Posts belonging to Category Handmade Monday

Hello and welcome.  It’s Handmade Monday time again!

the surfing plaque was finished and sent out

Thanks so much for all your feedback last week – all your comments were really useful.  It’s so good to see things from another perspective sometimes.  I hope the comments section now works for everyone on Handmade Harbour now  (I changed the settings so “anyone” can comment).  Please let me know if it doesn’t work for you.

I’ve made the decision that we will try out Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour, which will free this blog up for posts related to painting and gifts (and general ramblings – you know how it is!) and kind of separate it all (in my head at least).  I will of course join in just the same as always because I love Handmade Monday!

I plan to give it a month’s trial over there (if it’s a real disaster it might not last that long) – we’ll start next week, hopefully.  There will be lots of links over here to direct people who might get a little lost along the way.  I will monitor the number of clicks and visitors, to make sure things are going OK.  The interviews I’m doing on a Sunday over there will move to a weekday – probably Friday.

This week has been a busy one.  Not just with customer orders (although there have been plenty of those!) – there’s been a trip to London where I was actually paid to chat about personalised/handmade gifts and blogging!  How cool is that?

I also got the chance to try out my new travel sewing kit on the train journey down there – click the link for the tutorial.

sewing on the train

I found time to pop into a bustling art/craft market at Covent Garden

covent garden art craft market

and see my daughter and baby granddaughter who live in London.

Actually, it was brilliant to have them meet me off the train at Euston station in more ways than one, as my daughter knows the tube system well.  Would I have got to my appointment on time without her?  Who knows!  I could still be wandering around the underground now!  We both managed to get lost in Covent Garden though – I only had a little Google Maps printout of the area and taking a wrong turn out of the tube station took us right off the map immediately!

I wish I’d had more time there, but I needed to get back here.  I think one of the main drawbacks of a craft business is that it’s so demanding of your time – especially when almost everything’s made to order.

OK, so you know the drill.  If you don’t, check out this page for info about Handmade Monday and how you can join in.

Welcome to another Handmade Monday.  Don’t these weeks fly by fast?

surfer plaque

I have a question for you.

How would you feel if Handmade Monday were to move house?  I was thinking it might make more sense for it to live over on Handmade Harbour, seeing as that’s all about promoting handmade.

Would it bother you?

Handmade Harbour isn’t quite as busy as here yet (although it’s catching up pretty fast, to be fair!).  I do think a lot of the interest generated by Handmade Monday would probably continue over there.  And I do have lots of plans in place for promoting Handmade Harbour – some are already underway, others are a couple of months off.

How about we trial it for a couple of weeks?  What do you think?  If you have any objections, questions, worries, etc., please feel free to air them in the comments on this post

The surfer plaque above is a work in progress – a custom request.  I think it might eventually make its way to the website.  The customer likes it and it’s about to be personalised – and then it’s off to Australia for a birthday.

Over to you!

Hello and welcome!  Find out about Handmade Monday here.

This week has flown by.  I seem to have been one step behind where I want to be all week – do you have weeks like that?

As usual, I love the spin my customers put on things sometimes . . .

welcome to chateau tommo

although I usually forget to photograph them before they’re packed  – and it’s not much use photographing them after they’re packed!  This one was lucky

I’ve been doing lots more sewing too.    In true handmade and upcycling fashion, everything has potential . . .  as this 2009 diary can testify (and what a bargain it was at the time, huh?).  It didn’t actually see a lot of action in 2009 but I think it might see plenty in its new incarnation!

2009 diary

I’ve made something really rather useful with it today, involving recycled fabrics, my sewing machine and a glue gun.  It’s not quite finished yet – so you’ll have to wait for the great ta-dah moment – it’ll be on Handmade Harbour soon as a tutorial – I’m sure someone might guess today what it’s going to be when it’s grown up!

What’s your handmade week been like?  Leave your link and we can find out!

Welcome to Handmade Monday – click the link and read the info if you’re new to Handmade Monday.  There aren’t many rules, so please play fair and abide by them.

I wanted to show you this double sided plaque – it went out a few weeks back, but I’ve just not got round to blogging about it.

happiness is having 3 loos

It was for a family who have just had an extension built.  The three boys are on the front of the plaque with the wording happiness is having 3 loos.  I guess maybe it is at times!

On the back, the side which I’m told might only be shown to selected guests, is a slightly cheeky message …

… so I give you the warning now if you want to avert your children’s eyes before scrolling further …

(I know some people read my blog with children)

… although the double-entendre was one I heard in the Simpsons the other week, so perhaps I’m just being old-fashioned…

…although, to be honest, some of the jokes in the Simpsons make me wonder why it goes out as a kids’ programme!

