I’ve been bursting to tell you all about this for nearly six months so you can imagine quite how excited I am to be able to spill the beans. Well, I am delighted to announce that I have been working with Plueys, a small niche brand specializing in rainboots with fun and whimsical designs like these:

Plueys is an independent label which reinvents the humble rubber boots of our childhood with brave, bright, fun designs that recall simple joys, like playing in the rain. Made in limited quantities, Plueys designs are unique, practical, and always attract lots of admiring attention.

My designs will be appearing on rainboots sometime this year, either in time for the Summer festivals or those Autumn downpours! They’ll be available online and hopefully in some stores too. I can’t show you any images at this point but I’ve seen the samples and it’s all looking great. I can’t wait to wear my own rainboots!

Do you wear rainboots? Would you wear some with my designs? I’d love to know!

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.

My felt flower brooches are now available from new online shop Plume! I’ve made a special collection of the designs above which will be available exclusively from Plume – you can’t get them anywhere else! Made from coloured felt and Japanese fabric covered buttons, each one is unique.

Plume has only just opened but there’s already a nice selection of stationery, jewellery and beauty products – go check it out!

First, big thanks to everyone who voted for me on Spoonflower. Hopefully I’ve made it to the next round, at which point I will be pestering you for votes again :)

I’m currently getting a big bunch of new designs ready to be swatched by Spoonflower so I can put them up for sale. The colour thing has been driving me a bit mental so I’ve ended up making my own palette of safe colours which I’m going to get swatched too so I can see any colour shifts. It’s just too annoying having to order new swatches if the colours are wrong, since they’re in the US. I quite like how it looks as a pattern, though it is eye-bendingly weird if you repeat it over a yard.

Anyway, here’s a sneak peek at some of the new colourways I’m getting printed. Some are colours people have requested and others I might want to buy myself. If you have any other requests do let me know asap and I’ll add them to the list. I can’t put designs up for sale until I swatch them so this is your last chance til I next have a batch of designs to print.

I’m also getting some secret surprise designs printed which I can’t wait to show you, if they work out. I’ll keep you posted!

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.

Despite being quite better now, I haven’t quite recovered myself completely. My sleep patterns are all wrong so I seem to have spent February stumbling around half-asleep still wearing my pyjamas. Oh well. I hope to be more awake in March.

Reading, Watching, Playing

How to Enter the World of Textile Design by Lizzy House
An e-book by ace fabric designer Lizzy House. It’s full of excellent information about the ins and outs of designing a fabric collection and getting yourself a contract. I’m not sure I could handle the pace of a proper textile designer but loads of good pointers for my Spoonflower dabblings. You can buy a copy here.

Answers on a Postcard zines by Girl Industries
With my patchy track record of zine making, I am well impressed with Katy’s plan for putting out a zine a month this year! Having interviewed a bunch of crafty folks (including me!) about all kinds of things, she’s pulling the answers out into a series of themed zines. It’s all very interesting, except when I discovered I’m the ONLY PERSON who likes working in silence. I can well believe it though, considering how much noise everyone surrounding me makes. I’ve got copies in my shop, if you’d like a read yourself (you should!)

Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft
Yes, I only just read this. I don’t really buy new books and this was the first time I’ve seen a paperback copy in a charity shop. Obviously John Peel was a major instigator in my love for music – we used to listen to his shows religiously and send off for records he played. He also once said I had “a lovely name” on air. Aww. Anyway, the whole book is hilarious, written exactly as he spoke and full of all kinds of amusing anecdotes. Sadly John only managed half the book before he died but his wife Sheila finishes it off in a similarly amusing and affecting way. Lovely stuff.

Nobody’s Girl by Sarra Manning / Along For The Ride by Sarah Dessen
Two Young Adult (horrible name) writers who consistently write better novels than than 99.9% of adult books aimed at actual adult females. While covering the general YA teen themes of well, boys, they’re both smart, funny and dark enough to not be fluff while still being fun. UK Sarra’s latest is a love letter to Paris and holiday romances and the joys of exploring without guidebooks. US Sarah’s is a darker tale of insomnia, new babies and first impressions. When I say I’m inspired by teenage girl’s magazines it’s ones written by people like these guys (the long defunct Just Seventeen, Sassy and Elle Girl, sigh)

Ponyo
At last! I hate you Disney. While Ponyo has been out so long in Japan it’s on the TV schedules, the UK finally gets a cinema release. And they wonder why piracy is such a big issue these days. No option to see the original subtitled version but the dubbing was mostly fine (certainly nowhere in the league of Valley Girl Princess Mononoke). As with all the Ghibli movies, I was pretty much sucked in the whole time – there’s not a huge amount of plot but it’s all so cute with some glorious scenes like Ponyo running over the waves made by giant fish. I suppose it’s a cross between Totoro and How’s Moving Castle which is alright by me. Looking forward to the DVD.

Picross
Ahhh, how I missed you! Now replaying for the third time. Hope someone buys me 3D Picross for my birthday.

iPhone app of the month

Hipstamatic
As blogged here. Also the eBay app (thanks Alice for the tip) which helped me snag some new Rocket Dog shoes for £10!

Resolution update

- Two zines completed! That’s one resolution done anyway.
- I have a whole bunch of new patterns almost ready for swatch ordering on Spoonflower.
- Also, a resolution I forgot to post but have started on is clearing out my room. I have so much stuff. So I’ve given away a ton of books on Bookmooch this month.

Websites I’ve been enjoying

- Formspring! (I’m having lots of fun answering questions (ask me more!) and it’s so interesting to read other folks’ answers. Favourite people include Design*Sponge, Gemma Correll, Twinkie Chan, Lizzy House and Miso Funky.
- Recipe Look (illustrated recipes!)
- Loyal Army Daily (daily cartoons from the kawaii designer)

Things to look forward to in February

- My birthday! As mentioned above, I am kind of drowning in Stuff just now so if you are stuck for gift ideas, I suggest Spoonflower gift certificates so I can buy fabric, and of course my Amazon wish list. Or something I can eat.
- Getting my hair cut for the first time in two years. Yeah, that will be interesting.

Online sales

Items sold on Shopify: 45
Items sold on Etsy: 19
Items sold on Folksy: 12
Items sold on Dawanda: 17

And sales are up again, helped by Valentine’s Day.

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.

I have a new stockist! All The Fun of the Fair is a lovely little shop just off Carnaby Street in London selling all things quirky and handmade. They’ll be selling my I Love Buttons bags and the Little Button Bags so if you love buttons and live near London you’re all set!

They also run some great craft classes – find out more at their website.

As mentioned yesterday, I have two new notebooks in the shop. These mini I Love Buttons notebooks have been on my mind for a while, but I only really got the final idea worked out after Borders closed down leaving us without a Paperchase. I already knew Paperchase had the exact notebooks I wanted to use so I had to bribe my sister to bring some up from London for me. They’re simply hand-stamped with one of my vintage buttons and an I Love Buttons stamp I had made. They’re a really dinky size but with loads of pages so great for sticking in your bag for those random brilliant ideas.

I also have a brand new Bread Slice notebook. I’ve noticed that guys seem to prefer Bread Slice so he’s now printed on a manly blue notebook with lined pages, and with just a touch of watercolour paint. This now completes my Cakeify and Friends trilogy of notebooks – who’s your favourite?

Wow, look at me, I’ve actually been printing. I’ve had a few big orders from shops all at the same time so I had to buckle down and make big batches of things (and make a truly frightening stationery print order). It’s never the most fun making loads of the same thing but once you get into a rhythm it’s pretty easy to keep going until you run out of space.

Like so. Not pictured are the other bags perched precariously on a box of notebooks and the ones that were sitting on my lap for lack of any other space.

The only large flat surface in my room is my bed, which is fine for small batches of notepads but absolutely no good for anything that needs to dry overnight.

So, thank goodness then for some products that dry instantly and can be piled up at random.

Also, not pictured; me ironing everything before and after printing. Tedious.

(You might spot a couple of new notebook designs there – they’re in the shop and I’ll post more about them tomorrow). Sorry also for the less than brilliant photos – I’ve mentioned the rubbish lighting in my room before I’m sure.