merry

Etsy treasury, originally uploaded by flowerpress.

The bags are packed, the presents wrapped :-) We leave tomorrow on our two day road trip up the coast to my parents' place for two weeks with my family. Happy Holidays my friends :-) I wish you a happy Christmas, if that's your thing, but lots of happy times whatever you are doing.
(p.s. Can you guess where this image comes from, I made it from screenshots of that little kaleidoscope gizmo that grows while you are waiting to view the treasuries! I think it looks like xmas snowflakes.)

ladybirds

I recently heard about ABC Science show Catalyst's Ladybird Survey. They are asking people to photograph their local ladybirds and send them in for a sort of Ladybird Census.
Sounds like a gig for my new macro. This poor unsuspecting couple were just pottering around the back garden when the paparazzi hit! One nice thing I discovered is that these are both native Australians. I've long been fascinated by the different patterns and Catalyst have a gallery so you can identify your own.
p.s. Thank you everyone for the lovely birthday wishes :-)

special day

Hot on the heels of my blog birthday and my Etsyversary, today is my real birthday, can you guess what my present was? A new macro lens for my trusty Nikon D50! I have wanted one of these for a few years and i just love it. Amazing the little worlds that lie hidden close up.
Expect lots more pics!

learn to sew - tote bag

Regular readers will know that I have teaching myself to to sew (better) by tackling simple projects. One thing I've been dying to master is the tote bag. So fantastic to carry all those groceries, library books, art materials, knitting stuff, clothes, food for the park, everything! This is the third tote I've made, if you count the tiny one I made for my daughter's moose toy (he is very fashionable).


The great news is that they are very simple and very rewarding. Yesterday I made a couple in this fabric, one to use as wrapping for a gift to add a bit of handmade love.
There are some fantastic tutorials out there on the craft web. I usually like to read a few and take the bits I like from each, sort of how I use recipes. Here are some simple diagrams I drew to keep beside me as I sew, so I remember the steps.


One thing I learned early on is don't sew the handle straps inside out and then try to turn them right way out. This makes a simple project an exercise in frustration. I like them sewn on the outside anyway, they seem sturdier.

Next I might try a lined bag and some different shapes, I love those pleated totes, or even this tea towel/dishtowel pattern. Oh, and the pieces I started with were about 38cm x 45cm if you're going to try this at home. It's sort of long but I think I like it that way.

momento

Those tea towels of mine have the wanderlust now! Yesterday I put them on the plane to Launceston in Tasmania, along with some of my prints and cards.
They are off to visit the lovely Sarah of Momento Gallery, in time for the special evening she's having down there on Wednesday. Perhaps one day I can visit them there... I've never been to Tasmania (wistfully).

nesting

My tea towels have taken themselves off to Adelaide for a holiday. The lovely Carly and Amy from Nest Studio shop (and Umbrella Prints) are showing them a high time in that beautiful city so if you are an Adelaideian (?!) go and say hello and buy a couple (your kitchen will be happier)!

Isn't this treasury beautiful, I was a little disappointed when it made the front page but without me, my tea towel had already sold. I do love it though and I wanted to show it here. Some people are so clever with their styling and colour choices, this one is by KiraFerrer. I love the little girl in her bonnet, though I think that was sold prior too.

gift tags

I love the effect of the layering of the leaves in these simple stamped tags I made today. It only took me a few minutes to carve these simple shapes and I had the stamp colours in my stash.
One of my customers is giving sets of three tea towels and I tied them for her with brown string and then tagged them with these graphic tags. I made a few extras for Christmas presents and I've been adding one in each etsy parcel I send.

peony heaven

Sister in law + flower market = peony heaven!!!

Wow!

I just realised that my current stock of tea towels has just about sold out!
Until I reprint next week I have officially run out of quite a few tea towel colours and designs. I am happily overwhelmed :-)
The other day I noticed that I was running out of labels too. I went back to see how many I'd ordered - 200!
To me success is also measured by the wonderful feedback left by customers and the repeat orders and lovely emails they send. Thank you friends!
(p.s. look who came to my garden today!)

learn to sew - sunglasses case

Just recently I've broken two pairs of sunglasses in a row. I usually throw them into my bag and they get scratched or bumped. So I had the idea to make a soft case to give them a bit of protection.
As I've mentioned before I am not a wonderful sewer so I was really pleased to come across this neat and simple pattern for a sunglasses/spectacles case online. The pattern suggests toline the case with soft flannel material and luckily I had some leftover flannel in my fabric stash that matched these offcuts of Royal Blue Filigree linen.
I've made a few of these simple cases so I can give some away as presents.

shasta

The shasta daisies are flowering out the front. Must be Christmas soon!

christmas wrapping

Laura at Lupin has had the most wonderful wrapping ideas on her bugs and fishes blog recently. I've asked her if I can show some of them here. She has lots of other great crafty stuff on her blog too and of course she makes the most amazing felty things in her Etsy and Dawanda shops. Her craftiness is very inspiring and she is generous with instructions and how-tos.


I love simple but beautiful wrapping, and brown paper so to me these are just beautiful. Only problem is I'm one of those careful unwrappers and this would make me even slower!

bon voyage

One of the boys' best friends is moving next week. The three of them have been close friends for the last three years since kindi. I wanted to give him and his little brother something personal as a leaving present. Something to keep the connection. I wanted to make it and not just buy a toy.
I had an idea the other day for this, a letter writing post pack. I love this idea and if I'd had more time I could have added to it endlessly!
Included are some coloured envelopes from my stash, some different sized coloured papers, fine liner pens (so grown up) in four different colours, some blank postcards for them to draw pictures on one side, some stamps and some blank folded cards. Also in the pack were some stickers. You could also collect addresses in a little book, add some rubber stamps and an ink pad, though I wanted to keep it flat so it didn't add to the packing and it was portable.


