Putting the Goodies into Goody Bags: the Ladies Tea Party

I remember when Ruth talked about the Irish Blog Awards last year, and now they were coming to Belfast! Although our team blog was not shortlisted this year *HRMPH*, I was interested in attending the ceremony on 19 March, since it was nearly on my doorstep. Then Ruth came up with this brilliant idea that Etsy Ireland should sponsor the Goody Bags for the Ladies Tea Party - a friendly get-together with food and wine for Ireland's women bloggers - to make those bags extra special, and I was to be the Etsy Ireland representative there.

Woah!

This was, of course, St Patrick's week, and after coming close to being a social recluse for the last few weeks (hunched over my knitting and with no money to my name), I suddenly had three fun events coming up back to back. So I was a bit exhausted came Saturday, but at least by that stage had re-learned the ancient skill of dressing up. After weeks in jogging pants and sweat-shirt, often covered in fibre or threads, I was now back in a dress. Go me!

The Ladies Tea Party was fun! There were about 20 amazing Ladies who blogged or had an interest in blogging, and conversation was easy, because everybody was so friendly and chatty. And one of the many topics of conversation were the Goody Bags. The main sponsor was Baglitz which produces amongst other things, handbag hangers for your table when you are out and want to keep your bag safe. It took me a while to work out how they operate, but they are rather snazzy. I have plans to use mine to hang up a bag of knitting or spinning supplies when my working table is too crowded...
Edward James Hair and Beauty also provided some hair products (great! I ran out of some), and Life is Sweet provided sumptuous cupcakes.

However, it was Etsy Ireland who really outdid themselves, if that's possible ;) Ruth had sent up the parcel of parcels with the other half of Bettyoctopus, who got stuck in traffic on the way from Limerick, but accomplished his mission just in time. When Sabrina opened the parcel I nearly squeeed (or maybe I did), because it contained so many wonderful handcrafted goodies! Waves of greed washed over me there and then, and I was wondering if I could make a run for it with the parcel under my arm!

So many Etsians had sent donations, some more than one, also the Northern Irish Etsians Placed, JanMary and myself had donated something, so the bags were really nicely filled to the delight of the Ladies! Everyone loved the handcrafted gifts, we were showing what we've got to each other, and those who had been at previous Tea Parties commented that these were the best goody bags ever.

I was so proud of the team, and it was so wonderful to see all the things the team members had created. It was great to say 'I know who made this', and to admire the skill and creativity that went into the items.

The Tea Party was the best of the Irish Blog Awards in my view, because it was so much fun. There was food, wine, coffee, delicious cupcakes, chat, laughter - and I also got to meet two lovely Etsians in person, René from Placed and Jan Mary from Janmary Designs.
 
However, I did enjoy the Awards, too, and learnt some interesting facts. I only knew one of the shortlisted blogs, but I know now that there are such blogs called arseblog and ouchmyfannyhurts and blog posts that compare the present taoiseach to a part of the male anatomy. I also noticed hat many things can be made from foam, for instance letters, cups and guitars - the later were used to rock it out on stage!

I also met the delightful Lola Dee, another team member, whose blog was shortlisted for an Award.

Despite food, more cupcakes and the promise of dancing, I wussed out about 11pm, dying for a cuppa tea and then bed - so much for being a party animal. I need to get my dancing stamina back which might have got lost amongst all the crafting!

The next day, I took a picture of all my goodies, before I ate the chocolates and used the soap!

I got (anti-clockwise):

• a gorgeous beaded textile necklace from Queen of Cuffs
• brilliant soap from Daisy Chain Crafts
• a scrunchie which I am guessing came with the hair products from Edward James Hair and Beauty
• a beautiful card from Placed
• a groovy bottle opener saying 'I love Word' and a discount voucher from Nice Day Designs
• a handbag hanger from Baglitz
• 'Emily and Constantine', a striking postcard from Tanya Bond
• 'Overactive rooftops', a great textile print from Marisposa Vintage
• Delicious chocolates by DovVinia (coming soon: http://www.dovvinia.net)

Definitely some goody bag...!

Team Treasuries for the New Year

Hi, this is Ruth, your new team treasury co-ordinator. I'd just like to say thanks a million and well done to Rachel from Balanced for doing a fantastic job over the last 6 months, I hope I can do half as well as she did. If you are making any team treasuries don't forget to tag them with 'craftyirelandteam' so I can feature them here in my weekly post. Also the team treasury challenge will be starting back again soon, I just have to get my thinking cap on for some nice themes.

In the meantime hear are some lovely team treasuries, enjoy, and don't forget to leave lovely comments on the treasuries if you have a couple of minutes to spare.

