Twibes

Have you heard of 'Twibes' on twitter, did you know I'm a bit of a twitter fan? I'm @haptree if you'd care to follow me and I tweet about all sorts of things and quite often I 'flog my blog' on there, so you can keep up with my posts (what a hideous phrase I think I just invented, let me never use it again!)  Twitter really is a great help with boosting your readership and something like twibes really helps you to find the like minded people who may be interested in your posts.

Here's what a Twibe is - This is Adam from @Twibes

Sounds a bit like he's doing an impwession of @Wossy to me!

So imagine you may only have 50 or so followers but if you include #VegGarden then that tweet has the potential to be seen by the 261 members of that twibe.

When searching through Twibes, I'm a member of the twibes, Etsy, Craftblogs and  VegGarden, quel surprise! I was gobsmacked, to see that no one had started a 'twibe' for Folksy so I did.

I told my other half that I had started a twibe and he said, "Oh right so does that mean you have to do battles and stuff"  Umm no, it doesn't...   hopefully the video above makes it fairly clear what a twibe is for and besides Folksy would need another couple of thousand members before we could do battle with the likes of Etsy without it being a modern day equivalent of David and Goliath.   Not that I'm condoning any rivalry, I'm switzerland on that score, fingers in both pies you see, any one got another metaphor/similie I could use in this post?!

Look only 37 members so far!

So, if you are a folksy seller or buyer (yes buyers are more than welcome mwah ha ha ha!) or if you just like the idea of Folksy types then please join and find lots of other Folksy folk to chat to and maybe follow, remember to include the tags, handmade, folksy or craft.  here's the link - http://www.twibes.com/group/Folksy

I'm off en vacances tomorrow, can you guess where I'm going?  So I'm about to close up my shops, I leave you with this sad image of an unsold bead kit (including a beautiful, handmade wristlet crafted lovingly from fine japanese import fabric!!!)- a snip at only £9.50 ($15) so why hasn't it sold! No sales in a month in fact...   please do use my time away to comment and give me some top tips to boost my sales.

(Just look at all those lovely beads waiting to be transformed into some beautiful bracelets!)

Bon Nuit x

Folksy Mini Treasury - Petal Power

...what a riot

The anarchist Emma Goldman said "I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck" but lets not be hasty, if you can afford the diamonds then perhaps you could manage both! Although there really is nothing more beautiful than a flower, even a diamond necklace, (De Beers does have a floral collection at the moment, does that count?!) From the humble forget-me-not to the extravagant lily, artists and poets have been inspired by their beauty. Click click on the images and links for more details of this floral selection all available on Folksy (The UK's very own Etsy!)

Orange flower card £2.45 Jim Jam
Necklace and Earrings set - Stunning Red kanzashi £12.00 Lauren Vickers Jewellery
'Summer Love' hair accessory £16.00 A Alicia
Give peas a chance half apron £12.00 Purlesque Craft Boutique
Stunning mixed cotton knitted shrug.. £48.00 Maggie Cook
Small pleated Handbag SP13 £19.00 Scattergood and farmer

This weeks treasury theme of flowers was picked by Silvermoss who makes beautifully elegant jewellery inspred by nature. She also has a great blog, with stunning photos of her work, like this pendant below.

Leave a comment or tweet if you have any ideas for themes for the coming weeks!

Wotta Whoppah!

This is a massive pumpkin growing under the canopy of it's huge leaves (it's about 20 inches across so far) the plants total spread is nearly 7m, and there are lots of pumpkins coming all along its runners - I think we probably need to prune it, but having never grown one before we've just been enjoying watching what it will do next.

I took this shot above by shoving the camera into the foliage - the pumpkin looks very protected by those huge leaves, the angle of the shot really emphasises that I think.

You can see below just how far those runners go - there's another one of equal length on the other side!

The Cupcake Class

Cupcakes are big, well no they’re not actually they’re tiny, but these sweet and innocent little baked fancies are taking over. Crafty people all over the world are being inspired by tiny little cakes to making not only real and increasingly ornate cakes (edible works of art) but also all manner of handmade items that can be made to resemble or can be adorned with, this most enchanting and nostalgic of birthday treats…

…and they’re selling like hotcakes (or should that be cupcakes?!)

