Things to do while etsy sleeps...

Waiting for etsy to come back on today so I could answer my convos from last night I did quite a lot! I went to the post office, cleaned the kitchen, photographed some stuff, installed a printer...

...and made cheese scones!
These are from my trusty bero book which I have had for years and my granny swore by, here's the recipe, it works really well with a nice mature chedder!

http://www.be-ro.com/recipe/showrec3.html


Nom!

And the winner is....

The response to the blog giveaway was overwelming, we had over 100 entries between the blog, twitter and sales. Thanks to everyone who entered, retweeted and attempted to bribe me with cakes! The Tweets once more said they wanted to help pick... I think they were really after more nesting material since I can't get them out of the hat now!

Drumroll please... and the winner is...

Sassa Lynn at Etsy... yay. Well done and thanks for entering... your little fella will be winging his way to you soon!

She also has a lovely website where you can see her art work and beautiful paper collages. You all know what a complete fibre junkie I am so I may be paying a visit to this shop for some lovely yarns and supplies myself soon. I love this selection... yum!

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!

Etsy UK Retreat

So I'm back... Ok I was back a couple of weeks ago but have spent the interim period between panicking and working and generally cultivating an air of headless chickeness.UK retreat was fantastic, the venue was amazing... a very posh sixth form college in Escrick, York and it was all organised by the wonderful Tinyisland. All the etsy Lasses are totally lovely in real life (as I suspected!) and I was well impressed with their abilities to craft and drink at the same time to the wee small hours in the morning and then get up 4 hours later and do it all again.

I flexed my teaching muscles with a couple of wee felty workshops.

Debsmuddle made me a little nervous with her tweeting skills.... how good is this guy? He looks like he really wants a hug!
And fabricnation let me and Wildcatdesigns play with her gocco... great fun, so much so that I have had to buy a gocco now... whoops!

You can find more pictures here on my flickr stream.

Big thanks to Debbie for organising it and taking me to get new jeans after jeans malfunction, and to all the etsy gals who made it a fab weekend.

Let Me Introduce You To...

So it's been a while since I blogged recovering from my birthday and the blog competition. One of the high points of my birthday was my present to my self from Y0omii these wonderful marching polar bears. I ordered 1 and I got a special surprise of another 1 with a birthday hat!

For your information "y0omii is spelt "y [zero] o m i i"

This is what Y0omii has to say about her creations. "I like to think that my characters are a combination of the 'cute' and the 'odd' all jumbled together, and thus sometimes refer to my little characters as 'cute oddballs'." I love this wee kitty too... she is called Aika!

I kinda want everything in her etsy store, they are so great and cute and especially well made. Y0omii also does these fabulous little stationary printables if you are a little cash poor you might want to treat yourself to a set!


Find Y0omii on Twitter at http://twitter.com/y0omii and etsy