First show of the season

The Holiday season is upon us and while I dread this for many personal reasons I have decided to put all of my energy in doing shows and getting enough wallets and bags stock piled to get me through the season. My first show of the season was Union Design Festival which happened just about two weeks ago now. Despite the cold weather and the thin trickle of customers good times were had. This year I shared my booth with the lovely Michelle of Atomic Sweets and we were kept company by the beautiful Caitlin of Blue Ballad Design

I can't decide what I am doing here. I am either packing heat or stealing my own product.
Either way I am looking shady

Michelle!
Caitlin getting knitty at my table

I am going to admit the sad truth here. I am just not that into photography. Or maybe I should rephrase that and say that I just don't totally understand photography as much as other do. Don't get me wrong I enjoy and pretty picture or a well taken photograph but the honest truth is...I don't always get "it".
My room mate on the other hand loves photography. He works in a camera shop, has a whole army of new and vintage cameras and even has a tattoo of a holga. He loves photography like a love sewing.
A while back he was teaching a Holga class and as a way and a reason to get out of the house on a rainy Saturday I decided to take this class. I won't say that this class opened up my eyes and showed me the true magic of photography. No, that didn't really happen at all but I did learn the basics in operating a holga camera.
I have used the camera only a few times and only used up 2 rolls of film so far but I love the pictures I have taken with it. My roommate very kindly developed and scanned my last roll for me and I sort of fell in love with the images on it. I don't know that they would really be considered art but they have a lot of meaning for me because of their content.
These pictures were taken July 27, 2009. That date marked 5 months since the accident that took my older son from us. On this day we decided to take Miles and weed and water the tree that was planted in Zachary's memory at his school and I let Miles roam around his big brother's kindergarten play yard. It is so hard to do things with Miles that we did with Zach when he was this age but at the same time it seems so important. It is one of the few ways we can make sure that even though he isn't here Zachary is still part of Miles' life. So, I love these pictures because I feel in some way we brought our boys together that day.

New Fancy Labels

I decided a while ago that it was time to give my creations a more professional look with some super duper labels. The next challenge was figuring out what kind of labels I wanted and where I would get them. Instead of searching and researching I decided to make things easy on myself and just ask my sister where she had her labels made. So, that's what I did.
I bought these labels from Custom Couture Label Company on Etsy and I love them!

Union Design...

Is Union Design really only 11 days away?

Yes.

New bags!

I have once again been neglecting my sad little blog. But please don't take this as a sign that I have been neglecting my crafting as well. I haven't, I swear! I have actually been doing a lot of sewing. I have spent many evenings and baby nap hours in my sewing room sewing away while watching Lord of the Rings or some other nerd film with mythical creatures. I find that I work better while some sort of nerdy film is playing in the background.
I am trying to prepare for the holiday season (at least in terms of having a good stock of amazing items) and getting some stuff together to put into a real live store which I am doing tonight. After almost a year of putting it off due to the insanity of my life I am finally going to make my way to Needles and Pens tonight with a bag of wallets ready for consignment. Yay me!
In addition to working on my wallet making I have also decided to start working more on bags. I kind of went on a bag making hiatus. I am not sure why exactly. The only reason I could come up with is that I am an instant gratification type of person and bags just take me longer to make than wallets.
I decided to put an end to this self imposed bag strike a few weeks ago. So I sat down at my sewing machine and finally got back to it. Here are a couple of the finished lovelies.

Sometimes It's the little things

Yesterday I spent my day in a total funk. This isn't something too unusual for me lately but yesterday was unusually bad. There was just an ickyness that hung in the air around me. I was so happy to get off of work at 5 but that funk just followed me home.
Recently when I have been feeling like this I head to the gym as fast as I can and work that ickyness right out of my body. But I guess I did that one too many times this weekend and my knee was screaming me about it.
So instead I went upstairs for some quite time on the computer. Eleanor Rigby immediately joined me and gave me the most wonderful cuddles and kisses.



Then I logged into my Etsy and found that my wallets had been included in not one but two beautiful green treasuries.




Thank you to Eleanor Rigby, TheEnchantedSquare and Tresijas for helping to make my day just a little bit better

It's still hard for me to chit chat. I don't know that chit chatting will ever be at to top of my list of ways to spend my time again but I have decided to start blogging again anyways.
I returned to work part time last week. I would probably have preferred to not return to work ever but I would rather work 3 days week now then have to stress about me rent will get paid in the future. So here I am. When the filing is done and the phone calls aren't coming in I think it would be better for me to do some bloggy chit chat than to sit in my sad gray cubicle with my own thoughts. I am still in my sad gray cubicle but at least my mind is working.
I don't have much prepared for today just the announcement of my return and I will throw in a couple of pictures of what makes me smile
My baby bay Miles

and my sweet baby kitty Eleanor Rigby