I’m moving! Please move with me!

I’ve had this blog for 4 years now and whilst I love updating it, I’m finding WordPress is restricting my growth a bit and so I’ve decided to go independent. My blog content is all moving over too, just all future posts will be at my new address and not this one.

So what I’m saying is, please subscribe to http://blog.pennydog.com !

Please update your blog readers, e-mail subscriptions and bookmarks…. there will be a redirection in place very soon (about a week) but I don’t think this will update your RSS feeds and whatnot, so if you still want to read my blog, you know what to do. The design of the site will be changing a bit over the coming weeks too so I can now have it exactly as I want without any rules- very exciting (for me anyway).

On Sunday I’m going to go out and buy a nice fabricy giveaway prize and you will only be able to enter at my new location- just to give you a heads up!

This counts as a Blogtoberfest post, right?

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I’ve finally decided what I want to do!

This is quite an indulgent post, but I guess the practise of blogging at all is too, so hopefully you won’t get bored 😉

Anyway, it dawned on me today what I need to do to love making stuff to sell again. As mentioned I am veering away from resin a bit, but this way I can still dabble a little.

I have a big list of what I want to do- I want to sew bags and quilts, make notebooks and cards, maybe make the odd wooden homeware trinket, piece of jewellery and also the new range of cushions that are pretty much there I just can’t show you them yet for festive reasons. I promise I will show you these soon. I also want to learn to make underwear but that may not quite fit in. But it might. We’ll see.

I’m rambling. I think I CAN do all these things but keep a consistent brand AND still be PennyDog by the items following a similar style. I do a lot of doodles which I then trace and trace to make them simpler and more perfect each time, and I think if my artwork was to be printed on fabric or transferred onto other surfaces I could still feel like I am playing and not concentrating too hard on one medium whilst still being recogniseable. My work is by no means perfect and I am not a trained artist (far from it, I ran screaming from GCSE Art at school), but I enjoy it, so it’s worth giving it a bash in the new year and seeing how it goes. Here’s a bit of a peek of base drawings that I am going to digitally enhance into finished pieces and then maybe I will have something proper to show you soon!

PennyDog’s Bumper Jewellery Giveaway

I’m having a big clearout at home because I’m sick of living and working in a dump. None of my craft stuff has a permanent home yet because of financing the garage renovation, so this week is the week it get SORTED, or at least we start to.

I’ve also been entering a lot of giveaways in the blogosphere recently so it’s only fair I offer you one, dear reader! And also it will help me clearout some of the stuff I keep clinging on to…

So here’s the prize….

That’s right, three pieces of jewellery for one lucky winner each representing different times in my jewellery making life, here’s more info about them…

This necklace I made 3-4 years ago with precious metal clay, which means it is 99.9% pure silver (though I have added a patina to it which is why parts look dark). The stone in the middle is a garnet and I remember setting it to be a total nightmare and after shouting at it, my OH set it for me, cos he’s good like that. The chain and jump ring are sterling silver and I still have a tag on it from a fair, priced at £28.

This one is even older, I’ll have probably made it whilst I was at sixth form, or the first year of university. Beadweaving was my thing back then when I was less impatient and time-poor, and this small to medium size bracelet is circular peyote in pink around a memory wire core with a magnetic fastener. I remember magnetic fasteners were really hard to get hold of in the UK at the time- they were the new thing! This was around the time when Bead and Button had to be specially ordered from The States though as it wasn’t readily available in Smiths. The clear embellishments on it are tumbled chips of rock crystal. Shiny.

Last but not least, this piece is about 18 months old and is pretty fabric in resin on a black ribbon necklace. I just randomly selected this from my £12 craft fair display since I don’t sell jewellery at fairs at the moment.

So there you are, three pieces of handmade jewellery retailing at around £50. To enter to win, leave me a comment on this thread before midnight on Sunday 30th and I will draw the winner on Monday 31st October 🙂

New stuff!

Yes, really!

I’ve started sorting out the PennyDog site and I’m making good progress, I found a load of stuff this morning that I’d made ages ago but hadn’t put online, so rather than it gathering dust I thought I’d upload a few bits and get them online gradually. I will also be updating the supplies soon to sell my ribbon, buttons, etc that are currently only in my Folksy shop.

Things are now in categories of “made to order”, “one-off” and everyone’s favourite- I have a sale section! There are quite a few discounts on there so please have a look, including this necklace you may remember me working on last week…

It’s in the sale because there was a tear in the top coat of resin and when I refilled it it isn’t totally even (you might be able to see this in the picture where the jump ring is). It still looks pretty though. Normally I’d list it at £15 but because of this I’ve put it at £10 🙂

More will continue to be added until I run out and the next step is to start listing one-off handbags and bound books – though I need to make some first!

