I've Managed It Again...

... somehow almost six months have past me by and my last blog post seems to have been July! First off let me wish you all Happy New Year and I hope you enjoyed yourselves over the festive season as much as I did!

If you are interested here is a quick summary of the more exciting things I got up to in the last half of 2011 (other than reading, I did an awful lot of that!). 

In August I managed to nab myself a table at the Boutique Market in Portsmouth's Guildhall. It was a good experience and I got to meet other crafters from the local community, which was really nice. I was there for about 4 hours and my stuff seemed to get quite a lot of interest which was really encouraging and by the end I'd made £40 (which was even more encouraging!). The day itself was a bit of a logistical nightmare as I was supposed to be working! Luckily 'the management' were kind enough to let me skip work (as I was owed some lieu time anyway) for a few hours. So I ended up starting work at 9am leaving the shop at 10 o'clock to attend the market, only to return again at 3pm and carry on working til 5.30!

My very first table at my very first craft fair!

My table presentation will need some work though!!

In September my boyfriend's parents very kindly took us on a little holiday to Bruges. It's a really lovely city and I had such a relaxing time! I pretty much spent most of my time following everyone else and enjoying the beautiful architecture, it was so nice not to be in charge of the holiday and just go with the flow. The people were so friendly, the food (especially the hot chocolate) was delicious and the best thing of all, people thought I was under 26 years old - we were told you can get discounted tickets for galleries and museums when you are under this age, unfortunately I'm about five years too late to receive that, but it's still nice to be asked!!

Unsrprisingly I've hardly done any crafting (apart from a couple of custom orders) in the last few months! October, November and December were pretty uneventful and merged into one long month as the bookshop got into Christmas mode. Although I can tell you that I managed to sell about 90% of the stock I had on display in Waterstones and I completely sold out of my russian doll totes about a week before the big day! I even had people asking when they would be in stock again (that did made me feel quite proud!) 


Oh, one thing I can show you is something I made for my friend to give to her fiance (the guy I made the felty batman for). As they loved the other one so much she commissioned me to another superhero. He's not a character I'd ever heard of so I had to do some research, and I found he was a bit tricky to make but I got there in the end!

His name is Etrigan The Demon, who looks a bit like this....

...and here is my interpretation in the medium of felt! 

Apparently when my friend saw his gift he was speechless (which is quite a thing to achieve) and I received a lovely text message something along the lines of BEST. SOFT. TOY. EVER! So all the time and effort was all worth it.

Anyway I think that's enough for now, I'll try and blog again soon I'm aiming for one a week but whether or not that will happen is another thing.

Happy crafting everyone!! :)

Harry the Heron.

This is Harry, he is a felty heron and a present I made for a friend at work's leaving present. He is hand sewn and it took me 6 and a half hours to make. Why did I decide to make my friend a heron? Well that is a long and rather unfortunate story!

   

Arnold, Arnold, Arnold Rimmer more reliable than a garden strimmer.

It's been a while since I posted anything on here, mostly due to the fact that I haven't made anything, but due to a few people leaving work I've been working on a gift or two. Here is the first one....

It's meant to be Rimmer from Red Dwarf (one of my favourite shows). I'm not sure it looks much like him but the person I made it for really liked it and that's the main thing (although if I hadn't sewn the name tag on I don't think he'd have known who it was meant to be!)  

 

HULK SMASHED....

I made little fella for a friend's 30th birthday. I named him Hulkenstein as he was meant to be The Hulk but ended up looking more like Frankenstein (or Frankenstein's monster if you want to be a little pedantic!) He found he was very popular at the pub and was looking rather worse for wear when the evening was over as was the person who's birthday it was!!

Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Batman.

I made this felty batman for a friend at works birthday. As it's a 'him' friend I found it hard to think of something I could make (as everything I've made so far is a bit 'girly'). Now I could have given up and bought him something but I was determined to make something and I know he loves comics/ graphic novels, so I thought what could be more manly than BATMAN! He is my own design, completely hand stitched and took about 2 hours to make. I'm really pleased and he's probably the best thing I've made. I've ordered some new felt and I'm going to attempt to make Robin.....Or Wolverine!!!