want

I spotted this antique sewing table on Etsy this morning.

Oh, want!

if you want to destroy my sweater

I came across this short video on YouTube this morning by Sara Cox. It's called 'Don't let it all unravel' and the entire thing was created using knitting, or the unravelling of said knitting. I thought the shots where the ball of wool is supposed to be the moon were really strange looking, the movements reminded me a little bit of David Lynch.

freecycle

A few months ago, I joined a yahoo group called Greenock Freecycle where you can 'recycle' unwanted items instead of throwing them away and no money is exchanged.
I usually receive around 20 emails a day of people selling garden gnomes or electrical cables, but last week I came across an advert for an electrical typrewriter. I emailed back straight away and an hour later I was at a lovely woman called Christine's house collecting my new toy.





I was surprised to find that it was in perfect working order and that there was still some ink left.
I decided to use it to write a long-overdue letter to Katie Haegele who sent me some of her found poems a while back. When I was taking the second photo the flash was far too bright. I put my finger over the flash to dull it down a bit and I quite like the way this looks.

stylophone

I was in Glasgow last week and had some time to waste before I went to meet someone. I took a wander to Relics and got lost in there for over an hour. I found this amazing wee stylophone for £4 and was dying to get home to have a go. When I opened the box there was a piece of paper inside with a youtube link written on it.
This is what I found:



The strange this is, this guy lives in Leeds...

va-va-vintage! indie market

I think this is my favourite craft mafia poster so far.

pixel heart notebook

I love to write and to draw when i get bored on the train and was looking for a new diary today.
I came across a blogger/etsy seller/ crafter on a forum a while ago who goes by the name Lertsis. She makes all of these really nice journals and so I decided to make my own.
I did a test run before I used any expensive materials. Here's my first attempt:

I used strong brown wrapping paper for the cover,



white cartridge paper for the insides,



and a layer of grease proof paper between the two to mask the underside of the pink stitching.
I know 'grease proof paper' doesn't sound so nice but it does the trick!

songs for cake

From today, the new Firebrand Boy release is available for free download over at 8bitpeoples!

So what are you waiting for?!

boo-hoo etc.

I have my last ever exam on Wednesday and studying is proving to be a real downer. That and the fact that I've drank my way through all the green tea in the house. Ho hum.
But! A week today is Made in the Shade, a craft market being held in The Lighthouse which will be home to some of the best crafters around for a whole day. I'm pretty excited. I can't wait to start making things again.

Mark E Smith: Squirrel Murderer.

I don't read NME, but I found this link in the blog of a Fall fanatic who is a good friend of mine.

The RSPCA and PETA were up in arms when Mark E Smith was quoted as saying he would happily "set about an endangered red squirrel with a set of professional hedge-clippers... Squirrels mean nothing to me. I killed a couple last weekend actually. They were eating my garden fence.
He also laughed because his dad runs over seagulls. Did they completely miss the story on the news a few weeks back about the people in Wales capturing grey squirrels and shooting them in the face? Combined with their accusation that mark e smith has an inferiority complex shows just how wrong they've got it.

Read the article here.

Japan braces for UFO attack

I was going to write about this earlier, but I let it slip and now it's old new... but I still find it amusing. First the Chief Cabinet Secretary and now the Minister of Defense of Japan announce that they believe in UFOs. The Minister of Defense is trying to figure out how to prepare for an alien invasion under the current Japanese pacifist constitution...

I found it on Bloomberg.

April Markets

clothes swap.

I just read a bulletin sent out by Pistol Whip Vintage, who is one of my favourite members of the Glasgow Craft Mafia. As part of the Oxjam music festival, The Beat Club are hosting the annual Clothes Swap on Friday 25th April!
I'm really excited as I missed it last year. You can see some great pictures on PWV website.
The ticket price is £5 which gets you in to the clothes swap and free entry into The Beat Club. Storage for swapped clothing will be provided so you wont need to drag it around on the dancefloor with you.
The event is even being filmed for Channel 4's Bite

More felt.

