let the countdown begin...

I've applied for a stall at an arts and crafts market in Leeds, if I'm successful then I only have about 3 weeks to get myself ready. Nervousssss! I want to make bunting and other such decorations.

This morning I checked my etsy and I had almost 300 views on one of my owls which is completely out of proportion with all my other items (I'm very lucky to hit 50 views usually) so I googled myself (saaaaaaad) and there's a website called stylehive which is featuring said owl. YAY! It's so exciting! I've never come across someone talking about me before apart from on anorak forums after indietracks. It's very exciting. Onwards and upwards. It also motivated me to post some new badges up on etsy today despite wanting to save them all up for the stall. I've gone for a slightly different style on my photos.....



I'm not sure how effective it is but a change is as good as a holiday =)

bonnie wee scotland

I'm back from a short cottage-sitting holiday in Scotland. It was idyllic...so so pretty. And we dog-sat the loveliest golden retriever. I'm a cat person but I completely fell in love with her. I feel inspired.

In badge news, I've decided to start making a couple of larger items with the hope that they'll fill a stall better and also make a bit more money. I sent off my cassettes and ipods to john at wiaiwya =) and the lovely Liz from The School wants me to send her some badges for her to sell at gigs she puts on in Cardiff. Woo! Here are some of the "mixtape" badges for wiaiwya...





I've made some cards and I'm super super pleased with how they look all packaged up, I'll post photos at some point soon to show them off.

xx

Do you want to work in C and A 'cause that's what they expect...

I am still jobless. But still inspired by everything around me and still SO excited about the wonderful world of felt.

I have new to do's....learn how to do "real" felting with raw wool and needles, finish my batch of mixtapes and ipods THIS WEEK for wiaiwya and post them off, polish off my packaging skills so that I have nicely uniform items to post off to etsians.

I have excitingggg newssssss. I emailed a bunch of people about craft fairs and YAY there's an art and craft fair in Leeds every two weeks and it's 25pounds a stall and yay yay yay. In around three weeks there is a tea dance themed event and I really really want to be ready to sell by then so that I can bake up some cakes and set up a really cute table of teaparty themed items and wow I'm just so excited I can't even find a full stop. It does mean that maybe I'll have to abandon etsy a little bit for a while. I think I'll aim for listing one new item on etsy every three days and dedicate the rest of my time to filling a stall with felt wonders.

xxx

night time musings

I can't sleep. This blog is constituted of the nocturnal ramblings of a tired bored panda. I can only apologise. I suspect that I'm already making little sense and I'm only three sentences in.

Well, since joining etsy I have begun foraging far deeper into the wonderful online world of craft blogs and creative websites than ever before. I'm intrigued and delighted, and above all massively inspired, by what I've found. Etsy itself is so so useful both in browsing through other peoples' shops, and the storque area which acts as a gateway to outsiders blogs and sites, and the forums where everyone is super nice and super helpful.

During my first adventures into the craft blogosphere I've become fascinated by gocco prints and I want to buy a gocco machine. I did a little research and found out that a gooco is a self contained printing machine made in Japan. This makes me love it more. Anything which sits in most Japanese households should sit in mine. It seems a pretty easy system, basically a less fiddly version of a screenprinting machine. You take a photocopied image, put it in, it flashes and burns the image onto a disposable screen, you put the ink on the screen, and press it onto the paper/fabric where you want it to go. Very poorly described, but just take my word it seems a) not too complex and b) very exciting. Ohhhh I'm going to throw caution to the wind and try some old fashioned prints cutting out potatoes and see if I can create anything nice looking on paper. Not that I'll ever abandon felt.

My favourite new found lands in the wonderful world of blogging are

http://decor8blog.com/ which has really nice, really useful, and really interesting to read blogs. and also so much inspiration from all over the internet. and it's such a huge blog once you start clicking on the links...from advice on choosing a creative life to looking at inspiration and other peoples' blogs and etsy items.

www.threadbanger.com is again just a really fun to read, inspirational, and informative site.

And I have almost hundreds of new favourite blogs that are just plain nice to look at. Maybe it's just that I'm sinking deeper into unemployed philisophical bum status, but I'm finding the world so inspirational right now.

My favourite thing to buy from charity shops is cheap books. They are just SO expensive new. I'm at "home" in (my mum's home) in kendal for a few days and I've been going through books so quickly. I love it. It keeps my brain alive. I read Orlando by Virginia Woolfe, I thought I'd read it before but maybe I didn't finish it because the story seemed familiar until halfway through and then it was fresh as a daisy. I really enjoyed it, she has such a lovely and funny style of writing in it. Lovely. I wish that I had a decent vocabulary. I wont list the other books, but I've also started a penguin classic version of Hurry on Down by John Wain. I love it. The cover has orange srips down the sides and when I was on the train I noticed that it matched the train ticket I was using for a bookmark =) What a design classic. And the book itself is so easy to read and entertaining, it's a similar style and subject matter to Lucky Jim by Kingley Amis which I also love. So funny.

Okay bed tiiiiiiime

I have some exciting news...at indietracks I was asked by John from wiaiwya to make some badges to sell as merch for the label. I'm so excited by this because I've been thinking for a while how nice it'd be to join up with people in the music world on projects. I love that I've sold badges at clubnights I genuinely LOVE, and gigs I'm passionate about (indietracks being the most exciting). I might even be makng some mini rose melberg's...wow!

I've begun attempts at wiawya stuff and these are my two first mixtapes....



This is how my etsy is looking...I'm going to try to add at least one item a day for a week or two just to see what kind of success I get. I'm still only on 5 sales on etsy but I've also sold a few through myspace so I'm definetely not giving up on the internet to use as a tool for selling.



