Busy Quilting Bee

What's happened to all my craft projects? It would appear that I have totally neglected them over the past few weeks. But that's not actually the case - I just haven't been blogging them very much recently. I've been working on lots of textiles, of the quilted variety. You might remember that after my nephew was born, I made him a quilt out of some gorgeous fabric by designer Dan Stiles (you can see it here). 

So I decided to make some more! I've found some gorgeous fabrics over the past few weeks and have really enjoyed putting some of the colours and patterns together. Some of these have already been listed in my new online shop (click here!) and hopefully the others will be listed in the next week or so. What do you think? 

Love the little elephants on this

Possibly the most traditional one I've made - baby blues

OWLS! STRAWBERRIES! How cute are these fabrics? 

And as I loved the first Marine quilt, I thought I'd make another one... 

I seem to have caught a bit of a quilting bug at the moment... at the last count there were six new quilts and I definitely have plans for more. But I might have to take some time out of quilting for a few weeks because sadly it's time to get started on the next projects... I'll reveal more soon! 

By the way, if you are in London this weekend why not come to the Library Bar on Upper Street, Islington on Sunday? It's time for A Glamourous Affair again and I'll be back with some of the others from 12-5pm. And they do Thai food...

Craftgawker and Summer Dresses

Oh wow! I have just discovered my new favourite internet website ever! It's called Craftgawker and if you are at all artsy-craftsy and have a love of beautiful, inspirational things then you really really need to get yourself over there RIGHT NOW! I think I'm in love...

Essentially it's a bit like Pinterest in that it a list of links to other beautiful things but the slight twist is that it's just jam-packed with fabulous tutorials to try at home. How great is that? So guess what I've been doing?

Well, having found myself over there and having spent the past few days wondering at my lack of cute summer dresses that fit me (the problem with losing a stone is that none of your clothes fit anymore and some of them I'm just not up to altering myself - I'm not that experienced at tailoring) I found myself totally drawn to this tutorial...

Click on the picture to go directly to the tutorial on Trinket in Bloom's site

And I discovered another gem of a website! I'm in love with Trinkets in Bloom's fashion D.I.Y tutorials and I suspect you'll be seeing some more bits and pieces appearing over the next few months. But for this week I thought I'd stick to just one thing... a new t-shirt dress.

I pretty much ran out the flat to go and find some t-shirts to get stuck into this. I was super excited about it... And then my excitement turned to despair. I couldn't find any nice t-shirts! You see, I had envisaged a really cute loose stripy navy and white dress and my local shop didn't have anything like that on offer. After some sad minutes looking through all the very unsuitable t-shirts I did however get a glimmer of hope: a t-shirt in a sort of minted-green/aquamarine colour. And even better - there was one a few sizes bigger too! It wasn't as long a t-shirt as I'd hoped and I was very worried about having such a bold colour as a dress - I'm usually all for the demure, cutesy things instead of the statements. But I bought them and got stuck in right away...

And here is the result! A really cute dress, super simple and easy to make. I'm not a dressmaker but I had this done and dusted within an hour of starting it and that included coming back into the other room to check instructions every 5 minutes. What a fabulous tutorial - easy to follow, quick to make, and the possibilities of variations are pretty great too: why not up-cycle some old t-shirts and make a more eclectic / varied dress with different colours and patterns?

My initial concerns about the colour being a little too much were, it turned out, well-founded. I am just not the person to be wandering around in such a bold statement colour with nothing to break it up. So I did a little re-vamping and had a look at what I could find...

... and now I am much happier with the result! What do you think? I definitely have plans to make another one of these. So if anyone sees any super cute stripy t-shirts in navy and white, or even better navy with white polka dots,  give me a shout. And if you are at all arts-&-craftsy then I suggest you go and look at Trinkets In Bloom's website now! Who knows what little gem you will be making this evening?

BNR weekend

I haven't been very active on Etsy recently - I've been so busy trying to get things ready for the craft fair that I haven't listed anything for ages. I have however started getting more involved in the British Sellers on Etsy team again - it was another thing I had let lapse and am trying to pick up again.
Anyway, this weekend they had another BNR and I curated for a little while. I had forgotten that I really enjoy curating and the first thing I did when I got behind the BSOE flag was to turn the treasury red:

Yes that is one of my pendants in the top row - on Saturday morning I listed about 5 new pendants in my Etsy store - it's been looking a bit empty recently. One of the listings I made was for my long pink pendant. I bought in.... and got bought out really quickly! Woohoo! 

