Folksy Makes has finally launched and I got to be one of the first contributors! Makes is all about showing people how to make stuff with a bunch of user-generated tutorials for varying levels of difficulty. For my first Make, I’ve done a tutorial on how to make one of my washi book hearts.

I’ve been meaning to do a book heart tutorial for ages so this came up at just the right time. I’m quite proud of inventing the book heart and I enjoy making them but I can’t say I get a huge amount of artistic fulfillment from the process, which is basically sticking stuff together with glue. They are one of my best sellers though so I’m glad everyone likes them. But now you don’t need me, you can just make them yourself :)

Having said all that, I just made 54 of the things last night, as well as 32 button badges. I am determined to have lots of stock ready for the next lot of markets and the Christmas sales (which started for reals today!) so I don’t have to run about like crazy making tons of stuff the night before. We’ll see.

I’ll probably re-post the tutorial here, just for completeness, and in case Folksy gets run over by a bus, or whatever the techy equivalent is.

Oh, and yes the Prettify competition is now closed. I will pick a winner sometime this week and email everyone who entered.

Right, I need to make some new vintage button brooches now…

I feel like some kind of Girl Friday, testing out the latest technology for my loyal readers. If someone wants to give me a job doing that, just let me know!

Ponoko is my latest find, a company that will make your designs into 3D reality! It’s a bit like Spoonflower’s fabric printing service, except that Ponoko have some laser cutters with which to cut your designs out of acrylic, wood etc. I got desperately excited and had to have a go at making my Super Cute Kawaii bunny into acrylic shapes.

There’s a few ways you can make your design a reality – if you know your way around design programmes like Illustrator and Freehand then you can use their starter kits to create a file that’s ready to cut. If you’re not so technologically minded, you can draw out your design and pay for someone to create the artwork. I went down the Illustrator route and found it all fairly straightforward (after studying the Ponoko guidelines very carefully). Most of my designs are created in Illustrator anyway, so it was mainly a matter of changing the sizes and line thicknesses to suit and fitting as many shapes as I could into my chosen size of material. You can choose from tons of materials, including acrylic, wood, card, felt, metal and more in a range of colours and thicknesses.

The whole process took about 10 days and then there was an exciting package in the mail. I’m afraid I didn’t photograph it as I was way too excited. My little bunny shapes all came out great, though the raster line for the mouths hadn’t come out at all. The Ponoko team are very helpful though and have suggested changes I can make next time. It’s not really a problem though as I can just draw the lines on myself for now.

After a little bit of gluing and drawing I now have this! Isn’t it just the cutest thing you have ever seen?! I’m making them into charms but with a removable loop so you can thread them on to a chain or ribbon to make a necklace as well! I hope to have them in the shop very soon.

Ponoko also have a marketplace on their site where you can browse some of the things made by Ponoko users and buy either the finished pieces or the files to have them made yourself. I definitely plan to get some more things cut in future – as with all these services, the postage is what’s making it expensive but it’s a brilliant service and I can’t wait to see what it gets used for in future.

See also Little Robot‘s wooden jumping jacks which she made with Ponoko recently. So many possibilities!

As well as lazing beside rabbit swimming pools and eating everything in sight, I did lots of shopping during my recent trip to Thailand and was ably guided by the awesome Claire of Miso Funky (now back home in Glasgow, woo!). As my Tokyo Shopping Guide has been useful to a lot of people, I thought I would post up some of my favourite shops and markets in Bangkok. First post will be coming up later today but I’ve already set up an index page which will be updated with new posts and helpful links. There’s already some links there plus a list of what I’ll be posting about. Enjoy!

Update: Because of the political situation in Thailand I never finished this series. However, I have now posted up a shorter version, which you can view on the Bangkok Shopping Guide page, or as part of my zine, available from the link below.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging for so long there. Jetlag is no fun. But you want to know about Spoonflower. Spoonflower is an awesome new company that prints fabric on demand. You design your fabric pattern, send it over and they’ll print it on to fabric and post it right out. As a crazy fabric obsessive, you can imagine how exciting this was for me and I hope you’re impressed that I didn’t go completely overboard.

