Celtic Knots

I have been wondering how to make the cards 'nicer', now that Christmas is over and I no longer have the excuse of lovely gold/silver embossed tinsel and stars and what not...and thought of celtic knot suns (gold) and moons (silver).
Here's some sketches - they are actually good fun, and suit my kinda OCD grá for niggly precision and symmetry. Alas, embossing does not suit them - you can't make out the over and underlapping. Needs more work.

Etsy Feedback

And by Etsy Feedback, I mean I haven't had any yet - which suggests to me that the lovely Buyer-of-my-Christmas-cards will not have had them for Christmas. That's sad, mostly 'cos it would have meant a lot to me to have it all go RIGHT for my first ever sale, and also 'cos she was really lovely...
We shall see...and I do have pics of what I sent her, hopefully showing why I was so pleased with it, but unfortunately the memory card containing them is gone for the holidays. Lucky memory stick!

Etsy Card Sale!

Oh stop, STOP! I tease me! The 'Lovely Lady', my Etsy conversationalist, has ordered 5 cards, basically all of my Christmas ones...shucks!
I can't even talk/blog about this right now, I have been in a tizzy all night making up a 6th (a replacement for the one I realised was awful and dumped from the Etsy listings) to finish off the set, and a little 'folder' to hold them. This is all gratis, and I would probably have done it for her anyway just 'cos she is the first person ever in the world who has thought anything of mine was worth ANYTHING, just worth having even...but apart from that, she took it upon herself to send me an extra $2 to put towards the shipping fee. Wow - she will spoil me for any other customers!!

Better than a viewing? An Etsy 'Conversation' ;p

Yeah, I freaked! I saw the little tag at the top of the Etsy screen, with nothing changed except, EXCEPT: a little number 1, a SOMETHING!!!
In fact, a conversation. And apparently a 'Conversation' means someone, someone real in the real world!, had sent me a message :)
So a lovely lady was enquiring about the wisdom of my costings ($0.20 per card) and listing fees (zero), which I replied to with an outpouring of adoration and gratitude...professional much?! And I haven't heard from her since!!!
But I have Faith...on researching the lovely Linda's bio, she is all about The Good Lord Above, and how Creativity is, uh, From Him, and stuff. So she can't NOT get back in touch, can she?!

Oops..

I shouldn't have joked about it: complete Etsy-Free-For-All-FAIL! Nobody wanted my free (or nearly free, Etsy won't letya list at zero so I put them up at list cost, $0.20) cards.

And it's my birthday :(

Etsy FREE FOR ALL!!!!!!!

Yes, Congratulations indeed! 'Cos I got such a buzz from my Etsy shop being VIEWED, WOOP!!!, I was desperate to actually sell something...and since I have neither time or patience to wait until I produce something worth buying I have announced on my Etsy shop Banner that all day tomorrow I will be willing to 'sell' anything I have listed in exchange for nothing but a little constructive criticism and feedback!!!
We'll see if I'm still congratulating myself if it turns out I quite literally can't give them away, but it's all about the education, I'm sure...
Also interesting though, the distribution of the views: could it be that the newer cards - my decided 'design', having dumped the woven-paper idea - all look similar and PALE when viewed side by side in the list, whereas the older ones, the woven-paper prototypes, look bright red in contrast (the colour of the card) and though the most amateurish of them all in my opinion are therefore getting more views than some of the others. Hm - food for thought.

Nollaig Shona, Irish Christmas Greetings to cheer me up

Aw, it's good to remind myself how much fun the embossing has been, at a time like this...my credit card and Etsy are no longer on speaking terms :o! Why?! I only wanted to pay off my little bill for posting the cúpla cards, and feel like I was doing something constructive - hope it turns out ok.
Then I wanted to write in here and vent a little about how I'd been looking for a little comfort and was denied...and I completely blanked on the password for the blog! Random!
An Up moment: I went back to Etsy, feeling pretty morose by then!, and suddenly realised...Reader, I have been VIEWED! Viewed, and if you'd believe it, favourited! Granted, the shop who favourited me has over 1,000 PAGES of favourite sellers, but still: I'm absurdly chuffed :)

See-Saw, See-Saw

Aw, I was pretty down about everything (looking through some of the cards I have already listed on Etsy, trying to retake the awful pictures, and I dumped 2 of the 8 for being CRAP! Dammit, I don't know if I can trust my own judgment now, sad), THEN was kinda delighted: I have used my photo program on the computer to lighten the photos after I have taken them - so it's a bandage fix, but a fix all the same...
But now I have uploaded them to Etsy, and it's still not great - apart from anything, they all look like they are slightly different colours lined up together, shame. I don't have happy feelings :(

Growing pains

So I'm happy with the images, the paper/card, the 'design', the embossing idea and the end result...and the pictures look absolutely crap! Grr!
I did what I have read recommended: put taking the pictures off for three days until I had the time to do it in the morning light; changed the white balance on my sister's beautiful new camera; USED my sister's beautiful new camera - a panasonic lumix (sumthinsumthin), 8 optical zoom, 12 megapixel wonder machine...colour Blue! How could it fail?!
And yet, they all look awful. My only idea is to try taking them beside the big sliding door windows, as opposed to under the velux window upstairs, which I was convinced was a touch of genius by the way!
FINAL straw to be clutched at: it was pouring rain that day...although having said that when is it NOT going to be overcast during an Irish December?!

