I'm Back and A Petit Sale

Hello, have you missed me? Well, I've certainly missed you.

The internet has been broken for the last week or so, since the wild weather of the previous post. Darlings, it has been HELL.

Actually, it was fine, I spent all of last week making things for the Winter Fayre at Monkton Wylde to raise money for our kindergarten, so in the end I had plenty of time, with no distractions, to devote to that.

I made tiny felt hearts for the visiting Snow Queen to give to the children. Which gave me ample opportunity to practice my fairy stitching. You know, really tiny perfect stitches. Hmmm. I achieved partial success.





Look at this example of real-life fairy stitching. I found some embroidered linens at a charity shop last week and was so amazed at the level of work, care and detail. Lovely, eh? Oh, I wish fervently that I could sew like this.





So, back to my rather more haphazard brand of crafting - I also made a batch of mincemeat (very delicious), some dried fruit truffles (I'll be posting the recipe later this month) and some reindeer food. I'm sure you all know what that is. No? Well, it's the traditional recipe of oats and glitter, reindeer love it.

But this new week, I have to turn my attention fully toward Iris's third birthday, which is on Saturday!



I have a birthday crown and Bambi (current obsession of hers) card to make, presents to wrap and then on Friday, the mother of all cooking and baking sessions ahead of her party on Saturday. It truly is the calm before the storm! I am steeling my nerve.

So, I hope to be back a bit more this week - but until then I am happy to tell you that there's a 15% sale in both of the shops for the next two weeks or thereabouts. Orders will be shipped promptly so there's still time for a bit of Christmas shopping!

For le petit boutique and all the vintage goodness that lies within - add this code at the checkout - LEPETITCHRISTMAS and the 15% will be automatically deducted.

And then over in the etsy branch - I will refund 15% via Paypal.

Lastly, I was really thrilled to see that I had been featured over at A Beat My Heart Skipped (thanks to The Mad House for tipping me off) and as it turns out, one of my plates was featured in their Christmas Gift Guide last month! Double the warm glow!

November Skies and A Shop Update

What a wild weekend.

For weather that is. It's been very rainy and blowy and then rainy again and properly cold. We made the most of the wind by taking Iris to fly her kite yesterday morning.



Then in the afternoon, I watched the pinkly-tinged clouds canter over a silhouetted hill. It was beautiful.









Oh and I've added a few new plates to the shop. Go see!

New Plate Preview

Thanks for all your encouraging words regarding my last post.

The good ship creativity has yet to dock, but in the mean time, I have been practicing my Photoshop skills (negligible) and submitted a couple more designs to envelop.

This is newly approved and called blue mountain.




I also collected some newly fired plates from Flora's kiln - (do check out her sweet submission for Folksy's Upcycle Christmas Competition).

Excitingly, I used fancy gold decal on some of them. I bought it a while ago and have been intrigued to see how it turned out. Luxe! Shiny! Actually, it's not that shiny, it's got a nice pearlescent quality though.



Firing plates seems to require nerves of steel and a certain amount of magic and/or luck, a few from this batch just didn't make it, even though they're all from the same set (the tadpole-ish ones) more or less - I have no idea why.

Anyway, luckily some did! And here they are. They'll be in the shop soon!

Untitled

This is a post about, well, nothing really. And therein lies the problem.



I'm feeling distinctly lacking in inspiration. It's quite confounding and discombobulating. I don't know whether to do some more plates, or some more designs for envelop or whether to jazz up the shop a bit. I am cast adrift.



So, I sat at my desk and moved/straightened some piles of paper around, then I tipped all these shapes out and moved them around a bit.



I looked at the wall and my clutter, ahem, treasures.



Then I gave up, and came downstairs again. Maybe tomorrow will be different?

Post Weekend Post

Suzie has tagged me, it's a little music tag. I have to post a song that makes me happy. And right now, it's this song. Edge of Seventeen. If there's a song that switches a happy feeling on in you, will you post it in the comments?

We spent lots of time outside over the weekend. Although as it was so hugely and dramatically windy and rainy on Saturday there was no market, I haven't bought anything secondhand for days! I will rectify that at the earliest opportunity.

The sea was very tumultuous, the waves looked like mountains apparently, (Paul and Iris visited the sea without me).



Anyway, outside was lovely. Especially yesterday. We walked in the woods and looked for treasure and collected sticks for our fire. There was noticeably a lot of red around. Iris being the most red thing.









Also I am full of admiration for Kate Banazi and her work. I came across her on somewhere on Flickr after my screen printing adventures. And was instantly smitten.