Are you ready?

OK, then, here’s the other side:

what a stupendous erection!

Apparently, a stupendous erection is how this family refers to their new extension!

This commission brought back memories of my schooldays at a girls’ grammar school in the seventies.  Our rather posh (but perhaps naive) headmistress used to refer to a set of tiered benches the caretaker had built as Mr Clare’s erection.

I shall leave you to imagine the muffled sniggers in the assembly hall when we were told what the choir would be sitting on at the carol service

I promise you it’s a true story!  Poor Mr Clare.  I wonder if he knew he was the gossip of the playground in the run-up to every school event?

OK, so it’s over to you!

Hello and Happy Easter to you!  Hope you’re having a lovely day!

If you’re here for Handmade Monday, welcome.  If you’re new to Handmade Monday, find out more about it here.  There aren’t many rules, so please play fair and abide by the few that are there!

You may know I’ve been doing a little sewing recently.  I am loving the change this brings to my creativity and I thought I’d give you a little peek at one of my projects

a chicken emerging!

simply because it’s Easter and that always makes chickens kind of topical.

chicken coin purse

It’s a keyring coin purse and it’s going to be available as a downoadable pattern.  For these projects, the real work begins after I’ve made an item: it now needs a pattern that other people can follow (not just a hacked together one with alterations and scribbles all over it!) and proper instructions and sequenced photographs.

I also want to make some chickens in other fabrics!  I had an urge to make a hessian chicken but it’s probably not the best choice for such a small project – I think I might dig out some lovely cotton and polycotton scraps with spots and checks and stripes.

I’m also enjoying rediscovering lots of sewing-related stuff.

These threads belonged to my Grandma, and as the only person in the family with even a passing interest in wielding a needle and thread, I inherited a box full of them as a teenager in the 1970s.

threads

They bring back lovely warm memories of being about seven or eight years old and sewing at her knee (literally – I used to sit by her on the floor while we both sewed).  I learned my first pattern cutting lessons then, too – how to cut a doll’s trouser pattern so she could actually sit as well as stand!

I’m looking forward to relaxing now while I read your Handmade Monday blogs!  Hmmm… now, where did I put those creme eggs?

Welcome to another Handmade Monday!

hand-stitched heart and button

What a week it’s been!  The highlight for me, which you’ll know about if you’ve been following this blog, was of course meeting Theo Paphitis of Dragons’ Den fame.  I won’t bore you yet again (if you’ve not read it yet and want to see what all the fuss is about I talked about it here and here – there’s lots of photos on the second link).  I’m still buzzing though!

I’ve been asked for shots of the dress I wore as I ended up covering it up with a cardi on the day when the weather turned a bit cooler.  Here it is – and it really did only just fit!  I’m still losing weight and it is a very slow process!

back home and down to earth with the chickens!

The dress was an ankle-length one belonging to my mum way back in the 1960′s and I chopped it down.  I used some of the offcuts to line a handbag, which I made in true scavenger style from an old skirt of my sister’s.  Are you getting the impression my family offloads all their old stuff onto me?  You could be right

inside of the bag matched my dress

The lining incorporates a few pockets too for business cards and phone, with room for a coin purse and my camera.

my handmade handbag

I’m going to get the pattern for the bag together as a downloadable file – do you think other people might be interested in making one?

Meanwhile, leave your craft blog link and we can all do some well-earned blog-hopping with a cup of tea (or maybe something stronger!)

Welcome to Handmade Monday (follow the link to find out more about it).

This week I dusted off my sewing machine and started playing around with making sewing patterns. It’s something that has been on my to do list for a long while!

sewing machine

I also built some shelves in the office/spare bedroom which is now also a sewing room – a true multi-functional room!

gorm

The shelves were courtesy of IKEA, the wonderfully-named, cheap and functional Gorm, a name which makes me laugh.  My dad’s greatest insult when we were kids was to call us gormless.  Thank to IKEA, I have so much Gorm now (in my studio, the garage and now my office/sewing room/spare bedroom) that I thought maybe I would never be gormless again.

gormless

How wrong can you be?

While measuring up for this latest lot, I thought the shelves were 70cm long, so I measured up, bought them, built them, moved them into position and

slightly too big

. . . they would have been perfect if only we didn’t need to use the door to get in and out of the room.  The shelves were actually 77cm long and there were three, meaning my measurements were out by a critical 21cm

All was not lost – I rebuilt, because their versatility meant I could squash them up a bit by staggering the shelves.

shelving

That was the point at which I dropped the (very heavy) spanner on my bare foot.  Ouch.

Double gormless!