 

More moulds, resin and stuff back in stock

In case anyone who reads this has been waiting the two months it has been since I had resin in, I now have it back in stock (albeit without measuring cups, need to track some of those down from somewhere) and some colourings and new moulds as well. My supplier is selling the business though, so I’m not sure if I will be able to continue selling these or not so grab what you want while you can. With any luck I will be able to continue buying but through the new purchaser, depending on what the terms would be like. I am worried that my prices will go up and a hefty minimum order be implemented, which will mean I will have to pay more customs charges, so I’m really not sure what will happen.

Enamelling and PennyDog plans

In between the masses of patchwork this weekend, I had a go at enamelling for the first time, using a low fire enamel I learned about over on Craft Pimp called Efcolor. I made two but my one with stencilled buttons looks a bit ugly so I will only show you the good one!

Also I’ve been thinking about my plans for PennyDog and this post is as much as a place of reference for me as it is to keep you updated. I plan to make it into more of an artsy boutique but without the massive facelift, just a few tweaks here and there to pretty it up. The items on sale will be mostly one offs though I will keep my most popular jewellery lines on too but totally start again with the categories, which are currently planned to be:
– Upcycled Clothing
– Textiles (includes handbags and soft furnishings as and when I want to make them!)
– Jewellery (covering all sorts of different techniques not just resin, so will probably have to break this down further)
– Made to order Jewellery
– Hand bound books
– Homewares
– Craft Supplies

The Craft Supplies section should be quite interesting as I plan to sell PDFs of resin projects and perhaps other areas that I don’t submit to magazines, plus the stuff you can find in my Folksy supplies shop such as pretty ribbons and destash buttons- not just resin things.

Ch- ch- changes!

I am drastically cutting down the pieces of jewellery I am now selling. I’ve started by giving the Etsy and Folksy shops a good weeding and this will follow onto the main PennyDog site.

Why?

Well it is silly me offering more and more made to order items that I don’t have time to replenish. I really don’t want everything to be made to order. So I have been taking stuff off, even popular items. Then I will list them as I make them…. if I do choose to make them again! It makes life a lot easier, but this doesn’t mean I won’t list new things as I have a few things slowly being made.

The resin supplies section is totally unaffected, and in fact it is growing, along with my Folksy supplies shop! I am also quite happy to do wholesale and custom orders like the doggy necklace above!

The reason I now don’t have very much time is because I am trufflepigletting away in the kitchen as the launch of the site seemed pretty successful! So this is where my energies are focused at the minute and it feels good to be doing something totally different, I’d like to be more relaxed with the resin side of things rather than running around in a manic panic as I have been recently.

Ohh and if you are chocolatey minded, please come and visit my sister blog for the trufflepiglet venture, it’s nothing at the minute but I have plans to make it more interesting, so if you have a blog reader, I’d recommend adding me 😉

Have I ever mentioned my supplies shop?

You’ll be glad to hear I have another resin tutorial coming up this week, I’m really getting my act together now. However this weekend I have been rather poorly, which has given me an opportunity to get some more stuff listed in my Folksy supplies shop that has been waiting around forever. I set it up several months back now selling button, ribbons and unusual jewellery findings and any stuff I thought people might find cute and unusual to use in their own craft work. This is quite fun as I can buy all those things when I go to the wholesaler that I don’t actually need, or pick up some extra vintage bargains at the market!

Anyway, here’s a few bits I have in stock to show the range of stuff I have, apologies for the massive advert in this update 😉

Special offer moulds

 

I have put a new section on the supplies side of the website listing resin moulds that I have limited quantities of and won’t be restocking, so this is a great chance to grab yourself a bargain and more unusual moulds!

You can find this new section here! It will be updated regularly until my big box of moulds has gone!

I’ve also been doing yet more kitchenry, making Pimms truffles, gingerbread truffles and these little trufflepiglets!

I also discovered a great way of using leftover meat from our pressure cooker (best invention ever) that doesn’t involve feeding the dog. I put the pork (beef would be better) into a pie with dumplings and a smidge of gravy, which then expanded to make a big lump of mega-stodge, but man, it was good!

Shop restock and Chocs Away!

Sorry I have been away so long. This time of year I get very busy, and as a result a lot of my shop has been marked made to order. However I have this morning restocked the site (and also Etsy and Folksy where applicable) and I now have the following available for immediate delivery (there are other immediate delivery items on the site, so feel free to have a click through!): 

 

 

In other news, I am going on my food safety course on Tuesday, taking me a step closer to opening my chocolate business! The web designer thinks we will be live by 15th January, but I reckon it will be the end of Jan by the time I have had my kitchen assessment, etc. Here’s what I was up to last night…

(Bailey truffle centres- my own recipe 😉 )

(Oozy praline centres)

(Dark chocolate truffle centres- everyone’s favourites!)