Aus der Versenkung

Hallo Welt!

Etwas schwierig diesen Post zu beginnen, zumal ich im November 2013 das letzte mal etwas hochgeladen habe…

Seither ist viel passiert, viel hat sich verändert, viel hat sich erledigt, Neues hat Einzug gehalten, darunter ein Kind und ein zweites unterwegs. Frau kann sich also vorstellen, dass die Zeit für Krimskrams knapp bemessen ist.

Fast hätte ich Mad Tea Parties aufgelöst und ins Grab geschickt. An irgend einem Punkt habe ich nur noch produziert und zwar das was sich sicher verkauft. Ich fühlte mich gesteuert, unwohl und konnte nicht mehr richtig hinter meinen Produkten stehen. Kopien schossen wie Pilze aus dem Boden, da die Cliptaschen, Blumenohrringe und der Shabby Chic hierzulande nun auch endlich angekommen sind. Und ich merkte, dass ich die schlimmste Kopie von mir selbst geworden bin. 

Ich entschied mich zum letzten mal an einem Weihnachtsmarkt teil zu nehmen und fing an in den Haufen von Materialien zu wühlen. Ausmisten, umräumen, aufräumen, doch von einem Moment auf den anderen konnte ich mich vor Ideen kaum noch retten. Also. Stop. Einen Fuss vor den anderen.

Ich kann nicht aufhören damit.

Schön und gut.

Ich dachte an meine ersten paar Kollektionen. Ja, am Anfang habe ich sogar noch Kollektionen gemacht. Nicht nur einen Stoff und dann den nächsten verarbeitet.

Eine der schönsten fand ich nebst Granny's Best und Helena (für Helena Bonham Carter) die Katrina Kollektion (für Katrina van Tassel aus Sleepy Hollow).

Ich entschied mich als Einstieg ein Katrina Revival zu starten, da ich mit diesen einfachen und tollen Stoffen einfach noch nicht fertig war.

Katrina Sunday

Damals habe ich fünf Stück der grossen Tasche produziert. Eine wurde in der Schweiz an einem Markt verkauft, drei gingen nach Deutschland und eine nach England….das geht runter wie Öl, nicht! ;-)

Jede sah etwas anders aus. Deshalb fand ich es legitim diese Kollektion zu neuem Leben zu erwecken.

Und hier präsentiere ich euch Katrina Sunday Reloaded. Der Stoff ist fast aufgebraucht, es wird also auch jetzt aller höchstens zwei Exemplare der grossen Tasche geben und jede sieht ein wenig anders aus. Es sind also alles Unikate.

Katrina Sunday Reloaded

Katrina Monday und Wednesday werden in nächster Zeit folgen.

Ausserdem habe ich mich entschieden lieber ein Stück zwei weniger zu produzieren oder zu verkaufen, dafür dem Mad Tea Parties Stil treu zu bleiben. Aus dem Raster fallend, grazil, sperrig, aneckend, fliessend, verspielt, klar, verrückt, Mad Hatter mässig quasi. Dafür freue ich mich auf das Leuchten in den Augen derer, die IHR Produkt an meinem Stand finden und es nicht mehr hergeben wollen.

Hier noch einen kleinen Einblick in mein Sortiment am kommenden Sarganser Christchindlimarkt im Städtli Sargans (Infos folgen): 

Des weiteren werde ich, wie ihr bemerkt habt, meinen Blog auf Deutsch weiterführen. Einerseits, da ich nicht die Zeit habe zwei zu führen, andererseits, da nun im deutschsprachigen Raum die Blogs doch auch weiter verbreitet sind als zu meinen Anfangszeiten.

Einige meiner altenTutorials werde ich auf Deutsch übersetzten und neu posten, somit läuft hier auch wieder etwas mehr, wenn das zweite Kind meine Zeit zusätzlich einteilt.

Hiermit ziehe ich mich in mein geordnetes, kreatives Chaos zurück und wünsche allerseits gutes Gelingen, Spass und Freude und bewahrt euch euren inneren Freudenfunken. 

