What will I be dreaming of this weekend..

I'm addicted to Etsy! It's full of gorgeous handmade and vintage items. You can also waste time creating beautiful Treasuries, your own little treasure boxes of items that tickle your fancy, like I have done! It's fun, it's like being the editor of your very own magazine!

Here's two of my hand picked treasuries, collections of all the beautiful things I will be dreaming of this weekend, all found on Etsy:

Embroidery Transfers On Felt? Bah!

Iron on transfers pattern from FrenchKnot.com

 As mentioned about a month ago, I received a custom order from a 6 year old. In between working on less demanding projects I've been since thinking how best make what I had been ordered. The thing is, I need to embroider a butterfly. Bugger! Insects aren't my forté. But I found lovely embroidery transfers free online and bought an iron on transfer pencil (2,5€ at Lankamaailma Nordia) and was eager to give it a go. I thought instead of transferring the entire piece I'd test the pencil first with just the butterfly.

 And ta-da; here's a picture of how it turned out:









                                     Did absolutely nothing! :D

Embroidery - Day 1

I had a gut feeling it wouldn't work on felt, but surely it had to be tested. I had been avoiding starting this project in fear of messing up (I put WAY too much pressure on myself when it comes to custom orders) and was rather discouraged and disappointed even though I had predicted it wouldn't work. I tend to get like that, afraid of trying something in fear of failure. But nothing left to do but just face the music and start stitching away!

I was so cynical and so sure nothing would come out of me attempting to free hand a butterfly I was pleasantly surprised when with very little effort I managed to "sketch" out the insect last night!

Today I added a bit of color and will keep working on it before moving on embroidering flowers on the bag, just thought I'd share what I'm working on at present. I think this might just turn out decent enough :)

Wysteria Tree Hangbag

Ooh my my my this one turned out Preeetty!

 It's another bag made of yarn I bought from Kaunas, Lithuania this summer. It's another version of the same basic bag and if I may say so myself, a lovely one! Love the falling flowers and the color combinations!

Craftmuting

There are not enough hours in the day! Have you noticed this? I surely have! With a full time job and a 40min commute one way I find I don't have enough time for my crafts. Solution: crafting while commuting. As mentioned before, it helps pass the time, but also it's a great way to utilize the time that would otherwise be wasted.

It is also a great way to promote your work. People are often curious to know what it is that I'm making and this provides me a great opportunity to advertise my blog or Etsy shop. A little business card is always helpful to have on hand when crafting in public. You never know when somebody grabs your knit-work in awe and demands to know where can they get one!

Getting Inspired

wow my head looks enormous from this angle :D

Every now and then it's fun to break the routines and try something new. I had been dying to get my hands on actual felting instead of the numerous felt-in-machine-projects (which, I have learnt, are actually called fulled, not felted projects) and was a happy camper when the local civic institute published their list of their new courses. Among all the interesting choices, like "Facebook Basics" and "Facebook Follow-Up "-courses (seriously, wtf?!) I found two felting classes I signed up for.

The first one was truly inspiring! While the others took on some more challenging pieces, I humbly concentrated on making flowers all through the 8 hour class. Seriously. You'd think one would make heaps of cute little flowers in that time. I made three. Yippee. But quality over quantity, I say!

The flowers were assembled from five pieces. First I made little squares, one a bit larger and four smaller ones, and after felting I cut them into little "amoebas".




Then I needle felted them all together, using the bigger piece as a base and bundling the smaller ones in the middle. Piece of piss!

Then I went through all the petals one by one with soapy water, scrunched the flower, soaped some more and voilá, it's a flower.




Staying true to my colors as always, I made one in pink and one in turquoise. The smaller pink flower seen on the pictures is the test-version, the one I went mad on with the scissors. Amoebas, amoebas, that's the key to success!






 Here's some of the items others made:

Now if I would've been feeling a bit more adventurous, I could have used my time making a gorgeous hat or a cute little bag. But I wasn't, so I didn't. But some of the others took on the challenge and wow, they did a great job!

One of my personal favorites was the green crocodile. Making it looked more like voodoo than crafts! The finished beast looks fierce and was made by the youngest of us in class, roughly guestimating this crafty crafter was at least 16 years younger than moi. You gotta start young!

Not all of as were thinking small. Two of the ladies made chair pads and for a moment I felt as if I would've wanted to join in. Then I saw how much material (and work!) goes into them and decided to stick with my chosen path.

Now. If someone shows up in class with pink merino wool and matching equipment, they have to be respected. No matter what you're making at least make your project match your scissors! I found my kindred spirit in Pink Scissors Lady!

These slippers look so adorable finished. I will from now on value all hand made felt slippers even more seeing how much work goes into making them. They didn't seem that difficult to make, might even give it a go at the next course, but for now I'll stick to the knitted ones. But these are adorable!

All in all - I can't wait for next class!

how u like them apples

Blue Meadows Hand Bag

Oooh! Another bag to sell on Etsy :)

Made a really good start, my light green sun glass case was sold only few hours after listing it on Sunday. My first Etsy-sale only 4 days after opening the shop! GO ME! :) I've been spending most my free time researching, reading instructive blogs, commenting on etsy-forums, joining etsy-groups, linking up stuff to my shop and wow, there's a lot that goes into promoting your shop! I know now that I need to a) get more goodies out there b) get more professional photos and c) get the promotion going full steam. Last week alone I joined so many sites to promote my shop I can't even remember them all. All this has been maybe a bit too much, though I'm excited I'm getting stressed too thinking of all the hard work I'll have to put into this to get things going. And when I get stressed I get sick. FEVER! AGAIN! So gotta slow it down and make a plan, not stress too much.. And stop ranting. Definately need to stop ranting and write about the new bag. Get to the point, Sini!

So, long story short, may I present the bag that I finished few days ago: The Blue Meadows Hand Bag. It's GORGEOUS! It's made of yarn I bought from Kaunas in Lithuania, from a little corner shop from a man who didn't speak a word English and served me in German instead. Which was fun since all I remember from German is "ich habe eine hubschrauber in meinem arsch". Try typing that in Google Translater if you're interested in knowing why using that sentence wouldn't have been appropriate. But as I speak fluent Point-And-Nod, I got this beautiful yarn along with a light purple one too.

The bag is again first knitted, then felted in washing machine, and embroidered with this time 5 different color DMC embroidery cotton. I really like these bamboo handles and used one on this one too. But what I really love about this one is how well the colors on the cotton lining go with the embroidery. Perfect match! Or
as we say in my family: "sopii kuin nenä pyllyyn"  - simply translated: "fits like a nose fits a bum hole". Yes. Our family is odd.



Find it in Etsy at Purse with hand embroidered flowers

Etsy Shop Open!

Okay, original plan was to have loads of bags ready and then open an Etsy shop. But I just couldn't wait! So I launched it already! Huzzaaah, we're up and running. Only got 3 items to begin with, but then, quality over quantity :)

Come join my circle and check out my small, yet lovely, Etsy shop at http://muffintopknits.etsy.com