kitch, you're so sweet

Tonight I am drawing and drawing and drawing, something I've been doing quite a lot of lately. While I draw, I like to listen to nice tunes on Spotify. My playlists have names like "French-ish", "Country-ish" and "Sweet Electro-ish". I do know what I like, I just don't always exactly know what it is. This song is one of my favourites from my rather small "Reggae-ish" playlist, though it's not really reggae, I don't think. Please ignore the cheesy edit effects on the video and just enjoy the song. Puts me right in the mood for a foot rub :)

back to life, back to reality

We've just been on a minibreak to Perthshire for a few days, visiting Aberfeldy, Dunkeld and Pitlochry. I left my camera in my bag most of the time (failing to get even a single photo in lovely Dunkeld, where we browsed art/shops/antiques/the cathedral, ate stovies and got hustled at pool by some old men) but here are a few things I did snap.

We had a very nice day wandering around in Aberfeldy and visiting the shops. I got some books and photo frames (not pictured) in the charity shop, some notebooks and that great cowboy card (all wrapped up in handmade woodcut bicycle paper) as well as a lovely chat about printing in the Temple Gallery, some buttons in one antique shop and these adorable Russian dolls in another antique shop.

I am not sure about their "antique" status, but I do love them very much.

Look how tiny the smallest doll is! Tinier than my fingertip!

Whenever we are in Pitlochry, we always visit the amusements. Graham so nearly won me this black pony in the grabber machine, but its leg got caught in the hatch on its way out! I was very sad to leave it behind :(

The horsey game always keeps us entertained while we gamble away 2 pence pieces by the cupful.

I liked this sign. I did have ice cream once while I was on holiday (rum and raisin - mmmm!) but did not have any candyfloss or popcorn. I put my finger in a heart-rate monitor just beside this sign. It told me I needed to exercise. I think it was right.

We stopped to say hello to the scary chip man. He does not put me in the mood to eat chips at all! That said, I did eat some chips shortly after seeing him...

..when we enjoyed a very lovely dinner at the Moulin Inn just before getting the train back to Glasgow. Because I drank quite a lot of their own brewed-on-site ales, I had a lovely nap on the train :) You can also see from this picture (by what was once my fringe) that we got rained on quite a lot. It didn't rain all the time though and the sky was clear enough for us to do some stargazing and even spot some shooting stars.

We arrived back in Glasgow/reality with a hideous bump as Graham rolled over during the night to discover one of the cats had puked under the covers on his side of the bed while we were away. Ming! Sigh... The holiday was short but sweet and it's back to work tomorrow unfortunately. I want another week off, please!

Apologies for my lacklustre blogging of late. I've totally lost my blog mojo and it's been a bit like getting blood from a stone these last few weeks. Not to worry though - I have devised a cunning masterplan to get my blog juices flowing again. Prepare to be dazzled and amazed by my vintage craft book collection...

Been and gone and back again

Lurking in shop windows
Originally uploaded by nz_willowherb

Graham and I are just back from a sneaky few days away in (and around) Aberfeldy, where the shop mannequins are many and varied, but all slightly spooky. Please forgive my paranoia and our sneaking off in secret, but our neighbours have recently been broken into again and I didn't want to advertise our holiday (however mini) on the internet! I didn't take many photos while we were away, but I'll be back with some of the photos I did take very soon. For now, though, it's a wee whisky and off to bed for me. Good night.

not so rubbish after all

Talk about good timing! My mum and dad got back today from visiting my sister and just sent me a photo of my eldest niece Kim's newly decorated (super duper pink) bedroom. And what is that hanging on the wall? A-hem! It's the giant cupcake bunting that I made for Kim about three years ago, long before my blogging days. Now I don't feel like quite such a rubbish auntie, despite the dinosaur fiasco.

And for a bonus auntie point, here's a photo of (some of) the people who know me as Auntie Laura - Angus, Gav, Kim, Kerry (my sister) and baby Ruth.

I think I've done a bit too much blogging today, but it is good to throw yourself back in with gusto after a period of non-blogging. It's funny how quickly you can become self-conscious when you don't blog for a bit... and how quickly you can get over that self-consciousness and start posting random pictures of pink bedrooms and family members!

p.s. I bought myself the cat gocco print from two posts back :)

roar-bish auntie

My nephew, Angus, turned three two whole weeks ago and I have only just finished making his present.

Plus his present turned out a bit rubbish. Hopefully he doesn't mind too much. I am a bad auntie :( As well as dinosaurs, Angus loves volcanoes. Thank goodness I managed to send him one of Marceline's kawaii volcano cards in time for the big day, at least.

