materialised

textiles, crafts, embroidery & art by Julia Laing

May 16, 2012
by Julia
1 Comment

Wednesday Words

materialised stall

Wednesday already…?! This week is flying by so I’m making time to blog before it’s completely flown.

Saturday was a busy day for me… up at 6am which was hard. I’m definitely not a morning person! I had a stall at the Funk Fair in Edinburgh and still had to pack everything into my case, so there was no getting out of it.  The day went well – I gave out loads of business cards, spoke to lots of very nice people, and was pleased that some of them also bought my handmade goodies…a huge thank you to everyone who did!

I took lots of photos but must have been having a serious off day -  most came out awful…either badly composed or out of focus – which is pretty hard to do with the camera set to auto focus! Suppose I was in too much of a rush.It’s a shame because I wanted to show you all the great stuff on the other stalls. Hopefully I’ll have my photo mojo back by the next time I do a fair.

Something I’m working on just now is my very first newsletter…I’ve added a sign up form, up there on the right. I’m so excited that there are already subscribers :-) It’s going to be monthly, with the first one due in inboxes on the 1st June.

This week I’ve begun a new mixed-media project with a house theme, involving cardboard, fabric and glue…I’m doing some more to it today and if it goes well, there will be pictures soon.

 

May 6, 2012
by Julia
4 Comments

Making Purses for the Funk Fair

applique purses

This week I’ve been making lots of recycled wool purses for the Funk Fair which is next Saturday. It’s taking place at Christ Church Hall in Edinburgh’s ‘Holy Corner’ tucked  inbetween Bruntfield and Morningside. The last fair I did was before Christmas, when I sold loads of purses so I’m hoping for a repeat…but you never can tell.

I’ve cut down on the number of fairs I do because I can’t drive, which complicates matters. However, this is a good fair with a wide variety of stalls. Not just handmade but lots of vintage clothes and knick-knacks – lots of good lazy Saturday browsing.

materialised purses

I’ve tried my best to minimize the display paraphernalia.  I used to lug  so many boxes and bags around fairs – now it should all fit nicely in a my old pink suitcase and a large shoulder bag, which means I’ll be able to take it home on the bus (hopefully, I’ll be getting a lift there from my long suffering other half, Robb).

elephant purses

The ones that don’t sell at the fair, which could be all of them - let’s face it, will be going in my etsy shop, but if you’re interested in buying one of these ones in the meantime, please contact me (see link above).

I’ve still to do a mock up of my table. I want to make a couple more puppies or cats but will try to resist the temptation to stay up half the night sewing on Friday, which has been known to happen…

May 2, 2012
by Julia
1 Comment

Ornamental Textile Kittens

small textile cats

My shop has slowly been filling up with these kitten folk over the past few days…still got two more to add – Violet on the left and Henrietta on the right but Quincy, Harriet, Etta, Terry and Billie can all be found there.

Having a busy time of it this week, making purses for a fair I’m doing on the 12th. Less than a fortnight to go and I’m panicking about not having enough stock…but I’ll get there.  Today I made 4 purses plus some carrot marmalade that refused to set. It’ll be purses every day this week. Next week I’m moving on to puppies and may be covered notebooks if I’ve got time…

April 28, 2012
by Julia
1 Comment

Yellow Cat at ReMade

yellow cat cushion

This afternoon I was out and about, delivering a bunch of cushions and brooches to ReMade, a lovely shop, in Musselburgh, where I’m lucky enough to have my textile accessories stocked.

There’s a couple of birdies, an owl, but I think the yellow cat has got to be my favourite.

handmade cushions

This shop always has a brilliant selection of gifts and was looking particularly good today. There’s a special 1950s event going on just now, with the display centred around this gorgeous ladies tailored suit, which belongs to Nicky Orr, ReMade’s owner – it was the outfit her mother wore on her wedding day in 1957. Nicky’s holding on to that piece of history but there are many other fab vintage goodies there to choose from…

ReMade shop interior

Remade shop window

ReMade can be found at 147 North High Street, Musselburgh .  More info on the facebook page

April 19, 2012
by Julia
6 Comments

A Few Technical Hitches

Hendrix

A few technical hitches have left everyone at materialised headquarters feeling frustrated and more than a little irritable.

Here’s what happened.  At the end of last month Robb and I had a few days away in our lovely campervan, basking in the Spring sunshine in York. On our return I went to sign into my blog and was completely (and irretrievably) locked out. Over the next couple of weeks I spent hours looking on forums and trying a number of different solutions to address the situation, which had been caused by a plugin I’d installed to help with security on the site.It unfortunately made it just that wee bit too secure. Anyway to cut a long story short, I ended up having to completely rebuild the site from scratch, including manually copying and pasting the old blog posts from my blog feed as none of the import options would work because the web files had been written over…urgh. I’ve got most if it back to how it was, although  it’s lost all the text formatting, and most of the links, because that would have just taken far too long.  Sadly, I also lost all the readers comments which is very upsetting because I really appreciate that people have taken the time to leave their feedback here.

On the positive side, I’ve learned a heck of a lot  in the past few weeks about how my webhosting, and wordpress work and in particular how to make regular backups :-)

Apologies to people who read this in a feed reader and have been seeing all kinds of strange nonsense appearing there. I think it’s business as usual now. The old feed should still update with new blog posts but if anyone has any problems with it maybe you could let me know? Ha! how will you know… if it’s not updating…?

Another change is that I gave up my PO Box as it was just to expensive to justify for the amount of mail I get sent. Instead, I’ve added a secure contact form on the contact page. If there’s anything you need to ask me or comments you’d like to make without other people  reading them, just fill out the form and click submit. I’ve got plans to test it out properly soon by running a giveaway, where you can enter by using the contact form and then letting me know you’ve done so in the comments…

What would you like the prize to be?

April 6, 2012
by Julia
3 Comments

Puppy

Hello, here’s a prototype puppy, which I made from a lovely embroidered table napkin.I’m quite happy with the body shape but there are a few tweaks I want to make to the shape of his head before I make any more…so back to the drawing board.

This post is a test really – I’m posting it directly from flickr. I’ve been having some major problems with my website so apologies if you’ve been here lately and things have looked odd. I’m locked out of the admin panel and have been trying for days to sort it out , which is frustrating because there are a hundred and one things I’d rather be doing….
Hopefully it will be sorted out soon…there are a couple of things I’ve still to try.

From materialised, post Puppy

February 29, 2012
by Julia
0 comments

Leap Year 24HOUR PARTY

embroidered brooch

It’s a leap year, so we have an extra day today! I’m celebrating that with a 24hour sale in my Etsy shop. All you have to do to receive 24% off your purchase is quote 24HOURPARTY at checkout and the discount will be subtracted automatically.

UK shipping is also free and international delivery is a low flat fee.

Sale ends 3pm GMT tomorrow (Thursday.)

My shop is here in case you’d like to browse or buy. Hope you find something you like!

February 16, 2012
by Julia
0 comments

Biff Bang Pow : Applique Cushion

cushion on settee

To be honest, the cushion making hasn’t gone according to plan.

The plan was to make cushions for my Etsy shop this week but for whatever reason, I didn’t know where to start. Instead I’ve made 2 or 3 for my own home. This cushion is really for my other half, Robb, and was inspired by Biff Bang Pow which is an old favourite song of both of ours.

cushion

More cushions (hopefully) coming soon…