Home is Where the HEART is by me-Nice Day Designs

Ireland's got Talent for Valentine's Day by -Crystaleye

A Fairy Tale Romance- ByAmor

Team Treasuries! Halloween is coming!

We've got 4 treasuries for you all this week! Way to go, guys!

First up, some spooky inspiration from Fiona of patchworkdelights...

Hallowe'en

Next, another Halloween inspired collection I did myself...

bat, cats and fairies

and wouldn't Little Red Riding Hood make a great costume? From Ruth of nicedaydesigns...

Little Red Riding Hood Went Shopping

Maybe I'll dress up like a leprechaun this year? If so, I'll need to follow the... Rainbow
From Kimdot

Go show them some love! Click, comment, share with your friends!

Happy sales,
Rach
(balanced)

FAB 5 FRIDAY - Feeling a little Naughty(cal)!

necklace from podgy00

bakers twine from packages and strings

stripe bag from bagnoir

vintage brooch from dandelion daydreamer

cheeky mirror from nicedaydesigns

I'll Show You Mine...Nice Day Designs

Hi this is Ruth from Nice day Designs and Nice Day Supplies, and here is a peek into my studio. I was really lucky when we moved into this house last April, the recession was good to us in the fact that rent prices came down. So we were able to afford a second bedroom that I could use as a studio. Cheekily I took the large master bedroom, that uses up the whole top floor of our house. I really love the high ceilings and exposed beams, and all that great storage was already here when we moved in.
As you can see I have A LOT of stuff, I work in many different disciplines, so this means I need tonnes of supplies. I try to keep it somewhat tidy, but it's a contstant struggle to control the chaos. Since I've started selling supplies I now have loads of extra boxes in the space that I really haven't found a proper place for yet. But I'm hoping to take a trip to Ikea soon, and all my troubles will be over then.... hopefully!
I attempted to make the place look a bit tidier for the photos, but I realised I will never have one of those pristine spaces. It think this room looks a little like the inside of my head, lots of things/ideas going on, lots of colour, and a bit scatty, but with a strange kind of logic. Having said that it looks a lot better than during the start of January, which had the left over carnage from the Christmas madness. I also hung up a few extra drawings/paintings that I had lying around, left over from exhibitions. It's nice to have pretty things to look at, I must also get myself a notice board so I can make some cool collages....oh another thing for the list!!
I feel really lucky that I have loads of space to let the business grow, it's heaven working there all day. Most of the time I'm squirrelled behind my desk sewing and listening to my audiobook. I also have a second work desk set up, because over the past year I've had a few people come in and do work experince, which is nice to have a bit of extra company.
Hope you liked my little tour!
Nice Day Designs
Nice Day Supplies
Nice Day Blog

Trade Secrets...Limerick Suppliers

Hey there this is Ruth from Nice Day Designs and Nice Day Supplies, and I'm gonna show you a couple of my favorite supplies shops in Limerick. I buy an awful lot of my supplies online but nothing beats going to the shop and having a browse around a lovely supplies shop. The fact that I can see and touch things always makes me buy more. I work in quite a few diciplines, from making handmade cards, painting, sewing, and felt crafting. So I'm really glad that I have these two local shops just 5-10 minutes walk from my house.

Firstly there is this darling shop M-Sign that is on Mallow St in Limerick city centre. My first memory of this place is when I first moved to Limerick, and I walked down with my list for college clutched in my hand. They were so helpful and nice, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I love the work that Toni and Mary do, they are both so lovely, it's the kind of service you dream of getting in every shop. Their main focus is supplying materials for the art college students, and also for schools. They have a good range paint, pens, card, brushes and miscellaneous tools. Only the other day I picked up some great small canvases, and great scissors that cuts some funky shapes.

M-sign offer 10% discount to students, their email address is msign@eircom.net, and they open 9-5.30pm Mon-Fri and 11-1pm on Saturdays.

My second port of call is 'Silkes-One Stop Stationary' which is on Catherine St. right in the city centre. It has three main things that it sells: art supplies, teaching aids/crafts/supplies, and office supplies. There range of crafts covers a wide range of paints, canvases, card making supplies, sketchbooks etc. This is a really handy shop to go to if you have lots of different things you need to get. I quite often need to get office supplies for the business and it's great that I don't have to go to another shop to get staplers, envelopes etc. It is a pretty large shop, and it's not unknown for people to spend nearly an hour in there browsing through all of their goodies!

I'm always asking for really awkward things in there, in bulk amounts and the staff are always very helpful. They offer a 10% discount for students and teachers (not including the stationary) and they also sell online,check out there website here, and they are open 6 days a week.

How-To-Tuesday...even though it's Thursday!!