All of this in boys colours and packed in a neat little plastic folder to keep it all safe and then wrapped in a block printed tote.

mays roses pt 2

I've spoken before about the lovely May next door to me, 91 this year. For the last three years I've pruned her rose bushes in winter. She is always trying to force money into my hand as I work, but settles for dropping off chocolates for the kids. I have given up protesting!
The other day as I passed by she was out the front with her hedge trimmers. I couldn't convince her to let me trim the offending piece of hedge her grandson had missed and then she turned on this beautiful heritage rose, which her mil planted over 50 years ago. Before I could leap the fence she had pruned all these roses off for me. They are just so lovely. Wafts of deep perfume, a lovely cupped shape and a unique red/magenta/pink colour.
A couple of years ago I struck a cutting of this rose. I have had quite good luck with rose cuttings and I'm not sure why people don't propagate them more this way. They are reputed to be tougher on their own roots than grafted.


Here's another beauty I struck from one of my mother in law's roses. It is quite laughable really as I only did it this past autumn and so the plant is smaller than the flower! This rose has about a bazillion petals even as such a scrawny seedling.
The colours of both roses are beautiful, does anyone know their names? The colours aren't showing up so great, the one below can go more purple, might be a David Austin...?

industry

Catching up with my orders yesterday. Somehow it took me all day, I had to sew on some more labels, package some prints and tea towels and I'd run out of envelopes so I had to go to the post office twice.

Here they are (spread out on my bed - I really can't wait for my little space upstairs).

I was really touched because on the anniversary of my first sale, Liz who was my first customer, ordered some new prints. I still remember sitting at my computer that first day and getting the email to say someone had bought something from my Etsy shop. Excited is an understatement :-)

catching up

While I was away I've been a bit out of touch with the blogworld. I was really sorry to miss seeing Flower Press as Shop of the Day on Paper n' Stitch last Friday, though it was a nice surprise when I was catching up on my blog reading last night. I've discovered some wonderful new artists on Brittni's showcase and it is definitely worth exploring each month.

I also missed these two front page treasuries last week, thank you to Etsy Gift Guide (missed that too) and oktak for featuring me and to curlysue who pointed me to Etsy Front Pagers which does the wonderful service, along with a couple of other Flickr groups, of capturing one's 15 minutes of fame if you are (asleep) otherwise engaged.

Thanks also to odannysgirl for the Fabulous Friday mention which featured great Etsy kitchen finds. If you follow the link she has you come to a new searching feature on Etsy. Will have to check that out sometime, it would be great to refine your search. This is a new blog for me too, I love the intriguing line - owner, inventor, mom!

home

Flew home today, a bit exhausted. It is nice to be back.
I was so pleased to get an email when I returned from the lovely Carina who has published the interview she did with me recently (blush) on her lovely crafty blog. Her wonderful questions really made me sit and think about my work in such a nice and positive way.
Go and see the photo of my new attic studio window!
Thanks Carina!

glimpses

Here are the baby chicks as promised, very sweet though I haven't managed such a great photo. The bales of hay are in a field on the road into town yesterday morning. Someone had added to them overnight. It gave us such a big smile. Taken on my camera phone standing on the side of the road with the cars whizzing past.

Thanks to everyone who has made this year so much fun. Happy Birthday Flower Press for today. I am out of town, visiting my Dad in hospital during the day and then coming home here at night (that is Star in front and Bonnie in the background). We have some orphaned baby chicks in a box in the house, they are so cute! I will post a pic of them tomorrow :-)

Celebration Birthday Sale!!

Hello friends, Thanks to everyone who has sent birthday messages for Flower Press :-) I may just have mentioned that my little company turns one on November 11th!

To celebrate I'm happy to announce that I'm having my first SALE, to celebrate Flower Press's first birthday and all the excitement of this year! I will be discounting plain tea towels from $12 down to $10 and unbleached from $13 down to $11!!
Starting from today the sale will run for the rest of November.

I've listed some new stock today. First up a fun new colourway for my Ruby Slippers print. In a beautiful burnished gold that catches the light. It will probably be a limited edition so get in quick.


I've also listed a couple of new tea towel colours including this grassy green Filigree towel. You would have laughed to see me draping it awkwardly over all the plants in my garden, snapping product photos :-)
Also new is the Filigree design in beautiful Turquoise, to match the Chrysanthemum tea towel which I love so much. Now these two can be given as a matching set.

hope

I bought this poster on US Ebay a few months ago, as a present for my parents who have always been very involved in politics. I am really moved by Obama's historic victory today. I think it is a wonderful and important day for the world, not only for the US.

sculpture by the sea

Sculpture by the Sea is on again. This fantastic exhibition puts sculpture along the beautiful Bondi to Tamarama cliff walk, giving wonderful art a breathtaking background. We set off on a really hot afternoon with our swimmers and towels only to walk around the first corner and get hit in the face by a Southerly Buster, the cold wind that comes up from the cold southern seas, bringing relief after a hot, airless Sydney day. A couple of times I felt like I was going to be swept over the edge by a particularly strong gust! Here are photos of some of my favourites. I think the army figure is very clever.
Last year's sculpture by the sea pictures were one of the first entries on my blog. In a week's time I will have done a whole year of blogging!