Posts by Skully

Looks good so far Sooz!
Vampira, I love the flowers!
Beachcomber, great idea. I have some old towels that I've been wondering what to do with them. I could cut them up for makeup pads.

There are loads and loads of already printed mushroom fabrics for sale by the meter. If you measure your windows and let me know the sizes and which fabric has taken your fancy, I can calculate how much fabric you'll need to buy.

The iron on stuff isn't really going to work so well for curtain fabric. It makes the fabric stiff, so it might make the curtain hard to gather up and also the stuff will probably peel off when exposed to sunlight for long periods of time.

If you really want your own design on the curtains, there are fabric companies that will make you limited print runs of your own design, but they usually cost around £30 - 37 per metre for UK companies (US companies do charge less but you then have to factor into the price customs charges and delivery), that's going to add up to a HUGE cost for a whole van.

Gorgeous Sooz. The person getting it in the swap is a very lucky person!

Good work. I love the artwork.

Thanks Boz!

Beachcomber, all my monsters come with a little story. This is Sir Mortimer-Finknottles:-

Let me introduce you to Sir Tarquin Mortimer-Finknottle. He is a gentlemen monster, who has fallen upon hard times. This stately blue monster has been used to the finer things in life. He was born into a long dynasty of land owning, massive manor living, country monsters. He had all the best toys, the finest education and everything a young monster could wish for. Sadly, when Tarquin's father passed away and Tarquin inherited the title, the land and the manor house it became very apparent that the family was bankrupt and that the new lord of the manor was going to have to sell everything to pay off the debts. All he has left is his top hat, monocle and purple handlebar moustache. This means that the new Sir Mortimer-Finknottle is homeless and looking for person to adopt him.

Thank you Beachcomber.

I have made another large monster. His name is Sir Mortimer-Finknottle.

I love them, Beachcomber! Very pretty!

Well done ladies! Good for you for over coming your fears. Empowering, isn't it?

Will do

Jean, your plates are beautiful! (thank you for the compliment)
Emily, You bracelets are pretty. I have a weebly site too. I'm trying to find a shopping cart to put on there, because their own little shopping listings don't offer a way of selecting size, colour etc. How do you add the shipping on your work, or is the price you sell at inclusive of shipping?
Virosa, Your little hat is gorgeous! It reminds me of a large hat a friend made that I hanker to own

Tank Girl, your hat is creepy! hehehehe, but in a good way.

I had one done yesterday. It was 1 minute of taking off lower half clothes, 5 mins on the examination table 2 seconds of ouch followed by a bit of someone adjusting a light, waggling a spatula and a couple of giggles with the nurse and the Doctor taking the sample. All done and dusted.

Midnight^Star, you're right to just book it and go. You can do it. Worrying is pointless, action is GOOD. I hope they give you an appointment very soon and it is all over and done with, so you can get on with doing other stuff.

If you want free silica crystal bags try going to an accessory shop, or suitcase shop. All these come in boxes that are full of these and often when put out on display they tip them out and throw them away. Ask if they will keep them for you and you can pick them up when they have a bag full.

Turmoil, if you have a carpet shop near you they should be happy to give you the rolls from inside the carpets for free. They are made of card, but are super strong and work really well wrapped in sisal rope as cat scratching posts... they may also give you out of date carpet sample books which also work well around the rolls or on top of platforms.

I've been making wee swag bags for people to keep their precious goodies/savings in. The leather has been up-cycled and the knitted one is made from a small lone ball I found at the bottom of one of my yarn stash boxes.

Thanks for the comments.

Grezza, I' not sure of the name of the yarn. It was in my yarn stash and had lost it's cuffs. If I can find one with the cuff still on it I'll let you know.

I've been making hand warmers. These dainty cable stitch navy ones.

And these chunky large orange/red/brown ones

I had a smear done many years ago and it came back with abnormal cells. I had a couple more tests at the time, neither of which I can say I enjoyed, but they weren't as bad as many of the tests I had done when they were diagnosing me with M.E. The year after I had to go back again for a smear, just like you are being asked to do, and my smear came back as normal. I was a bit shocked and asked them if they were sure, they offered me another smear, which I had done, because I couldn't believe after the tests the year before and it also came back as normal.

My advice would be, get it done and get it done as soon as possible, because what is the point in worrying yourself until the New Year, when you could, like me, have a smear that comes back normal and you get a Christmas without having to think about it.

