Shop Local Scandinavia

Shop Local Scandinavia on Etsy, originally uploaded by -syko-.

This is one of many reasons it's been so quiet here on the blog lately. I was asked to make a "Shop Local Scandinavia"-guide for the Storque, which is the Etsy blog. Click here to meet some great crafters from all over Scandinavia! The bags under my eyes tell the story about how many tomte people I have created during the last month. I have two craft shows coming up, the first one in two weeks and I've still got lots to do. Next year I will have to hire someone to help me cope with everything! I am also supposed to make a pattern for a book, a nice swap parcel and a few other things... I guess all this means my business is growing :) Which is a good thing, right?

For those of you who are in Finland - please check out my web site for information on where to find my Christmas stuff for sale.

More news soon! Hope you are all well! We've been coughing for a couple of weeks now :(

Features and Factory work

A few notes about what's been going on in my crafty life this week:
My road cushion was featured in Koti ja Keittiö 11/2008! This is actually the only home deco mag I order so it was a very pleasant surprise to open it at my lunch break yesterday just to find this beautiful picture! And as if that wasn't enough my friend also spotted my house card in Glorian koti recently.

This is one of 60 fairy-angels I started making yesterday. I quite enjoy working like a little factory sometimes and along the way I still come up with new embellishments for the dresses so there is some room to be creative anyway! The one on the picture is decorated with a piece of a handmade lace cloth, one of my thriftstore finds. Talking about secondhand shopping I realise that the vintage polkadot ribbon is a find by my sister and the seashell button comes from the treasure box I got from a fleamarket in Zürich, Switzerland where my sweet sister lives. She gifted me with more treaures when she visited last week. I also got a pair of zig-zag scissors as on early birthday gift. Got to show them off soon, they are sooo great!

Verner, Alfred and Melker are already on their ways to their new homes in Germany and the US, so exciting! This is Lars, a new member of the tomte family. As soon as I get more stuffing the family will continue growing. I have six fellows looking at me from the shelf right now, I wonder what they are up to during night time....
These are the fabric squares I sent in Chickpeas's Spare Change Swap. Click on the picture if you want some information about the manufacturers! I can't wait to see what I receive! I've seen some pretty awesome fabrics in the flickr pool.

Tulips in the mailbox

Look at these flowers I got in the mail today! As the etsy addict I have become I made a treasury list (learn more about it here) with the theme Christmas flowers. I love fresh tulips at Christmas so I added these lovely napkins by margotbianca to my list. And after a while I got a convo from someone telling m e my list had reached etsy's fromtpage. Margot got so happy she decided to send me these georgeous napkins, please go visit her shop, it would make me happy too! I can convince you that her work is very well done!

The only Christmas present I have managed to make this year is this cloak and crown I made for a little six year old prince (his sister just turned three and got a princess dress that made him green...). The top is a pathwork of velvet fabrics and the lining is golden satin, I quilted stars with golden thread on the velvet, great fun! I decorated the crown with buttons, of course! If M doesn't like them, he doesn't want to be a prince ;-) I'm hoping to get a better picture later of the prince himself!

It's been nearly a month since my last post. I've been using most of my spare time for sewing stuff to take to the Christmas fair (Kvinnornas julmässa - Naisten joulumessut) that I attended last week with my mum and sister. It was very fun and also surprisingly tough to stand from 10-18 five days in a row. Little E joined us and behaved like a little prince. I got many compliments for my pouches which made me very happy because they are really fun to do and I have plenty of ideas for new designs. The ones I have left are now up in my etsy shop. The monkey pouch is the most fresh produce, ruby crowned kinglette suggested I should put a banana on his head :-) I have a few tote bags that I will add soon too. I need to develop a better pattern for bags (reminder for myself). It was so inpiring being in the middle of a crowd of creative women so we started to plan products for next year already the first day at the fair :) I am thinking about fabric bowls of some kind and then I want to make mini wallhangings/ fabric paintings. First out will be a robot I think, I want to make something for small boys.

I'll be back in a day or two to tell you more about what we've been up to. I've promised to do some Christmas crafts with big E so I'll show off the results soon. We bought a Christmas tree for the Barbie dolls yesterday and have started to decorate it :-)

Quilting frogs and some cleaning

Cow, dog, rabbit, bear, monkey, giraffe, alligator, elephant, furry sheep, angora rabbit, gecko or lizard, spider, octopus, troll or ant. Thank you for all those great suggestions for coming pouch designs! I ended up doing frogs... Which no one of you suggested. Sorry, but the idea just came up while working on this baby quilt, a custom order for a friend. I will have pouches ready soon with a couple of the suggested animals ;-)

Making the crib quilt was great practise, I wrote down every minute I was working on it. Good for the future I thought (good to think once in a while...). It will be easier to estimate the price before making the quilt next time. I had it ready about an hour before my friend picked it up so I didn't have the time to take any pictures in daylight. We have all been ill so that kept me from quilting it earlier, I had the top ready two weeks ago. Once I was ready to start with the quilting I realized the 505 spray (for gluing fabric) bottle was empty so I went to town to get some more. Nope. You can't get it anywhere. But they will order it for me and I will have it next week. Thanks but too late. So I ended up working with lots of needles again. I wont do it again.


I have started my first Christmas project, I had small scraps of fabric with vliesofix on which looked like gnome caps (=tomteluva). So I decided to make some greeting cards. I like this fresh color combination. And they can be used after Christams as well. A garden gnown for a gardener maybe? Find some more gnome inspiration here. They are so cute!


And since it's Friday, some cleaning tips for other desperate housewives... Take a brush, make a pile of everything that's lying around the floor. Collect everything that belongs to the same category, put it in its place. Saves a lot of steps. And my 4-year old agrees to help a little when we do it this way.

Have a nice weekend everyone!