I typed this on Saturday, foot raised on a couple of cushions, feeling a little sorry for myself (well, someone had to and nobody else in the house was feeling sympathetic!).  I’m happy to report it’s starting to feel better today.

I’m  also trying to prepare for a potentially busy week next week – I’m waiting to see if this clock

give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world

goes into a certain magazine with a very large circulation, as planned.  Part of me is dreading it because of the reaction my clocks have had before in the press (it can result in stupidly busy days with no spare time at all).

But another part of me is of course very excited.  It’s such a lovely thing  to see people reacting positively to your designs and even better when they part with cash to own one of them.

Here’s hoping your week hasn’t involved dropping heavy tools on your feet.

Join in with Handmade Monday by leaving your craft blog link and leaving comments on the other blogs if you can

Welcome to another Handmade Monday.  If you’re joining in, please remember to add a link to this blog somewhere in your blog post – thank you.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mums out there!  Hope you’re having a lovely day.  If you’re in the US, you may think I’ve gone slightly crazy, but I promise you I’ve not (yet).  I don’t know why the world doesn’t co-ordinate these events!

toilet door plaque

One of my commissions this week was for a ladies’ retirement home.  Specifically, the request was for six toilet door plaques, without wording, because some of the ladies have dementia and have lost the ability to read but can still recognise pictures.

toilet door plaque

Each one was slightly different and I really enjoyed doing the little plantpots, each with something different in them!  I’ve had an email from the retirement home manager saying they were exactly what they’d hoped for, which I’m pleased about

toilet door plaques

I’ve also started sending out interview questions for the Handmade Harbour features – if you want to promote your shop, let me know and I’ll send you the questions too.  The first one has just gone live and is one of the Handmade Monday linkups tonight.   A big thank you to Caroline, for agreeing to be featured and sharing some tips with us all.

What have you been making this week?  Looking forward to finding out…

Welcome to another Handmade Monday.

What’s Your Tipple?

I seem to be becoming known for my alcohol-themed clocks – this vodka clock was a special request!  There’s already wine, gin, beer and my list of jobs often looks like a round at the bar (two large gins, a small beer and three large wines – the clocks come in two sizes!).

it's vodka o' clock

I meant to have tea time clocks made in time for Mother’s Day, too, but there’s just not been time

Handmade Harbour

I think a lot of you have by now discovered my new baby – Handmade Harbour.  If you haven’t seen it yet, please do have a look.  It’s all about supporting the handmade community and I’ve started by blogging helpful tips that you might be able to use.  I’m hoping to add downloadable designs and even ebooks at some point in the (probably very distant) future.

Would You Like to be Featured?

My next stage for Handmade Harbour is looking for people to feature.  I’m going to be doing a regular feature in the form of an interview with designers and shops (you could potentially be featured in both because the questions for each will focus on different things).  I didn’t want to do this until I’d drummed up a bit of interest, but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the number of readers I’ve had up to now (which could just be down to the fact it’s new of course).

So – with luck – the interviews may begin sometime very soon!

If you’d like to be featured, please email wendy@1stuniquegifts.co.uk with Handmade Harbour as the subject line.  Once I’ve finalised the questions, I’ll send them out to you.  It’s another way of promoting yourself -  and you’ll get links back to your shop/blog of course.

The interviews aren’t just a standard set of questions – I want them to be something where we can all learn from each other.

put your feet up

In the meantime, I’m going to put my feet up for a little well-earned blog browsing (join me by clicking on the links below) – it’s been a busy week and looks set to be another because Mother’s Day orders have been coming in thick and fast this weekend.

Hello and welcome to Handmade Monday – click the link for more info and how to join in.

Phew! It’s been a week of short notice orders and urgent deadlines.  It’s all well and good prioritising orders when they’re needed urgently for Christenings, weddings and birthdays but it’s difficult when they all come at once!  It’s been a good mix of canvases, clocks, plaques and photo frames (a good mix makes life more interesting but slows down the making process!).  Oh, and a couple of chalkboards thrown in for good measure!

personalised christening frame for twins

In other news, I was shocked to see Culcheth village on the national news today – the car park where the man was shot dead by police last night is the one I use every day when I do the post office run.  There’s a lot of online speculation, but it seems the victim may have been involved in a number of armed robberies (there was one in the village a couple of weeks ago).  Culcheth is usually such a quiet place, which makes it all the more shocking.

I’ll be using a different post office for a couple of weeks – not because of this incident but because the post office was taken over by new management this week and the emphasis has very definitely been on staff training rather than customer service.  The queue has been out of the door and it’s been moving rather slowly, to say the least!   How is it that a slow queue rather than a shooting sways a decision?

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s been going on in your world.  Please leave your craft blog link and I’ll pay you a visit!