Me Me Me
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By Marceline | March 12, 2010
Those of you who follow me on Twitter, or know me in real life, will have heard me mention working on a “secret project”. Well, FINALLY, I’m going to tell you all about it. On Monday. Hee hee. See you then!
PS. As you can see, I also got my hair cut! There’s an actual photo of it here, though it doesn’t look quite that awesome any more without 2 people to blowdry it for me. I must have had about 10 inches cut off – it grew a lot in two years. Which means it’s also two years since I quit my job for the freelance life. I will organise some kind of giveaway soon.
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Vote for me!
By Marceline | March 1, 2010
My Sun and Rain fabric is part of a contest at Spoonflower to design a fabric panel for a baby carrier. I’m in the semi-finals and I need your votes to get to the next stage. Just GO HERE and pick as many of your favourite designs as you like. There are lots of great designs so I won’t mind too much if I don’t win but I would like to be in the finals. Here are a few of my favourites that I voted for, so as not to be completely self-obsessed.
THANK YOU.
Topics: Me Me Me | 3 Comments »
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Me in a spotlight
By Marceline | February 26, 2010
Ooh, Claire has tagged me to do this:
1: Open your first photo folder, 2: scroll to the 10th photo, 3: Post the photo and the story behind it, 4: Tag 5 or more peeps to continue the thread…
I trusted the task to iPhoto as it looks after most of my photos these days and it came up with that one. Clearly, I didn’t take it as that is me. I can’t actually remember who did take it – sorry, uncredited photographer.
I have just checked our extensive gigography page and this was taken on 12th March 2005 when the band I was in, Üter, headlined at the infamous Winchester Club at the Woodside Social Club in Glasgow. The Winchester was co-run by my flatmate at the time, the incomparable Ally C, so it was easy enough to wheedle our way on to a bill. In fact, we played again the year after on our awesome but doomed tour with econoline – after playing that show, we walked outside to discover Glasgow ankle deep in snow and had to trudge home all the way across town in a blizzard at 2am (LOOK!). This was one of at least FOUR occasions when the arrival of econoline in Glasgow has resulted in freak weather conditions. We can’t handle them.
This show was much less eventful. In fact, I remember very little about it, although I do still have the poster on my door. It’s a terrible photo, technically, but I do like it. I look a bit depressed but probably I was concentrating hard on counting how many times I have to play these 2 notes before changing to 2 different notes. I’m playing the Jen, one of our many vintage keyboards. This was my favourite one because a) I could lift it myself, b) it had lots of knobs and c) it went URRRRRRRRRR.
Also definitive proof that my snowman lights (on the left) were 1000x better than Declan’s weedy fairy lights on the right.
Wow, I can’t believe it’s almost 4 years since our last gig. If you fancy listening to Üter, they hey! guess what?! I have records in my shop :)
Gosh, who to tag?
1. Nicolette of jiji~punch
2. Chloe of Kuro-e
3. Jen of Jempins
4. Catherine of Merulapie
5. Michelle of Covetables.
Phew.
Topics: Me Me Me | 1 Comment »
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Ask me anything!
By Marceline | February 14, 2010
I’ve dragged my heels on this so now it looks like I’m jumping on the bandwagon but yes, you can now ask me anything on Formspring. I often get asked the same questions by email so I’ll post some of those answers up myself too.
But if you have any burning questions, please do submit them using the form and I’ll do my best. You can ask me about crafts, web design, illustration, self-employment, diskant, my record label, zines, Japan, printmaking, gocco and literally anything else* you can think of.
You can also add this link to your RSS reader, if you’d like to follow my answers as, knowing me, I’ll probably wait and do them in batches. There’s some interesting folks on there already like Gemma Correll, design*sponge and Twinkie Chan.
* I reserve the right not to answer any questions I think are mean, or too personal :)
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10 iPhone apps that amaze me daily
By Marceline | January 15, 2010
I felt slightly guilty after giving in and purchasing an iPhone late last year but that was soon forgotten when I realised I had bought something pretty much indispensable. No jokes, this has totally changed my life.
