A photo shoot

A while ago I had an e-mail asking if I'd like to sign up to try and sell some of my things through a new website - it's launched today and is called WowThankYou (there's a link on the right at the side of the blog if you want to have a look.)
The idea is that it's the place to go if you'd like to buy a hand-made gift for someone. As it was a completely new site there was nothing to see while signing-up which made it hard to judge whether it would suit the kind of things I make, but since I've not yet attempted anything other than my own website I thought I'd try this one, although looking at it today I can't believe anyone will ever find any of my products at all, there are so very many on there. They've also taken mine out of most of the categories I'd put them in - I think they're in an "other" section so I'm not very hopeful! But you never know, there's always a small chance, and in the words of Tesco 'Every little helps'.

So last weekend I spent a LONG time trying to take photos that showed my tea cosies in a nice and hopefully attractive setting.

Of course, we never, never have tea like this, because it requires a tablecloth and some ironing (I don't really iron - I smooth clothes out hopefully on a radiator, which sadly doesn't work for everything). Usually I take a Simpsons mug of tea up to son no. 1 in his dreadfully messy room where he is surgically attached to his computer, and the rest of us wander round with mugs - but I love the idea of this kind of a tea, it is how I'd like my life to look, and I have to say after doing the photos I plan to try and make it a reality occasionally from now on.

I wanted to set up a small table in the sunshine in the garden, but the weather was awful so I had to stay inside. I bought tulips specially in the market for a pound a bunch, and went to the charity shop to find a proper tea-cup and saucer, and plate (70p for the lot!). I made a victoria sponge cake and asked my mum if she had any silver teaspoons (she's got everything in that house). I sent son no. 2 down the road to buy a croissant for an 'Easter breakfast' (he got to eat it when we'd finished), bought some Easter eggs and got my Easter chickens out, which I thought made everything look suitably Easter-y:

though when I looked on the Easter section today they weren't there which is a shame. You might recognise the actual tea cosies as they're both ones that Archie has been helping with!

Even though it was a LOT of work I really quite enjoyed it, and it's made me want to update all the pictures on my own site and re-design it - I think this will take so many hours I probably won't manage, but I'll try. All I did when I started and before I had a better camera was to put everything on the kitchen table, and nothing looks interesting flat on a table, felt has such a beautiful texture it deserves something better!

Even though I'm not sure about the new website suiting me, nothing's ever wasted - this has made me think yet again about how to display things better, and perhaps has taken me a step closer to trying something like Etsy. At the very least I got a tidied-up kitchen and some pretty flowers which are still on the window-sill, and we all had lots of cake!!

Christmas Fair and What's In My Oven?

It's been a frantically busy week getting ready for a stall at my own church yesterday. It was very quiet in the town so we didn't have many people but due to the support of a few loyal friends who bought most of their Christmas presents from me I did well.

I'm still relatively new to craft stalls, and am still investigating how best to display things on what is always a smaller table than I think it will be in my mind! At the last one I went to I learned that displaying things properly makes all the difference - people need to be able to see your range of things clearly and also to be able to pick things up and have a look without being scared that everything else will fall over! I'd just spread everything out as best as I could last time but had run out of room and was unhappy that things were squashed and propped up against each other - if I'd been a customer I'd have been put off browsing. Perhaps in this case it would have been better to put out less, except you always want to show everything you have.

So this time I'd been up in our loft searching for an old towel rail I remembered having about 20 years ago - it ended up being perfect for displaying some of the bags, I tied some on with raffia and propped others up on the rails - it gave some height at the back of the table and yet I could still see through it and easily talk to people. All I need now is another one exactly the same (may take some searching around as they're now described as 'vintage' as they're not a modern style, and are therefore very expensive!) You can only see just the leg of it in the photo as I was in such a rush I only just snapped one picture.

Also in the photo you can see some pincushions -

I made them on Tuesday but after wet felting them they came out so dense I thought they were never going to dry in time - so I resorted to putting them on a baking tray with the door slightly open,

luckily we have an exceedingly gentle oven and I just left them for a few hours - it still took ages to get them thoroughly dry!