To follow this tutorial you will have to have some knowledge of Photoshop, but I tried not to use anthing too complicated, so most people could give it a shot. If you have any further questions do not hesitate to leave comments and I'll try to answer your queries. I use variations on this technique a lot, it's very handy for making posters and invitations. I even once made a comic book style present for a friend using a photo of him. I think it could be a fun present to make for a teenager. The image I used for this project I got for free from gettyimages. Here is a before and after of the original picture.Step One: Open your photo file. Go to the lasso tool section, right click and choose the second item, this is the polygonal tool. This will allow you to click on multiple points of an image linking them altogether to eventually select a shape, like cutting her out with a scissors. The aim here is to select the woman so that we can get rid of the pink background. With a plain image this can me done with the magic wand tool, but a lot of the time the background is more complicated. I started with the left shoulder and worked my way slowly around the shape clicking every centimeter or so (note do not click too quickly or it will close the loop, take it slowly!). At the end when you come full cirlce a little dot will appear on your tool, this means when you click the start point the selection has been made. While floating your mouse over the selected area right click and choose 'layer via copy'.

Step Two: Make a new document, A4 in size and 300 dpi ( 29.7cm height, 21 wide). Use your move tool to move your selected ladies head over to the new blank document. It may be much smaller but this is ok cos it can be stretched. Make sure the 'show transform' tool is clicked as shown above, this means there will be a box surrounding your image. Go to the bottom right hand corner and while holding down the shift button scale the image up to A4. At this point the image will pixalate, but after you press the enter button it will be fine. This kind of stretching is fine for this project because we will be altering the image a lot so the quality doesn't have to be very high.

Step Three: You need to duplicate the layers 4 times. The above image show you the layers window. When a layer is selected it is highlighted in blue, right click on your image layer and 'duplicate layer', repeat this step two more times, so you will now have 4 copies of your image. Select the third image down, ie two above your background layer. Go to 'filter', then choose 'artistic'. A dialogue box will open, on the right hand side there will be an option that says 'fresco', click this and set the levels to 'Brush Size=8, Brush Detail=4, Texture=3'. Note these levels can played with to suit your image, it depends on how much darkness you want. In the layers box you will see 'opacity' set this to 80%. Next with the layer above that go to 'filter', then 'artistic', then choose 'watercolour' as an option. Set the levels at the following 'Brush Detail=14, Shadow Intensity= 4, Texture=3'. In the layers box set the opacity to 50%. With the top layer go to 'filter', then 'artistic', then 'poster edges'. Set the levels to the following 'Edge Thickness=7, Edge Intensity=6, Posterisation=5'. In the layers box beside the opacity it says the word 'normal' scroll down until it says 'multiply'.

Step Four: With the watercolour layer selected go to 'Image', then 'Adjustments', then 'Replace Colour'. The above dialogue box will pop up. Select a lighter tone in the image, I chose her cheekbones, set the fuzziness to medium/high, and set the lightness to 75-100. This is to bump the contrast between the colours in the image without it being too garish. If needed repeat this step with the layer immediatley underneath.

Step Five: Select your paint bucket and while your background layer is selected fill in all of the layer with a bright comic book colour. I went for primary red. The next part is to add in the white dots. In this case I was very nice and made up a template for you as it would take too long to explain how to make it, and it's really boring!! So just save the below image and when you bring it into photoshop magic wand out the black to delete the background. The magic wand is the 4th tool down, simply click on the black and then right click, then 'select inverse', then right click again and 'layer via copy'. Move this white dotted layer into your image with the move tool. Place it two layers above the background, ie above one of your image layers so the dots overlap the face, but don't overshadow it too much. To move a layer up and down, go to the layers box, select it and hold down left click while you drag it up/down.
Step Six: You can add a popping white star burst to the background using the polygonal tool. First create a new layer above your background. Do this by pressing the icon beside the bin in your layers box while you are on the background layer. Then use the polygonal tool to roughly make the star burst shape, after that paint bucket in some white. After this go to 'select', then 'modify', then 'grow' and type in 20. Change your main colour to black and paint bucket once more and you should get a black rim around the star shape.

Step Seven: Lastly add a funny text box to the bottom. Write what ever you like here, or maybe an annoucement for a poster. Make a rectangle with the shape tool (which is below the move tool). Add a new layer above your background and paint bucket the shape, and add some lines to the top and bottom with the line tool. You can change the thickness of the line by typing in different numbers in weight (which is under help). Select the text tool, left click and drag into the shape of the rectangle and get typing! I find a good comic font, or something retro looks good here, there are thousands of free fonts online if you wanted to download some cool ones.

Ta Da!! That's it!

Posted by Ruth of Nice Day Supplies and Nice Day Designs