I think my favourite thing about the iPhone is how light I can travel. If I’m only going across town, I don’t need my iPod and if I’m away somewhere for a couple of days then I don’t need my laptop. Or maybe my favourite thing is how I can keep up to date with my shop/s wherever I am so I know about new orders and can delete sold things at craft markets. But no, actually, my favourite thing is how I can check my email, Twitter, weather and news headlines without having to get out of bed. Double bonus if you’re sick. Hurrah for Apple.
Anyway, I have immediately become hooked on installing apps to do whatever random thing I just thought of. Not that you can’t have hours of fun looking up the weather in Tokyo, or typing PIE LONDON into the maps thing to find the nearest pie seller, but these apps make my life even more fun.
Hello Kitty Camera (£1.79)
I read about this aaages ago and had to get it myself as soon as I had an iPhone. Basically, you take a photo of your friend/s and pass it to Hello Kitty who will place fruit on their heads and otherwise decorate the screen like a 3 year old. To hilarious effect, of course. It’s always been a dream of mine to wear a pineapple on my head and Hello Kitty can make that come true. Although, having posted about it here, I’ve lost the element of surprise and won’t be able to collect so many idiotic photos of my friends in future. Disaster! At least Angel Bunny is a willing subject.
WordPress (free!)
The first app to truly blow my socks off, as it lets me do almost everything I can do on my computer – write and edit posts, approve comments and do that on all 5billion of my blogs. Which doesn’t explain why I never blogged once from my sickbed, hmm. It does mean, I will quite likely BLOG FROM JAPAN later this year. Amazing. See also the Flickr app, though it’s a bit less amazing.
Brushes (£2.99)
Since the iPhone has a touchscreen, clearly people like me want to use it for drawing. Brushes has a great interface with colours, brush sizes, zooming and everything, plus layers so you can draw on one and add colour on another. Now if only I could control my fat fingers better. Might be investing in a stylus soon for this.
Facebook (free)
Notable for being an app that is infinitely better than the website. At least I now check in with my FB friends on a dailyish basis. Might even start posting things again soon.
The Guardian (£2.39)
I like The Guardian best for news because it doesn’t update too often – when I had BBC news on my RSS, it used to update with about 700 stories every minute. It also has lots of writers I like. This app is a bargain, as you can choose which sections to get updates on and even download a bunch of articles to read on the train. Other newspapers/magazines take note.
Solitaire City (free / £3.49)
This pretty much saved me from stabbing my eyes out on a number of occasions including extremely delayed train and illness-induced insomnia. The controls are really nice and the design isn’t too hideous. The free version did me fine for ages but I just upgraded to the full version and it has so many more games and variations. Farewell, boredom!
PicGrid (free / £1.79)
Picross on the DS is literally my favourite game in the entire history of the Universe. It’s tricky enough to make me forget about work stuff but enormously fun and satisfying too. I’ve played through the whole game twice and am missing it so much since my sister borrowed it a few months ago. So, the first app I searched for was picross. PicGrid is the best of a bad bunch – sadly the small screen means the puzzles never get bigger than 10×10 but it’s still fun, even if some of the pictures are ludicrous.
Amazon UK (free)
Like I need an easier way to buy stuff off Amazon. This is a truly dangerous app, which not only lets me search Amazon’s inventory but gives me access to my wish list, and allows me to pay for stuff with 1-Click. Argh! It is actually very useful for wishlisting things I read about in magazines etc. but I fear for my bank account. I also note it has a new feature where you can photograph covers and it will look ‘em up for you. Wait, WHAT? When did we arrive in the future?
iBattery (free)
One of my “I wonder if..” app searches. It just tells me how much battery power is left and what that actually means. You get a breakdown of time left in various uses – internet, 3G, phone calls, standby etc. As the owner of a camera that can work on a third battery power for about a week, this is hella useful.