Unfortunately, as part of my work contract I've had to do clusters of three and four nightshifts in a row every few weeks. Due to some management changes, the passed weekend is the last I'll ever have to do them. Yip-yah!
Anyway, I got through the long 11 hour stretch by a mixture of films (thanks Karena), Game Boy and sewing. I made an order last week for some really nice hand-made felt from paper-and-string (I'm trying to find the link) and so decided to use up all my scraps. I've sewn all these different coloured felt circles and stuffed them. I'm thinking about using either wool or twine to join them all up and make a mobile. It's a work in progress.

This is the happy house.

C86 is a UK-based digital and mixed media artist whose designs I've been slevering over for a while now. He has a great myspace page which includes some of his most popular work, which comes in the form of t-shirts, badges and prints.
After I got paid I treated myself to one of his t-shirts =) Certain designs are sold via certain websites, but I contacted him and he was super-nice and pointed me in the right direction.
Due to the exchange rate, I got my t-shirt - plus postage and packaging- for £14. Score!

Hotel Fox

While I was killing some time before going to bed, I came across pictures of this amazing hotel in Mamiko's blog.

Hotel Fox is in Copenhagen, Denmark and each of the rooms inside have been decorated uniquely by different artists from all over the world. It's extremely expensive to stay there, and would probably be hard to sleep there due to the decor. But it looks great, doesn't it?

The La La Theory

I arrived home today to find that I'd received a letter from Katie Haegele, who writes under the pseudonym of The La-La Theory.

Katie has an impressive collection of writing in various forms, such as poems, zines, creatice nonfiction and even a newspaper column. All of this can be found on her website.

My favourite is her found poetry. Found poetry is the rearrangement of a random or 'found' piece of writing in order to give it an entirely different meaning. It's not something I've tried before, but I really love the idea of playing around with the wording to make something mean the complete opposite of what was intended.

I found Katie on the Cut-out and Keep website.

I emailed Katie and she offered to send me some of her things in the post and, in return, I'm sending her a package which I am in the middle of making. More on that later...

sweater skirt.

I sold some things on eBay and bought this skirt from DDA




Buy Handmade!!

Bagz

As part of my contract for my new job I have to work a few nightshifts each month. I was really dreading it at first, but it hasn't been too bad as it gave me time to finish off my first hand-knit bag!




The pattern that I used didn't have a pocket, but I thought it looked a bit plain. I think it turned out well!
I didn't really think about the measurements stated on the pattern tho, and I feel like the bag is a bit on the big side.
I'm thinking about unravelling it and making the bag half the size, but I wanted to show my first attempt =)

and another..

I found another photo!

For about a month between December and January this year I wasn't working. I'd just left an awful job and was waiting to start a new one. I had a lot of free time on my hands and spent a lot of it reading or making things.



My mum jokes that if anything stays still long enough that I'll sew felt onto it. I had these plain purple sillow slips on my bed looking dull and decided to make them look a little more interesting. I used the lid of a vaseline tin (again) to make the 'leaves' and hand-sewed the lot. It took a night and a day to finish, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

Heart-felt

I'm slowly collecting all of the things that I've made over the last few years and trying to get them photographed so that I can stick them in here. It's not as straight forward as I'd hoped it'd be.

Anyway! Here are some more things that I made a while back for Firebrand Boy.




When trying to think of the sort of merchandise I could make with felt I came up with the idea of these felt envelopes as cd sleeves. I measured and made a paper templates from which I cut the felt, then sewed the edges together. I made the sleeves in five or six different colours, but my favourite is the torquoise-blue. The polaroids which were in a previous blog were used as inserts for track listings for these sleeves.

I've sewn a lot of little appliques, too. It was one of the first things I did when I first started using felt.




This one I made for a card, which ended up being used for some of the Firebrand Boy things.
I like how lame the shapes and stitching is.

Etsy love

I'm pretty sure that by now everyone will have heard of, and fallen in love with, Etsy.
I'd like to give the creators a huge kiss. Before its existence, buying handmade was something only those with a ridiculous amount of time were bale to do, as these are often the projects which have little or no promotion.

Etsy has created a space where handmade items can be bought and sold, which is a great approach as now everyone can get involved. And that's the way craft should be.

The Etsy labs are a great source of information and for ideas for things to make.

I have a few favourite sellers who , even if I'm not looking to buy, I just like to look at their space.

FromJapanWithLove is a Canadian living in Japan who sells lots of amazing Japanese products and ships worldwide.
I especially love her collection of buttons and paper cuts. She's also a super-nice girl.
Kawaii!!




