Getting Stitchy Again

A little action at the Etsy shop is very motivating!

I made some custom patches for an Etsy seller, Chat Noir Designs, who will use them on some children's things she knits.



These are smaller than I usually do. The disks are just 1.5 inches. She wanted two sheep, two elephants, and two turtles. It is hard to believe, but these are the very first turtles I've ever stitched. Not because they are so fantastically original or anything, but hasn't everyone crafty made owls and turtles?


Just because they are smaller doesn't really make them easier. You have to be really precise with small shapes like these.



Their wee cuteness brightens my mood so I also made an amigurumi valentine. It's dark here now, so I'll have to photograph it later. I used this pattern by Owlishly HERE.

Finally, back in the fall I had a HUGE order to craft a variety of my pouches for all the moderators at Craftster. Yesterday, my pouches were on the front page of Craftster. See it HERE. Craftster has really updated their look and I love it. It is really easy to see projects people post because there are thumbnails for each photo post. They also have a long overdue blog.

I listed and relisted a bunch of stuff over at Etsy. Our slightly brighter days are good for my photographs!

Craft Show!

This is my set up for tomorrows craft show. I thought I didn't have enough stuff but when I put it all out, I think I have plenty. My daughter's 2nd grade friend thinks I should have made more things with monkeys, but she assures me that she'd spend a lot if she didn't have to keep her money in the bank ;-)

The sun already set around here, so these detail pics are blurry. I sometimes forget to photograph things before I sell them or give them as gifts and then I forget how I made them. Anyone else do that?

Kitty Pouches:


Surprised Owl:


Mushroom and Sunshine Overtaking Cloud:


Whales:


Cupcake and Cookies:


I have a bunch more pouch designs. These are the ones I haven't shared yet.
They have a simple velcro closure and measure about 6 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches with a 1 1/4 inch square gusseted bottom and a velcro closure.

I also have embroidered hairclips, crochet flowers, Cotton crochet pots, and a few felt envelopes.

Wish me luck! (Edit: The show was tonight and my disc barrettes were my best sellers. I got great feedback. It was a really cold forbidding day weatherwise so it was kind of slow with customers.)

I do have an Etsy shop. You can email me there if you are interested in my work, but aren't local to suburban Chicago. Look for the little "Contact IamSusie" on the side of the shop page under "IamSusie's info". I ship worldwide!

Felt Hairclips for Craft Show

I've been stitching like crazy for a craft show I'm doing locally on Friday. I have no idea how busy the show will be, but I know we have some talented sellers! I've decided that I can't control whether or not people decide to buy, but I can make a cute pile of stuff, so that is what I've focused on.

Above is a detail of a mushroom hairclip.


I made some cupcake versions:


Gnomes:


I did some little embroidered snowflakes on these:


Here are some elephants:


Little Red Riding Hood:


and some more boy and girl doggies:


I also wanted to do monkeys, flowers, and a little kitty, but I am exhausted and I think this is enough for now. I also have a pile of fabric pouches, a few felted sweater totes with felt applique, and a stack of lovely crochet flower pins including some festive pointsettias.

A few of my hairclip designs are available at my Etsy shop. I also accept some special orders of things I have photographed but not actually gotten around to listing in the shop. Just email me or send me an Etsy convo and I'll see if I can send you that item.

If you are in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago, come to our Grayslake Holiday Boutique.We'll have 2 sessions on Friday, December 5: 11-2 and 5-9. I'll be set up at both sessions. Free refreshments! I'm baking a variety of brownies too!

Doggie hair clips

Someone suggested that I should make a doggie version of my hairclips so this is the result. They are pretty cute! I adapted a design from one of my Japanese felt craft books. The felt disc is about 2 inches across and the snap hairclip is sewn inside.



I've stitched up about 50 disc hairclips like this in various colors and styles. The thing that often happens when I show them to people is they say, "Oh you should make these into pins!" Or if I have a pin design, I hear, "This would be a great girl's barrette!"

This is so nice to hear, so I really have to think of a quick way to make these into either thing based on the preference of my customer.

That stack of 50 took me days and days to make, so I doubt I'll be able to get a similar stack of pins done for the craft show I'm doing at the end of next week. In fact I'm getting pretty nervous about that craft show. I've made a nice stack of these clips and I have a good pile of cute embroidered fabric pouches. I plan to crochet up some wool flowers over the weekend too. My offerings are so small! I hope I have a good enough selection of stuff.

I wanted to sew up some luggage tags and maybe some tissue paper holders too, but someone else in the show is a good sewer and I don't want to step on her game.

Cotton Pots

These little pots are really handy for small craft supply storage.



I use sturdy dishcloth cotton yarn because it has a heavier bulky weight when crocheted so they hold their shape. They are still soft and collapsible.


The knobs are a button and a pony bead. I like the idea of a natural wooden bead, but the colorful button-bead combination is even better.



I enjoy making these and I hope to list some in my Etsy shop in August after we get back from a family trip we are taking out west. Etsy is fun but it takes a lot of effort to list new things constantly. I got distracted recently with quiltmaking and sewing for my family and I hope to go back to embroidering and crochet for the shop in the fall.

Happily, I have some baby projects to make. Our friends came home from the hospital this weekend with a long anticipated new member of the family. Hooray!