National Rail Enquiries (£4.99)
£4.99?! Are you insane?!, you’re thinking. Best £4.99 I ever spent. It would be almost worth £4.99 just for being able to see when the next trains are leaving Bridgeton station (in real time!) so I don’t have to type all the info into the website every time I want to go across town. Even better though, if you’re taking a train, say, to Inverness on Christmas Eve during some unexpectedly heavy snowfalls, you can look up your train and see if there are any delays or problems along the line and get real time updates along the way that your train is currently running 40 minutes late. That way you can text your dad and tell him to carry on shopping and not stand around in the train station waiting for you. Mind you, if the train staff actually ever told you when you might arrive at your destination we wouldn’t need iPhone apps for it, but you know, best £4.99 I ever spent.
If I’d had 11, I would have added Tweetdeck, but really all Twitter apps are great as Twitter is pretty much custom built for phones.
If you fancy any of these apps, do buy them – just search for the app name in the App store. Most of them should work on iPod Touches too, though in a less useful way once you’re out of wifi range.
What have I missed? Tell me about your favourites so I can install them too.
Topics: Guides and Tutorials, Me Me Me | 1 Comment »
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Hello 2010
By Marceline | January 14, 2010
We may have got off on the wrong foot but I am determined not to fall out with 2010 because a) there’s a lot of it left and b) 2010 sounds cool.
Last year I made some resolutions which weren’t entirely successful, though I don’t feel guilty about not completing them as I did pretty well and other exciting things got in the way and filled up my time. I’m sure the same thing will happen again this year but I do have some goals and ambitions for 2010, which I will post here in case I forget them or have a boring Sunday that needs filling. They’re purposely vague :)
1. Organise trip to Japan and have an amazing time!
2. Make more zines (since I made zero last year, more would be at least one)
3. Make more fabric patterns and get them up for sale on Spoonflower
4. Keep doing my monthly updates on this blog
5. Streamline my Etsy/Folksy/DaWanda shops to have the same product range.
6. Print something new on my gocco
7. Visit a trade show for inspiration and possible future attendance
8. Try and do a craft market in London
9. Write some more useful posts, eg, guides, tutorials, travel, reviews etc.
10. Try and complete my Big 5 Projects.
My Big 5 Projects are mostly product ideas but I don’t want to share the details in case they turn out to be impractical or rubbish, or someone else makes the same thing, by design or coincidence. I will keep you posted though!
(Photo is me with Totoro from our first trip to Japan, back in 2006 – I can’t wait to go back this Autumn!)
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Goodbye 2009!
By Marceline | December 31, 2009
I can’t remember anything I did this year so good job I have a blog and Flickr eh? Let’s see what I got up to.
JANUARY
I was clearly feeling the inspiration this month as I designed my first badge set and sticky notes, plus the Jammie Dodger valentine card, which was mega popular (I’m working on a new 2010 design right now!). I also opened shop on DaWanda and was interviewed by The Little Red Suitcase. Other than that, I did rather a lot of web design projects, including fancying up my own shop.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Day in the Life
By Marceline | November 29, 2009
Back in the day, a few of us used to do a regular thing where we blogged about the same day in excruciating detail. Always interesting to read what people really get up to. Catherine spurred us on to do it again so here is my Saturday 28th November. If you ever wanted to know what it’s honestly like doing a craft fair, well, read on. I forgot to take any pictures, sorry.
8:00 – My alarm goes off, which actually just means Radio 4 comes on at a volume that makes it almost impossible to hear what anyone is saying. I turn it off and think about getting up, but don’t.
8.15 – My iPhone tells me to get up. I do. Alarm clock probably sulking now.
8.30 – Washed and dressed - I am the best at getting ready in 15 minutes. Make a packed lunch and then drink some peppermint tea and eat some biscuits as I can’t face anything sensible this early, while also checking emails and tweeting about market.
8.45 – iPhone tells me to leave. I do. Carry enormously heavy suitcase down stairs and drag it all the way to Dennistoun with little event. It’s all uphill this way so I am boiling to death by the time I get to Dennistoun, despite only wearing a thin jacket.