Of course, having been bought out, I was able to buy back in again...Look at the goodies heading my way! I think I have a bit of a love of hair pins - I seem to have bought a number of them over the past year. But they are pretty cute and I'm looking forward to some fun hairstyles this week.

Typewriter key hairpins by Altered Eras -
I already had some but love
them so I needed some more! 

Gorgeous rose pins by
  Wishes On The Wind
I also got some red ones too.

And then in a mad flurry of sales just as it was about to close, I was bought out again! I hadn't actually managed to list the last one - Isabelle of BumbleBeanUK chose a pendant that I had literally just posted onto facebook and I made the world's swiftest Etsy listing! In the end there were 184 sales over the weekend which is a record breaking number - there were a number of times when people didn't even get to showcase their items because they were bought out at the moment they bought in. Anyway, I really enjoyed curating and all the chats over the weekend. We've covered a whole range of subjects, although somehow came back to food a number of times...! It's been really nice getting to talk to some fellow British Crafters and I've really enjoyed it. Can't wait for the next one! 

Project Update

I bet you're all wondering whether I actually still do anything crafty these days - I haven't blogged about my own craft projects for a while but that's not to say I haven't been doing anything... honest! Admittedly, I haven't done as much recently as I would normally have done, partly because it's a new school year and things are a bit hectic and partly because I have had loads of inspiration but no motivation. What is it that Einstein (Eddison?) said? Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration? Well I'm lacking in the 99% bit at present!

I have, however, been doing some things of late...

I know a number of you who read this know me from Twitter as well and may well have noticed that I've been mentioning penguins the last few days. Some of you may also have seen said penguins. I broke a very old keyring the other day but while the charm bit had fallen off, I still had the actual ring. Coupled with a whole load of felt I've had hanging around looking at me for a while now, I got to thinking... I needed a new keyring charm. I can't say I went through a whole load of designs before I got to this one - one of my favourite animals is a penguin and it seemed quite natural to make a penguin. So this is what I made:

Well, I couldn't leave him all lonely, could I? On Tuesday I went to the local hardware store next to work and bought some key rings. So what have I been doing this evening? Yup, I've made some more. The penguin family is now at 5. I have plans for green, red and turquiose ones but at present haven't got any suitable ribbon for them. The red ribbon I have doesn't sit right with my red felt and, when put with the green felt, is a bit too Christmassy. So I need to get some pretty ribbon... I know just the place. I have a question for you: do you prefer the penguins with the white stitching or the ones where the stitching is a near match to the felt? I thought I'd prefer the stitching to be the same but I'm not sure...

What else? Well back in April I wrote a post about bags (you can see it here). The first bag I showed you was the crazy crazy wool bag. I had finished the main part of it and most of the lining but couldn't find any buttons suitable. Do you know how hard it is to find really large wooden buttons? Oh my, it's been a nightmare! BUT... I have finished the crazy wool bag, and in fact have used it a number of times too. I've realised I made the strap a little too long so I am going to pin it and sew it a bit shorter but otherwise I am quite happy with it. Do you like the buttons?

I"m not done yet!!! I have also made a few new mosaic pendant designs! There should be one more but I managed to break it while trying to grout it this evening so I need to take it to pieces and start again. It was my favourite design but the one I knew was the most precarious due to the millefiori I had used in it.

Sadly I've only just taken the photos of these and as it's quite dark in the flat the photos haven't totally come out. The paler one is light green and orange porcelain - totally upcycled materials as they used to be plates belonging to a friend of mine. I couldn't get a close up shot without it all going blurry but once I have the right light I will try to. Of the larger shots, the top one is a repeated red, purple and turquoise mirror design while the lower one has become known as the Google pendant because it's colours match Google's.

Just to let you know - once I have managed to take some decent shots, the key-rings and pendants will be going into my Etsy store - or if you would like one and can't wait for me to take pictures and list them, get in contact with me via the contact section of this blog and I can let you know prices / payment arrangements etc.

