syko

Cards, cards, cards

Many people have asked if I will be offering any cards in the shop again some day, now after a very long time of procrastination I have managed to take some new pictures! It is challenging for an amateur photograhper to take a good picture of 31 postcards, I must say. The best light I could find today was in this corner of the balcony, so I had to do some rearranging... You see? I really need more space!

The result, well it isn't perfect, but still a picture of all cards I have in stock right now!

Don't you just love the feeling when you finish a project that you have being avoiding for far too long? I do! And if you would like some Syko cards for yourself, you know where to find them!

Summer dreams...

I hope you enjoyed the holidays! Earlier this week I had my doubts whether or not I would ever get into the work vibe again, but I can feel it coming now and cannot wait to take the kids back to school on Monday! We had a wonderful holiday at my sisters place in Switzerland and enjoyed ourselves fully, it has been along time since we had a real holiday together as a family! It took some adjusting to get used to Helsinki after 10 days in Zürich, we still have no snow, which means it is dark, wet and windy, which even an optimist like me have a difficult time finding anything positive to say about.  

So I've made myself busy playing around with my new Summer card collection for 2012, I hope you like it! I wanted it to reminincence of Summers in the 1950's and 1960's.

This is my personal favourite, I call it "garden party", of course. 

The moped comes as a close second, I am always asked for cards for the guys, this should be it? At least my dad used to ride one of these in his teens with his long hair blowing in the wind.

Happy new 2012! I've heard it's going to be a great year :)

Packing for a crafty weekend

I'm packing and preparing for a fun work trip to Vasa, the town where I went to school and where my parents live. I was asked to have a Christmas exhibition at Loftet, which is the local craft centre. I was very flattered of course and even happier when they asked me to have a workshop too! It is a busy time of year with projects piling up, so I admit that I have been feeling stressed, but it feels much better now! Today I feel surprisingly calm (considering that I am travelling by train with all my stuff + 2 kids tomorrow) and am looking forward to an inspiring weekend!

Of course I did not make half of the projects I was planning to, but that is just how it always is! I am happy with the three new quilts I finished for this exhibit. I promise to show you pictures!

My friend Tuija asked me one day if I had ever thought of selling my card originals and that gave me the idea of framing some of the Christmas card originals for the exhibition. Thanks for the reminder Tuija! When I first started making cards I didn't think of the option of selling the originals, silly me, so the cardboard I have sewn the appliqué on is a bleached shade of white, which means a white frame makes it look greyish= not nice. The lovely lady in the art shop suggested that I'd use black passe-partouts, which make them look great, I think!

And I discovered that my little laptop makes a nice little art display. Now I just need to decided how to attach a loop to the back of my art pieces. And here's a sneaky peek of the back, I know you always wanted to know ;)

I do have a bunch of tomte stuffies that are longing for names and a couple that are eagerly waiting for eyes, so I'm off my friends!

Have a crafty weekend!

 

Updating....

Why, oh why do I not blog more often! More and more things pile up that I should blog about, which makes me procrastinate even more. So this is an update post to let you know what I have been up to lately. The Dad is picking up the kids today so there is no rush, I am going into town for an Etsy meet-up later, I am so excited! It was so fun last year. I love when people arrange these things that makes me get out to meet some wonderful creative people!

 

This is what I have been up to:

♥ I got seven new cards printed as always with a positive attitude! They are in the shop!

♥ I went to see the team at Gummerus, my Finnish publisher. The atmosphere was very welcoming and they are happy to have me so I am very glad that I teamed up with them! I blushed when I saw this huge picture of me in their Fall catalogue :) 

♥ The brooches are nearly ready, trying to finish them along side custom and wholesale orders.

 ♥ I have been interviewed at the Petite Purls blog as part of their renaissance Mom series. I talk about being a mother and about running a craft business, I hope you enjoy it!

Phew, I made it! More updates coming soon! Now I'm off to meet the local etsyans AND Matt, founder of Etsy.

There will be flowers...

I am back in my studio after a week of holiday. We went to the Summerhouse my dad has been building for the last years. It's finally finished and perfectly cosy on a cold winter day too, I just wish we could have stayed longer! My dad was so clever to make these peeking holes on the loft for the grandchildren!

Mum and dad had prepared a great sledding hill for us and the weather was perfect (that's my mum in the picture)! Look at all that snow!!!

This is Big E taking a break from reading, she was mostly up on the loft reading all the books we got in the local second-hand book shop :)

I got this one for me, I fell in love with the beautiful cover, but I am certain it has some useful information inside too! I am very ready for the gardening season! Last weekend felt promising, snow dripping from the roof and birdsong, ah!

So the time felt right to make an art print of this picture to keep hope up during the cold days that I'm sure will come during March. Yes, there will be flowers! Eventually.

The Love machine is now also an art print. At the moment this is my favourite of my printed designs, I love how the colours of the quilt turned out. Tomorrow I will finish the rest of the paper work I have waiting and then dedicated the rest of the week to sewing! I cannot wait!

What are you longing for today?

 

Hey, what's cooking?

I've been cooking up some new cards today, thought I needed a card for all Jamie Olivers and Nigellas out there. I have to confess that I'm not a very passionate cook myself, I do have inspired moments in the kitchen from time to time, but I would be happy just to eat the food :) Luckily I share my life with a guy who knows how to cook so we're sharing the responsibility for the everyday cooking, which is how it should be in a household with two working adults, of course! 