9.15ish – Arrive! Drag suitcase upstairs and start setting up. I get to use my new banner today for the first time (see above) – it is incredibly exciting (for me).
10:00 – An announcement – the heating is broken. Oh joy. Sadly my walking warmth has faded entirely and I dig out the cardigan and scarf.
10.05 – All set up and ready for customers, of which there are none so far. Go buy secret surprise Christmas presents and chat to other crafters.
10.30 – Realise I haven’t put any prices up yet. Duh.
10.45 – Give in and buy a cup of coffee to warm me up. It’s just 20p, what a bargain.
11:00 – Check Twitter on my iPhone and remember it’s day in the life today. Hastily type up notes on my iPhone – how did I manage without it?
11.05 – Start cutting out badges to make this evening.
11.40 – It’s still freezing. So much so, I have to stop and put on my legwarmers.
11.45 – Finally make my first sale – some cards, woo!
12:00 – Now actually shivering – go for a quick look round stalls to warm up – it doesn’t work.
12.30 – Badges done. Eat half a pack of Oreos. Start cutting out paper heart shapes for book hearts
13:00 – Small boys and badges – it’s a match made in heaven. These two go a bit mental over them. Smallest boy also loves my Cakeify coaster, showing it to everyone and shouting MUFFIN! Aw.
13.15 – Normally, leaving my stall unattended to go to the bathroom is an annoyance – today I am probably going more than usual just to use the hot water to warm my hands. Then back on book hearts.
14:00 – Lunch time! I get another cup of coffee. I am never going to sleep tonight after all this caffeine but it seems preferable to freezing to death. I’m not ashamed to admit I hold the cup against my face to warm it up. Eat my (English) MUFFIN – for the first time in craft fair history this doesn’t immediately bring 10 people to my stall while I have my mouth full. Shame, as I am not doing that well yet.
15:00 – Drop all my cut out hearts on the floor. SIGH.
15.10 – Sell some more stuff including 2 one of a kind brooches and feel smug as I use my iPhone to login to my online shop admin and delete them. Hah!
15.30 – Finish cutting out book hearts. Celebrate with the rest of the Oreos. iPhone automatically capitalises Oreos – worrying.
15:50 – Everyone has started surreptitiously packing up. I go very slowly and am rewarded with another brooch sale, hurray.
16:15 – all packed up and wisely leave on my cardigan and legwarmers then add gloves and hood. It is FREEZING outside, as in literally, with fog everywhere. Every time I do the Dennistoun market, I discover a slightly better route and this time is no different as I go down the wrong road which turns out to be way better paved than my usual. Sadly my dodgy knee (I have a real actual printmaking injury) decides now would be a good time to play up which makes the walk home doubly painful.
16: 35 – Standing at bottom of stairs willing my suitcase to walk itself up 3 flights of stairs. No such luck.
16:40 – Finally make it to our front door and it is SO WARM inside, hurray. Also a stack of mail which is all for me, though only half of it is interesting, being a card from my mum and a ’sorry I couldn’t be bothered bringing your parcels’ card from Royal Mail which informs me I have “6+” parcels to collect. I have no idea how this is possible. I guess I will find out on Monday.
17:00 – Delete final sold brooch from shop, check email, tweet, think about making dinner. Tot up sales and add to my accounts – did better than I thought, yay. Try and email my notes to myself from my iPhone but it doesn’t turn up so I use my WordPress app and paste it into this draft post you are reading. I’m quite clearly living in THE FUTURE. My flatmate comes home.
17:40 – think some more about making dinner. Instead, faff on internet.
18:00 – have a chat with flatmate in kitchen about our new cheaper faster internets. Look in fridge and I’m so glad I bought lasagne at Tesco the other day as that is exactly what I want and I would never have had the energy to make it. Stick in oven and make some sprouts to go with it.