Product Review: Funky Diva iPhone Case

Exciting news! The lovely Anna from FunkyDivaDesigns asked me to sample one of her new products for her. In case you haven't come across FunkyDivaDesigns, you really should check out some of her bags because they are gorgeous and I would love to have one. As well as her site, she sells on Folksy  and is on Twitter too. Anyway, Anna asked me to try making one of her iPhone Kits and let her know what it was like. So here you are: my first product review!

A few weeks ago Anna sent me a sample kit which looked like this: 

Looking good hey? I was quite excited to get this and thought the material was quite cute too. Once I opened the packet I realised that all the pieces I needed had been pre-cut to size, including interfacing, pockets and the tag for the keychain. There were also some very comprehensive instructions which included pictures making it much easier to follow. There are 15 steps in all, but they show you how to pin, where exactly to sew and are broken down into very small pieces of information.

On the first page there was a list of everything I should have in the packet so that I could check and then it was merely a matter of following the instructions. Which was easy! Because Anna has broken the steps down into small pieces of information even someone who isn't good at following instructions (like myself) can follow! It was super easy to make!

My sewing machine decided to play up today - for some reason it was like a petulant child and wouldn't get the tension right whatever I did - but even so it still took only about an hour to finish my new iPhone case because FunkyDivaDesigns has put together such an easy to follow set of instructions that it took no time to assemble.

I would definitely recommend these for beginner sewers who want to make something fun and funky but don't have the experience to make their own patterns. They would make good gift ideas and, while they are aimed at adults, I think grumpy teenagers could be inspired to make themselves a cute homemade phone case too. It was also nice to take a break from the quilt project which had been going on forever and do something quickly and actually finish it! So thank you FunkyDivaDesigns for asking me to give it a go - now everyone else you need to go over to FunkyDivaDesigns and get yourselves a cute DIY phone case kit!

A flurry of a weekend with Etsy

Hurray! This weekend was another Etsy BNR by the British Sellers on Etsy Team. I curated twice for this one as I enjoyed curating last time and, being still fairly house-bound, didn't have much else to do. As I'd volunteered to curate fairly early on, I was featured in the initial line up which was great and I did say to myself I wasn't going to go mad and buy lots of things... 

I was bought out on Friday night when someone bought a bunny bag from me, and in total I made 4 sales in the BNR - a pink and a blue bunny bag, a wedding card and my green and blue mosaic pendant all went over the course of the weekend. My etsy store is now looking quite empty! 

 As always it was a great weekend and I really enjoyed chatting to fellow Etsians and browsing through their shops. Of course I bought back in (how else did I get so many sales?) Want to see some of the goodies that I'm looking forward to receiving? Well you get to see them anyway!

Love Altered Eras's steampunk hair clips - and she's making special ones for me! Yay!

House of Hampton are throwing in an extra set of Wine Charms for me as one of the special offers. Thank you! 

How gorgeous is this seaglass necklace by RainbowsOnTheBeach? Love!

Thought I would post photos of what I sold as well - just in case you've all forgotten what kind of things are available in my Etsy store...!

Being a Grown-Up Crafter...

Do you consider yourself a 'grown-up'? I've been a teacher for nearly 9 years in total and yet I still don't think of myself as an adult. When kids say 'miss' it's fine, when they say 'Miss Phillips' I get a little freaked out. But I am beginning to come to terms with being a proper grown-up and have taken some steps into adulthood: I now have my own business cards! Yes, I know most people have had them for, like, ever but I've always thought of them as being what proper adults have and I have never really thought that I am a proper adult. But as my craft sales are beginning to take off and my printer doesn't like me very much, it seemed about time to get some. Actually I didn't - the lovely Andy designed and bought them for me. THANK YOU!

I was soooo excited when I opened these for the first time I nearly clapped my hands like a little girl (see I TOLD you I haven't grown up yet!) Aren't they great?

Now that I've got my business cards, I guess I really should start getting busy for a craft fair or some more Etsy sales. Please feel free to look at my etsy store and take your pick!  

But before I can prepare for a craft fair there is something I need to get on with first. Remember all that material I bought? Well it's been going to good use here at Creating Trouble HQ... It's time to reveal part II of the grand project. This bit is looking a little more complete and I guess that some of it is beginning to take shape. Can you guess what the whole piece is going to be yet? 

