I am back in Glasgow and we all had an awesome time in Thailand. Here is Oooew Bunny overwhelmed by the joys of the Rabbit Resort, in front of that very pool I posted below (which did look exactly like that!). I think my face had a similar expression most of the time as well. My internet usage is currently restricted during peak hours for too much LOST watching or something, but Flickr photos will be forthcoming.

I had so much super exciting mail waiting for me on the kitchen table, which was just what I needed at midnight after 16 hours of planes and airports. One was some pretty new colours of gocco inks for an exciting project I’ve been planning and I also had a pay it forward package from Rebecca which was a lovely and unexpected surprise. Thanks Rebecca! You can see a bit of what she sent here. More exciting even than that, was the arrival of my fabric from Spoonflower. It looks even better than I had visualised and I literally did a happy dance in the kitchen at the sight of it. I will photograph it soon and let you see! You can catch a couple of glimpses of it in the latest Spoonflower video, though I imagine you will be dazzled by the amazing fabric of The Small Object and miss mine.

Oh, and I bought a giant happy carrot as well…

Woo, I am off to Thailand today and will be sitting by this very pool at the excellently-named Rabbit Resort in Pattaya by the weekend. The pool has a rabbit pattern on the bottom! The rest of the holiday will be spent in Bangkok, shopping, eating and having larks.

The shop (and Etsy shop and Poppytalk stall!) will remain open in my absence and mucho exciting free gifts will arrive with any orders made between now when I resume shipping on the 4th of July.

Also, the GIVEAWAY. I have here a copy of DIY: Design It Yourself by Ellen Lupton, a great resource for would-be designers and anyone needing an injection of inspiration. It explains some of the basic rules of good design and then shows you lots of cool ways to make unique and exciting design projects like business cards, tshirts, product labels, packaging, websites etc. It’s not exactly a how-to book but it will give you a whole lot of ideas and starting points for creating your own designs. I’ll also stick some random handmade and kawaii fun in the package.

All you have to do to have a chance of winning is leave a comment on this post before July 4th telling me a fascinating fact about yourself. I’ll pick my favourite when I get back.

AND, as a special little bribe thank you, I will also pick ten people who subscribe to my mailing list during this period and send them a free badge and bookheart. Just sign up using the form below and I will choose some at random on my return. It’s FREE and you can unsubscribe at any time, if you want to be mean about it :)

Both of the above are open to everyone, worldwide. Okay, see you soon!

You may not think the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival has much to offer you but you’d be surprised! It takes place in the pretty coastal town of Portsoy every year and there’s a whole host of fun stalls and events going on. Me and Miso Funky went up last year and had a whale of a time; eating donuts on a stick, buying awesome vintage stuff for 10p a go, drinking Moray Cup, rolling down hills and paddling at Cullen beach up the road. If you happen to be in the area, it’s on today and tomorrow and it really is a fun day out.

Of course, you can also visit my mum at The Curiosity Shoppe, her lovely antiques shop. She also stocks lots of cute handmade things by me and my sister so go have a browse and say hello.

Cakeify is here to say THANK YOU. I think he’s thanking you for continuing to read my blog. I was faffing yesterday and read a thread on the Etsy forums about appreciation pictures in feedback. As a buyer, I never leave a picture with my feedback because I often haven’t done anything with it yet. However, it never occurred to me that as a seller I could leave a fun picture to thank my customers. Hence the above. Technically, this is a pretty good waste of my time so I made them into thank you notecards as well to make a change from the Angel Bunny ones I normally use. So, if you order anything from my shop, you’ll probably find a happy Cakeify in there too :)

I have a bunch of stuff I want to blog before I disappear off to Thailand next week, but somehow I doubt much of it will happen since I have yet to a) pack, b) pick up my train tickets from the station or c) do ANYTHING on my to do list. You never know though. What I do promise before I go is another GIVEAWAY. Two in fact. One of them involves an exciting prize for little effort and the other is a blatant bribe to get you to join my mailing list. Who doesn’t love bribes?

In other news, I have another reason to be pleased to be going away on holiday, as I just jumped on the Spoonflower bandwagon and ordered some fabric featuring my own design! I went for a repeat pattern and it nearly killed my perfectionist self, making sure every last pixel lined up properly. I am very very very excited to see the finished product and doubt I could wait 3-4 weeks without gnawing my arms off in impatience. Hopefully the joys of Thailand will help me forget about it, for a while at least.

So, yes, watch this space!

