a week off

Brilliant, a whole week off work for a much needed recharge of batteries, although I'm probably not doing very well as it almost 11.30pm and I'm still up!
I promised myself I would blog every day this week - call it a quest, something to help motivate me not to waste the week. I thought it would be a poor show if I didn't blog on my first full day away from work.

I've spent most of the day doing those jobs that you just don't get around to doing - so I've taken a pair of shoes back to Next which were just a bit too small, I've been to the bank and the post office, I've taken 2 quilted throws into the cleaners, been food shopping, sent my bobble hats off to the folks at innocent, and I've made 2 monsters.
It was a bit too dark this evening to take pics of the monsters so I'll take some pics of them tomorrow and then pop them into the etsy shop.

In the meantime, here is a few pics of some of the bobble hats that I'd made (thanks to the goose for modeling) and finally a pic of cheeky little stevie, who is growing bigger by the minute it seems. She's a bit of a menace at the moment and i feel like we are constantly telling her off for climbing on the table, or jumping on mellie (our other baby cat), or running up the back of my legs (thank god for denim). She's still an angel in cat form though :o)
Tomorrow, I'm going to start the day by putting a stew in the slow cooker, which means I can give myself a good amount of uninterrupted time for making more monsters, and maybe a few other bits and pieces too.

Where have I been?

Good question. I have not blogged for over a week (eek). Been super busy this last week (day job) and also feeling a little under the weather with a seasonal cold/sore throat. Next week I am having a well deserved rest - a week off work. It's really going to be a week to catch up - I need to get the oven fixed (I'm really missing it, especially with the colder weather - I feel the need for hot comfort food). I'm also going to get a carpet fitter to fit my new stair carpet - which I probably bought about a year ago, if not longer - it's probably gone out of fashion now!
I might even blog every day - what a luxury and of course read a few blogs too. oh yes, and I'm going to sleep a lot. zzzzzz.

I have been a little bit creative though - I've made a few more innocent bobble hats whilst watching TV in the evening and I've made a wedding card for a colleague - it was quite a big affair this one, and took a fair few hours to create. I hope she likes it.
It's A4 size - I printed the background text and flowers onto handmade paper, and then collaged with photographs, magazine cut outs and machine embroidered the clothing in felt.

I also went to the second week of the origin craft fair in London, which was good, but not as good as the first week, and because I felt a little under the weather I didn't really have much energy for it - which is a real shame.
I'm really struggling at the moment to understand what is happening to all the hours in the day - thank goodness for daylight saving (in a couple of weeks I think). We'll get an hour back - yay!

My latest monster is also in my etsy shop. He's a trunk monster (so called because of his rather trunk like legs) and he's called Sebastian.

origin 1st week

today I went to the origin craft fair at Somerset House in London, and I came out saying to Mr Monda, 'I could do this' and 'this makes me want to do an M.A.!'.
I did my degree in design crafts - I dropped ceramics after the first year and concentrated on textiles (printed, embroidered and multi-media). Whilst I mull over what it might take for me to do an M.A. i'll tell you about a couple of the designers/artists/crafters that caught my eye today.
Firstly this pic is just a selection the cards i picked up today - mainly so I could go to their websites and find out more about these talented folks.Samantha Bryan is a mixed media artist. I can't copy any of her pics from her website (would be naughty) but check out the link here, its definitely worth it!

This is a pin brooch that I bought from erin hensley. In her words she makes 'handmade originals from repurposed materials'. You can see her website here
Occasionally I have to work at weekends, and tomorrow is one of those days. There won't be much in the way of crafting from me this weekend. If I'm lucky, I might end up making innocent bobble hat number 3, but at least I have the second week of origin to look forward to next weekend :o)

monsters and bobble hats

This weekend I did the following:
Bought a pair of shoes even though I was shopping for a pair of boots. They are nice shoes though, and surprisingly for me they have heels. This is the time of year when I can no longer wear flip flops, but every cloud has a silver lining - I can wear jumpers and cosy clothes now. I quite like Autumn as it goes - I like the smell in the air when the leaves have turned brown and have fallen on the ground. I like seeing all the shiny treasures of the conker trees. I like halloween and bonfire night and the smell of fireworks and bonfires in the cold air. If you could describe yourself as a season I would definitely be Autumn.