That Friday Feeling...29/07/11

As I'm sure most of you have worked out by now, the reason you haven't seen much of my work on here recently is because I'm working on a grand project. A quilt! It's not actually taking me as long as I thought it might do - the last one I attempted took the better part of a year. This is it by the way:

The colours really didn't come out - it's a wine red, fairly royal blue and bottle green!

Thanks to now owning a sewing machine, the present attempt has been moving fairly quickly... well it's only been a month so far! I thought that as I'm about to reveal part of the design (yes watch out for tomorrow's post) today's Friday Feeling would be dedicated to quilts.

Recycle your denim with this great quilt by Original Cloth

How great to have a scrabble quilt? Brilliant idea from BarbMalm

And I really like this quilt bag by Hoganfe too.

There's a totally unfounded myth that quilts were used on the Underground Railroad as signals for slaves escaping from the south to the north in the U.S. It's a myth. 

Hand-sewn quilts are considered more durable and better quality by professional quilters. I can see why - they take HOURS to make by hand!!

Quilting started to be considered as an art form from about the 1960s when abstract art came into fashion.

Quilts were important to those in the early American colonies as fabric was expensive so scraps were saved, sewn together into larger bits (blocks) and eventually into quilts. 

Granny Mad...part deux

What have you been up to recently? I've been working mostly on the quilt project, but will show you more of that soon... (just trying to keep you all on your toes!) Today's post though is dedicated to Grannies. Well granny crochet squares that is. You can dedicate this post to your granny as well if you like, but it's not obligatory. 

I've said before I'm not sure what I'm making with these grannies - I think I'm just playing around and seeing if I can make interesting designs. I'm definitely not being very speedy with them! The pattern for these could be really easy but I'm not good at following patterns and I got this one wrong about a million times over! But anyway - these are the grannies I made this week.

The pattern was designed by Chris Simon from Yarn Crazy and you can find it here. I love the flowers! I think they have turned out really prettily in the end - so lots of hard work but definitely worth it!

Twitter Giveaway!

Hooray! I said I'd do a giveaway once I'd got to 500 followers and... well it's time for a giveaway now! As this is my first one, I'm starting small... so it's your chance to win one of my unique designed cards. The material for this card came from India and there's hardly any left - which means that actually this really is a unique card as there won't be many more of these! If you'd prefer a different card, stop by my Etsy store and take your pick (let me know in a comment below) So... here's what you do:

If you want to enter, just leave me a note with your twitter username either here or on twitter (twitter.com/create_trouble)

For extra entries (1 extra entry each)

1) Follow this blog and let me know you are following

2) Follow my facebook page and tell me you entered.

3) Go past my Etsy shop and let me know what your favourite item is.

Let me know that you have done each of these though - either with a mention on twitter or a comment below.
You have until Sunday 24th July and I will be announcing a winner on Monday 25th.

Good Luck!

Love the Weekend

It's been a good weekend - well apart from the fact that I haven't left the flat in days and am going a little crazy... But I was really excited on Friday when I checked my e-mail and discovered that I had sold 2 (yes, 2) mosaic necklaces! How great is that? So a massive thank you to Julia from MyApplique who bought them (check out her Folksy shop - it's cute!) Part of me is a little sad to see them go - the mosaic one is one of the very first necklaces I made, and the Red Reflection one is my favourite design. But I'm glad they're going to such a nice person. Just in case you've forgotten what they look like - here are the two necklaces in their boxes about to be put in the post:

Posting these turned out to be harder than expected. I don't have business cards yet (because that would make me feel like a grown-up) so up to now I've been printing off a small card with the Creating Trouble logo on it and using it instead. Except for last night my printer decided it just didn't like me. At all. After about an hour or so messing around with it, Andy decided to try printing with the same printer from his Mac. And of course, it liked him. Admittedly we only managed to get one piece of paper out of it in full colour, and normally my cards are a LOT smaller than half an A4 sheet, but at least we managed to get something!

It was such a palaver (love that word!) Andy decided to design and order me some business cards. They should be arriving on Wednesday or Thursday and I'm really excited to see them!