XXX

Dina

Zum Schluss noch dies: wenn ihr euch Inspiration bei anderen Künstlern, Produzenten etc. holt, benutzt es doch auch im Sinne einer Inspiration. Seid kein Abklatsch, keine Kopie eines anderen. Seid ehrlich und euch selbst doch so viel wert. 

Back on Track

Good Morning World,

it's been a while!
I'm back with some impressions of new products I'll be presenting and selling at the christmas Market in Sargans (Switzerland).
Unfortunately I wasn't able to realize all of the projects my busy brain came up with this year but I'll give my best to catch up!

I also was working on a lot of furniture but I haven't been able to take reasonable photographs due to a huge mess taking over. BUT getting there step by step. ;)

Here we go...

Much love!
Dina

And time went by

Back to "normal" again. The Christmas Market is over and I've got a bunch of impressions. I've learned so much, thanks to my booth neighbor Mara and my costumers and visitors!
The market went well, we had nice weather, lots of visitors and my husband brought me a can of coffee per day and I sold a lot of cool things. What can I ask for more?

The only misfortune was our car not willing to start on day two. So I had to bridge it twice. Once at home while being late anyways and once at the market while still being late...by the end of the market not even the bridging did help. It was dead.
Well, we changed battery yesterday and my nightmare of trashing our car did not come true. :)

Here are some photos of my booth. I loved it dearly and I think that I will participate on more markets. I had such a great time!!

A big thank you to everybody that supported me kindly!!

Me doing funny faces...

cleaning up

I also found out that the date my homepage went online is 11.december.2010 and the first day of my first market is 11.december.2011

It was so fun to look back. Great memories, great times! :)

Much love,

Dina

Stockings

Japanese Cotton

Good news at first: I got accepted for christmas market in Vaduz. Yay! Got the answer waaay late and have to get going on a lot of stuff now. But I'll make it! :)
It got cold and foggy outside anyways, so there's nothing I possibly could miss.
First I started with stockings. That's something we did not have here, overseas, but through out the last few years stockings start to pop up here and there. I just love them and I think that we need more stockings here! :)
So here are three of them, I did more but it seems like I'm just not up for good photos today...sorry!
Maybe I'll be able to post them later on.

I'm totally in love with the red and white striped one but I ran out of that fabric. I spent half of yesterdays evening to find some more of it. Not much but it'll make me happy and I hope it will arrive before the christmas market!

The graphics are from Karen's Blog (The Graphics Fairy) and I printed them directly onto a linen fabric.
I'm thinking about doing a full stocking tutorial with a pattern to copy for you but somehow it feels silly to tell a whole bunch of americans how to make stockings...so if I do, please just ignore that post if you are born with hanging up stockings for christmas!

And here are the other ones.

Japanese Cotton

Felt

Have fun, much love,
Dina

Surprise par Excellence

First of all a big Welcome to all of "my" new readers!
I actually would be on vacation now, in Austria, sippin' on a fresh orange juice, lying on a deck chair next to a well temperate pool, reading a good book......enjoying the vacation I was in desperate need of for more then two years now.
We actually where in Austria, in our hotel...for exactly ONE night, until Abby (our beloved dog) decided to bark because of every little sound. It started at five o'clock in the morning when the guys of the hotel kitchen started to prepare breakfast.
Our room was right next to the elevator, so Abby heard it every single time they used it and next to this, just about freaking everybody had to pass our door on the way to the elevator.

I don't think anybody heard her but only because I jumped out of the bed every time she was up to getting loud. I got one hour of sleep, just like Abby, and we both where letting my husband know that we are NOT going to take this another night. We packed up our things and left.

It was just too much for Abby and she really got crappy before we left. We rather have a happy dog than a fresh orange juice at the pool ;)

When we where back home I started my computer and wanted to check on everything and guess what: My Tin Milk Can made it to get featured on lovely Karen's blog "The Graphics Fairy"! Thank you big time for this Karen!
There where also a lot of orders and mails to check so it was a good thing to be back home and get things done.