Flowers in Shop Update

I love having an Etsy shop and It's taking much less time for me to photograph and list items than it did at first. The thing is that they recommend that you try to list things regularly, hopefully everyday to keep your shop visible in searches. I find that I can only really do it in fits and spurts and then my listing goes quiet for awhile. I just can't make crafting for the shop my full time activity.

Don't worry! I'm always ready to ship as soon as an order comes in! It's just the crafting that I can't fully maintain at a constant level.





These are the flowers pins I listed for today, even though in most of the world, it is the off season for wool items. I have several more to list tomorrow too, but I am at least going to try to spread it out over a couple of days. I used my recently dyed wool yarn to make these. I want to keep my shop more fully stocked with offerings. That will be my summer goal!

Shop Update

New stuff for the etsy shop:



This sock monkey pouch sold really fast. I have to make more of these soon:

Spring Applique

New hair clips for my shop made possible by my circle die cutter:


Snap barrettes are stitched inside 2-inch felt disks:




My daughter test drove a version of these and I was pleased with how well it stayed in her slick straight hair. The felt really helps keep things secure.

Etsy Shop Update

I made some new hair clips and updated some of my listings at Etsy. I have some cute happy sunshine pouches and my favorite monkeys in various incarnations. I use similar velcro pouches in my purse as organizers and they are very sturdy and fun to use. Anyone else with an Etsy shop want to tell me the secrets of selling?

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade IamSusie.etsy.com

DIY lightbox

Thanks Marichelle and Joyful Abode for their DIY lightboxes.

Here's the set up I did today:


I used clip on lights. I should have bought three of the larger sized ones, but I wanted to save a couple of dollars.... I used duct tape to tape the lamps right to my plastic tub. Since the lights are hot halogen ones, I have to be sure to switch off the lamps so I don't melt my plastic tub. (edit- I switched the tape to heat resistant aluminum tape and it works much better than duct tape. You can find it in the same area of the hardware store as duct tape.)

Here is the result:


I was able to achieve this with my old method of laying the items out by a sunny window, but the light that way was too inconsistent. I only did some very small photoshop tweaks to get this to come out. I also got 4 separate angles of this item and the color matches on each photo. Yeah... I'm a lightbox convert. My camera is one of the littler digital ones, not one of those fancy SLRs people have so much success with.

It turns out that I thought I needed a tripod, but I have a good steady hand and it is easier to snap super closeups without the tripod set up. I love that little flower setting on my camera.

Finished and Photographed Pouches

It's taken me all day to get photographs taken of just 4 of my fabric pouches to list them at my etsy shop. The crafting is easy, but dang, getting decent photographs is so frustrating! It's particularly difficult getting four angles of each item to match. I think it may be the winter sun. We went out and got a cheap full spectrum light and it helped, but I'm still not totally satisfied with my photos...

I really like my pouches though!

I've had this adorable sock monkey fabric for awhile. I even made my own mousepad with some of it. This is my Sock Monkey Fabric Pouch.


Here is another monkey style applique pouch. I love this bandana fabric. One of these fabrics is from Michael Miller.


I adore red gingham and flowers, so I made this more traditional style pouch:


Finally, I made another version of my Alien Invasion pouch. The novelty fabric was at JoAnns, but I think it sold out awhile ago.


I hit upon the idea to do circular patches because some of my fabrics are very graphic and bright and aren't such good backgrounds for handstitched details.

Voting Day

My blogging has really slowed down. I love winter, but late January and February is when winter malaise hits me. I'm thinking about getting more full spectrum lightbulbs in the house because I heard they help.

We made it to Super Tuesday! Don't forget to vote if you live in one of the states in the USA voting today!
My dad serves as the election judge at his precinct and election day is his favorite. He likes to chat up all his neighbors old and new that show up at the polls. Being an election judge is truly a marathon that starts at dawn and doesn't end until well after the polls have close and the votes are counted.

In many ways, I think voting in primaries is more significant than voting in the general election because the primary is where we can have a voice in the direction our party takes. Here in highly corrupt Illinois politics we've seen many honest, hardworking candidates lose in the primaries because they don't have a political machine backing them. I personally don't think there is such a thing as "throwing your vote away" on an underdog candidate.

That said, my candidate is a front runner. My darling husband votes in the other primary and would like them to stay true to their ideological principles.

Thanks to you all who had advice for me about the rosacea makeup. I'm going to try one of the brands of the mineral stuff although "all natural" isn't always good. Poison ivy is natural, but I wouldn't use in on my skin. I found THIS product from Maybelline. It is quite inexpensive. I have to put it on right after the moisturizer so it isn't too dry on my skin.....

Back to our regularly scheduled crafting soon. I pledge to take some photos today of the cute pouches I'm working on for my shop.

Some of these cheerful sunny pouches have already sold, but the purple and yellow one is available.

More Flowers

I added some of my Felted Crochet Flowers to my Etsy Shop.



I also added one of my Monkey Totes:

There is sort of a trick to listing on Etsy. You have to tag everything carefully or items seem to get lost in the masses of listings. I have to get involved in the forums over there to get the skinny on successful selling. There is even a whole board dedicated to it over at Craftster. Obviously the key is self promotion. I think I have to work on that, as all my blogger connections are crafty like me. In the meantime, I checked out the prices for overseas shipments and my things are light so it isn't that much more expensive. Crochet flowers available worldwide!