Just Beachy

So excited about a new, inexpensive, easy design I came up with last night!  It's a beach bag.  Nothing's more beachy than a bag made of towel!  They are turning out super-cute and they are not terribly time-consuming to make.  I think they will be my bag party special.

Another bag party special--I tried my hand at earrings.  I only got enough stuff to make a couple pairs of them, but I think they're cute.  "Bones and Stones" is what I'll call them, because I used these awesome, light-weight bone beads and some pretty stones.  My mom thinks they are cute. 

Seat Of My Pants Land: Preparing For a Bag Party!

I haven't posted anything new to Etsy in several days, but I have been busy, busy, busy making new bags for the bag party coming up this week.  The hostess told me that the guests were "big bag ladies," so I have made a couple larger totes that I'm pretty happy with (one of which I want to keep of course!).  I also revisited a design I thought I'd retire, but it turned out pretty well too, so I think I'll keep it around.

New... and Let's Party!

Today I posted that Joel Dewberry diaper bag. Of course I still love it. I just don't need to keep one of everything I make. This is an important realization for someone who makes bags, I think.

Another new endeavor in the last few days: I made my first pair of earrings on Saturday. I like them a lot because of the combination of materials: African amber, ostrich egg, and synthetic blue quartz. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. I got all the supplies from a really nifty bead shop in town, The Bead Cafe.

I am having a heck of a time deciding what to stock up on for my upcoming bag parties. I already have a bunch of medium and large tote bags, so I'm torn: do I make a few more diaper bags, or some wallets, or a handful of journal keepers, or something else all together? My husband thinks that people will want to snatch up the wallets. I kind of think I'll have a lot of custom orders inspired by items I've already made.

My first party is May 8. I am SO excited about it. I have these sweet little mirrors and lip balms for people who place orders, and I am almost as pumped about them as I am about the event itself! Christine at http://christinerenee.etsy.com made the mirrors for me--I cut the papers and decorated them, and she did the hard part. And Iva at http://ivaart.etsy.com made the world's best lip balm with a cute little Seat Of My Pants label on them. (I'm serious--I've never tried one better!) For the mirrors, I have made little tiny pouches to keep them from being scratched or finger-printed up. They turned out so nicely. Plus I made them from material I had that I didn't have other plans for. That makes me very happy.

Question of the day: What do you think I should do about my inventory? If you were hosting a bag party, would you like to see more totes, more diaper bags, more wallets, another size of bag, little pouch wallets, or something else??

The Tulips Are Showing Off Today

... and I just can't say that I blame them.  

Diaper Bag #2 makes 

its debut appearance today.  I like it so much that I haven't decided if I can bear to post it on Etsy.  I really just want to keep it.  I love the fabric (Joel Dewberry Chestnut Branches in Eggplant), and I am so thrilled with the design!

I've decided that this will be the "standard size" diaper bag that I post in my shop.  I can't wait to make another one!  It takes about a yard of each fabric (plus a ton of interfacing), and I would like to wait until I sell some totes to buy much more fabric.  Though I do have 2 yards of Michael Miller's Chocolate Animal Crackers headed my way... yippee!

Diaper Bag fit for Quadruplets

Well, maybe not quadruplets, not that I'd know.  It is massive though!  A friend of mine asked if I made them, and I said that I could, but definitely wanted to take a stab at it before I ordered and cut her fabric to smithereens.  Yesterday, with the only piece of fabric that I had that was big enough, I made my very first official diaper bag.  

The thing I'm most pleased with about the bag is its flap.  It's messenger bag style, and in the flap I put a lovely lined, zippered pocket.  My first successful zipper (outside of tiny felt change purses)!  

The design is right, but even for a diaper bag I think it's too wide.  At the bottom, it's 18 x 5--and the 5 is not the problem, but the 18 gets gradually wider until the top of the bag, where it's nearly 2 feet across.  I suppose it is a good design to keep on hand as an option, but I would personally prefer a slightly smaller bag.

The Silver Lining to the Sewing Blunder

You know, when you mess up round one that thoroughly, the good news is that it really does only get better from there.  (I have to mention this because it's hilarious: shortly after I posted last night, I went ahead and ironed the iron-on interfacing to the ironing board.  But it really did get better from there.)

The 2nd journal cover turned out beautifully.  It is not quite done--I need to pick up some snaps today--but it is really nice!  I am so pumped to show it off at the bag parties.  I made another one today with that same fabric as the church event wallet, and it also turned out nicely.  It's such a simple, lovely thing--it doesn't take that long to make at all.  

My original thought was to offer custom journal covers for any size of notebook, but after yesterday's fiasco, I think that may be more difficult than I first thought it would be!  I'd love to get some Etsy book makers' books to put in there.  

Up From Here!

So I am working on a new design that will be handy when I am doing bag parties: it's a journal / receipt book holder, and this way I will be able to keep notes on orders and all the receipts together.  There's a pen holder, too.  The designing process can only improve from where it is now.

Taking measurements for this thing was an approximation, as I was not sure how big it would actually need to be.  Yesterday I cut the last bits of an Amy Butler remnant (the gold morning glory one--my fave at the moment, I think, aside from the pink morning glory!) I had--cut them into the complete wrong sizes.  Sigh.

This evening, I tweaked the measurements a bit and tried again.  Everything was going swimmingly until I was 2 steps away from being done and noticed that the pocket I'd left for the back cover of a notebook was about 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch too small.  A pain, but fixable: I flipped it inside out again and stitched up a new seam.  

Then I burned myself on the iron, ironed the opening and stitched it up too--twice, actually, before I got it so the dang thing would actually cover the whole notebook inside--yes, before I attached the part of the snap that should be attached before the sewing of that seam.  

And THEN I noticed that in the fixing of the 1/8 to 1/4 problem, THAT seam had come undone.  This is a prototype, I thought, This does not have to be perfect.  This is a first try.  So I gave a "decorative stitch" to (somewhat) repair that little error.  (Not very decorative.  Not very repaired.)

And at last, I went to affix the snap that I was supposed to affix before the stitching of the top seam.  I would pay somebody to invent a snap affixing pliers that left more room between the thing that holds the snap and the hinge in the pliers.  Because then I would not have to try and bunch up half a planner in that tiny little spot only to--after I'd affixed the snap of course--realize that such bunching would misalign the outer and inner fabrics permanently.  

Thus ends the first round of my attempt at making a planner cover.

By some grace of God, I have not broken anything in my workshop this evening, and I also have enough of the same fabric to try again.  

I am, however, out of snaps.