Before I left for Austria I started on sewing hearts for the christmas market and this made me come up with this small sewing tutorial for today. Lace framed pictures.
For some of you this may be "an old hood" as we would say, but I've seen projects with the lace cut in four pieces and glued on with overlapping edges. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with handling it that way. I just wanted to provide an easy method how you also can handle it.

Lots of words, here are the facts:

Don't cut the lace before you know how much you will need. If you are not sure if the trim is long enough, you can wrap it around the picture and you'll see if it will fit.

Using pins is no disgrace! They help you, all the more if you're not an experienced sewer. 

Flip over the end vertically on the edge.....

....pin it, so you won't have to fix it with your fingers. It will get more accurate and easy...

....and flip it back, horizontal, or what ever direction your frame has to follow.

You can just flip over the end and cut it off. If you are happy with the precision you can start to sew on your trim. If you feel safer with the pins, just leave them in while sewing and take them off afterwards, just please (!) make sure you don't hit the pins with the sewing needle! I did once and was lucky enough to close my eyes before getting hit by the needle splitters...Be careful or take the pins out right before you are getting to that area.

And here is how the first few hearts look like:

(JOY and the bird image are from Karen's Blog "The Graphics Fairy". 

"Forget me not" picture from The Graphics Fairy

"Joy", made with typography from The Graphics Fairy

Hope you like them!

Love, Dina

Book Page Cone Bundles for Christmas

Christmas Book Page Cone Bundles

It's all about preparing for christmas and christmas market these days and I really need some time to calm down, for I was in a rush all day for the last few weeks, hopping between my other jobs and Mad Tea Parties. So I'm slightly over worked.

The idea of posting another tutorial was a friendly thought and off I was, making and preparing pictures to show you how to make these cute cones out of old book pages.

First of all you need an old book. I prefer really old books that even have the old script, stains and natural darkened vignettes.

Roll three, or five, cones. It's always better to use odd numbers in decorations. I used three on this.

It's better to use odd numbers in decorations.

You can roll the cones as you prefer, there are many ways. Just make sure you glue the ends so the cones will stay cones.

Then glue one cone to another and the third one on top. I did not glue them in one line because it looks less straight.

Original old lace trim fits so well on this but I did not have as much as I needed for all of the bundles, so I ended up on using new lace trim as well. Both looks fine but the original old lace makes it...old. :)

You might want to use a little glue to fix the lace so it won't slip towards the points of the cones.

Now to make the decoration richer, because that is what's mostly wanted on christmas, you can add some flowers, leaves, stars, snowflakes... I used these stunning flowers which I found in "Papierwelt", a scrap-booker's paradise. 

Those flowers are kind of expensive but so worth the money when you see the effect of them.

You can place the item of your choice where ever you feel like. I glued it right next to the lace trim on one side. You even can glue items to both sides or to the top. Use as much decoration as you like. It's all about taste.

If you feel like you also can add some glitter, which is what I basically do with everything that will attend christmas ;)

You can use glitter-glue or loose glitter, flitter, shapes, flakes, what ever sparkles and catches the light.

I used loose glitter on this because it sparkles brighter than glitter glue.

For loose glitter just add some glue where ever you want, I did on the edges of the cones.

Then you can either pour the glitter onto the glue which maybe will make you loose a lot of glitter, but you can catch it with a paper underneath your work and safe it, or you can dip the cones. I'm kind of doing both techniques.

And in the end you, at least (!), have to look like this. Otherwise you missed the christmas preparing spirit... weeehee ;)

So I hope all of you will be able to preserve plums now...

For now I will head for some more shopping and afterwards get back to my glittery atelier.

By the way, I FINALLY, found a distributor of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint here (!!) and I ordered a lot of milk paint and wax to make my boxes and chests and hopefully another furniture soon!

Stay tuned if you wish!

Much love and choccolat-cinnamon-apple-glitter-cookie-fireplace-spirit to you

Dina