I posted a thread recently on the Folksy Forum requesting some help with ideas for a theme for my weekly Mini Treasury feature and Julia from Midsummerstitches asked if I’d thought of doing cupcakes… well no I hadn’t and to be honest I hadn’t thought much about cupcakes at all except when making them for my daughters birthday parties, but it seems I’m the only 30 something female on the planet that isn’t thinking about them, tweeting about them, eating them, buying books about them or making cupcake shaped crafts. Just take a look at this scrummy looking soap from Lovelee Soaps on Etsy, you could easily eat one of these by mistake!

I did a quick search on Folksy for cupcakes and was amazed, I then followed this up with a search on Etsy and was astounded – there are 174 sellers on Etsy whose names alone start with cupcake, and that’s just starts with cupcake…

But when did cupcakes take over and why are they now so popular with otherwise sensible Pinot Grigio swilling grown ups? And when did a large slice of chocolate cake take second place to a tiny little cake for one...

It seems that businesswomen, mothers, grandmothers students and even teenage girls have all been getting increasingly excited by cupcakes recently, and just nobody should be getting married without the obligitory cupcake wedding tower.

The 'cupcake class', is now a recognised social demographic, Trendy bakeries selling only the most chic cupcakes have been emerging in our worlds cities over the past few years, if you have one near you then I'm guessing you live in a pretty affluent postcode, lucky you!

We can congratulate our waistlines and our purses for the invention of the mini cupcake. Chocolates and petit fours somehow don’t have quite the same blameless frivolity as the hallowed cupcake which we can consume guilt free, and especially a mini cupcake (or 5), it's just a tiny little burst of cute childish joy. The Cupcake Emporium in London states “each cupcake only 130 calories (same as 2 apples)”! I had better add a health warning, as clearly eating a cupcake is not the same as eating 2 apples. Looking at those sweet Robins Egg Mini Cupcakes above from Etsy's The Cupcake Mint I know which I'd rather have!

Perhaps this fascination with cupcakes comes from the nostalgia of a childs birthday party or a village cake sale, happy innocent times when we used bright crimson cochineal food colouring to produce perfect, pink, hand sized treats all covered with hundreds and thousands, and made by our mothers for us because we were special and had been so very good. We can no longer wear the pink ruffled taffeta party dresses (maybe just me) but we can eat the cupcakes and we’re prepared to pay for them (£2.50 a cake!) and they had better be exquisite and no, we are not going to share.

Or maybe on a more Freudian level they have a similar allure to that of beautiful lingerie, a pert little sponge cake transformed with bows, satin and lace into a tempting seductress, with a cherry on top... I won’t elaborate this point, but you can see it too, right?! I spotted this amazing corset from Tusejolie who may have been thinking along the same lines with this fabric choice!

For those of us who aren’t popping into the Hummingbird Bakery in London or indeed Carrie Bradshaw's favourite The Magnolia Bakery in NYC on a regular occasion then we do of course need to be constantly reminded of cupcakes in other ways lest we become faint, cue 1000 pages of cupcake related items on Etsy.

Ok it must be cupcake o'clock by now, there’s a new phrase for you! I urge you to click the images included for more details on where you can get your hands on these beautiful items included here from both Folksy and Etsy sellers.

Folksy Mini Treasury - There's no place like it...

...It's good to be home

With everyone including me taking holidays I thought I would pay homage to the home this week. That one place above all where we feel safe and secure as exhausted we dump our suitcases and straw donkeys on the floor and slump down into the couch after a hard weeks holiday, bliss! Here are a selection of 'home' inspired items from some of Folksy's talented crafters and artists - as always images are clickable for more details and follow the links below to browse the shops.