I did use a pattern for this dinosaur, but I'm not even going to post a link to it because the pattern/instructions were so awful. It was free to download, but was foolishly posted by a publisher as a teaser for a whole book of patterns. I certainly wouldn't buy the book now. I had to adapt the pattern a lot, as I couldn't work out how half the pieces fitted together. I'm pretty sure it's a bad sign when half the pieces you cut out are left over when the dinosaur is finished... Their shoddy pattern has not helped my auntie-rating at all. Harumph!

Angus's birthday marks the beginning of crazy season as far as children's birthdays go. There is a gift-requiring birthday every fortnight or so for the next few months. I can't keep up! I think perhaps I should give up on the handmade gifts - better a shop-bought present than no present at all?

Mrkgnaow!

Gocco Smiley Cat Close Up

Originally uploaded by k e e k i

I love this cat gocco print by keeki. I got some new colours of gocco ink yesterday and they are so lovely - turquoise, gold, fluorescent pink, mustard... I've been plotting a new gocco print on and off for a few months now. I haven't used my gocco since I made the ice-cream van cards over a year ago! I thought I had the design sort of finalised and this week I drew most of the bits for it, but couldn't quite bring myself to commit. After chatting to a couple of people, I realised it wasn't (only!) the usual gocco fear that was putting me off, and that my design wasn't actually getting across the things that had most made me want to print it in the first place. I'm starting from scratch (back to the doodling on envelopes and old receipts) but I have a good feeling about it now, so hopefully I should be able to share my own gocco print here soon, instead of just stealing other people's. I'm so excited! Yay gocco!

market mayhem with made in the shade

The two markets I did seem like a long time ago now... probably because they were! I can only apologise for my terrible lackadaisical blogging style of the last couple of weeks. I have actually really enjoyed my unplanned break, but I promise to do better now that I'm back.

Part of my blogging problem is that I am no good at taking photos (or more accurately, no good at taking my camera out of my bag!) so I should confess that I stole the first and second-last photos in this post from the markets' organisers' flickr photostream. Thanks, Made In The Shade, for awesome market-putting-together-skills and for the photos!

These first three photos are from the Summertime Hop through in Edinburgh - the tatty-looking back of my stall (oops!) the out-of-focus front of my stall (oops!) and a close up of my newly packaged handkerchiefs and space-saving display methods.

Space-saving display methods turned out to be very necessary. Here is the scene (very late at night) on the night before the market, when I realised I had made enough stuff to fill my whole living room, let alone a six foot by two foot stall! Excuse the cat's scary eyes. Look very closely towards the right of my imaginary stall and you can see my miniature bunting hanging. Eep! The bunting was very well received. I didn't sell that many, but it had lots of people squealing and oohing and aahing. The really big sellers of the day were the pinwheel brooch kits.

My first ever market in the capital was brilliant and I set a new personal best in sales (smashing, obliterating, stamping upon and destroying my previous personal best) even though the day had a nice laid-back pace to it. I was there on my own, so didn't get the chance to look at all the stalls, but I did find the perfect Christmas present for my brother-in-law on the stall next to mine. My brother-in-law (notoriously difficult to buy presents for, hence why I'm saving this for Christmas!) works at the Hadron Collider at Cern and my neighbours, The Lindstrom Effect, had made this IKEA style flat-pack Hadron Collider instruction manual. Perfect!

Here I am at the second market of the week, Pin Up Nights, with my friend Bernie who (thank goodness!) came with me for moral support and even brought some stuff to sell with her. This market was... interesting - the sort of thing I'm glad I did once, but probably won't do again! It was fun (drinking cider funded by sales and chatting to Bernie and other stall holders like lovely Mhairi from Bonnie Bling) but I did spend most of the night defending my wares from drunk people and their sloshily full pint glasses. "Noooooo! Not the bunting!" etc. We didn't quite last until 3am, but did stay late enough to sell some Pat and Frank lavender bags to a man who was almost too drunk to get his purchase into his jacket pocket. Oh how we laughed at the thought of him finding his lavender-scented friends in his pocket the next morning! I gave him a discount - it does feel a bit weird to sell things to drunk people, not knowing if they would ever buy them sober, plus he was the first person all night who was nice enough to put his drink on the floor rather than on top of my stock!

This hand-drawn notebook was my purchase of the evening, for a friend who always laughs at the word "jobby". I don't know the name of the person who made it (I'll try to find out it's by Jolly Joyness) but she does really lovely line drawings and portraits, by which I mean that she is a very talented individual and hasn't merely built her artistic empire on the strength of the word "jobby"! This was, in fact, the only jobby-related item I could see on her whole stall. I wish I'd never started trying to explain that!

Phew! This post has taken me so long to write. I'll try to come back soon with something more snappy for you. I'll be off now, to forage the bare cupboards for food.