friday find

And oh my, what a find it is this Friday!

The Frenchman is away mountain biking and (rather insanely if you ask me) camping this weekend. As camping trip in November was something that I most definitely was not interested in participating in, the Boy and I are staying with my parents near Bristol. Mum and I had a little stroll to the local shops this afternoon; I always like to do this when we go to stay, as they are really quite spoilt when it comes to charity shops. And just look at what I found...

a beautiful beautiful sewing box. Which looks a little bit like a handbag.

I'm not quite sure what the wood is, and it needs a little bit of a clean-up but I love it!

Keep warm and dry and have a great weekend. I'm off to admire my sewing box...

two little words that everyone wants to hear

I had a letter at the weekend, containing those two little words that everyone likes to hear...

tax rebate

Admittedly that's because I earned hardly anything last year because I was on maternity leave. But I'm not complaining. No siree.

I went out shopping. And I did not buy anything for the Boy, or the Frenchman, or the house. I treated myself to a lovely cardi.

Yes, I could have done that embellishment work myself. Quite easily now that I look at it.

But just sometimes, it's nice to have a treat.

By the way, I never did hear back from the original winner of my giveaway, so I decided to redraw.. and the new winner is Elli Moody - if you could pop your details to alittlebirdtoldme@twoforjoydesign.com I'll pop it in the post for you

discovered:puddles

or more specifically how much fun it is to jump in them..

Not that he can actually jump, more stamp, but that didn't stop him. This made for a very long but very fun walk.. and a very good nights sleep.

autumn leaves

I've been amazed by how beautiful the trees are looking this autumn. I don't know whether the trees are looking even more spectacular than normal, or if I'm just noticing more because I'm keeping an eye open for inspiration for the autumn leaves swap I'm taking part in. Anyway, when I saw this post on Lovely Design I decided the Boy and I would have our own little try at creating an autumn tree. We did some painting last Saturday afternoon, which I cut into leaf shapes, then earlier when we went to the park, we found a twig that looked kind of tree shaped (I guess all twigs look a bit tree shaped really, being that they're trees and all) anyway, I stuck the leaves on to our twig with some sticky tape and here are the results...

I really love it, and really love it as a way of displaying his artwork, which often is consigned to a drawer in his room ... in fact I think we'll do a spring and summer one too - not so sure what we'll do for winter apart from just a twig! Maybe make some snowflakes to hang on it.. although that might have to wait for a few years until the Boy can be entrusted with scissors.

friday find

I recently stumbled upon the clothkits website. I have to admit, that I had a certain image of Clothkits in my mind, which wasn't necessarily very positive, and furthermore I've had to completely re-examine. There is an amazing selection of prints from designers such as Rob Ryan and Jane Foster, and lots of beautiful sewing accessories. Here is just a small selection of their beautiful haberdashery items...

See? I told you. I particularly like the fact that a lot of the ribbons and tapes are supplied on those fantastic wooden bobbins... which is enough of a marketing ploy to have me well and truely hooked!

work in progress

I've been working on a few more phone cover designs..

I am reliably informed that these fit iphones ... or I guess most smart phones for that matter (sadly I'm not an owner of one, so had to send the Frenchman to the shops to test display models for size!)

I am going to add these to my newly opened Etsy shop soon - there isn't much stock in there yet, but please do call in to have a look! Speaking of shops, if you hadn't noticed there is also a shop tab on my blog now, so you can also buy directly. I'll start building a small collection of stock in. If there's something that you'd like which isn't in there at the moment, please leave a comment to let me know! Sorry, I'm in danger of turning into a sales pitch here ... but that's only because I'm feeling a bit guiltily slack on the marketing front lately!

Right, off for some more work in progress... got a custom stationery order to get finished!

a tidy up

I'm not quite sure how I managed to let things get into such a mess, but I spent a lot of the Boy's nap time this morning just tidying up my work room. But it was worth it, as everything is - for the time being - back to some kind of order..

...ribbons were rolled...

...buttons were sorted...

...drawers were tided...

and all before setting to work on some new phone covers...

Very industrious!