I solemnly swear...

...To not buy anymore fabric, until I use up all that I have. Or, how I like to think I can keep promises like this.

I went to the Renegade Craft Fair in LA yesterday. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed by the fair overall. But I did come out with some gorgeous Amy Butler fat quarters for Karlee Fuchs stand (I really regret I didn't get one of her purse sewing kits). They are so so gorgeous. I cannot wait to make more fabric-covered notebooks with these babies.

Here are my favorite fabrics from the bunch:

Orange polka dots!

The colors and the patterns make me think of tiki.

I'm not much of a pink person, but this pattern just jumped out at me.

And while I was picking up more notebooks to cover at B&N, I also bought two sticks of Coccoina gluesticks (they were on sale and I needed gluesticks). You know what's awesome about them?

THEY SMELL LIKE ALMONDS. I am definitely picking up some more of these next time!

If your local BN doesn't have them, littlepinkstudio carries all sorts of glues, including sticks, by Coccoina. I think if I ever run out of the jar of my Paper Source PVA glue, my next choice will definitely be a jar of Coccoina paste.

Poppy poppies

Finished one part of my "project." I realized that the iconic Unikko pattern from Marimekko was of poppies and decided to recreate the patterns with paper.

Photo via The Glam Guide.

I started with green.

And they're up for sale at the etsy here. Depending on how sales go, I want work through all the color combinations by Marimekko and I have a few combinations of my own (purple and gray, tangerine and gray... Yes, I love gray).

Here are a few others I've done:
Definitely my favorite combination. It's a little bit hard to tell in the photo, but the left poppy is more of a bright red and the right poppy is more of a burgundy.
And this pink combination rocks too. My camera seems to get overwhelmed or underwhelmed by bright bright colors. In this case, the magenta is supposed to be much much richer (we've had this discussion before).

Speaking of Marimekko... I really really want to go crazy at this Marimekko sale. I'm lusting after all the fabrics (but particularly those by Sanna Annukka), the Kaarna class case, the Kauris bag... and damn, a Unikko purse I wanted is already sold out! Not that I could've afford it anyways, even on sale... Damn you Marimekko for being so darn cute, but so unaffordable!!!

Reds

[UPDATE 7/7/09: Got the OK from wisecraft to sell these on my etsy.]

I picked up a few fat quarters of fabric and two sets of Moleskine cahiers to make some more fabric-covered notebooks. And I absolutely adore the results!

These aren't quite perfect, so I'll probably keep them for myself. But I hope to have a few of these up within the next two weeks on the etsy. 7/6/09: asking for permission first. 7/7/09: got the OK! Here we are!

Good stuff...

[This post should have pictures... but I didn't have my camera and I ate everything too fast anyways.]

-More sales. :)

-A flickr photo of my roses made it on the Folding Trees website.

-A friend took me to Irv's Burgers in West Hollywood. I started out with just onion rings -- which were freshly fried and delicious. After a bite of my friend's burger, I had to get one for myself. Solid. My German friend's last meal here was a Double-Double at In-N-Out and it reminded me how awesome a good burger can be and so I've been hankering for a burger since then... Irv's satisfied.

Also, the owner lady, Sonia, is so insanely nice and cheerful, genuinely. Not the I'm-high-on-something kind of happy. It's really rare to see her kind of happy. She writes cute things on your plate. My friend's had "Made for you" and a little green shirt drawn on it, because he was wearing a green shirt. My rings had a message that said "Made for me." Then my burger plate said "Made for you and me" and hearts (she thought my friend and I were dating and were going to share the burger). She does this for EVERY person. If you're getting take-out, she'll draw on your take-out bag. She even writes messages in Spanish.

And she has an incredible memory for the details of all the customers' lives (it seems there are tons of regulars). She greeted almost everyone by name and had questions about specific things about their lives (i.e. for friend, "You still looking for a girlfriend?" hahahaha. The spouse-searching question was a common one. Typical Korean lady. :P). One lady rolled in on her wheelchair simply to tell her "Happy Fourth of July." It's that kind of place.

-We also paid a visit to the folks at L'Artisan Du Chocolat. I wanted to get more chocolate and also remind them I would gladly gladly work for them when chocolate high season returns. In terms of purchases:
-Fennel
-Kiwi and curry: I think it's my favorite.
-Green apple and cinnamon: This was one of the prototypes I tried during my first visit and I definitely like the version they're selling right now. The prototype was just really sour. This one has a mild apple pie flavor to it.
-Peach: We both really liked this flavor. I don't know if this makes any sense... but you know how peaches have that kinda blush to them? The peach bon bon tasted like that blushing peach pink, reddish color. It's amazing. And she hand paints them with a cocoa butter with a little gold dust in it. It's so pretty!