My current obsession is colourful stationary. Look at these tickets...(but what on earth would I use them for?!)


these are from schOOLLOcker on etsy.

xxxx

One of my current obsessions is Matryoshka Dolls (or Russian Stacking Dolls). They've been a quiet favourite since Liam bought me some panda stacking dolls from a charity shop last year, and I think it was probably the sight of hundreds of brightly painted ones in Stockholm in January which really cemented their popularity with me. I love that they stand side by side in order, I think it appeals to the same part of me which arranges her bookshelf into alphabetical order and sorts her buttons by colour into jars. I also love that they can be bought as a souvenir from a country, although regrettably I didn't buy any from Stockholm despite it being the painted woodcraft capital of the world. I'm a HUGE fan of tacky souvenirs...pens, keyrings, lighters, and the all important SNOWGLOBE.

Any way, back to Matroyoshka Dolls. They're such a cute image as well as a decoartion, I like that they're so rounded and can be all different characters, some of them are really creepy with pinched lips and big eyelashes. Plus patterns and colours used for some are really beautiful. It seems that they're a popular choice with etsyians too and my love for them has been fuelled by some adorable finds online. I have yet to buy any of these but they're nice to look at. And decorate my blog with....








I've just spent about half an hour looking at them all! I wont post more pictures, but if you like russian dolls go and search for them on etsy....especially if you like cute printed paperware or fabric. I am in love with so many Japanese fabrics at the moment, www.sakurafabric.etsy.com is one of my favourite places to browse and drool over it. They even have several fabrics with russian doll themed prints...



I love it!!

Other favourite ways to spend time on the world wide web at the minute include looking at photos of creative people's apartments. I've got a book which I left at my mum's house which looks inside Paris apartments (I think that it's called Paris Apartments!) and I love looking through it. Most of them have pet cats too =) Design*Sponge have a whole section on previews of people's apartments (and they're all SO pretty) >> http://www.designspongeonline.com/category/sneak-peeks

I like looking at little details and feeling inspired. I'm definetely going to make myself some really simple cute artwork to frame when I get a house I can make my home.


In the "real" (non internet world) my biggest news is that I've started volunteering at a playgroup in a refugee and asylum seeker centre. The centre is where new arrivals to the country stay for 2 to 3 weeks while they are found somewhere to stay and given a series of medical and legal checks. The government feed them but offer no thing for them to do, so some voluntary organisations have got together to open up a playroom for the kids. Tuesday was my first shift and I was SO SCARED. I'm not a natural with children by any means, so I knew it was going to be hard for me to act naturally and have some fun. But it went alright. I made a little friend which was nice, and I didn't drop any little toddlers. I'm doing two shifts next week so I'm sure I'll be super nanny in no time. It's nice to do something good as I feel that since arriving in Leeds as a student all those years ago I haven't really been involved in any real "community". But now I am. Hurrah. Plus while between jobs it makes me feel useful for something other than making badges!

Think I'll post some of the leftovers from indietracks onto my etsy this afternoon so keep checking =)

www.amypanda.etsy.com

I'm on a steaming train and I'm driving into your heart...

Indietracks....wow. Well badge selling-wise it was such a HUGE success. I sold about 75 badges, which almost cleared me out. And more importantly people were just so so nice and sweet about them. I really did have such a great time just standing behind my wares and seeing peoples reactions. I can't imagine a nicer feeling. I feel like my hard work has been appreciated. I get SO much pleasure from people admiring my little creations, and when I see people WEARING them....ohhhhh it's just lovely. There were too many perfect moments for me to tell any heart warming anecdotes about badge appreciation. I might be doing something for an independent record label in London who have Shrag and Rose Melberg on them, which is superrrrrrr exciting =)

Music and fun-wise the weekend was a roaring success too. I was most excited about Ballboy and they more than lived up to my high expectations. I loved that everyone was so twee and typically indiepop that they wilted in the sunshine, it was so geeky. I only managed to see one act on a train, a guy (sorry I can't remember the name...the shame) from Wimpy Milkshake, but that was fun. I somehow kept being in the wrong place at the wrong time for Darren Hayman despite him doing 3 sets throughout the weekend including little acoustic things, but did manager to sit at the back of his acoustic set in a tent thankfully. In fact Darren Hayman was arriving at the campsite just as we were on the first afternoon, so he was kind of the theme of the weekend...Darren Hayman sightings accomanied by excitement. I enjoyed the outdoor stage for The Deidries and The Smittens, hopefully it'll be the "main stage" next year. Well only if it's sunny. I'm not even going to complain about all the times for everything changing constantly because that's no-ones fault and added to the "who's it going to beeee" excitement. If I'd missed Ballboy then I'd be complaining. Oh and Comet gain didn't play. I was pretty gutted about that.

I think I was tucked up in my sleeping bag by 12.30 every night despite intentions to party til dawn, what a geeeeeeek, sunshine and daytime drinking proved lethal. I talked to more people than last year (thanks to the stall) and I can't get over how lovely and friendly and sweet every single person there was. I loved it. Why can't the real world be more like an indiepop steam train station? I almost feel silly for being nervous about the whole thing because when I first arrived everyone was so helpful in sorting me out a space on the merch table and checking that I was okay. I regret not seeing more bands but to be honest, and probably totally self obsessed, I can't imagine getting more pleasure from that than from standing with my badges and playing shop keeper. I hasten to emphasise that I did feel like I was playing shopkeeper...I loved it. I want to go backkkkkkkkk.

I guess it means that the pressure is on to keep up the hard work and keep sewing so that my etsy looks good...especially as I'm hoping that some of my flyers given out over the weekend lead to internet sales. Here's my etsy.....

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade amypanda.etsy.com