Following by Example...

After my complete craft space blitz today and following feltmeupdesigns' example I decided to post a few pictures of my new and improved work area. I went through every single box/ drawer of my crafty things and rearranged them so I (hopefully) can find them again!!! I dusted every single surface and I even hoovered!!!!

I am terribly messy and unorganised so I'm (again) hoping that this will motivate me and that having a properly defined and designated work area will help me to be more professional and treat my crafting as a business rather than a hobby.

I decided to put up the Cloudberry Skies bunting I made to take to craft fairs but it's far too long but I think it looks perfect hung over my bookcase (BTW this only contains a small selection of my many many books). Also I would like to point out my TinTin poster, I love it as it reminds me of my Ottakars bookshop days.

As you can see I have organised all my fabrics by colour, I've even integrated all the guilt ridden items I mentioned in my last post so hopefully that will be the end of that and I can move on.

One last thing, feltmeupdesigns also had an inspirational image in her studio tour, this is mine!! Not all that inspiring but every time I read it it makes me feel a little better, this card basically sums up my attitude to life!!!

All in all I've had a productive day and just maybe this will mean a step in the right direction for  cloudberryskies.

Happy crafting. xx

Doesn't Time Fly When You're Trying To Find Somewhere Else To Live...

I can't believe I haven't posted anything on here in about 6 months! How shameful! I guess I really do live up to my 'lazy crafter' name. I have no real excuse as to why I've not been on here! I suppose I haven't really made anything blogworthy and when I really think about it apart from a few custom orders and a couple of presents for friends, I haven't really made much at all this year!! I'm going to blame my craft apathy on a couple of things that happened back at the beginning of year. I told my self that 2010 was going to be a year of change and it was, but just not in the way I had planned!! In summary, I managed to get my full time hours back at work (good) but unfortunately in the same month my landlord told me (completely out of the blue) that he needed me to move out of my lovely (and very inexpensive) flat after nearly 5 years (v. bad).

I think it was the combination of these two events that threw my me into my craftless slump, essentially I have been going to work during the day and house hunting in my evenings and on my days off. I decided a couple of months back to close my Etsy and Folksy shops and pack up my craft things so I could focus my mind on house hunting so rather that spending my free hours on Etsy, blogging, tweeting etc, I was trawling the properties on Rightmove, silently praying that I could find somewhere nice that wasn't asking for too much rent!

Finally after months of searching (and viewing some absolutely hideous places) I have found somewhere and it is lovely! Slightly more expensive than I had hoped but as I say it is rather lovely so I'm sure it will be worth it. It is a fully furnished 2 bed terraced house (I currently live in 2 bed flat) and I knew it was the one for me as soon as I walked through the door! People look at me strangely when I say that, "I'll know it when I see it" but I've always felt like that when looking for somewhere new to live, I get a feeling for somewhere as soon as I set foot in it and I just know if I would like to live there or not!

Now that I've found somewhere new and lovely to live, I'm hoping to turn things around! I move in at the beginning of July so it's not long now until I get back to crafting and get hopefully get Cloudberryskies back up and running again. I know I'm always saying this but I am definitely going to have to take this craft business more seriously, so in the mean time while my shop is closed I've got a lot of thinking to do. The first thing I need to do is to re-evaluate the kind of things I make, so rather than making whatever I feel like and listing it, maybe I should think about what Cloudberryskies is all about (does that sound quite as lame as I think it does?). The main thing I need is a stronger identity and I'm thinking starting with a new banner and avatar and then going from there. I have another Etsy shop called BizarreDodo which I started ages ago but never got round to listing anything on it so I have been toying with the idea of linking the two shops with the themes of darkness and light - with Cloudberryskies selling the lighter, cutesy stuff and BizarreDodo selling the darker, skully side of my craft personality. What do you guys think? Sound weird?

I think that's enough for now, I'll try not to leave it so long next time.