Sweet

Elzeline from Paperfection send me this image together with her sweet wishes.
I love how she transformed the happy girl into a X-mas version!
And while looking up the link from her shop, I came across these beautiful Japanese paper stars!
Ohh, how I love them, they are so pretty!

image by Paperfection

I throw some stars around today and hope that you will have a lovely New Year's Eve.

Work in progess

I have a weak spot for cookie cutters.
Really W.E.A.K. and sometimes the temptation is just too big and I give in.
I ordered some new ones last weekend and they came in the post today.
I love to see my collection grow and had to try some right away of course...
Do you have a weakness for something?

Happy weekend, everyone! :)

Rant

The past few months have been extremely busy with all sorts of things. Sales wise, I dont think I've ever had such a busy season before. I combined custom orders with regular sales,wrapped up orders and send 'em out, tried to keep up with the stock of the feelings and even work on a few new things in between.
I wish I could say I enjoyed it all but that would be a lie. So here's a little rant to start off the new year and kick out the negative vibes so I can leave it behind and move on...
I didn't enjoy getting home to my inbox being overly full. Half of those usually were treasury notifications from people who include my work in their treasury. Don't get me wrong, I love being included in treasuries but the amount of convo's were at times quite overwhelming.
It made me happy but also a bit stressed as sometimes I didn't had a chance to look right away and I certainly don't want to be ungrateful as I really do appreciate the inclusion in so many wonderful lists! I really, really do! Thank you! :)
The other half of the messages seemed to come from people that wanted to know when their package arrived. If I had a crystall ball, I would definately grab it and tell them.
But I don't have one so this really has been the most stressful factor of the past weeks and I think I grew more then a few grey hairs too.
Due to weather conditions and customs/security in US, lots of packages are delayed and basicly there is nothing I can do about that. As soon as a package leaves my hands, it's out of my control and I have to depend on postal services to bring it to it's destination safely.
But still some people seem to expect that they will get a home delivery the day after they order. Tsk tsk! :(

If you live in the US and you order a gift on the 13th of december in Europe and expect it to arrive before X-mas, then you have ordered too late. So when people write 3 times within the same week to ask where their package is, I really have no lines to say anymore by the 3rd reply...
It saddens me that in extremely busy times I need to deal with other people's impatience and failure to order in time. So yes, I dislike that too.

This year the last day for garantueed arrival of the packages will be the 25th of November. Order early to prevent dissapointment please!
I'm not putting myself through this stress ever again...
I have been selling online for more the 3 years and only had 2 packages lost and 2 packages damaged so far. So I think that's a pretty good statistic. I do hope that the excellent service from post companies world wide will help me keep these statistics this way. *knock on wood*
And whatever goes wrong, there is always a solution if there is communication! I've never failed in giving good customer service so people just have to trust me on that.

Another thing that bugged me were some custom orders. Customers inquire a certain thing and then when you get to work and have a few questions regarding the order, they are not responding to you. Clay is a medium that dries and I like to finish it off in a timely matter because that just makes it easier. No response prevented that. It annoyed me as it kept creeping around on my to do list. So, GRRR to that too!

I feel like I kind of start this new year with a very low energy level and the pile of work I look upon is still very large. And don't get me wrong: I love selling on line but it has it's perks and I just wanted to share that it's not always roses and sunshine.
Besides, I'm only human too you know... and most of the time I love it all!
Thank goodness!
Now that the rant is over, I feel I can start fresh and get on with the job.
Aahhh, feels good! :)

How to make felt light decoration?

Today I finished off a project I started about 2 years ago. I bet you have those laying around somewhere too! Well at least I hope I'm not the only one who starts something and never finishes it! Anyway, I decided to finish it and make a few pics to show you how to do it.

Here is what you need:
light chain, olive soap or soap flakes, wool roving, towel, plastic to make a resist, bubblewrap foil.
I made the plastic resist from stiff plastic (3mm) and cut out a 'witch hat'.
The triangle is 7cm wide and 9cm high. I added a little extra (1cm) on the bottom as not to make the felt touch the other side.
If this sounds like Chinese, read on, you'll understand later!

First you need to lay out the felt.
Hold the end of the wool roving loosely in one hand and
gently pull off a section with your other hand. Hold your four fingers
against the pad of your palm, trap the wool there and pull firmly.

Lay out three thin layers of felt. When you start out vertically, the second layer needs to be layed out horizontally
and the third one vertically again.

Then place the resist on top of the layed out wool roving.

Then lay out three thin layers of felt - mostly in the middle of the resist.

Then fold the felt on the sides over to the middle.

Put some soap flakes into the glas.
If you don’t have soap flakes, you can grate some from a bar of
olive oil soap with an old grater.
Pour hot water in the glass and let the soap melt a bit.
Then use the spoon to sprinkle some drops onto the roving.

Press lightly onto the wet roving and make sure that there are no 'holes'.
If there are holes, you need to add a bit more roving before rubbing lightly.

Sorry for the quality of the following picture but I find it hard to keep
my hands still while taking a picture. So this is an action shot! :)
Rub genlty onto the wool roving while it is on the bubblewrap.
When you feel that the fibers are more attached to each other
you can rub the other side and also rub it between your hands.

Then you can take out the resist and rub it some more.
As soon as the fibers are attached, they won't attach
anymore when taking away the resist.

Then rinse the piece in water.
I usually just rinse it under the tab but used a bucket of water here.

This is what it looks like when rinsed.

Cut off a tiny part at the top of the felted piece.

This is what it looks like...

Now cover the little lamp with the felted piece.

This is what it looks like when it's lighted...

But you need to make as many as your light chain is to get this...And from a distance...
the felted X-mas trees are mighty cute and are from ViltalaKim on Etsy
the round 'disc' is a ceramic piece made by me called 'infinity'

And this is what they look like when I use my flash.
I'll try to get a better daylight picture tommorrow. :)