I also made a new monster - although I think he needs a slight modification. Mr Monda thinks he looks like he's got butt cheeks (!) which was probably not helped by the placing on the name tag - it looked fine before I added the stuffing.
Finally I made my first little hat for the innocent supergran project. I am slightly embarrassed to say that when I eventually got the needles out, my brain also seemed to fall out and I had temporarily forgotten how to knit. I sat there for ages trying to wind wool around needles to no avail. I eventually looked up some knitting instructions, which I knew wouldn't help because I've never been able to follow the written instructions of how to knit. What I really needed was my mum to show me how to do it, but she lives a good 3 hours drive away from me so that really wasn't an option. Eventually I found my brain, and the result was this little hat. Not perfect but not bad either. I'll need to make a few more though, so i'm off to start another one now.
In the meantime, here is something funny I found whilst taking pics of my new monster - a very battered (but much loved by both my cats) cupcake which I posted about a bit further down my blog. It was a worth while investment from paper and string and my moggies love it. I think it looks kind of rustic now :o)

Origin - the London Craft Fair

For years I have visited the chelsea craft fair - run by the crafts council. Chelsea craft fair became Origin last year, and the location has changed but the fair is just as good. If you check out the link you can see a little sneak peak of who is exhibiting this year. I have picked out a couple that I am looking forward to seeing this time (below). The fair runs for 2 weeks and they change exhibitors after the first week. This year it runs from the 2nd-14th October.
I've not been particularly productive over the last week. I've done a few drawings of new monsters I'd like to create and made a stack of cards to sell at work and of course Stevie is keeping me pretty busy - I'm scratched to death, and I fear for me feet if I need to go to the toilet in the night (I swear she waits up to attack them) but she's lovely, and does so much cute stuff, like falling asleep in the box that our new router came in. ahh.

It's all about the cats

I don't have any of my own crafty offerings at the moment, but I was very lucky to be sent this cheeky little kitty from Gila at Strumpfkunst for being her 100th etsy heart I can spend hours trawling around etsy finding lots of things to add to my favourites. I do occasionally buy stuff too.
I wonder if Gila secretly knew about the arrival of my little baby kitten Stevie?
Stevie is so playful and full of energy one minute and completely zonked out the next minute. Yesterday I was doing my best to work from home but stevie just kept climbing on me or on the desk to see me. She's sitting in front of the keyboard now and seems quite mesmerised by me typing. I'm going to try not to post about stevie too much, but please just let me indulge myself for now - she's only been here for a few days and is just constantly doing cute stuff. ahh.
I wish my other baby cat liked Stevie as much as we do - she currently just hisses at her a lot.

Cats with cupcakes, and kittens!

This is a particularly cat focussed post today, but as these are the best things about my weekend I felt I had to share them.
Some of you have already seen my little baby cat (mellie) in some of my older posts. She's a little bit quirky and sometimes she thinks she is a dog. She's chases things that we throw for her and brings them back, and often moves things around - for example she has taken one of my balls of wool from the living room into my bedroom.
I have a big pile of half made cards, piles of felt and fabric, buttons and the like currently on what is supposed to be a dining table. In one of the piles are card toppers, and some of paper and strings cupcakes. One night this week I saw mellie pouncing on what I thought was probably a poor spider, but no, it was a cupcake!
This has now been declared hers, and she's been intermittently running around the place with it in her mouth, attacking it, or just staring it out. The pics aren't fantastic, but she moves so fast it's quite hard to catch her on camera. I love this picture of her legging it off with the cupcake in her mouth :o) I had to take out the brads incase she swallowed them, but I guess I'll reuse them so it wasn't a total loss.

And something so sweet it would melt the heart of an ice queen. Meet Stevie. Stevie is our second baby cat. Stevie arrived today, and is currently having a kip on the sofa.

knitting, yes that's right, I did say knitting!

just a quickie, to tell everyone that Supergran is upon us already.
For the last 3 years, I have knitted little hats to raise money for Age Concern (in association with Innocent) - the idea being that us crafty types knit lots of little wool hats which will fit onto their drinks bottles - and every bottle sold with a hat raises money for people like our grandmas so that they can get help with paying their heating bills or to give them so nice warm food in the winter.
Now I'm no expert knitter but I have put an innocent hatometer on my blog to
a) encourage people to get involved and
b) remind me that I need to get knitting some hats too

Below you can see proof of my knitting skills - very basic stuff, and it's probably been a year in the making. I'm not a slow knitter, I just put it away and forgot about it for a while.
Maybe I'll just pop off a knit a few more rows now...

monster moo

I worked out that last month I worked a staggering 73 hours extra in my day job (thats like an extra 2 working weeks), and it looks like September is going to be very similar, so weekends, although precious non working time are pretty much taken up with food shopping, washing and cleaning up. This weekend however I managed to squeeze in a day trip to legoland, and also to make a monster. My ability to make stuff and indeed to blog is limited as a result, but I'm hoping in October I'll be able to take a few weeks off work to recharge my batteries, pay more attention to my crafting and of course my blog.

now to the 'moo'. a few weeks back I ordered some moo cards and they arrived earlier on this week - I was very excited about this but i'm not posting pics of them, Instead I decided to celebrate with a monster moo - you can see him here sporting a new monda loves... tag. I think however that the tag is just a little too big so maybe I'll experiment with folding the next one to see how that looks.
Monster moo will be in my esty shop tomorrow.

and the winner is...

