stamp carving

Geninne's Art Blog is one of the first blogs I subscribed to. I remember finding it after discovering her stamp carving tutorial and how inspired and impressed I was by her work. She also sells her beautiful work, above, on Etsy.
Today she has posted the most wonderful video of her stamp carving process. For anyone interested in carving this is invaluable. She makes it look very easy (she is such a talented artist) but still its interesting and very inspiring.
I'm always fascinated in watching people work, especially really skilled artisans in fields such as art, craft, cooking, gardening. Recently I've been hearing that they have identified that many people are visual learners. Immediately I identified with that idea and googling it just now I see it fits me perfectly - here's a summary. I really relate to the reading, proof reading, remembering faces not names (!) and needing quiet when I'm doing something. I am easily distracted by sound.
Here's a quiz to work out what sort of learner you are, visual, auditory or tactile:
My results, surprise surprise, said I was a 'very visual learner'. I wonder if most artists are? I like the idea that we are readers too.

fabric junkie

Including independent designers - second from top block printed fabric from Jezze (yes Jesse I haven't used it yet!) and second from bottom Saffron Craig.

The other day my daughter and I slipped away together to go bead and fabric shopping (here and here). I had to laugh because on the way to the car she said 'its hard to use the really nice beads because I want to keep them'. Cue recent and not so recent fabric buys, newly washed (but not ironed, sorry) and ready to cut into. I keep buying more thinking it will help me to use the fabric I have. Not so much LOL.
But as I said to her, its nice to have them to look at anyway, that's pretty good too. And she agreed.
Here's a photo Miss A. took of some of the new beads. Don't you like the way she's styled the shot :-)


I was interested to notice when I folded all these off the line that they fell into a couple of quite obvious colour combinations. Very revealing! I think my new favourite colour is turquoise, or aqua, or whatever you like to call it. And chartreuse, mustard and limey greens are close seconds.

Vintage buys from Ebay

greasemonkey + etsy hacks = heaven

Today on the Etsy forums I came across a thread talking about the Greasemonkey and Etsy Hacks and how fantastic they are. I'd never heard of either. After a bit of investigation though I worked out Greasemonkey is an add-on for the wonderful Firefox browser (if you don't use this download it now! though they are adapting these to work with other browsers) which runs scripts (bits of personalised programming that automate lots of separate tasks).

Etsy Hacks are purpose written scripts that you can install once you are running Greasemonkey and this is the exciting part - these 'hacks' add great useability to Etsy. They do things you've been dying for them to introduce for ages and some you hadn't even thought of. And they are very easy to install and use.

Some of the Hacks I've added already are: copy a listing rather than starting a new one from scratch (hooray!), edit a listing with drop down menus from the item page (takes you quickly to the right page too!); buyer info which gives you links to email and convos and feedback; a script that lets you add all item tags in one go; searchable sold pages (you can look up a buyer or an item in milliseconds)...


I won't go on, needless to say I'm really excited about these tools. If you are an Etsy Seller they will be invaluable. They will save you heaps of time and stress. For example I've been meaning to list all my Cotton Tea Towels but the idea of generating new item listings for each style has meant I've put it off for ages. With the copy listing and tag adding apps I can do it really quickly. Another hack lets you upload five photos at once. Bliss!!!

The other nice thing about Etsy Hacks is that the commands are integrated seamlessly into the Etsy format. Commands are listed neatly at the side. For a designer like me that makes them perfect!