In the Workroom Recap : Week 288

Hello everyone! Happy Victoria Day or 24 weekend to you Canadians!

When last week ended, I let you know about Uglycon, the Ugly Dolls convention in LA, but before I sent my doll out, I put together a little Ugly Doll-esque tag! Which of course involved a little doodle first.






And a little story for her! Since she was based on the Babo Ugly Doll who is a bit nervous and loves cookies, I thought Babette should have a similar personality. It was fun to write a little story and make a tag for this little one. Some of you may (or may not) know that when I first started making Needlings back in 2007, they all had little stories on tags. Unfortunately it became difficult for me to keep up with it when I started focusing less on my one of a kind items. I miss it! It might be something I bring back in the future but there might be another written element for me to work on as well. We will see, I guess! For now, these little fun changes of pace will have to do.

I spent the next couple of days working on a secrect gift project that I won't share until I'm all finished and the recipient has recieved it but I will say it is for one of my favourite people in the world and her coming new addition to it. Ok ok that's all I'll say!!

I also had a pile of fabric I planned on making some skirts for myself sitting around that I decided to work on. Only one skirt made so far but I'm quite happy with how it turned out - I heart heart pockets!



I might change a few things about the process if I ever make these pockets again but I'm really happy with how they turned out! This fabric was an old one I believe my mom purchased at least 15 or so years ago in Iowa as part of a never realized quilt project. I'm so glad she kept it! I think I'm pretty picky when it comes to floral prints but I always thought this one was quite sweet.

So, in the midst of work, gift making, skirt making, and enjoying the nice weather lately I do have this coming week on my mind where I will be out of the workroom again to spend the week taking care of my dad. Luckily I'm able to bring a few things to work on, handsewing travels well for the days at the hospital and evenings ignoring the hockey games on tv.



Since I will be away starting Wednesday, the shop will be closed for the week and I think I'll probably also put a hold on next weeks' workroom update until the following weekend when I will be at home again and back in to the regular work flow. Hopefully I'll have a few things to show you then after the month, and Spring, is finished! 



See you then lovely friends! 

In the Workroom Recap : Week 287

Happy Mother's Day everyone! I hope you're all as lucky as me to have an amazing mom like mine!

She's why I am who I am and a big part of Needlings too! She's there at almost every single show and I could never thank her enough for everything she does for me and her family. She's the best! 

I finished the week up making a few little handmade goodies for her...



But before that, I had lots of Needlings work to do!




I sent these guys off to Wholly Craft in Columbus then got to work on my next to-do.
About a month ago I was asked to provide a piece for the art show associated with Uglycon, a celebration of Uglydolls, put on by the creator of Uglydolls andGiant Robot gallery in Los Angeles. I was quite honoured to be asked to participate!
The task I, and the other plush artists, was given was to make a sort of collaboration of our own plush styles mixed with the "Babo" Uglydoll! After a little brainstorming, I made a Needlings dolls/Babo hybrid with a little touch of owl of course.  So little Baby Babette B. Babo will be headed off to Giant Robot in LA and available at Uglycon on June 15th! I can't wait to see what everyone else makes!







In addition to the art show featuring the artists' spin on Babo, you can also make your own Babo (although no outfits, prints, or edits) to participate in Uglycon as well! And apparently even watch along on Google+




Fun stuff! I will be in Welland on the 15th at another show but hopefully will catch a little bit of the excitement via the good old internet later on in the day.

Well that's it for the week! Hope you are all having a lovely Mother's Day! See you next week!

In the Workroom Recap : Week 286

Another week for Needlings over. 285! That's 5.5 years if you can believe it. I can hardly.

I still wasn't feeling too well at the beginning of the week (don't worry, I'm back to normal now!) so I took a couple more sick days and decided to do some drawing. My plan is to do illustrations of all my one of a kind art dolls. This week I finished Olivia, one of my first dolls made for the Plush You gallery show at Schmancy in Seattle a couple years ago, and Violet, my first doll sold at the One of a Kind show.