I know a lot of people really stress about having the smears taken, for a whole number of reasons, but getting past that fear is very empowering. I do not know your reasons for your fear, but I do know that if you face it head on and work your way past it, you will come out the other side feeling like a winner.

Good Luck with the test. The odds of the test being normal are in your favour and it is much better to find out now, than wait.

If you are thinking of selling online you need to know that to sell well you need VERY good photographs. Crisp clear and most people prefer white backgrounds. I wrote some blog posts with advice on selling online a while ago. Some of the info is a bit out of date, but on the whole it is pretty much still true. The names of the en vogue promotion sites have changed, but the advice about using them is the same.

http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/photography-tutorials-using-natural.html
[URL='http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/photography-tutorials-macro-setting.html']http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/photography-tutorials-macro-setting.html
[URL='http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/make-me-want-to-buy-your-goods-part-1.html']http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/make-me-want-to-buy-your-goods-part-1.html
[URL='http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/promotion-on-budget.html']http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/promotion-on-budget.html
[URL='http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/business-cards.html']http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/business-cards.html
[URL='http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/please-critique-my-shop.html']http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/please-critique-my-shop.html
[URL]http://www.autonomousartisans.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/place-to-advertise-promote-and-get.html[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL]

Love it!

I covered my office chair in swatches from a swatch book that was being thrown out. It was high grade upholstery fabric that was normally £30 per metre. I patchworked them all together and used the resultant fabric to cover the chair.

If you want more free fabric I'd suggest going around upholstery shops around spring or Autumn as they will very often have loads of discontinued swatch books that they will just throw in a skip.

Thank you all.
I'm half way through making another with green and blue pages.

I made this mini journal today. It is small enough to fit in a pocket or a bag so you can take it with you when out and about. The cover is recycled leather and the pages inside are a mix of pretty colours.

Flickr, facebook, twitter, tumblr, google+, pintrest, umpteen art sites, blogs, link swap with other people with their own websites, Adwords, ProjectWonderful, You Tube... there are hundreds of sites out there that can help push traffic to your site/shop,but usually it is a bit of trial and error to work out which combination will work for you.

I would suggest if you do decide to go down the networking site path that you separate your art works from your personal life and have a separate account for your Artwork. I went on the other route of using my personal account and a facebook page for my Pirate Pixie Crew and Hyperloop Hoops, I have found that it has ended up with my personal account being swallowed up by a massive number of people that I really don't know... It's not so bad, but if you are a person that likes to keep your personal life completely separate from your potential business customers, it's quite hard to do without different accounts.

I don't really have my toe in the art sites, but I do know there are loads of them out there. They all seem to have a bias toward one style of art to another, but if you find a few you can upload your work to, it can't hurt, especially if you are allowed to link back to your own website. The more places your website is linked from the higher up the search engine rankings your sight gets.

Also remember to submit every artwork you list for sale to google shopping. It really ups your chances of a sale.

I have and Artfire shop and also a free Weebly.com account. You can list the items on Weebly for free, but you then have to get the traffic to the shop, but that is also true of Artfire, etsy and any other sell through site. Weebly is very easy to set up. I have yet to use the shop on it though as I can just link to my Artfire shop through a neat little widget that puts up a page of my shop on my site. My website is http://piratepixiecrew.weebly.com if you'd like to see what it can look like. They have a large number of premade templates for a website on there and it takes very little computer skills to set the site up, and if you have any issues their help team will assist you.

I hope that help.

http://piratepixiecrew.artfire.com

Cuckoo, I really like your work!

Beachcomber, I have all the ink pictures for sale in my Artfire shop at the moment, but have only managed to sell one. I put them up for sale as a test of if people were willing to buy them, and it seems not.

Worldpeace, nice work. I used to work as a facepainter for a while. I was never really all that good though

Nice rug Beachcomber.

Ink drawing just takes a leap of faith of not caring how the images come out. Sometimes they work and other times they don't but just draw them anyway. I have doodled the same weird stuff for years now. The little creatures and creations seem to leave my head via my hand without me thinking about it, in fact they look better if I don't think about it and just let them get on with it by themselves.

Thank you Meeesh

Beautiful Meeech! I love it!

I have been doodling a lot. You can see some of them on my Flickr account.

Here is one as a sneak preview