Our House NeedleBook £8.80 Paperfish
HOME Summer Bunting £15.00 Sew Recycled
Home Sweet Home felt brooch pin... £8.00 Pippin
The House on the Hill £55.00 Wallop
House Earrings £8.00 Cherryloco
Home Sweet Home bag £15.00 Reviva Designs

My Welsh Home

A few pictures from my recent trip to my mothers house in North Wales, which was not only my childhood home but hers too. The garden is vast and a full time job for my mother and aunt, they have allowed certain areas to naturalise with huge ferns springing up all over, it's great to get lost in and especially good for the kids. There are drops, as the garden was terraced by my grandfather and also 3 ponds so we can't take our eyes off P for a second. E is old enough to play on her own now although she mostly wants to play hide and seek which can take some time, I found her lost in thought twirling around on the swing and couldn't resist taking a photo.

P mostly likes to climb... he was trying to get out of the window as he'd just seen the cat jump out through it.

The veg garden has to be rabbit proofed so they've grown a box hedge around it which also protects it from the wind, we enjoyed some lovely french beans whist we were staying and also got to taste the little tomatillos that are growing in the green house (it's behind the beans) - my brother collected the tomatillo seeds on a trip to South America from some growing wild in a hedgerow, so they are now 2nd or 3rd generation. This year I'm going to try to collect seeds from everything I'm growing, far more satisfying than buying them.

In the background you can see E and W playing on the see saw with my sisters niece, W built it last summer, it's a lot of fun and has an adult height setting. We don't have two people in the family that weigh the same so it usually involves adding extra children to try and get a bit of equilibrium, like a pair of old fashioned scales - we need a toddler this end!

Some beautiful flowers I picked from the garden - my mother said they were lovely but complained they smelt of feet, the tansy smells awful (thats the yellow stuff) so I've learnt that you need to sniff flowers before picking them.

My photo tips series is on holiday (too much holidaying to do!) It will be back in September!

Folksy Mini Treasury - More Tea Vicar?

More tea Vicar?

The English are famous for their tea drinking antics so how about a celebration of this civilized tradition from some of Folksy's finest. Get out your best china (a mug just wont do) and settle down with a pot of Earl Grey and a slice of cake while you peruse this week's refreshing selection - don't forget your little finger should be pointing skyward! As always, click the images for more info or go directly to the shops via the links below.

A Storm in a Wonderland Teacup.... £9.50 Mrs B
Art Deco Trio Candle £16.00 Clara Bows

Little Teacup Pin, pink £8.00 Lupin
Pink Raspberry Fruit Tea Cosy £12.99 MagicMinky
Time for tea £12.00 Lei Rose
Childrens Wooden Tea Party Stencil Set £12.99 Half an Acre

More next week, always looking for ideas for a theme - post me a comment if you have any you'd like me to investigate.

Holidays and Bottom lines

Just had a fab holiday visiting W's family in North Devon and then on for a few days camping in Polzeath on the North Cornwall Coast with some old buddies we haven't seen in ages - a really good week but very tiring and somewhat wet. Glad to be back home as the sun hasn't stopped shining! We're off again on Friday to see my side of the family in Wales and then a few weeks after that a short break in France with more family... It was so much simpler before we all moved so far apart!

Gorgeous (and very busy) Polzeath beach below, our campsite was a little field above the sheep field, we enjoyed it so much we're considering buying a Bongo so we can be a bit more protected from the elements, the rain on Friday was pretty relentless, luckily we did have some really lovely weather and managed a few beach days too.

Tentertainment - it rained alot, mini dvd player to the rescue!

On our return I was greeted with these monsters! I didn't know gherkins grew this big, I suppose it's all the rain we've had. W is going to be pickling them tonight hopefully, not whole as I'm not sure they make jars that big.

Good news for my shop as I've also had a request for a wholesale price for my beadkits from a little shop in Texas which sells cute items for kids, I'm going to be doing some maths today to see what my bottom line is - that's business speak and nothing to do with wearing tight trousers, although reading this post on Artists in Business from GlassPrimitif 'The Knicker Theory' perhaps business and pants are more closely related than I previously thought!



Hope you all enjoyed the party last week, I'm afraid it's back to sobriety for a few days now...