Top: Little Black Rabbit, Nice, Cabin & Cub
Middle: La Pomme, Loot by Stina, Sirena con Jersey
Bottom: Papeiraarre, Abigail Paper, F2 Images

I’ve been have a good browse around the stalls of my fellow designers at this month’s Poppytalk Handmade market and there are so many lovely things. I’m keeping a firm hand on my purse strings since I’m off to Bangkok soon but I have been bookmarking some shops for future visits. Above are what I would buy if I had the opportunity to go on a little shopping spree - click the links to visit their stalls at Poppytalk. Don’t forget to have a peek at my stall too!

I had a great day at the Dennistoun Craft Fair yesterday. It was the first one organised there, so I wasn’t sure what to expect but it turned out to be a great day. I have to say the most enjoyable part for me (apart from the sales!) was being involved in something local. I live in the unpopular East End of Glasgow and so often have to make the trek over to the West End for craft fairs - it was much nicer to walk 20 minutes up the road and meet some of the locals.

Most of the stallholders were also local so it was good to find out who lives in my neck of the woods. As well as my fellow Mafia member, Morag from Global Guru, I was delighted to meet a couple of new folks. Fugsly had the stall next to me and were super-nice - Nicole makes awesome bags, purses and cute squashy monsters and loves all things Japanese, yay. If it wasn’t for my impending trip to Bangkok and a firm hiding of my purse, I would have have been very tempted by her wares. Also lovely was Dotty Monkey, who makes the cutest sock monkeys, appliqued bags and other monkey filled joys.

I’m hoping there will be some more markets organised by the same folks. If you’re local, I hope to see you at the next one!

Also, sorry I haven’t been posting much - there’s been lots going on at my other website, diskant, as we near our ten year anniversary. I’m also awaiting some new gocco inks so I can get going on some new prints. Hopefully I will have some things to show you soon.

I’ve got too many ideas going on in my head right now. Lots of them are gocco-related but I need to make sure I work them through properly and not just rush on and waste materials. With that in mind, I have been doodling in my sketchbook the last few evenings, just to settle my brain and clear out all the nonsense. Doodling is great because it doesn’t matter - no-one ever needs to see it and all the pressure is off. Normally I draw lots of flowers and bunnies with stupid faces but I’m noticing an old friend keeps turning up. Yes, Cakeify seems determined to return in some form. Looks like he might have some other bakery-related friends as well. And, uh, a bear with a bowler hat and tie on…

Lots of news for you. First up, I am part of this month’s Poppytalk Handmade market, which has a lovely Summer theme. You can browse my virtual stall or have a look at all the other awesome folks here. It runs until July 4th so there’s plenty time to see everything.

I’ll also be selling my wares this Saturday (14th) at a craft fair in the slightly less glamourous location of Dennistoun in Glasgow. It’s just up the road from my house so I thought it might be nice to meet the locals. I’ll be at the New Church Hall from 10am-4pm and will have all the new stuff with me - button bags, travel journals, new photo cards and maybe some other cute stuff if I get a move on. It’s my last Glasgow market for a while so I hope to see you there. You can find out more here.

On a completely different note, Asking For Trouble is now on Facebook. If you’re a member you can become a fan and get all the latest news and nonsense.

And finally, my button bag was featured on Cuteable last week. You can see the full post here.

This week I am working on more gocco things so hopefully I will have something to show you very soon.

Hands up who loves buttons? Well, the fabric gocco prints have been ironed and tested in the washing machine and can be revealed as drawstring bags! There are two colours available - natural cotton and a pretty aqua blue - both with a print in blue. They’re around 9″ square so there’s plenty room to store all your pretty buttons or anything else you fancy. The drawstring is pretty tight so there really are a million uses for it. If you fancy one, they’re available in the shop right now. Go see >>

I’m busy busy at the moment getting my stall ready for Poppytalk Handmade. I’l let you know more once it all opens tomorrow.

Well, here is one of my new gocco prints. If you remember the button drawings I did the other month, I finally got around to doing something with them. I have a plan for them involving kraft paper so this was a test print to see how the ink showed up. I think it’s looking great so I will be pressing ahead with that plan. The ink is a little thick on this print because it’s actually fabric ink. My main gocco experiment was printing on fabric and I was so pleased that it all worked out so well first time.

Isn’t the texture of the ink just lovely? I only messed up on two prints, trying to get the right thickness of protective paper underneath the fabric. For future reference, one sheet of printer paper is just fine. I just used a normal gocco screen and printed using the gocco printer with fabric ink I got in Japan. Cleaning the screens is even less fun than with paper ink though.

I will let you see a full picture of what exactly I was printing on once I get some proper photos taken. I have lots more gocco things planned so I hope to find some time for that next week.