Tomato Soup Mug For Handmade Monday

Its been a busy week for me, although not too much has happened on the making front. I have, however, painted this tomato soup mug which i rather like. It was partly inspired by the fact that we have finally been harvesting some home grown tomatoes this week - yay!

I've also been seeing those retro style soup bowls with soup recipes on them around lot at the moment and i thought i could do a modern twist on this idea with a mug (i much prefer soup out of a mug personally, there is something so comforting about sipping at it from cupped hands :)).

However, having made some lovely tomato soup to check the recipe (yum :)) i decided that maybe the design was best kept simple and i have not yet painted the recipe on the reverse side as planned... what do you think? Should i add a recipe to the back or leave it as it is?

If people respond well to this design, leek and potato will probably be next... or carrot and coriander... or pea and ham.... or roasted pumpkin.........

i like soup :)

Autumn Leaves Lavender Pillows

Thank you to everyone who left lovely comments about my apple and sailing boat lavender pillows last week, each and every one was very much appreciated :)

You may remember me saying then that i intended to make a few more... well, after stocking up on lovely Somerset lavender, which arrived beautifully presented in the post mid week...

... i made these three with applique Autumn leaves in the same gorgeous Michael Miller fabric i used for my Autumn leaves cushion a few weeks ago.

Along with my other lavender pillows they are now available to buy from my Etsy shop.

CRAFTfest

If you are wondering what has been keeping me so busy this week, then the answer is CRAFTfest! If you don't know, it is an online craft fair run by crafters network, Creative Connections. The event runs for a week at a time (there was one in June this year, the September one was this week, and there is one starting on 24th November).

You pay £5 for a 'stall' (which is an album with product photos, descriptions and links to where your items may be purchased online) and although the appearance of the Creative Connections site changes to direct visitors to the stalls during the CRAFTfest week, stalls can be visited at anytime and any links to them remain active (mine is here).

The emphasis is very much on everyone involved contributing to promotion of each other's stalls, and the event as a whole. Lu Smith (of Handmade In Keswick) did a fantastic job of galvanising stall holders and organising promotional activities on social media networks - the usual suspects; Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, but also Craft juice, Wanelo, StumbleUpon, Etsy... i have learnt a lot about things like SEO and marketing along the way and i will put the most useful info in dedicated blog posts soon!

I hear that the event as a whole had 56,000 visitors and although the visitor numbers for 180 individual stall holders haven't been released yet, i can tell you that i have had a lot more visitors to my website and Etsy shop (and probably Folksy and Wow too, although i haven't checked yet) - no sales have materialised as a result of this increased activity yet... but they may still!

I'm really looking forward to the November CRAFTfest and am determined to have improved product photographs and social media connectivity by then as well as make some lovely Christmassy things to tempt people with!

In conclusion, if you are wondering about whether to get involved in November, i would highly recommend it! :)

Handmade Monday

That's all from me for this week... i will leave you with this pretty pic of Autumn brambles (i feel some jam making coming on...) and also a link to Handmade Harbour where you will find lots of other crafty blogs to stroll through... see you there! x