Late Night Shopping

Busy getting on with stuff at the moment, which has also meant a few bits of shopping for the necessary supplies. I decided I needed some slightly larger flat sequins and my friends at college pointed me to Simply Sequins. This site is fabulous it does exactly what it says on the tin: sequins. Needless to say these caught my fancy as well as these. I was sorely tempted by these, but didn't have a sufficiently good excuse to buy so will have to save that purchase for another day.

Another purchase came out of a brief flurry of designing during class. We have moved onto playing with velvet (more on this to follow) and I needed to put together a quick design for a 'mini project'. Though this is not to be confused with a finished piece - its just an exercise in sampling techniques but our tutor is encouraging us by making things more interesting. I started off with this quick sketch of a Roman gladiator helmet:

After this I then thought - "how is this going to transfer into a design?". As the brief was for a small bag, cushion or panel, I wasn't sure. Then I noticed the faux buckle on the bottom collar of the helmet. I then looked at the sketch upside down, and came up with this:

This design just screamed at me to use a purse frame so I quickly packed up shop and went home to do a little shopping. It may have been 9pm on a Thursday but nothing was going to stop me from shopping. After a little searching I found a wonderful site dedicated to the making of bags: u-handbag.com. If it wasn't for the fact that they also sell sample bags, this site would get G sewing for sure. Anyway, after adding the purse frame (pictured in top photo) I couldn't resist adding in a couple of patterns by Amy Butler. I won't have the time to make anything from them for some time but I can dream! I expect it would only take an afternoon to make the top or bag (no I am not in the pudding club - I just want a bag with lots of internal pockets) but I have to concentrate on all my other UnFinished Objects.

One other site recommended to me at class was Smithfield Gallery where they sell all kinds of coloured craft wires and metals. I didn't succumb this time (no lime green metal foil) but I am sure its only a question of time. especially as I now have the link logged in m'blog! Another useful site which did have some useful sticky bits was stix2, they sell quite a lot of glue and tape related craft materials - stocked in large craft shops (you know the one I am always rude about in private) but also available online at very reasonable prices.

I was really impressed with both the sequins and bag sites as I ordered late Thursday evening and everything arrived this morning. Would have liked to stayed in and played but had to go out and help shovel horse poo. Yep, you read correctly - horse poo. It was well rotted and didn't smell and is now dug in (thanks to the efforts of M, P & G) to our allotment. I don't have any photos of this but will leave you with some of my handiwork from a few weeks back: