Over 1500 views!!!

Wow! I just checked in on YouTube to see how my Linocut animation is going and it has over 1500 views. I never would have expected it to do so well within just a couple of weeks.

According to the stats, most of the views are coming from the Craftzine blog, which I love so much. A lot of them have also come from the delightful Yellow Umbrella blog.

I also know that Imaginative Bloom posted it on facebook, for which I'm very grateful.

If you are one of the unlucky few that has yet to see the animation, check it out here:

Yellow Umbrella

This week my linocut animation is featured on the lovely Craft Mondays section of The Yellow Umbrella. It's such a great blog, I'm really happy to have been selected. Check it out.

How-to Linocut animation

I made a new animation to show the process of creating my linocuts. I wanted to keep it short and sweet, so that it'd be fun to watch.

I hope you like it, if you do, please share it.

Find a gift for a friend

I don't know how long this has been around for, but I've only just discovered it. There's a tool in Etsy where you can select from you Facebook friends and it will run a search based on the things they like.

It sounds weird, but it's actually really good. I tested it on someone I always struggle to buy for (my little brother) and it came up with some suggestions I never would have thought of.

Give it a go if you're ever short of ideas. Buy Handmade.


(Thanks to Business Insider for the link to the tool.)

It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday

I cannot get this song out of my head. I think it's because I am just so glad that the week has come to an end.
It's a bank holiday on monday and I want to spend the 3 days doing some sort of project. I've been doing a fair bit of printing lately, and I've had some lovely positive responses from friends.

I think I may try and do another animation. I've been coming across a few really inspirational things recently. Here's one by Peter Lowey from the Annecy Festival that I'm loving:



Also this from Katie Blair:

Screenprint love

Oh goodness, this is just the most beautiful thing:



I love it, it has such a delightful style. It's from Etsy here.

Etsy update

In fact, in a fit of productiveness, I've started work on my felt shop on Etsy and set up the widget for it within this blog.

New Etsy

One of the many many things that I have perpetually unfulfilled intentions of doing is sorting out my Etsy shop.
In a shocking turn of events (especially to myself), I have in fact finally got around to setting up a new shop for my printed items, there's just a couple of cards in there at the moment, so I'll be building it up over the next few weeks. I haven't yet sorted out my felt shop, but I will do that next.
You'll be able to see a few items from the shop in the window on the right of this blog, and I'm going to try and get back into updating my blog by putting in some details of my linocutting and printing work.
Here's a photo of some of my new cards:

Etsy Treasury

I haven't done an Etsy treasury in a while. But today I happened to check on the treasuries and there was an opening within half an hour. That only happens every couple of days so I thought I might as well take advantage of it while I was on. I made one based around the colour purple:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=73554

It's got a scarf of mine in it, and it's only on for a couple of days, so check it out.

Another treasury

I've been busy making some new earrings to be sold in the John Rylands giftshop. But in the meantime, things are ticking along on Etsy. I've been included in another treasury. It's full of beautiful cobalt blue items. Have a look.

Etsy

I got my first sale on Etsy and I want to use that encouragement and roll it on to more pro-active selling. As part of that I've made a treasury - a sort of on-line poster of good pieces from Etsy on a theme, which includes a piece of my own. Check it out here. And my shop is here.

Catching up

The internship is over.....sort of. I have to go back into the library some time this week to finish cataloguing the last box I was working on. Then I will have done all the letters and magazines from the 50s to the 70s. And there is it, this complete phase of life that can only be glimpsed on the page. The letters are like butterflies pinned in a display case - merely specimens, only those few fragile samples that have been caught and kept.

Soon, the whole thing will go full circle and I will be inside the story. I'm going to Elaine's book launch, and the invitation will go into the special bottom drawer that forms my archive of sorts.

And I'm writing a piece, or maybe a couple of small pieces, inspired by the archiving to go into my magazine, Bewilderbliss.


This post is all very disconnected. I've spent the last few days catching up on things I'd let slide while I was finishing my masters essay and doing the internship. I've even squeezed in a bit of felting to make a commissioned piece for somebody and a scarf for a friend. Now I feel like I just want to sleep for a few days.

But I can't. I feel like I'm making progress with the novel after it had been lost for a while. I've got out several hefty books on Madagascar from the library so I can get totally immersed back into the subject.

The only problem as far as that goes is that the books I ordered last week have arrived (the Bananas anthology and the Tsvetayeva-Pasternak-Rilke letters that I mentioned here). They're very distracting and the summer sun is calling for me to sit in it and read by its warm light.


Finally, I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I have to point to Max Dunbar's blog. It is always interesting and hugely varied and even when I've got no time at all it somehow manages to suck me in.

Etsy Treasury

For anyone who doesn't know, on Etsy you can create a treasury, which is basically an arrangement of some of your favourite things for sale on the website on a theme of your choice. They're really hard to get but I finally snagged one and made a collection of lovely spring and summer themed items since the weather is so nice.

Check it out.

Also, while you're in the Etsy mood, check out my store.

Felting

I mentioned my Etsy shop below. As an extension of that I've joined an Etsy team, FeltingTeam, and I now contribute to their blog. It's got some really great felting info on there and some of my favourite Etsy shops are part of it. Hopefully the members will help me find a way to increase my profile and get some sales. My absolute favourite member is Arlene Watson, who does some incredible nuno-felting.

readings and felting

Something about writing

Last night was the March outing of the incedibly popular No Point in Not Being Friends. Thanks to Chris Killen we had a slot for readings from Bewilderbliss, which went down well. If you want to read more about the night visit my blog ManchesterWriting.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Something personal

This is the first thing that I want to collect onto here - my etsy site:








I've been felting for about a year now and though I do a lot of crafts (to keep the creative part of my mind ticking over when I'm struggling to write) this one's my favourite. Maybe it's got something to do with how much I'd love to paint but how frustrating I find it to spend ages dabbing watercolours onto paper just to come out with something that looks like a five year old did it. Felting's a lot like painting in relation to the importance of colour and composition. It's also a lot more fun and hands on so I can work out the tension of writer's block.
If you want to know a little more about felting click here.