My new best friend

I just got myself a new best friend. She has agreed to pose for me whenever I wish, will keep me company in my workshop without ever getting bored or having to go to the bathroom. She shall listen to me complain and bare the grunt of my aggression without ever protesting or telling me to ‘F-off’. She shall be there in my moments of needs and I won’t even have to share my chocolate with her! Or my morning coffee! Selfish of me, I know! 

Yes, I’m sure you have guessed, my new best friend is a mannequin…  I though she would come in handy for shows and for pictures, well the original idea was for shows and then the idea of the pictures came afterwards when I was justifying the expense.  I just fell in love with her really.

What do you think, she looks good no?!?

Actually, you could help me find a good name for her! Any suggestions?

My knees hurt…

… and it’s not because of anything naughty!!! I can’t believe just thought that!!!

As mentioned late week, I bought lots of new material at the weekend for my next batch of bags and also for the book covers.  I’ve been matching these (exterior with linings) and then cutting them, but as my table isn’t big enough, I’ve been doing it on the floor.  I now have very sore knees and back…  I should really invest in a bigger table.  One large enough on which I could roll out the width of the material and be able to cut at ease… My desk is wide enough but not early deep enough, I find it helpful to draw the patterns out of the back of the material for several bags at a time so that I can fit in as many as possible per square meter.  If I can’t see a big area of the material I find it difficult to do this and end up wasting.

  

On the table in the picture above, you can see a pile of book covers and a pile of bags ready to be sewn together.  I find it helpful to match not only the lining and exterior but also think about the decorations I will use for each bag, like ribbons and prints, at this point.  I tend to get more ideas this way.  If I just pull out one bag at a time and try to decide each time what to do, I find it more difficult to find inspiration.  It’s a bit like brainstorming I guess, from one idea you get another and then another.  It ends up saving time and more importantly you come up with more original ideas.

Wibizz

I am now a member of Wibizz.  Anyone ever hear of it?  It’s basically an on-line arts & crafts community or gallery.  Every member has their own profile that includes pictures of their work and a link to their website and/or blog.  I’m guessing it’s quite new as there doesn’t seem to be many member yet.  So spread the word!

Why don’t you also go check out my personal Wibizz homepage:

 http://www.wibizz.com/alexhandbags 

More new bags!

Just to let you know that I’ve added some more small day and evening bags to my site.  Click here!

    

Basically I’ve spent the whole week trying to improve my site.  I’ve added bags, contacted other sites and blogs for link exchanges and registered with both Adsence (Yahoo!) and Adwords (Google).  So we’ll see if I get more visitors and if it was all worth the effort.  This means though, that I don’t really have much new to talk about, as I’ve more or less been starring a the screen for a whole week.  It also means that I’ve not produced anything new that I can share with you.  But at the weekend I shall go buy lots more new material, so I should have new bags to show you soon! I have the big FREIBANK fashion fair in March that I need to start producing for.  I also have many more book covers to make, if you’ve read my blog before you’ll know that through the Christmas holiday I was stressing to finish an order before we left for our holidays.  Anyway, to make a long story short, they liked the last lot so much they want more…  It’s all very exciting! So please be patient with me and pop arourd again to check out the new bags as they appear!

Links, Links, Links – follow up!

 Well, I must say that the other day of writing to lots and lots of people to ask them to trade links was really worth it.  I’ve had lots of responses (thanks to those of you who wrote back!) and I feel that I have quite a good variety of links on there now.  I guess, I should work some more on the French and German links pages now, they seem rather bare in comparison….  Tomorrow!  Promise!!!

I thought I should mention another great site that I found the other day…  And hopefully my husband doesn’t read this as I think I’ve found his next Birthday present, so shhhhh!

‘What’s your type’ makes jewelry, cuff-links, belt buckles, etc. out of old typewriter keys.  They’ll even custom make something for you.  I love the following the best…

 

You should check out their site!

Links, Links, Links!