For my first attempt, I wanted to keep things simple so I could get an idea of how time-consuming the design aspect was and how the whole process worked, as well as how the fabric actually looked and felt, and how similar the finished fabric matched my design and expectations. As they’re based in the US, I also had to limit myself to just one fat quarter as the postage costs are currently very high. I believe they plan to lower them once they’re out of beta. Obviously the more you order the cheaper it gets but this was just testing the water.

As you can see, I went with my button drawings as they really are perfect for a fabric pattern and simple enough for a first attempt. I spent almost a whole morning trying to make the repeat pattern work in Illustrator and wanting to stab myself in the eyes until I discovered Illustrator isn’t able to crop the kind of paths I make. After that, I moved to Photoshop and it all came together quite quickly. The Spoonflower site has all the info on sizes and file formats so that part was very easy. I also used this tutorial to remind me about how to build a good repeat pattern. Once it was done, and tested a million times to make sure every pixel lined up, I sent it off to Spoonflower and promptly went to Thailand so as to try and forget about it.

The first thing I saw when I got back home was a package from Spoonflower so it actually only took about 2 weeks altogether. It was all prettily packaged in tissue paper but it was midnight and I just got off a plane so I wasn’t able to photograph it. To cut a long story short, I was delighted with how it turned out; the pattern was sharp and detailed and the colour was just right as well. The fabric was a little thinner than I might have wanted but it’s a standard white cotton. Hopefully once things take off, other fabric options might be possible. I really have no complaints at all and I can’t wait for my brain to sort itself out so I can make something with it and see how it sews. I’m definitely going to try out a few more patterns after seeing all the goodness in the Spoonflower Flickr pool.

I’d definitely recommend you give Spoonflower a go but I’d also recommend you do your research first and take the time to work on your perfect pattern, especially if you’re not in the US. Spoonflower only make the printing aspect easy; the hard part is still coming up with a good design. For me, it’s not just making fabric with anything I like on it that I find exciting, but that I can tweak sizes, placement and orientation to make fabric that works perfectly for a particular project. I see a lot of potential in Spoonflower’s services and it’s going to be hard to rein myself in and do the planning first but I’m looking forward to trying out lots of new ideas.

(This was written for the Glasgow Craft Mafia, but I’m sure it will be useful for some of my readers too)

So, you’ve made your products and you want to get them out there for people to buy. What’s the best option for e-commerce? Well, as with most things online, it depends on a lot of different things. There are many different e-commerce options and each have their own pros and cons. Which one suits you best will depend on your range of items, your technical ability, your product prices and your pocket. There’s no ‘best’ solution, just the best solution for you. When it comes down to it, there’s no magic answer – it’s not really where you sell but how well you promote it. So do your research, pick what works for you and do the best you can with it.

I’m going to cover 4 different levels of online shops, and give you the rundown on how they compare and who they’re best suited for.

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This is my newest gocco print, all finished. This batch were just test prints to make sure I’d worked out the registration and colours correctly. The next batch will be on cards once I find somewhere that stocks the colour I want. Since it was just a short test batch, I couldn’t be bothered mixing up the colour of ink I wanted for the kimono and instead thought I would try out a technique mentioned in the gocco manual, of adding different inks directly to the screen and seeing how they mix together. I thought it might echo the pattern of a real kimono. I’m quite pleased with the results though the colours are a little too bright. I’ll probably try this again in a more subtle way next time.

I also used a new registration technique as suggested by on the Flickr Gocco group. This group is so helpful if you have any questions at all about gocco. I can almost guarantee your answer is already there! This registration idea uses a sheet of acetate taped to the side so you can print onto it and then pull it over each print to check the placement. It really saved me from throwing out half my prints from bad registration. There are even better suggestions on that thread now so take a look!

I’d also like to re-state my claim about the gocco being the cleanest form of printing ever. I am doing this on my bedroom carpet without even putting newspaper down. The worst that happened was a couple of ink smudges on one finger.

I ended up with a small edition of 12 prints which I have now signed and numbered and packaged in cello bags. We have plans for special goody bags at Made in the Shade and these will be my donation. From what I hear, it’s definitely going to be worth your while getting down to the market early.

As I say, I will be doing more of these in different colour combinations – I will let you know when they’re finished.

More info on gocco >>