Leavin' on a jet plane

Sometimes so much happens, yet nothing really happens either. I've been sick for a week with gastro (yay for loosing 3kg, not so yay for horrible stomach cramps).

I spent the whole time on the couch thinking about what I should be doing, sewing etc. and came to the shocking realisation that I am kinda over making bunting! Oh my!! What the? I love it don't I?? Well sort of. I can totally understand where some crafters don't do custom orders. It is great to expand into colours and play with fabrics that I wouldn't normally use, but then again, I like to be the master of my own creativity. Hmmm.... was left pondering.

So I am off for a much deserved holiday to visit the outlaws in NZ for a few weeks. They live in the most serenely beautiful place in the Nth Island you could ever imagine. I love NZ because of it's fresh green purity. The rolling paddocks that meet the black sand, the beautiful mountains with their snowy hats on. It is truly a place to recharge (and freeze one's norks off at this time of year). They have a beautiful big garden where I can take Minky to pick fresh fruit and veg, hubby can go out fishing every day and Minks can spend lots of time rolling about with her Poppa or patting the sheep and cows that graze in the paddock behind the house.

What am I going to get out of it? Well there are loads of designers and galleries that I have always promised myself I will visit. So this time I AM going to. Even if I have to drive the half hour into town to do it! I am also going to visit some antique shops and see what vintage Kiwi bits I can pick up for possibly a new bunting range. Or something. Oh I don't know! I just feel so energised thinking about it! Kiwi designers have this amazing ability to draw on their surrounds for inspiration more-so than Aussies. There seems to be a significant influence everywhere from Maori art, and also the colours of the sea, native plants and black rocks and sand. It is so unique and can be picked from a line up. Can't wait to get stuck into it!

I guess the point to my rambling is this. I was watching Upstairs Downstairs Abbey last night and realised what I have long known. I was born in the wrong century. I could have quite happily spent hours in the sitting room doing cross-stitch, drinking out of fine china or riding side-saddle through the rolling hills (in my fantasy I was born into money mind you). I would collect roses from the garden, be married off to a lord someone and probably die during child birth of my 9lb daughter after 23hrs in labour...

BUT!! Besids all of that, I would have loved the purity of life. Which brings me to NZ. While everything is always that bit rosier on holidays there is a certain 'way of life' the Kiwi's have maintained that we seem to have lost, or strive for here. Hubby didn't know what 'organic' meant when he arrived here ten years ago, because all he ever knew was fresh from the garden. Both Minky's Nanna and Great Grandma both knit and sew (and have never owned an overlocker!) so I am looking forward to getting some tips from the masters. Days will be spent going for walks across the swing bridge to the beach and coming home for a hearty winter dinner in front of the fireplace.

If you don't already know where this place is, i'm not telling!!

See you in a few weeks if I ever decide to come home!!

Things I have learnt

~ Follow your women's intuition
~ How to change a nappy
~ 4-7-8 breathing
~ You must water the veggie patch
~ Drive slowly and park carefully
~ Love makes everything better eventually
~ Use good scissors
~ Nothing good ever happens after 2am. Or midnight (thanks Dezza)
~ Riding a bike makes you feel really good
~ Wear sunscreen
~ What ISO means
~ How to type quickly
~ How to make a wicked cassarole with nothing in the fridge
~ There is always a positive in everything
~ Don't swim somewher you have pee'd
~ The correct way to use an apostrophe (but I always forget)
~ How to play "Need to give this broken heart away" by TBG on the guitar
~ Love is the best and the worst thing in the world
~ How to count to 10 in Japanese
~ How to lick my elbow
~ How to drive
~ Don't ever drink and call/text/email/facebook etc etc.
~ How to ski. Sorta
~ When in doubt, don't
~ The collective nouns for more things than anyone needs to know
~ The best places to get cheap designer fabric
~ How to fish
~ I am not always right
~ All the words to every Guns'n'Roses song
~ That the reason Noah took 2 of everything on the ark so they could then reproduce (had absolutely no idea of this fact until recently. Der)
~ How to lay floorboards
~ Where the best coffee on the Gold Coast is
~ The laundry will not do itself....
.....
........
..........
What I haven't learnt

~ What 'off-side' means
~ When to say no
~ How to walk away from the computer and do the housework

J x

Chickens and Eggs

It's been an interesting day in Facebook-land. It all started long, long ago.....

There were these frilly nappy covers. And doilies. And lace. And 'vintage' prints of cute things. Then came along some talented women who turned these things into hot, must-have items for little girls (and the odd boy). Now let's not forget that these are products made by Mums, for kids.

So this morning two very strange and coincidental things happened. Firstly, I found a new designer on FB who is making things very similar to a designer I already follow who has been around for yonks. I noticed the similarities and was going to email her (established designer, not the newbie) but thought i'd leave it, best not meddle. Ironically, this designer had already been alerted today to the fact that someone else completely different had indeed been finding quite a lot of 'inspiration' in her work. So much so that this person decided to almost identically replicate one of her designs and sell it on a popular site. By the time I had finished my coffee I felt so sorry for this poor woman. Here, by her own talent, she had effectively spawned a series of imitators. Or 'inspirations'. Call it what you will, there were undeniable similarities too close to call coincidence.