18:50 – the phone rings! I answer it and it’s flatmate’s mum. Normally he answers it and it’s my mum. Then my iPhone rings and it’s my mum :)
18:55 – dinner finally ready. Eat it while watching Fringe. I’m rewatching S1 and amazed at how much of the mythology stuff I had forgotten about. S2 making a lot more sense now.
19:40 – working on a surprise Christmas present. Shh.
20:50 – Cup of (decaf) coffee. I am still a bit shivery – if I get ill because of this market I will not be happy. Have a minor panic that I haven’t made any of these badges/book hearts for Mono market tomorrow, but hey it’s not til midday.
23.25 – Uhh, where did the last few hours go? Oh yes, I was doing some work for a freelance client and then some secret Christmas present gift designing. This is a bad time of year for Day in the Life. Most notable moment – remembering how to do dotted lines in Illustrator. They do hide these things away.
23:30 – off to bed now methinks, even though I haven’t done anything for tomorrow or answered any of these emails. Oh well.
This post is sponsored by Apple iPhone and Oreos. Please check the Merulapie blog later this weekend for links to all the other Day in the Life posts. Hope this was even slightly interesting.
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Back From London
By Marceline | November 25, 2009
I’m back from my long weekend in London and I had a great time! Well, apart from the journey down, which took NINE HOURS, five of which took us all of 75 miles out of Glasgow. This wasn’t entirely surprising, since the whole Borders area and half of Cumbria had pretty much been turned into a lake but it was still very boring.
Other smaller disasters included;
our favourite Japanese restuarant Soba turning into a Mexican restaurant seemingly overnight with no change to the decor or staff by the looks of it. Still, Mexican food is good too.
London Transport deciding to ‘do a FirstBus’ in honour of my arrival, with the East London buses on strike, half the tube lines down and buses we wanted taking forever to arrive, in the rain. Thanks for that!
No pie! Despite major efforts, including typing PIE LONDON into my iPhone and then being directed to a shopping centre with no pie, but instead a Waitrose (yay!) and a Japanese restaurant (double yay!). I spent my journey home full of rice and clutching chocolate orange tarts, nom nom.
Anyway, apart from that I did two very important things – go to the Enterprise Nation conference and SHOPPING. I’ll be posting about the conference soon but obviously shopping is the important stuff. Here’s the highlights:
ANTHROPOLOGIE
You know, that lovely shop US bloggers are always going on about. They’ve finally opened a store in the UK so we had to go and have a peek. It is indeed beautiful in every way, with the most gorgeous clothes dotted around the floors surrounded by homeware, stationery, toys, accessories and everything else pretty you could ever want. Not to mention unbelievable things like a giant squid tapestry and a 10ft narwhal hanging from the ceiling. I couldn’t have afforded a single thing in the shop but I really wish I could. If you’re passing and fancy getting me a gift, the narwhal would be great, thanks. Or maybe an embroidered fox teatowel. Lots of photos on Print and Pattern. www.anthropologie.com
Where is it? On Regent Street, next to Hamleys
ARTBOX
Possibly the cutest shop in London and filled with all our favourite kawaii brands. There’s a good range of products and prices so whatever your budget, you can at least come home with some little notebooks or stickers, even if you can’t afford Hello Kitty ear muffs or a Rilakkuma mug. They also had amazing panda mittens which I hope will be mine this Christmas :)
Where is it? In the Thomas Neal Centre, off Shorts Gardens in Covent Garden. Get a map, or just have a wander around the lovely shops in the area as there are maps all around showing where the cool shops are. There’s also a bigger store in Camden Market which I really want to go to now! www.artbox.co.uk
BOROUGH MARKET
If there’s one thing the recession can’t seem to touch it’s quality food and Borough Market has been getting a ton of press over the last couple of years as the best food market in London. I’m a big fan of food myself so we went to have a look. If I lived in London, I’d be hard-pressed not to go here every weekend – so many amazing food stalls plus people handing out free samples and loads of hot food ready to buy and eat right there. Not to mention the cakes, oh my. I had a fantastic burger and then we split a huge squidgy brownie. Next time, a meringue the size of my head is called for.