This is a sneaky peak of my work in progress, it's starting to look quite retro. I'm very happy with the edgy border that was provided by my favourite linen skirt, which was becoming alarmingly thin. I bought it second hand and now it gets a third life, very sustainable!

You can see more of my former skirt in the second card I've been working on, inspired by my little Batboy at home. I'm very fortunate to have this little 5 y old as an inspiration, many customers are asking for cute and cool boys stuff and it is much easier to come up with ideas that work when you have a little man with opinions and preferences to talk to :) If you're looking for crafty inspiration for boys there is a flickr group dedicated to the matter!

 He chose the outfit himself :) Notice the crafty bling-bling star on the rubber boot! 

 

Christmas in August (sorry)

I promised to show you what I've been working on lately. The first thing I had to do when I started working after the holidays was to design a set of new Christmas card designs (or 2 sets actually, the other was a custom order, will show when I get samples!). I wanted them to be ready for the fair last weekend because many shop owners go there to order stock for Christmas. This is a tomte girl and the tulip in the new banner is another motive! I got the idea for the tulip and bird from a painting in the ceiling in a manor house and museum we visited this Summer. There's a lot of white, red and lime going on in the cards of course! I'll show you more in late October and will try to keep quiet about Christmas projects until then...

I'm still in the fresh new start mode and determined to do some decorating and organising at home and am thinking about painting our little dinner table in this aqua shade I found on the Fjeldborg blog (the side table), it would go so well with the map of Europe that hangs over our sofa and since I didn't get to move my work space out of the home I will invest in a Melltorp table. Which reminds me of the fact that I haven't got my hands on the new Ikea catalogue yet! Have you got any grand plans?

Etsy in Helsinki + new cards!

Last Thursday Etsy had a meet up here in Helsinki and I was very happy to see so many people show up! There is now some 500 Etsy users in Finland, when I joined back in 2006 I think we were around 10... Etsy has established an office in Berlin, part of an effort to make Etsy easier to use for Europeans.I can't wait to get a currency converter on the site! Minna of karuski has got some nice pictures from the meeting on her blog, I was so busy chatting away so I didn't manage to take any pictures...

 

I got my new postcards today, just when I needed some cheering up the door bell rang! Had to take a picture immediately, but I didn't have the best light with all wet snow coming down outside :/ Give us some sun tomorrow and I'll take a better shot! Please.

The cards are inspired by the best things in life: sewing, gardening and kids! My personal favourite is the love machine! Thanks to my mum who figured out what to call the machine! I had sewn the hearts on the quilt and wanted some text on the machine, but couldn't figure out what to write, it felt so obvious when she came up with it! My kiddos like the linen Easter bunny here best.

 

And some flowers! I will need a lot of them to manage through the wet days of Spring, it will take time before all that snow has melted and the earth is dry! Sigh.

 

I hope you have a lovely lazy Sunday!

 

Free to work

The kids have been away for two whole days and we have enjoyed ourselves! At least I have loved to work from the morning til late in the evening. I made myself a schedule for this week last weekend, trying to make an effort and be a better boss for myself, it has worked great so far and I have managed to keep on track doing one thing at the time. I have finished the troll princess baby quilt I talked about in this post. I tried out some loopy quilting for it and I think it works great with the fluffy polyester batting. My BSR-foot (=Bernina Stitch Regulator, a special quilting foot for Bernina Aurora) did not like it however (it seems to prefer low-loft cotton batting and thinner materials) so I had to use the mending foot, so the quilting isn't as even as it could have been. Anyway it's finished, now I just need to deliver it. I've got many photos of it in my flickr album, if you are interested in seeing the back and more detailed pictures.

 

I have also been busy making some new postcards, this is a little sneaky peek of how it looks in my new card file today. One little bunny still needs to be finished and after that, off to the printers! It's about kids and babies, sewing and flowers, the important things in life!

  

Thank you for your concerns about my little boy! He is alright, but we have an appointment with the doctor again this week. We are crossing our fingers that the coughing and huffing will stop when Spring comes and the air gets more humid.

Syko fabrics!

 
Today they arrived! My first Spoonflower fabrics. The apples are great, but the Spring tree is perfect! Sadly I didn't order more than a fat quarter of it so I will have to think before I start cutting in it. It would make a beautiful Summer dress for my girl so I will have to order more later. Each tree is 11 cm (4 1/4'') high. The background is off-white.

  

The apples are more orange than the original, but I can live with that, colours always change in the printing process. One apple is about 3cm (1.18'') wide. I'm not sure what to do with it yet, but both fabrics are quilting weight cotton so I want to combine them with other fabrics, hopefully I will have more sewing time next week...

I have put the fabrics up for sale at Spoonflower, the more they sell of my prints, the cheaper it gets for me to buy more of them, so I guess it's a good deal.

I've spent a lot of time with little e this week, he had some problems breathing, was huffing a lot and got us worried so we've seen the doctor and got some medicine that seems to help him. Today they xrayed his lungs just to make sure he is OK. We've got asthma in the family so it might be that, I just hope it doesn't get worse and that it will disappear with the flu season. I'm so ready for Spring!!!