She has a blog and a shop and a website and the most magnificent eye for colour and detail.

I am planning to snap up this one up, once I'm a little less fiscally challenged.



Looking forward to hearing all your happy song recommendations!

envelop

Thanks to Elisabeth's tip-off on her blog, I have got myself set up on envelop.

It's a great idea - they describe themselves as an online print-on-demand platform where independent illustrators and designers can create cotton textile collections such as cushion covers, tote bags and other household items. Read more about it here. It's just perfect for frustrated screen-printers like me!

You can see my submissions so far here and here's a preview below.

This one is called volcano.


And this one is called blue mass.


Just the thing to spruce up the homestead, eh?

p.s. my birthday brogues are by Jeffery Campbell, and they're available here at urban outfitters.

Post Birthday Post

Thank you all for your birthday glad tidings. I had a sweet and treaty day, with all sorts of nice. There were presents and cards and cake (two kinds) and prosecco and oysters.

Unfortunately all the photos I took were either out of focus or rubbish in some other undefinable way. So, I can only really share my new brogues with you for the moment.



And this whizzy photograph I took of Iris.



Oh and also, here's a little peek at some things I'm working on at the moment.

Birthday Wishes

(Paul took this on my birthday about 6 years ago, it's one of the only photographs of myself that I like. and then I read the footnote on one of Garance Dore's posts and laughed in grim recognition.)

So, yeah it's my birthday on Saturday. Ergo, I am a Scorpio. And I will be 35 years old. Eep! 35 seems quite a milestone, it sounds terribly grown-up.

Anyway, I have been promised chocolate biscuits, ice cream and balloons by my sweet Iris.

But of course I want far more than that, I've had a birthday list on the go since about September...

Any Dr Hauschka goes down well.

Some new books, in particular, Nick Cave's new novel and also Sarah Water's latest. And any tome from this lovely series, but of course the one on Scandinavian Style would be most welcome.

A Diana.

Um, ooh, I'd love a new bag, either a Fjallraven or one of these beautiful satchels (via here).

Some wool tights.

This print

These long woolen socks are rather fancy.

Some skinny cords - always a good winter staple.

I could go on...

I will go on - stay with me..

Some delicious fun stationery from Lazy Oaf! The Happy Friends tape!

Some of my favourite notebooks, in an assortment of sizes. Oh Rhodia! I used to be able to buy then from a local-ish post office quite randomly, but now I can't.

So, that's about it. Well, of course, it's not at all, but this is all extremely self-indulgent and frivolous anyway. Thanks for indulging me.

Junk Shop Finds

No carboot sales for me this weekend due to inclement weather forecasts, so I, very wisely, managed to steal away for an hour on Friday to go to my favourite junk shop and it proved very fruitful indeed.

Okay, so some of the things I bought are a bit odd, but no worse off for that. Shall we have a look? Then you can decide for yourselves..

First up is this groovy jig-saw-ish game, called Car Capers, you have to make such classics as an Austin Maestro. Fun!



Some squeaky toys - maybe from the 1950s? - they remind me of Jeff Koons' work, I can just imagine one three metres high and perhaps made of stainless steel. Super kitsch and super super annoying when squeaked incessantly.



And also some flocked animals, such as this squirrel with a real fur tail. He only has one eye and his nut has long disappeared.



A tiger and a proud lion, both pretty unravaged by the passing of time.



A shifty looking polar bear.



Some story-telling gloves. The prints on these are so sweet! I love all their dear little faces!



A teeny tiny little doll, I rather like her.



A jolly Brio figure.



A tube of 'Figure Craft' for making all kinds of creations.



I just loved the look of all the different shapes and groovy colours.



A pair of tiny white leather shoes.



Some little pieces of embroidered fabric that I'm going to stitch onto a blouse or cardigan.



And that was that.

Well, actually there was lots more oddness. More animals missing various limbs (they were all in one big bag) and a really nice old till for Iris. She keeps pretending it's a bepooter (computer), and that she's working (this involves hitting all the buttons very quickly in the manner of typing). Tsk! These modern children!

In other non-junk related news, I carved another pumpkin. Pretty, no?



And today, we went to the seaside, but the reason I'm showing you this photograph is because of some re-purposing that I am particularly pleased with.

Do you see Iris's leg warmers? They're a pair of Paul's old socks, (the pair he wore on our wedding day no less), they were sadly beyond repair but now live on in an equally stylish way (I just cut the feet off)!



I'm planning to make some more as they're so simple, although I will probably add some elastic and hem the ones I do next, you know, do it properly. I am also part way through teaching myself how to crochet so expect some wonky evidence of that this week..