These were two of my favourites to make so I think they were also two of my favourites to draw so far but we'll see how the future ones go. They'll be available as prints soon. I also have some more plans for them once I do a few more but for now, sewing calls.

I had a custom order to work on for the rest of the week based on a customer's own lady skull design he calls Skully-Chan! I don't normally do too many custom orders through the year but I know Pete, through twitter and he even tracked down one of my robots at Kid Icarus in Toronto while he was vacationing there from New York awhile back so I was quite honoured to have been asked to work on something as personal as this. 



He even gave me free reign on the body design and little outfit which was fun for me of course!




And she's on her way to Pete in New York! This was a bit of a rush order because he is going on a two month trip to Europe and plans on taking photos of her in fancy landmarks and such. Exciting! 

So that was it for the week! I did a little bit of work on a stack of cell phone sleeves that will be added to a bunch of things that will hopefully finally be heading out to Wholly Craft in Ohio this week.

Have a good week guys! 

In the Workroom Recap : Week 285

Hey guys! As promised, I don't have too much to show you from the workroom last week and additionally less because I seem to have picked up a bug that has rendered me mostly useless.

Luckily I was still able to finish what was planned for the week - mostly. Most importantly the boring taxes and paperwork! I can't fully express to you how glad I am to have them out of the way.



My worktable was covered in reciepts for most of the week but when I finished, I did a little reorganizing again then dove in to the supply closet to see what was hiding under the clutter and supplies...



Lots of goodies! The few fabrics on the right will become skirts for me when I get around to sewing them and the rest I think I can use for doll dresses and other fun things. I'm glad they are no longer buried and forgotten! And the closet is a little easier to get around now which was the initial goal.

Since summer shows will be coming up sooner than later now, we've also been painting some more potential display items to match the display trunk I finished for One of a Kind Show a while back. The little table in the top left was made by my mom's dad many years ago so I'm excited to use it for my display now. Lots of white things happening!



It'll be fun to get another brand new display together for the big outdoor shows this year! Some of you may know that my mom and I combine our handmadies for the local shows so her knits will be mixed in with Needlings once fall comes!

I was working on the last batch of cell phone sleeves that will go along with a big batch of goodies for Wholly Craft in Ohio before I started to feel a littly flu-y. Not fun!



Hopefully I'll be back to normal soon so I'll have the finished bunch to show you next week. Fingers crossed!
See you then friends!

Toronto Weekend : City of Craft, Photobooths, Street Style!

As I mentioned in my last workroom update, I went in to Toronto on Saturday to check out the amazing City of Craft Spring Show with one of my crafty friends Lisa of Nerdbiskit. I'm so used to being a vendor at all the craft shows I attend so it was nice to be a customer/visitor for the day!

We walked in to Trinity St. Paul's on Bloor Street and it was adorably decorated with handmade paper flower decorations so even though it was quite a chilly day for Spring, it was beautiful and sunny and cheerful!





I could have bought something from every single vendor there but I refrained and only spent a teeny bit and had a great time looking around at some new and some familiar favourites.


Picked up a few cards, a postcard print of a drawing by one of the vendor's kiddies, Bookhou (who's bags I am in love with), and a washi tape covered heart pin from Ghostface Knittah.


One of the cards is from We See Inc. that had a booth up in preperation for a performance piece and their Soul Bank! We happily donated our souls via our fingerprints and strand of hair! Yep, we did that! Anything for art's sake.



The other card was from Have & Hold Design that puts together super cute photobooths and photo props! Lisa and I of course couldn't pass them down.



So much fun! 

As we were walking down the street after our craft show fun times, a girl who turned out to be Karyn of KillerKurves.com, a plus size fashion blog, asked me to participate in a street fashion feature on her blog! Turns out we even have some friends in common! Small world!



Forever squinty glasses girl. Windy but bright day! Someone needs some prescription sunglasses...
All the details from my outfit are over on the blog feature including a little Needlings plug. I'm so happy to make Karyn an Owl Mama of her own now! It's funny how just walking down the street sometimes can end up exciting. 