Where is it? Opposite London Bridge tube station, or it’s a nice walk from lots of interesting places – Liverpool Street, Tower Bridge, Tate Modern, Design Museum etc. etc. www.boroughmarket.org.uk
JAPANCENTRE
The Japan Centre used to be something of a hidden secret, where you could find all your favourite Japanese foodstuffs and a few bits of kawaii too. Then they started importing homeware from Daiso and now it’s expanded across the road so it covers two buildings! The original shop on Piccadilly Circus is mostly homeware, toys and gifts plus lots of books and magazines in both Japanese and English. Across the road on Regent Street the new branch is next door to Mitsukoshi, the Japanese department store and is mostly food (hurray). As well as the supermarket, there’s a bakery selling fresh curry bread and the always-intriguing melon pan and a sushi/bento bar. I got some rice (sheer laziness, but also cheaper than the Glasgow stores), some grape chews, some grape Cheerio (almost as good as Fanta Grape) and of course, a custard pancake which I had for breakfast the next day. Don’t leave without a custard pancake!
Where is it? Homeware branch, just off Piccadilly Circus,, next to the Clydesdale Bank. The food branch is on Regent Street (heading South) next to Mitsukoshi. www.japancentre.com
MAGMA
A shop to be avoided, unless you have strong willpower or lots of cash as pretty much everything is amazing. Lots of quirky gift ideas plus stationery and cool homeware. I didn’t even dare look at the book shop part as I can’t be trusted with books at the best of times.
Where is it? In Covent Garden – see above. www.magmabooks.com
MR PANDA
Yay for Mr Panda, who sells my favourite iPod monsters, hand-sewn pouches with all different animal designs. My current (amazing) cat one was falling apart a bit so I picked up a brand new bunny one, plus a few bits and pieces for the SCK shop. It’s all pretty affordable though, especially compared to the other vendors in the building – they’re best treated as a kawaii museum of awesome but overpriced cuteness. They also have a Japanese photo sticker machine and out the back takes you to Chinatown proper which is good for a wander.
Where is it? In a little shopping centre on Charing Cross Road – there are loads of Asian restaurants surrounding it so not too hard to spot.
MUJI
Ahh, Muji. It’s still absolutely ridiculous that there isn’t a single branch in Scotland. The online ordering is really good but it’s always nice to have a browse in real life. I only ended up buying some soaps but there are loads of cute Christmas things on offer. At least I now smell like an orange.
Where is it? Branches everywhere. We went to the one on Tottenham Court Road. www.muji.com
PAPERCHASE
The flagship store, which means three floors of awesome stationery, homeware and art/craft supplies, and even a cafe. Mostly we were there to squeak individually at each and every item in the Food Friends range but they’d kindly dotted it around the shop so we saw lots of other cool stuff too. We managed to restrict ourselves to a shared box of notecards – bargainous!
Where is it? On Tottenham Court Road, nearer the Euston end than the Oxford Street end.
Clearly, these are not the only good shops in London – I’d usually add Liberty, Selfridges, Hamleys, Rough Trade and many many more, not to mention the other markets at Spitalfields, Camden, Portobello etc. Do some googling!
Topics: Guides and Tutorials, Me Me Me | No Comments »
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Look, it’s me!
By Marceline | September 28, 2009
In a daily national newspaper, no less. I had given up all hope that this article was ever going to be printed but here it is today in The Scotsman, complete with an unnervingly large photo of me. It is all rather exciting though and you can read the whole thing right here. There’s also a few unused photos I got from the photographer over on my Flickr, if you want to have a nosy at my bookshelves and my glue collection.
I don’t have much else to share at present as I’m currently awaiting the arrival of about 700 pieces of mail, thanks to strikes, general Royal Mail incompetency and bank holidays but there’s lots to show soon!
In the meantime, I have added a few things to the shop, including a prototype Jammie Dodger mug and, (I’m sorry) Christmas cards. Check it all out!
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