Embroidered felt brooches

Remember this flower-flower felt brooch that I made here?

 I use the exact same template as my flower-flower applique.

Apart from the blue/red felt brooch, I made another one, very similar, just different in felt colour and stitches. The sad thing is I probably forgot to take a pic of it as I have hunted high and low. Anyway, both brooches were sold at my VivoCity craft market. When I first made the brooches, I did wonder if anyone would buy them. Now that both have been sold, I feel encouraged enough to make a few more.

The difficult part in making layered felt brooches is putting the colours together. I don't know if you know this but putting colours together is not my strong point. I have to see the colours together to know if it works. I can't visualize it. My son and hubs are gifted with colour matching skills. For the brooch on the right, I had no problem putting the 3 colours together. But the one on the left, I wanted the green/yellow to go with the pink but I couldn't find the right center. My son said the blue would work and he's right.

I have listed these 2 brooches on Etsy. Check them out HERE and HERE.

As always, Bear steps up to model my brooches.

Anyhoo, I got so into the brooch making mood that I made another one.

I was in the process of taking a pic of the third brooch when my Canon S100 died on me. Can you believe it? I almost had a heart attack. It hasn't even been 6 months. So I went back to my trusty Casio. The third brooch is orange and lilac. The colours didn't quite pop.

I think I would like to have at least 10 of these flower-flower felt brooches for my next craft market at the end of the month. I'm looking around for a book on crazy embroidery stitches because I think the embroidery style suits such brooches. These 2 books look good to me. 






I have read Judith Baker Montano's Embroidery books before and the stitching is amazing. If what you want is something FREE, this is a link to a free PDF on crazy stitchery. HERE. Search for "Book of Fancy Designs for Ornamenting Oriental Work". The pages are not in the right orientation so you need to print them to view them comfortably without straining your neck. It's in black and white so don't expect to be wowed. And while you're there, the Antique Pattern Library has loads of other free pdfs of very, very old books. You might want to have a look around.

Lastly, I wanted to show you a new isolated stitch I've not used before. It's called spider's web. It's the stitch I used in the center of the flower. You sew an odd number of straight stitches. Then you weave your thread over and under the straight stitches. I'm liking the look of raised stitches.

Linking to:

Ask anna
ninth street notions
get outta my head please

Skulls and bones niche

Ever since I wrote this post about my skulls and roses tees, I have been getting a little excited by the idea of always having some items with skulls and bones motif for sale. And I'm not talking about sometimes making one or two item if I feel like it. I'm talking about having a permanent skulls and bones niche. I'm thinking 5 items is a good figure to start with. What do you think? Will it work? Will it work? Or will I cry?

I dug out a skulls and bones beaded bag I made in 2007. Maybe the execution was not very good but I get a nice vibe from the beaded skull. No, I'm not going to go all crazy beading and embroidering. It's a lot easier to sell bags made from fabric print compared to something with embroidery.

Over the weekends at VivoCity, I chanced upon this skulls charm at one of the stalls at the craft market. Although I feel the beads are kinda in the way, overall, it's quite interesting. It's $5! This purchase has pleased me so much I want to go shopping for some skulls knick knacks to include in my pouches. A skulls zipper pull would be so cool.

My feeling is hubs will likely think it's not a good idea to have too many skulls related items for sale seeing how they're hard to sell and it's such a small market. So I won't tell him about it. Haha. shhhhh.

VivoCity Craft Market 5th-6th May 2012 Post-mortem

As you know I had bought a few gadgets to display my products at craft markets and over the weekend, I had a chance to try them out.


These did not work. At all.

The pouch holder just wasn't wide enough to hold the pouches. Every time a customer touched the pouch, she couldn't put it back. Sometimes the pouches just keel over. It was such a struggle. Good thing I only bought 2. It was a waste of $10.

The brooch carousel? Hardly anyone spinned it. Most just looked at what was in view. It baffles me. $19 down the drain.

This was my table display on Saturday.

I had also bought these hanging thingy which could hang more than one bag. I really like it. I think I should get more. It's only $2.

One of the perils of selling at craft markets is encounters with crazy bitches. I'm happy to report my weekend was crazy bitch free. Good for me but sad for you guys, I'm sure! I even made new friends. An old lady behind me and the table on my right took me under their wings. I had no problem running off to get my meals or go pee.

Usually when I sell over a weekend, Saturdays give me better sales and on Sunday it's quieter. If it's over 3 days from Friday to Sunday, then Friday gives the best sales. That's what I've observed. But this time around, Saturday was really sad for me. I'm guessing it's because Saturday was a public holiday. That probably changed things up.