A third horrible thing then happened when I thought I'd check out my own page on said crafty-selling website. Lo and behold there is someone selling something incredibly similar to one of my own designs. I had NEVER EVER seen one of these particular 'things' before I started making them. And to make matters worse, it wasn't listed months ago, it was listed very recently, like yesterday. Very recently after I have listed very similar listings. Lsts use an example here. Say there are heaps of people selling teddy bears. They all have different clothes on them, some are blue, some are pink, some are big, some are small. Then I start making two-headed teddy bears. I didn't invent the teddy but I did add an extra head to it. Then lets say that within a few days another person starts selling two-headed teddy bears. How do I feel? (Besids making creepy toys, lets not even go there. Probably not the best analogy but it was all I could come up with!) Not only that but this person actually re-worded my text! The bloody nerve!!! Should I feel flattered? Trust me, there aint a huge market here for 'two-headed teddy bears'!!!

So here I was feeling all sorry for my fave designer when I too was kicked in the guts. It hasn't left me all day but has given me a lot to think about.

Is there a difference between 'design' and 'inspiration'? Can a true designer ever claim inspiration without a certain level of artistic credit going to the original object?

We aren't coming up with completely unique ideas here folks. Yes, we put our own very personalised marks on things. This is what makes a designer different from an inventor. None of us invented the ruffled nappy cover, pinny or embellished baby singlet. Hell, I didn't invent bunting but I mix and match certain bits and call them certain things. Nor did anyone invent the dress but it is what that person adds to it that makes it unique. We certainly aren’t the first to up-cycle doilies or make yo-yos or appliqué singlets. Unless you own copyright over a certain image then it is free for all. But it is what you do with it that counts. Or what you don't do with it more to the point. If you are going to use a very distinctive motif then be sure it hasn't been done before. Any credibility you have as a designer will be instantly dismissed, no matter how genuinely original you think you may have been. Research people - sadly someone has probably already done what you want to do.

Today I have been left with an eerie feeling that all this 'niceness' on Facebook can sometimes be a facade for something simmering just below the surface. Or perhaps that is just because I have been hurt and bullied before and I am the cynical one. (I was going to mention bullying here but that is another blog post entirely).

At the end of the day we have to remember who we are doing this for. It might be our own small businesses but our products are for children. Babies. Little people who look up to us as role models.

Oh and if you want to take 'inspiration' from my designs or anyone elses, a final word. Don't make it so bleedingly bloody obvious!

To Market, To Market...

Agh! Another week almost gone. I started writing this blog on Monday and now it is Thursday. Time flying and all that jazz...

~Practice Market @ home~

Well I did it. What an achievement for this little piggy. Last Sunday, 5th June I officially took My Little Lovebird to the public, like, real live people, not just computer people. It was at The Upper Market which is a fairly new market in a school not far from where I live on the Gold Coast.

To say I was nervous would be lying my tits off. I barely slept the night before and when I arrived I wanted to turn around and run, or hide behind my husband (who desperately wanted to get out of there. I think the crafty ladies scared him!)

But I didn't run. Or hide, well, I hid behind my table for a bit but then got brave. And had a triple-shot skim latte so talked my pants off. And I loved every last tiny minute of it!

Here is my little stall.....

Lovebird started when Chloe was about 5 weeks old. Many close to me must have thought I had lost the plot somewhere between giving birth and all those night feeds. I had a newborn baby, my first. She had colic, silent reflux and didn't sleep. But I was bloody determined that I was going to make this little dream of mine work. It was just funny timing that's all.

4 months of days and nights spent huddled over the sewing machine, cursing each mistake and unpicking 3m of bunting over and over. Turning the dining area into a rainbow of colour, cotton and loose threads. Oh and did I mention completely renovating the living and dining with new floors, paint etc while having my in-laws stay for 3 weeks?

My husband has been amazing through it all, poor bloke. There were days/weeks I could see the look on his face, wishing he had his house back and not the sweatshop that it had become. Wondering why I was doing it all. He has cooked, cleaned, been the best Daddy to Minky. I couldn't have done it without his amazing support (love you babe).

I don't know if it was a reaction to the fear of post-natal depression but something very deep inside me has refused to let failure be an option this time. I was and still am, a prime candidate for it and wether it be subconsciously or not, MLL and sewing have been my saviours.

I didn't sell much at the markets but I don't care. I feel like it was the first box to tick off in my new life. Mother, tick! Wife, tick! Crafter, tick! Business owner and runnerer, tick! Markets, tick! Those who knew me in my 'old life', well lets just say she is dead and buried. And I will never look back.

This is the real me.

For the first time in my life I 'AM' something to be proud of.

J xxx