The Vicious Chicken
A green blockhead monster called Austin
Was secretly fond of cake frosting.
It was his favourite treat,
So sticky and sweet,
But cleaning spills off his felt was exhausting...

This did indeedy make me laugh, so vicious chicken please make yourself known to me by emailing me at monda(at)homecall(dot)co(dot)uk and Austin and the Japanese bag will be on their way to you.
Some more news from the monda camp. I have been waiting for these to arrive:Finally I have some monda loves... tags to sew onto my monster creations. The bigger one is woven so will use this for some of my bigger softies, but the smaller ones are iron on transfer type lettering. I tried a few different versions here, some on grossgrain ribbon, and some onto felt - which I'm pleased to say works really well. I got a little carried away infact and ironed Austins bottom - I think it works better when you try not to iron an already stuffed monster!Tonight is Heroes night. Is anyone watching this? It's about the only thing I am watching on TV at the moment but i just love it. 'save the cheerleader, save the world' Fantastic!

1000 view freebie!

1000 views means a monda loves... Giveaway!
But what is it? Michael Caine? Harry Potter? Buddy Holly? Chris Evans?


No, it's the lovely bespectacled blockhead monster 'Austin'
If you would like to get your hands on Austin and this really sweet Japanese bag all you need to do is write the last 2 lines of this verse and pop them in the comments box. The one that wins is the one that makes me laugh the most. I'll announce the winner next Wednesday (5th Sept). So here it is:

A green blockhead monster called Austin
was secretly fond of cake frosting...

when gloves become dogs

from this:came this:
Now I'm not much of a fan of following instructions - I always prefer to 'do it first and read how to do it properly afterwards' method, but this time round I did read the instructions and now I have a lovely long and stripy dog as a result. I made him yesterday and I was nervous to say the least when I cut up the gloves - they were a really nice pair of 'Matthew Williamson' for Debenhams gloves too - so this little pup is a posh designer doggie.
I can't put him in my shop for sale because he's just so lovely I have to keep him, but I will definitely be making a few more of his friends - I'll be on eBay looking to gloves to convert later.

I'm nearing 1000's views on my blog which is an exciting milestone for me (I think). By way of a mini celebration I'll be giving away a surprise gift - you'll have to keep checking back over the next few days to see what it is and how you can get your hands on it - but here's a sneak preview.Au Revoir for now.

Perkins!

remember this? (from a post further down)well this is what happened to some of it.
As the fabric (well tops) came from Dorothy Perkins, I'm calling him Perkins, as he doesn't look much like a Dorothy to me.
He'll be in my etsy shop when I have 5 mins to put him in there.

love is all around

It's definitely wedding season right now - I've been asked to make loads of cards for weddings lately, and the ones below are a few examples of things I have made this weekend. On Sunday I went to a wedding of a work colleague - it was an Indian wedding, and I had been told that 'bling' was the order of the day :o) There were many bright colours worn, and the bride was wearing bright pink, so this heart that I made for the card suited the theme perfectly The next wedding was again for work colleagues, this time a bit more traditional - the cake was machine sewn and hand finished and the hearts were sewn by hand (whilst watching TV!)And the last card topper I made was for an engagement card (again made whist watching Sunday morning TV) I also found a small window of time at the weekend to use some of my new fabric/tops and I have a half made monster sitting waiting for me at my desk. Perhaps I'll get time to finish him after work tomorrow, and if i do, he'll be here for all to see.
Watch this space...

bargains galore!

I had to pop into town today, as I'm going to wedding tomorrow and need to get some last minute things like tights, mascara, accessories etc. The sales were still on so I had a look around in a few shops and ended up buying a few bits that were not on the list (always happens) but everything I bought was a bargain. First I bought a pair of spotty socks for £1 and a pair of long stripey gloves for £3, and thought I'd try to make a few new creations from my new book.Secondly, this lovely fabric is actually 3 tops from Dorothy Perkins. These are not for wearing though - I bought the biggest possible sizes to get the most amount of fabric so I'm going to cut them up and make them into something (not sure quite what yet but I have a few ideas), and the best part was that they only cost £8 - Bargain!
I'm really desperate for some time to start making things again - I have to make another stack of cards to take into work, people just keep buying them which is a good thing, I just wish I had a time turner (harry potter fans will know what this is) so I could double up the hours in the day. It's quite late in the day already but I'm feeling quite inspired so I'm off to the sewing machine now...