My table location was not bad. In fact, the fengshui was fabulous because my eyes did not water, my skin did not itch and I did not feel cold at all. The traffic was quite good. There were truckloads of overseas visitors, either Malaysians or Indonesians, very likely killing time before their ferry departs. But none of them bought from me. They would ooh and aah but after looking at the price tags, they fled for their lives. Honestly, my prices aren't high so I"m guessing their currency exchange rate is at a disadvantage.

I spent a lot of time snoozing away on Saturday. In fact, once, I fell into a deep, deep sleep and maybe you don't know this but when I sleep, my mouth is open. But not wide open. Just some. One itsy bit of my lips (the gummy part) was fastened onto one of my crazy tooth. Over time, my lips got drier and drier but that itsy bit of lip still remained fastened onto my crazy tooth. No problem. Then I woke up and moved my lips and with that action, I tore one itsy bit of my lip off. Utter shearing pain I tell you.

I am quite accident prone and how I am still alive is a big mystery to me. For dinner on Saturday I had dry ramen which is so delicious I can't even describe it. The most surly woman cooked it for me. Why do surly people cook the best food? I bought a cup of tea with sugar to go with my dry ramen and was puzzled to see only half a cup left when I reached my craft table. Then I realised the cover was not tight and I had sloshed half a cup of hot tea all over my jeans. How is it I don't feel the pain? I went to the toilet to have a look and indeed I have very thick skin. I was not maimed.

Know what else didn't work? My pocket tissue holder. Certainly they attracted a lot of attention. Many people came to point, chuckle and snigger over them. I only sold 1 on Sunday.

Speaking of which, my sales got so much better on Sunday.

On Sunday I changed my display. I decided to go against the convention and displayed everything flat on the table. Most of what I had for sale was very visual - with embroidery and illustrations. And I thought it was better if I could display them like how you would paintings. I ditched my carousel as well and displayed my brooches flat on the table. I think it worked because I sold 3 brooches and a few other stuff. Overall, my sales improved from the last craft market. So that's a good sign. Small improvements each time!

The craft market organizer gave me something (I paid $5) to display at my table. It has my photo and some bio. The photo of me in the card board thingy is quite god awful and I'm a little embarrassed to display it. But it seemed to fascinate the customers and many would stand there and read it. The men would read it and smile from time to time and then check me out. Not sure if I should feel flattered or worried.

I asked hubs for a sexy pic of me. I guess standing like a statue is sexy to me. 

Hubs said don't act cute but I couldn't resist. My fingers were itching to do a peace sign but I resisted.

*    *    *

I only had 1 not so good moment. On Saturday night, after a long crushingly defeating day, 2 ladies came to my table. Let's call them Jolly and Holy. Jolly ooh and aah over everything she saw and I could tell she was really into me.

Jolly: This is so pretty.
Holy: Not nice.
Jolly: I like this.
Holy: This one is also not nice.
Jolly: The flowers are so pretty.
Holy: No, all these are not nice. Listen to me. They are not nice at all.
Jolly: The birds are so cute!
Holy: Really, I'm telling you. All not nice.

With that, Holy dragged Jolly away.
Don't worry. I sent a few fireballs in Holy's direction.

*    *    * 

I had a few fab moments.

When I showed a customer this pouch, her face literally LIT UP and she bought it on the spot.

A customer, Cindy from my MAAD days came to VivoCity to seek me out. I was so touched.

Another customer, Christin also from my MAAD days found me too! I'm so delighted to see all these people I haven't seen for a long time.

Oh, a blog reader, Ivy (I hope I didn't get the name wrong) came by too. She only told me she enjoyed reading my blog as she was leaving. hahahaha. So sneaky ah.

Oh, say hello to my new bff. She's standing behind my signboard. She's in her 70's and taught me a thing or two about standing up for myself. And would you believe it? I spoke Mandarin thru'out the weekend because my bff can't speak English. Somehow we manage to understand each other and make each other laugh. Then we discovered we're both born in the year of the dragon! Ah.....

The other new friends I made were the table on my right owned by a deaf woman. I mean a real deaf woman not like me who could still hear. Despite her deafness, she could lip read and speak. Awesome. And she was super nice to me taking care of my table when I was away. The next time I complain about having only one good hearing ear, please do me a favour and yell at me.

It was a good weekend. Hope yours was good too. See you.