AND... I follow quite a few other blogs and tend to comment when I see something I like or get asked a question. This weekend Kate from Scientific Culture posted a picture of one of her yetis and asked what people were up to this weekend. Apparently my comment was the most interesting response (it involved turning into a Yeti to be able to move) and she's sending me one of her cute badges! How cool is that?

Go & check out Scientific Culture on Etsy - really cute badges & more!

I'm getting a Yeti Thumbs Up badge... it's so cute! And in fact has quite a lot of character so I think he deserves a name... Any suggestions? Thank you Kate for deciding to send me a badge :-D

Oooh oooh ooh!

I've been really bad and ordered a whole load of fabrics and felts recently... and they all arrived today! How excited am I? Ridiculously so. So I thought I would show you why I'm so excited:

First up - felt from Lupin on Etsy - I've got 30 squares in my own choice of colours! I think I forgot to get brown which was a bit of an oversight on my part, but looking forwards to some Christmassy felt projects (and other top secret ideas too...!) Hooray! 

Love the batik effect of these blue and purple fabrics from ForgetMeNot Fabrics. And can I just point out that they have FANTASTIC customer service: I had also ordered a blue bundle which they had sadly run out of - they went out of their way to try and get it back in from their supplier and refunded immediately (including changing postage costs) when they weren't able to. Thank you!

And finally I went back to Seamstar for a new red fabric bundle and found this cute blue daisy bundle too. Hooray!

So I guess I need to reveal why i need so much fabric? Well.... here's the beginning of it:

I can't really reveal the rest of this yet but I'm sure you can see what it is the beginnings of. For those of you on Twitter - these are the 'project #' s I've been tweeting about. It's recently had a huge design upheaval but I'll reveal more when I have done more of it...

That Friday Feeling...1/7/2011

You may or may not know that I spent a long time living in Russia - a year in St Petersburg living with a Russian family while I was a student and then, when I had finished my degree, 3 years in Moscow as an English Teacher. Maybe I should post some of my photos on here at some point... I'll have to dig some of them out. But I digress. This week I thought I would do the same as last week; instead of having a theme of items, I would choose a subject and see what items I could find around that theme. And because I love matrioshka dolls, and I've been asked by one of the Yr 3 classes to come and talk to their kids about life in Russia, I thought that this week I would dedicate the Etsy shout-out post to Matrioshka dolls.

How cute is this bag by Overthegardenwall? You can see (& buy) it here

I need a new keyring - & these ones look like just the thing - especially the red ones!
Thanks Ricecakeshack!

I'm doing lots of sewing at the moment & this fabric is just so sweet!
Beautifulwork has lots of other matrioshka fabric designs too...

I thought as a quick finish to this week's shout out I would give a bit of a background to Matrioshka dolls... 

The first Matrioshka doll as we know it was carved in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin and had 8 dolls - the outer one being a woman in traditional peasant dress, with girls and a boy inside. Like today's dolls, the innermost one was a baby carved from a single piece of wood. Nowadays they are usually female throughout but originally it was only the outer one that was female - the inner dolls could be either male or female.

There is some dispute as to how the original nesting doll came about; the idea for a doll probably came from a similar design from Honshu, Japan, but Russians had been making Easter Eggs with the nesting idea before the doll idea came about. So whether it is a Japanese or Russian invention is up for debate. What is certain though is that Russian Dolls took off quickly and are now the most well-known Russian souvenir. Traditionally they have either 8 or 5 pieces but I have one that is 11 pieces - the smallest one is smaller than a grain of rice and is beautifully ornate. 

The name Matrioshka is an amalgamation of the name Matryona / Matriosha which was quite a popular name among the serfs during the late 1800s. It conjures images of motherhood being also related to the word mat' meaning mother and mater (Latin). As the outermost doll is usually a woman and it tends to be a microcosm of a family, Matriosha seems fitting - the 'ka' at the end is a diminutive: in Russian my name is Sasha but I'm known as Sashinka = little Sasha (term of endearment).

Nowadays you can get all sorts of different Matrioshka dolls as tourist souvenirs - I've had one with different presidents of Russia and I bought my sister a Leornardo diCaprio one with 5 dolls featuring his different looks in different films! Lenin is a popular version as well...

So there you have it: a very short background to Russian Dolls. By the way, they are apparently also known as Babushka dolls. I've never heard a Russian say that about them - Babushka means Grandmother and it doesn't really apply.