width, so now I know that if I cut it width-wise, I can get 12 point something bags out of my 12.5 centimeters, each bag being approximately 8cm wide. I will post one when it's made up, but for now, here's one I made earlier!

Second time around, third time's the charm, apparently

So, on Wednesday when I was at home feeling like 'dren', I set up a blog in this very tool, attempting to use my real person email address, then I realised half way through that I really wanted to use my shop persona, so my split personality wouldn't get in the way... but I discovered that the address for this blog had already been used (by my real persona) & so I had to delete that one, and start again with this one. Interestingly, setting up all the HTML items, badges and whatnot, took considerably less time at midnight Friday than it did on the whole of Wednesday. Weird, huh?