She also gave us a free one -- on the grounds that I traveled so far to visit the shop. I chose the cucumber vodka, one of the summer flavors. My friend liked it. I thought it was good, but I couldn't taste the cucumber... probably because my taste buds had been destroyed by years of Tabasco abuse. She said it has a sorbet-like flavor.

We talked a bit of chocolate shop talk... About how to make fruit-infused truffles, which truffles she hand paints, the wonderful magnetic chocolate molds that she uses to transfer the acetate paper patterns (their bon bons are little jewels). Seriously, I want to work and learn from these people.

Her husband was there working too. It's funny, because I speak in Korean to the wife and then English to her husband. The wife's English isn't so good (although I've never heard her try?), but her French is excellent, so her husband and her talk in French to each other. It just ends up being a fun language triangle. Oh my gosh, I really really really really want to work for these people. You have no idea.

-Then we went to go watch The Hangover. Hahaha.

Tomorrow... Work on a ton of orders, but fireworks and good eats in the evening. :)

Nose on the grindstone

Today ended up being really productive. I plowed through most of this box -- the "to be made into paper" box:

After a lot of trimming...

I ended up with this:

It's a lot... I think it's over 70 sheets. But out of it I only pulled three full sets to put in the store. Some of the colors -- like the lime green, which I love -- will be used for a shop project. I'll be buying more crepe to round out the sets I made today, look forward to big paper update next week.

A mess

Another thing I forgot to mention yesterday: I need to clean up and organize my workspace.

Exhibit A:


I know. It's seriously curbing my desire to make stuff. And what's my organization like?

Exhibit B:


Boxes I should be using to ship sales in. I just take out the stuff and leave it in a pile... somewhere, every time I get a sale.

But I think this whole mess can be fixed by a run to Joann's for a few container boxes.

And for the last photo... A box with finished buds. It makes me happy to look at this box.

Today, will be paper making and hopefully getting on the project I thought up of last week...

Apologies...

...For the long pause. It ended up my friend had to go back to Germany to get surgery on his knee. It's a total bummer on so many levels.

On the bright side, we did spend a day out in Malibu (photos to come... whenever I get the photo CD from him). You often forget what you have available to you when you live in one place for so long. I'm debating whether to make "learning how to surf" my summer goal. I adore the beach and I've always wanted to learn... And prolonged unemployment has made me have wilder career aspirations. The latest is Roxy model (or any other surf brand).

I also have an idea of going to New Zealand on a working holiday visa next year... Maybe I can also learn there. Anyone have any advice on traveling on a working holiday visa?

Anyway. I have my camera back. Here's a photo of my latest order. A bride wanted several sets of the mini envelopes and cards to use as placecards for her wedding.


In other store news, or more thoughts:
-Need to get a system down for production. I want to be able to introduce new items and re-stock the store at least once a week.

-Got a new Dennison book:

It has a lot of new patterns, including gardenias, so I'm excited to start trying projects out. I'm on the look out for a copy of the 1967 edition, which has instructions on how to make giant flowers. Let me know if you see any!

-Need to move onto making less labor-intensive items, or at least, labor intensive items that I can price so I win and the customer wins. After making so many sets of mini envelopes and cards after it was on the front page, I am considering raising the $3.50 price tag. But then again, it's not something that I think I can make very expensive, you know? It is a pretty popular item in the store, so I'm going to have to think a bit more about what whether I want to keep them in the store or not.

-Work on getting my financial ducks on a row. I bought a few spreadsheets from an etsy person. They're OK, but I'm still looking. My next shot is at gnucash. I'm still sorting through the source coding stuff, but hopefully by tonight, I'll have it down.

-Look into bookbinding. I bought a set of book binding kits on sale from Paper Source. I want to get a better idea of how to do it, because I'm deciding how I want to go about introducing fabric-covered notebooks to the store.

The text blocks included in it are 2009 datebooks (hence they were on sale). Hopefully I can find plain page text blocks to put in them instead.

Hm... this post ended up being quite dull. Apologies again. Hopefully, I'll have more interesting content up this week.

Etsy front page again!

Can you believe it?


Three sales. Two foreign country shipping inquiries. One wholesale inquiry.

So that's the good news... and now the bad news. I am hoping desperately friend's leg injury will heal so he doesn't have to go back to Germany after two days here or I hope at least that his injury isn't as severe as he thinks it is... :-/