The 300... Blog giveaway

In ancient Sparta 300 scantily clad and over muscled warriors defended thier country against millions of heavily armoured Persians hell bent on taking over thier lands and enslaving thier people... this has nothing to do with the blog post although it did make a rather good film... I say good, I was too distracted by the high volume of man candy on display to pay proper attention.

Anyway I digress.

My point is Feltmeup is edging ever closer to 300 etsy sales... a major land mark! This means there are at least 300 felt creations marching thier way across the globe in a bid for felt dominion.

To mark the occasion I shall be giving a surprise goodie bag to who so ever becomes my 300th sale and as an extra bonus I shall also be giving away a prize of goodie bag plus a creature of choice from either The Felt Menagerie or The Feltanomicon to one lucky winner.

To enter simply leave a comment on my blog or buy an item from from either shop or leave a Twitter comment mentioning this blog post with link... If you do all 3 you get 3 entries... simples!

Competiton will close on the 7th of October... at which point I shall have a large drink and toast you all. The winner will be picked from my new hat by a lovely assistant... whoever I can rope into doing it!

(The prize is for a single item... no bird pairs I'm afraid, sorry. But If you do want a bird pair as your reward I will offer half price on them)

What's In a Name? Suggestions Please...

Thanks to all the lovely comments about my gocco prints I have decided the only thing to do is open a new etsy shop! But it's not so simple as that is it? One can't just willie nillie choose any old name and open an etsy account can you?

This has prompted me to pose the philosophical question of What's In a Name? You see feltmeup is now an established brand... but my new project isn't felt! Notfeltmeupdesigns? Unfelt? A little negative I feel. Printmeup? Printmedown? Print... something. It's very very hard!

Suggestions on a postcard please... or just as a comment... help! I need help... there may even be some printed goodies in it if someone comes up with a name that's and better than my poor choices!

Going Gocco...

My new gocco came in the post last week and I have been itching to try it out. I decided to buy one after the retreat where Gillian aka fabricnation showed me how to use one and I was instantly hooked. My main problem is that I have too many ideas and only limited screens!

It's been a while since I did any artwork so I thought I'd have a go at drawing some of my skull collection since they are so lovely (I know, I'm weird!) I drew out my design onto postcards using riso carbon pens, I usually work in Ink any way and the pens are surprisingly fine and good for drawing with, they gave a really nice quality of line.

I did do a few ink tests on my screen from retreat but since my attention span is kinda short I jumped in straight away making my new screen!

I decided to experiment with different backgrounds and found my self running round the flat looking for interesting things to print on, pastel paper worked very well, in fact everything seemed to work well which must mean this is a fairly easy to use system since I can usually manage to screw up most thing!

My black prints cam out a little splodgey, I have to admit I may have got carried away and over inked my screen or maybe i didn't leave long enough between cleaning and reinking between colours. The black ink seemed to be a little more watery then the others so I know to use less next time.
I really liked my white prints tho and my map prints when I managed to get the ink right. I also experimented with turning the paper to make a larger print which I am happy with.

I also tried a few contact prints from my over inked ones which came up quite nice. So all in all I am very chuffed with my first gocco session, I don't think I'm quite ready to turn my business over to a printing one and am really not sure that any of todays experiments are saleable but it's definately been a good afternoon.


Next time I think I'll play with colour a bit more but I will have to order some first since all my colours that came with the gocco are a little odd! Gocco is great fun but I would recommend buying and sharing with a friend since the initial outlay can be quite high, especially if you're not planning on using your gocco for profit!