Commissions

19 Tuesday Mar 2013

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I know I’ve been a bit quiet on the business and posting front so I thought I would share a commission that I did for a friend.

It is based on the carpet from the film The Shining. It took a long time to make and finding a burnt orange colour yarn proved way more difficult than I expected, apparently burnt orange is not an ‘in’ colour. However I am super happy with how it turned out and my friend loved it too. =]

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Funds for Gretel

13 Wednesday Feb 2013

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I came across this while I was browsing facebook this evening. I think it is a really creative and clever way to raise money.

Gretel’s partner passed away recently and because of this she can’t keep up with bills and may lose her home. Her friend started a campaign within the crafting community to do a raffle to raise money with handmade items from many businesses as prizes. There are is an amazing amount of donations and seeing the amount that has already been raised after only a couple of days is astonishing and really shows how strong the crafting community can be.

I think it is a beautiful and inspiring idea and even though I don’t personally know Gretel, I have purchased some raffle tickets and wish her all of the luck in the world. We can see that she has a great friend and crafting circle to support her during this hard time.

There is a blog and a facebook page if you would like to find out more about this great cause =]

https://www.facebook.com/FundForGretel

http://fundsforgretel.blogspot.co.uk/

http://allaroundus.blogspot.co.uk/

Work in progress..

07 Thursday Feb 2013

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So today I’ve been working on a few different things.. I seem to find it incredibly difficult to concentrate on one thing for too long at the moment which means I find myself switching between projects a lot. 

I’m currently working on a satchel style bag up-cycled from shirts. I would say I am about two thirds of the way through making it and today I hit a snag as it’s the first one I have made which caused me to get a bit frustrated! Although I know I shouldn’t because it’s a work in progress and the first attempt.. still it made me loose my concentration and I ended up having to switch projects.

To help my creativity and productivity I then went on to decoupage a pencil pot for myself with some lilies cut out of a magazine (I like to have my own little home projects on the go to keep me sane) – the pencil pot is a plain white mug that my partner broke the handle off of last week so I thought I would up-cycle it into something more useful and make it all prettyful at the same time =].

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Once I’d finished that I then made a knitting pattern for a hat that I am working on for my friend in the design of the orange and brown carpet in the shining. 

So even though the bag making went awry, in the end I felt productive and accomplished different stages on other projects which was nice =].. hopefully I will be able to finish the bag tomorrow and then I can put it up on my Etsy shop and start my next exciting project =].

New Start!

29 Tuesday Jan 2013

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So this is my new start…

Since finishing university I’ve been slowly progressing towards starting my own ethical clothing business. I took the first big step of putting some garments up for sale on Etsy back in November which helped me face my fears but then I had a bit of a lull over the Christmas period.

Throughout November and December I took the opportunity to make presents for friends and family as I have not had the time to do it in many many years. The creative hand-made presents varied broadly from mini food hampers to a hand made shirt for my dad and a Lion head costume for my friend Pete.

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Now that all of the Christmas gift making is over I have a few commissioned items to make for friends and family, then I will be getting properly stuck into everything business related. Especially making lots more goodies for my Etsy shop.

I am hoping that my new found motivation will bring lots of new craft based opportunities. =]

www.facebook.com/SecondStitchDesigns

SecondStitchDesigns.etsy.com