KupKup
is the fictional character who likes to find treasures in the bottom of the sea, but can't swim. His creator resides in Spain and makes these amazing little scenes made entirely from felt, along with buttons, brooches and stationary.
KupKup is my favourite.


apak is the combined efforts of two people to create really simple but amazing prints. I've bought a few of their cards before and they looked so great that I wanted to put them on my wall. A lot of their prints have a really washed out, sunny look about them. A lot of their work is created using Gocco (more on that later).
Alive!

week-long slump

For some technical reason, my digital camera hasn't been working properly.
I feel as though, for this blog at least, photos are necessary for each post.

But, I have been busy!

On Monday I had to work a dreaded nightshift. In a lot of ways it's a good thing, as I always feel as though I have to have done a lot during the day to make up for the fact that I have to go without an entire night's sleep.

I got up really early in the morning, got ready and set off with two of my cameras: Holga 120 CFN (white) and Lubitel 166B. Once I've used the remainder of the film and developed them, I'll post the results here.

On my way home I came across a little wool shop just behind the Greenock West train station. I picked up loads of different colours of balls of wool and headed home.
Every woman in my family knits, really well. I've stopped and started numerous times, always associating knitting with boring things like arran jumpers and itchy scarves. I searched Etsy for as many 'fun' patterns as I could find.
So far I've completed one of the patterns and am still working on (and waiting to get more wool for) another.

This is my latest 'make':



I needed a lot of help with this one (thanks mum), I get a lot of the stitches mixed up.

The other pattern I'm working on is a dark blue shoulder bag which I can use to put my uni things in. Why do I run out of wool on the only day the wool shop is closed? Argh!!

Cupcakes.

I've been crazy for baking recently.

I used to bake quite a lot when I was living in Glasgow and working in Mono. Mono is a vegan restaurant/venue in Glasgow which serves some really good food and hosts a lot of really interesting events. All the other staff who worked in the kitchen hated baking, so I'd spend most of my shift on a Sunday experimenting with new kinds of dessert.

All of my baking is still vegan as a result of a bad experience with eggs when I was 14 years old.
I made these cupcakes at a friend's the other day:




I'd never used food colouring before and was under the impression that food that colour really shouldn't be put into your mouth. I was wrong, these tasted great!

We used this recipe for the sponge-part of the cupcakes. The topping is buttercream which would usually be used for the filling of a cake, with food colourings. I highly recommend the recipe to anyone with a sweet tooth.

If anyone decides to try it out, let me know how it turns out!

Badges

I'm pretty sure that for everyone that makes little things like this goes through stages of making the same sort of thing over and over again.
My thing was badges. I made this one for Pip two Christmas' ago.


I cut out all of the tiny pieces individually, used the lid of a vaseline tin as a template for the main body and then stuffed it with cotton wool.
The end result was so effective that I made loads more with different appliques.
One of my favourites being the pixel heart badge, as seen in the top left of this photo (polaroids used for Firebrand Boy cd inserts).
.


I then decided to give the badge-making a rest for a while after making this badge for The Teacups

Textiles.

I love textiles. I love looking at them, I love feeling them, I love making things with them.
Mainly everything I've made so far has been from felt. I remember making storyboards with felt when I was younger and it never really lost its appeal. It's cheap, it's easy to use and it's colourful. It makes everything you make look simple and it makes even the simple things look really effective.
One of the first things I made was this applique.




It was for a t-shirt I was making as a homeage to a band called Pony Up that I really liked at the time. It's not so clear in this scan, but you can just make out the word 'up' in the yellow heart on the horse's back.

Introductions

So, this is it, my craft blog!

I've blogged a lot of the things I've made before, but they've been in amongst a whole other host of things and, well, it got messy. I wanted to find somewhere that they could have their own space.

Ever since I can remember, I've been crazy for making little collections of things; trying to save the most insignificant of things, being caught up on the tiny details and not wanting to forget anything. I've always kept a diary and can't really function properly when I haven't had a chance to write things down.

My boyfriend told me just the other day that I'm a documenter, that it's my thing. I also love textiles and to make things by hand.

That's where this blog comes in. I get a huge amount of satisfaction at the idea of all of my handmade things being in the one place.

I hope you enjoy looking as much as I do making =)