Well, it’s not been the most interesting of days…  I’ve been surfing the net looking for cool sites and writing to them, asking if they would trade links with me.  I should get in the habit of doing an hour or two a week rather than a full day every three months or so.  My eyes are hurting and am getting rather fed up with sites that don’t have links…  sorry!

I thought I should mention a particular site as it is so different to everything else I came across today.

Michelle Caplan makes what she calls mixed media collage portraits.  I think they’re amazing!!  She has an on-line shop and an Etsy shop, she even takes on commission work. 

Anyway, I thought she was worth mentioning as it’s so original.

You should also take the time to check out her website: http://www.michellecaplan.com/

Well, if you want to trade links with me, don’t hesitate to contact me! 

I’m back!

Well, I’m back after two weeks of amazing holiday.  It’s quiet a shock to the system I must admit.  Especially when the alarm went off this morning!  It was still dark…  Actually it’s now about 15:00 and it’s still rather dark  I just spent two full weeks in sunny St. Lucia with my husband drinking lots of cocktails, eating too much and just relaxing on the beach.  The most strenuous thing of the day being a swim in the sea. We are now back and everything is sooooo grey! Oh well, I wont rub it in any more…  but I must say if you are looking for a great place for a wedding or honeymoon I would definitely recommend it!

Anyway, more importantly I have added some new bags to my website and to my DaWanda shop, you should go check them out!

  

These two super cool shoulder bags you can find on my site!!!

  

These you can find on my DaWanda Shop!

I will be adding more during the week so keep on popping by until you find something you like!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wish you all the best for the new year!

Christmas was great, to be honest had you asked me just before it all, if I was excited about it, I would have said that I could easily have skipped the whole thing.  It’s not that I don’t like Christmas or that I wasn’t looking forward to spending time with the in-laws (honest!).  It’s just that tonight, the 3rd; we, my husband and I, are off on our late honeymoon for a full 14 days and are actually redoing the wedding…  Long story cut short, we got married in August in a bit of a rush and have been planing on redoing it properly since then.  It would have of course been great to get everyone together but as he is English and I Canadian and that we are living in Germany, it was just too complicated to get everyone together.  So we are going to the Caribbean, to some romantic beach when the sun is setting, ahhhh…  Anyway, this is why I could have quite easily skipped Christmas, I could have gone straight to the beach and pool bar. 

But that said it was a GREAT Christmas.  We had a truly wonderful time in the UK, then met up with friends we hadn’t seen for years for New Years Eve at a super venue.  It had been some 6 or 7 years since we had all been together but it was like we had never been apart.  We all had a laugh and I think it was even better than it used to be somehow.  We’re all a little more grown up and a little bit more mature (just a little  !!! ).  The only down side to it all was all the wonderful food…  I know it doesn’t really make sense but the diet of the last 3 months went down the drain on the 24th…  Let’s hope the sexy dress will still fit!  You know what I mean.   

It wasn’t just laughs though, at the Christmas Market in Wiesbaden on the 2nd of December someone had spotted my little covered agendas and asked if I could cover other books as a Christmas present.  I said of course I could, I would have been silly not to!!!  So he told his secretary to send me a book and told me he wanted 17 book covers… I was really pleased with the order and thought, what a great way to finish off the year.  The only thing was that I only got the book in the afternoon of 20th of December…  Bit late!  So  after contacting the secretary again (who’s name was also Alex, which I thought was a funny coincidence), we agreed that I could send them on the 2nd of January. Great in theory… I mean here I was, still no Christmas shopping done, in the UK from the 24th to the 29th and in Heidelberg on the 31st and predictably hung over on the 1st…  Well I worked whenever I could even on the 1st, I am very impressed with myself to be honest.  I sent them off yesterday as promised and I was really pleased with the result, they looked great and all 17 of them were of different material. I even used a iron on interfacing so that they had some stiffness to them, so that even without a book inside the looked nice and didn’t just flop around. I am glad that I don’t have to  hand them out, it will be a very difficult task.  I couldn’t tell you which was my favourite, each and every single one had a little something special…

Here are a couple more pictures.