the studio clear out

is now complete! I have room for my heat press, sewing machine, printing stuff as well as my stash of lovely vintage fabrics all boxed and labeled.When I packed my latest etsy sale to send away to the customer I could actually find all the things I needed without having to run up and down stairs or saying any sweary words. Result!

The room was used as a kitchen by the house's previous ocupants so I have a very useful sink and some much less useful kitchen cupboards and a cooker (now covered by a piece of chipboard and has my lightbox on it). The second pic also shows the crazy light which you can pull down or up. I have managed to raise it up a bit so I don't keep hitting my head on it!

i want vintage!

This super cool newish website was featured in Grazia a few weeks back and I had a wee look at it and decided to take up the free trial for some ads.

Lots of the usual suspects are on there: clarissa hulse, jan constantine, ulrika may with their vintage goodies and now littlechook is muscling in.

They have a newletter for customers which this week is on the very important subject of cushions and they featured me me me! My 60s floral cushion is hanging out with the cool crowd. I can't post the feature as it's a pdf thingy and I can't figure it out!

http://www.iwantvintage.co.uk/

Apart from this excitement I did do some work today printing tea towels and cutting flock shapes for the t shirts in preparation for saturday's craft market. My lovely sister looked after Katherine. The little lady was made up to have her Auntie Ali with her all day. Thanks sis!

I love summer

Today was a lovely summer day here and we managed to pack loads into our sunday. Hubby went to the park with the little lady to run off her energy and she then slept for almost three hours.

While she was slumbering peacefully we got stuck into the jungle aka our garden. Out went half a tree, an old woody lavendar and many many weeds. The grass has been shorn and the bush trimmed.

We then decided to have a bbq. The lovely John and Anna who we bought our house from left us a fab kettle type bbq so we cleaned it up and lit it. Unfortunately the charcoal had been in our cellar and I think to be honest it was a bit damp. I tried to light the bbq and failed then hubby took over (man fire and all that) and with much fanning and sweating he did get things going.

By this time though we had already had to cook the food in the oven as Katherine was starving hungry!

My sis though made the most fab veggie food. The receipe roughly is:

Cut chunks of red pepper, courgette and shallots. Add whole mushrooms and halloumi cheese and marindae with rosemary, basil, chilli sauce, soy sauce and partida agave syrup. Wrap mixture is foil and bake for 30 mins or till the veg is cooked.

Delicious with our burgers. Thanks sis!

Tonight got down to sorting through the kids tshirts and tea towels for next saturday's craft fair in Brixton and I have quite a bit of printing, washing, ironing and packing to do before then but I am feeling confident about it and raring to go. Etsy is great but it will be nice to chat face to face with customers and get their feedback on my designs.

And Spain went into the semi finals of euro 2008 - yay!

insomnia and creativity!

I didn't get to sleep last night until about 5am. Hubby bless him let me lie in till 7.30am. I had hours of fun on the etsy forums and had a chat with my lovely web designer Jen about her baby bump.

I am cursing these steroids I am taking. Side affects include insomnia (thanks) and weight gain (and I worked so damm hard to shift the baby weight) and hungers pangs (hence the bowl of rice crispies and a glass of port at 3am).

But have managed to get myself working today while Katherine is at nursery. A grand total on a cushion cover made from some screen printed fabric with rabbits and squirrels in flock popped onto the cover. I'm not sure about it to be honest.....

Secondly finished one of my flower circle designs and am pretty happy with that one so hopefully can get a screen made up soon to start printing some of my lovely organic fabrics.

Think I will be napping with the little lady when she gets back from nursery. In fact got to pick her up now!

butterfly prints

Just a short post tonight as I am knackered! Hopefully soon I will be able to put some of my new prints up for sale in my etsy shop in the form of cushion covers and tea towels. For my designs I am using alot of tiny flowers with line drawn butterflies. I'm using alot of muted greens and turquoise with brighter accent colours like fuschia.

I need a new print table though because my current set up is too low and my back is really sore today.

Tomorrow I am going to use my new flock which is done by printing a layer of texiflock glue onto the fabric then heat pressing on the flock layer. Can't wait to see what it looks like!

Family Photos

hello for a bad littlechook who hasn't blogged for days now. Mainly because of a rare night out in london on friday which involved cocktails and bucket loads of rose. The cocktails in a tapas place in shoreditch was very sex and the city but we had to take the fancy leaves out in case we poked our own eyes out.

Anyway, I was able to do some printing today using my butterflies screen to add to a flower garden design and the result is quite lovely and I'd blog more about this if I could upload a picture but I can't find my lead to connect the camera to the laptop.

And for some reason I am feeling all nostaligc this weekend so today's pic is of my two favourite family photos. On is of my daughter Katherine sleeping in the garden of our old flat when she was about 10 weeks old. The other is of me and my gran. I think I am about 4 and it is a strip of pictures from a photo booth (way before digital gave you four of the same photo). My aunt found it in a bundle of family pics she went through recently and the strip has been folded in half. I wonder if it was kept in her purse? It makes me remember what a lovely, strong and kind woman she was and how she would have loved to meet my Katherine.

I've seen walls of family photos in quite a few featured homes in interiors mag such as elle decoration and living etc and I think it adds a real personal touch to a home. I am planning to do this in our hallway over time so that Katherine can see her family members as some live quite far away and we don't get to see them that often.

My first attempt at a montage turned out well using photos from the bundle my aunt gave me including a picture of my dad with us in the 70's with a Borat style 'tash - it's a classic. I love all the 50s and 60s shots of my grandparents on their holidays especially loving the floral prints on my grans dresses.

Anyway that's me for tonight, off to update my neglected etsy shop.