Coming Along...

Phee-ew, the lovely card-paper and I are still on good terms, yay! And the printer did start playing ball again, and I have finally got a few cards put together...and Embossed.

EMBOSSED you cry?!! Yes, my sister had given me a little embossing set a while back, which I completely ignored until I started despairing of making the cards, well, nice. And I find I am ombsessed: obsessed with embossing :) What a thrill as you run the heat over the rough dull powder and it begins to 'blister' and blossom into lovely glittering detail, swoon :p

It will have to be trusted that it is more fun than it appears in these miserable pictures - cameras despise me!

Not a bad pile of rocks!

That's right, you heard me: I kinda like the look of the dry stone wall below!
And when I say it's the simplest of the drawings, it actually still took quite a lot of effort, so thaya...
I'm all about the positives at the minute - trying to, I should say, against tremendous odds (why is my printer printing all the black bits rusty brown?)
Anyway, it would be exciting to have some actual CARDS to talk about at last!

Oh, there is an update: my paper-weaving idea does NOT look like much after the initial honeymoon period, boo! And anyway, I found some lovely paper which is as close to card as is possible while still being able to go through the inkjet printer, fingers crossed we are still on such good terms by the next post!

No. 3: Traditional Dry Stone Wall

This was the simplest drawing so far, and does it show? Is it enough? Although there are only so many ways to do a line drawing of a bunch of rocks piled on top of each other!

Who-ker Improvement

Is it, an improvement?
Ah well, what would really cement its who-ker-ness would be colouring in the sails the traditional deep red/brown colour...but I am curtailed by my artistic determination to keep the images to simple line drawings. Amn't I?!
But dammit anyway if that little sailor-man doesn't look absolutely ridiculous, pffffff :(

Next Up...

Ummmm, this is meant to be a drawing of a traditional Irish sailing boat called a Hooker ("who-ker"!), but it looks kinda like it could be ANY old sailing boat, right? Hmm.

Etsy!

Oh-emm-gee!

I am now officially an Etsy Seller...actually I have been for a while, but these few pictures below appear so y'know, I ain't bragging!
Hopefully that will soon change - I'm reading up on all the hints and tips for good photographs and remain confident that THAT is all that is wrong with my product. Ha!

Oh, I'll have to get back to the shop name - firstly I don't quite know what my shop name is, and secondly it'd be NICE to have it looking all nice and whatnot before divulging that information :p

RESULT

Well, it isn't that dramatic really, in fact it's quite anti-climactic - or is it just that I am AWFUL at lighting for photographs?!
Anyway, these are a few attempts at different coloured cards and papers. I also had a simpler idea for the layout - I mean, I have limited ambition and imagination so I'm just printing the images and text using my cheap old laser printer, which obviously doesn't print on card. Sooooo, I want to combine the printed paper with the card, and I did it by cutting slots in the card and weaving the paper through to hold it in place; in these photographed cards there are 5 cut slots, so that the image is framed on the front of the card and the message is framed on the inside of the card, using one piece of paper printed both sides and no glue or other fiddly bits. The simpler version has just one slot cut into the crease of the card, and the paper slipped through.

I thought I was being smart and creative...but is it just silly?!

Finished Product?

I wonder?
Shape, check; vanished shadowy lines, check; end of my patience, absolute check!

Step 2: Refined

Because in fact the trees out here in Connemara have a really distinctive shape, hunched away from the winds off the sea...and I think this is a closer match to that shape.
The funky shadowy lines, however, I can't pretend have any artistic relevence - they are left behind by my wrinkly tracing paper and cheap scanner! Modern technology my tóin!

Step 1: Connemara tree card

So, it began with this - my first attempt at a Connemara-esque wind sculpted tree, my idea being that I will make and sell cards with Irish language messages and a couple of hand drawn images to make them authentic-like.

Another new start...

This is the equivilent of repeatedly turning the key in the thus far unresponsive car of my blog-life and hoping that THIS time there'll be a little life in the engine...

So, out with 'Long Winding Binding' and in with 'paperpennies'...I am zooming out from my focus on binding, and onto general crafts (with a preference for paper!), with the intention of eventually getting around to a few different things.

Like following this post with an actual, legitimate, constructive entry, covering more than my inability to post sn entry.

Lord!

Fingers crossed :D

New Title FAIL

So far...

But at least I did get the vibe right - this is a hella long road to these mythical bindings ;) ...but I have in part been justified, so I choose to think of this as just a super long new beginning.

Title Ta-Da

Not "Long Winded Binding", haha, but Winding - ie, I get it that I procrastinate as if my life depended on it, and being as yet unable to get the better of this bad habit I have to embrace it...in my Blog title.

But actually I do have something done, and I will get it up soon...good start!

Recycled Blog!

Christmas being so last month, and the Christmas craft fair the blog was named for such a non-starter, that a new title is is order...but...I don't have one yet!

Such is my confidence that by next post I WILL have a new title and a new project to go with it that for now and posterity I say "Goodbye Quantum of Christmas Craft"...

Dropped the Blog Ball!

Ok, Christmas and New Years and all that goes along with both HAPPENED! So not a lot else did!!!!

The title of this blog will be the first thing to go - soon :p