Busy times here in Sweeneyville! Finally got moved into the new place over the weekend. Now begins the massive unpacking efforts.
I do have a purse to share from a few weeks ago. This was a special request for a friend of a friend. Get this: She likes purple, monkeys and skulls! This is a girl after my own heart.
It's hard to see in the picture, but the purple in the monkey is a fun glittery fabric. The same fabric was used for the lining. I learned the hard way to iron the wrong side of the fabric or the glitter would come off. I used a skull and crossbones button for the tab closure. This was a fun one to make!
Now, I should go unpack the kitchen. Or I could keep watching Heroes. Eh, we'll see. :-)
I received feeback for the custom kitteh purse. She says,
"Amazing quality and craftsmanship. Couldn't be any happier!"
Here's my latest song obsession. You Don't Know Me by Ben Folds, featuring Regina Spektor. I find the video mildly disturbing, so you may want to close your eyes or skip ahead.
I just placed an order with Fabric.com that I'm super excited about. It was hard not to get carried away. Handbags with love birds, owls and woodland creatures are coming soon! Here's a preview...
Btw, if you've thought about ordering from Joann online, I'd think twice about it. I ordered some stuff just before the holidays for Christmas presents and was disappointed.
For starters, they sent partial items. For example, they ran out of some fabrics and sent 1 yard instead of the 2 yards I ordered. When you're talking about fabric, this can render the item useless. Such was the case for my projects. Secondly, you can't return or exchange in store. Granted, I should have read the return policy before I ordered, but seriously?
So now I have a bunch of fabric that I can't use and have to make a trip to the post office to return. (Does anyone else hear the world's smallist violin?) I ended up with enough fabric to complete 1 of the 5 projects that I ordered for.
I emailed Joann and got a canned response about how they're forwarding my concerns on to the proper authorities. I doubt that anything will come of it, but sometimes you need to vent. Multiple times, it seems. At the end of the day, I'll still shop at Joann because I've never had a problem in store. However, I won't be ordering online again and that's disappointing.
Here's a pic of a bracelet I forgot to post. This one's a gift, so it's not available for sale. I found these handpainted glass beads at the International Gem and Jewelry Show, which is what sparked the new jewelry making obsession. I wish I had picked up more of them now because I absolutely love them.
I got in a slap fight with one of my cats over orange chicken. I like to think that I won, but you never really know with a cat.
The custom purse I was working on is complete and shipped. The requestor wanted a purse with silhouettes of her cats in their typical poses. I really like how this one turned out.
I just introduced jewelry to the Etsy store! This was the perfect opportunity to break out the micro studio I got for my birthday. It's actually much bigger than I expected. As you can see below, it takes up the entire dining room table.
Overall, I'm very happy with the pictures of the jewelry...
I tried retaking pictures of purses with less success. The camera wants to wash out some of the bright colors. I'll have to keep practicing with different settings.
In the coming weeks, we'll be finalizing our move to the Chicago area. We're trying to sell or give away as much as possible to make the last move easier, which puts us in the market for... a new sofa! Initially, I thought I wanted a sectional. One sofa doesn't give both of us enough room to lay down and, let's face it, we're sofa layers. As I was shopping, I had a hard time finding a sectional that I liked and in the right color (my heart is set on gray). Then I found this beauty!
I love the shape and it's an awesome deal. No, it's not a sectional, but I love it! The solution is that we'll have to get two of them, of course. The color shown is Oyster, but it also comes in this amazing gray textured fabric. It reminds me of boucle.
I'm very excited! Just need to figure out how we're paying for it.
One project I'll definitely be undertaking for the living room is this fantastic wreath made of torn book pages.
Love, love, love it! Thanks to Living With Lindsay for the idea and tutorial. She made this for about $2 with items from Dollar Tree. It has a wonderful vintage vibe and would be awesome if you used a book that has sentimental value. If you could bring yourself to do it, that is.
Shop-side, I won a bid on Etsy's Alchemy, so I've been working on a custom purse. I'll post some pics when that's done. Should be cute!