So that was our day! I can't wait to visit the holiday City of Craft this winter and will be spending some solid time visiting the vendor's via the internet in the meantime. Check the vendor's list here. Every single one of them is worth a look!




See you soon!  ♥

In the Workroom Recap : Week 284

Hi guys! Another week over. I spent the week finishing up a big restock for White Rabbit in Iowa City, one of my favourite shops in one of my favourite towns.

It's a big one! And it's all boxed up and on it's way. Whew.

I took a little break from work this weekend to head in to Toronto to check out City of Craft, a great indie craft show with tons of amazing vendors. It's fun just to be a shopper at a craft show every once in awhile and this one is a great one for that! I'll have to do a seperate post very soon to share my day (which was great). I know I've slacked off on the non-workroom posts this year but now that One of a Kind show is over and my workload is a little less, I hope to share with you a little more than all my loads of sewing and crampy hands. 

But for now, that's it for the week! I will probably have less to show you next week as far as finished things since there is some fun paperwork and TAXES to finish up but I'll be back anyway just in case. See you then!

Have a lovely week, friends!

(From Callie too!)

In the Workroom Recap : Week 283

My week started with packing up some orders and sending out some goodies with special cards.

I want to eventually get around to drawing all the one of a kind dolls I've made so when I say goodbye to them I have something to remember them by! Plus it's just fun for me, ok guys?

After those few jobs were out of the way I got down to biz on my application for the Christmas One of a Kind show. Yep, applying again! We'll have to see if I get in again of course but they have my requests anyway. I didn't have it in me to fill out the paperwork during the week of the Spring show but it's all out of the way now.



So exciting!

The next little thing I worked on was a little Thumbelina for the Plush TeamFairytale Challenge. I was a little late on getting her finished but I had to go with the late-coming inspiration anyway. I have plans on making a half-size option of my big art dolls so I thought this extra little one would be good practice. Plus I always loved the Thumbelina story.



She's now available in the Plush Team etsy shop for purchase, where you can read a little bit about my connection to the story and see a few more pictures of her.





She's little! And she has a little polka dot flower to lounge in. It's funny how being given an assignment of sorts helps me think of some new things I end up liking and wanting to make more of.  

The rest of the week was spent on some cell phone sleeves that will be added to a big bunch of goodies I'll be sending off to White Rabbit in Iowa City.



I'll be working on boring paperwork things like taxes next week but will hopefully have a few things to show you by the end of it.

See you then!

In the Workroom Recap : Week 282

Back in the workroom! We'll go ahead and skip week 281 which was spent mostly at the One of a Kind Show with a few days of scrambling beforehand to get things together and ready for the studio/car/convention hall transition. 

But that's all behind us now! I will admit that I had a pretty slow week after the craziness of five 13-15 hour days in a row but I still managed to get some orders out and get my own space back in order after it was sufficiently torn apart before, during, and after One of a Kind! So not completely behind us but almost there!

After a couple days of relaxing recovery time which involved lots of kitty and puppy cuddles and movie watching, I got to work on a little robot order!



Notice the close up shot to cut out the disarray all around...

I don't make these big robots as much as the little ones but custom orders for them are fun for me. I got to thinking about big robots with bowties so that might be a thing at some point...

Next, I packaged up some more orders and decided that new doll owners will get special little sketches. I plan on doing some more illustrations of my girls in the future, mostly because I think it's fun and because I get a little sad when they find new homes and leave me forever.




And then a day of reorganizing and rehanging! I really should have taken a before picture since no one ever believes my desk is messy but I swear it was!! 




Ah, much better! I still have a big ol' stack of felt scraps that has yet to be dealt with but everything else, for the most part, is back in order.

Which is good because I have a couple store restocks to get to work on in the coming weeks! First up is a big batch of goodies for White Rabbit in Iowa City which shouldn't take me too long to finish up hopefully!
Table space helps!

Well, that's it for the week! I'll see you after the next one, friends!