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In between all the crafting

So with all the new Etsy store fun I’ve been spending a lot of time lately crafting, creating new designs, packaging etc. Last night I took a break from that and baked some cookies… hooray!

Some of our friends brought delicious sugar cookies to our engagement celebrations on the weekend… less than 3 days later I was hunting down the recipe.

The recipe can be found at the Sweetapolita blog. Just a word of warning… I used about one third of the ingredient quantities and still made around 30 cookies. So unless you’re cooking for an army, you might want to at least half it!

I would have liked to attempt to make fondant icing but it sounds way to complicated so instead I stuck to good old icing sugar mixed with a tiny bit of water… and of course sprinkles!

Love heart sugar cookies

Painting, processes & other fun

Since opening my Etsy store last week, I have received a lot of lovely and helpful feedback as well as a whole lot of new found inspiration and encouragement, much of it from the Etsy community.

I’m very happy with some of the products which at first, I was not planning to paint. While experimenting with painting a few brooches, I found that I totally love the painting process and kind of want to paint everything now… I’m holding back on the more simplistic designs though.

Products are turning out different and mostly better than I had planned… which is a nice reminder that you just can’t plan everything… and that it’s a lot of fun to experiment and take a few risks. Not all of my experiments worked out wonderfully but here are a few that I’m quite happy with.

New brooch designs

Red bear suit, Little yellow bunny suit, Little ice-cream and Orange bear suit are all now available in my Etsy store.

Etsy store up and running

I’m proud to say I finally have my Etsy store back in action. I have a few new laser cut brooch designs in stock and a few more on their way. To be honest I’m doing a little testing at the moment and trying to get a feel for this whole Etsy store thing. I hope to produce a few solid lines of different products in the near future and then do a proper Etsy store launch with a new business name etc. In the meantime I’ll just keep making things… and putting them in my current store and see how things go.

Here are few of my new products which I put in the store today… hoping to get a few more up in the next couple of weeks. I’m very happy with the simplicity of these 3 designs and my first attempt at painting some of these brooches.

Little love boat - laser cut bamboo brooch

Little loch ness monster - laser cut bamboo brooch

Little dinosaur - laser cut bamboo brooch

New red dress…

Within the last few months, I turned 30, got engaged, removed my nape piercing, removed my labret piercing and returned to my ‘natural’ hair colour . Not necessarily in that order, but I’m sure you can see the theme here…

Illustration of my new red dress

With all these changes you’d assume I should feel like a new woman, and in many ways I’ do, but there’s been one thing holding me back and getting on my nerves of late. Every day I get up and put on the same mishmash of old (mostly old… some more than 10 years) new and somewhere in-between clothes. Somewhere between my 19 year old self and the current me, I totally lost my style. I also have a habit of wearing old clothes that I no longer even like because I don’t want to waste them and I often don’t wear my nicer clothes because I don’t want to waste their wears on events that aren’t ‘good enough’ for them or something ridiculous like that. This habit is starting to effect the way I feel about my looks so I’m pledging to myself to begin on a track to a new and freshly styled me.

Last week I brought 3 dresses. My favourite is from Dangerfield and has a slightly vintage shape/style to it and is illustrated above.

In an effort to improve my illustration skills and my wardrobe I’m going to draw more of my new clothing and wear it too!