Greetings from (near) Chicago! The last few months have been filled with moving, starting a new job, our first anniversary and my birthday. I've been trying to settle in as much as I can in a temporary house with my husband living in another state. I feel like I'm coming out of the funk though. It's time to put my stamp on the house, put together my crafting area and do things that make me feel like Mel P. This includes, but is not limited to:
Eating chocolate
Getting a pedicure
Making snarky comments
I just read through my old posts and realized how many projects I've started, but haven't finished. I have so many ideas, but there's so much stuff to watch. :-)
I just made a spreadsheet that, when purse dimensions are entered, calculates the size of the pieces of fabric that need to be cut. You'd think I'd have the math memorized by now, but not so much. This will greatly simpify things!
The etsy store is continuing to truck along slowly. I recently commissioned a new banner, avatar, business cards, etc. from Little Loveables. She did a fantastic job! Exactly what I was looking for. I also sold a purse to someone in Australia, which was super exciting.
By the way, you can now become a fan of Pomely Grove on facebook! All the cool kids are doing it. (Note: there's only like 6 cool kids at this time. You can get in on the ground floor.)
In other exciting news, the Pacman purse received a very nice review at GadgetHER.
I've gotten really behind on my blogging. I would almost feel guilty about it if anyone actually read this. :-)
As mentioned in a previous post, I've been unemployed since the company I worked for (rhymes with Schmircuit City) went out of business. I work in the field of retail space management, so my options are limited to retail headquarters. The Richmond, VA area doesn't have many more left, leaving me to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
So, elsewhere we will go! I've accepted a job with a company located near Chicago. I'll be very vague about my future situation for the protection of my job.
Anyhoo, my world has been occupied with interviews, planning, packing, etc. Unfortunately, this hasn't left much time for purse making. Once I'm relocated and settled I'll have more time to devote to crafting and blogging. Especially since I'll be leaving by hubby behind for 6 months to finish school.
I'll be making a headboard for the new place. Maybe I'll take some pics as I go and blog about that.
I'm very excited about the upcoming move. While I love this area, I've been here most of my life and am looking forward to having new things to see and new areas to explore.
If you, good reader, happen to be from Chicago, feel free to comment give me some ideas of cool things to do!
So, I've been a bit of a slackard. I haven't had much energy for anything that doesn't involve hulu. I guess I needed a break from sewing, but I seem to have the bug again. W00t! My goal is to burn through all my stockpiled fabric while the desire to sew lasts.
I finished the purse for my friend Kobi, which you can see above. I absolutely love this fabric and may use it as inspiration for redecorating the living room/dining room. But we'll wait a bit to see if any bites come through on the job front.
For those who don't know me personally, I used to work for a certain big box electronics retailer that closed recently. Being that retail floor planning is pretty specialized, the only leads I've had are many states away, so I'm trying to limit how much we do to the house. In fact, as I look around at the things in our house, I ask myself, "Do I want that enough to move it?"
Anyway, besides Kobi's purse, I finished the dinosaur purse and found out the requester actually wanted two dinosaur purses, so yay! There's the red dinosaur to the right and his green brother. How do I know they're boys? I just do.
For anyone who may be interested, I'm thinking I'll do a dinosaur applique tutorial soon. This coming week will be very busy, so it may be the following week.
I just started a cherries purse out of what is supposed to be a girl's sundress and I like how it's looking. You'll see that with the next update, hopefully, along with the beginnings of my new line of super scary purses! (You'll be so fweaked out.)
Two more purses sold! The monkey purse is gone (thanks, Jennie) and I made a skull purse as a special request. I have a friend whose daughter loves skulls and purses, so it seemed natural that she have a skull purse.
On the agenda for this week: Complete the dinosaur purse, find fabric for a purse for my friend's b-day and get started on the cherries purse. I'm also very excited about a red toile bag that will be coming soon.
Artfire is free, but you can only list 10 items, so see etsy for the full breadth of offerings.
In other exciting news, my first sale has reached its destination and the buyer says, "I received my Pac-Man purse and it is freaking awesome! I love it!!! Thanks =)"
