Different cultures and natural influences feature heavily in Anne-Rose Mordi’s jewellery. Tribal elements create key themes. Her online shop Jewellery by Anne is brimming with beaded necklaces, bracelets and earrings and unusual hair accessories and evening bags. Materials include glass, crystal, unakite, jasper and wood.

Take a peak at www.jewellerybyanne.com.

A special Monday morning treat. Today we follow Carrie Madennan, aka Lady Wurlitzer, through a typical day in her life. Over to Carrie.

Getting Up

Once my eyes have opened and regained focus, I spend five or ten minutes just lying in bed, thinking through my plan for the day. Without this little quiet, private period, I find it quite difficult to get motivated and enjoy a productive day. Sometimes Smokey Cat comes to say hello while I’m filling the slots in my mental diary. There have been mornings where I’ve asked her advice on which order to do things in! She doesn’t seem to mind as long as she has food in her bowl.

Lady Wurlitzer isn’t my full time job. Or at least, it’s not supposed to be. I am studying for my PhD in the non-indie world. I am free to structure my days and my working week as I see fit though which is helpful when trying to create more hours in the day to make soap! Research is my full time occupation, but every free minute is spent developing Lady Wurlitzer’s repertoire or planning my Fuzzy Felt Folk craft parties.

Let’s presume the particular day in question for the purposes of this article is a day where I don’t have to worry about PhD work and I can devote my entire day to soap! So. I’m awake, I am dressed, I am fed and I am watered (my husband has gone to work and Smokey Cat is asleep on the couch). The first thing I do before anything else is check what’s been going on online. I check my mail, I log into my Myspace accounts and I check what the activity in the shop’s been like. It normally takes me a while to sift through correspondence and what not. I really love it though when I receive positive feedback from customers or from people who have been browsing in the e-boutique. I love it even more when there’s an email notification from Paypal to tell me I have a sale! :o)

I spend quite a lot of time keeping my shop up to date. I like to change around the text every so often just to keep things fresh for friends and loyal customers who visit regularly! I add in offers or special products quite often too and I sometimes add extra fragrances of a particular bar to keep things interesting. I’m not exactly the greatest photographer, but I do enjoy putting the pics together for my products and I do feel awfully satisfied when I’ve loaded all my images onto my site. The Lady Wurlitzer Blog is important to me too. I like to keep everyone up to date on the happenings in LW land and recently there’s been a huge amount of news to report! Normally I deal with my updating and blogging during the first part of my day. I type away while listening to my alt -country/vintage country favourites and I enjoy having a little mug or two of pomegranate + blueberry juice too! :o)

My main aim at the moment is to spread the word about the opening of www.ladywurlitzer.com. In the afternoons you can find me sorting through a pile of my favourite crafty magazines searching for opportunities to have my items featured or talented crafties and designers who might like to swap links with me. I have recently discovered the joy that is ’the creative online forum’ and so I make sure I keep in touch with other likeminds around the country who can help spread the soapy word! I might spend a day writing an article, I might spend the day emailing magazines, I might spend the day taking suitable photos to include in publications.

Lady Wurlitzers who Lunch

Lunch is a bit of non-event for me. If I’m at home, chances are I won’t really eat at all (maybe nibble some berries if I have any). If I’m at the office and feeling flush I will often indulge in a ridiculously expensive sarnie from Pret (and maybe a smoothie and piece of lemon cake and some parsnip crisps?!?!?) but if I’m poor (which is more often the case), I have a fat laden flapjack to see me through til tea time.

Assuming that I have already ordered my ingredients and presuming that they have all arrived when they are supposed to (this does NOT always happen and this is probably my only pet hate re. Lady Wurlitzer work), I will spend a few hours preparing for up coming markets, organising orders from www.ladywurlitzer.com and making items for friends who request top up products. I enjoy making soap much more than I enjoy making anything else - it is cleaner! I just love cutting up soap base - it’s a great sensation (I can be a bit of a weirdo when it comes to textures). The fragrances I use are all absolutely delicious and so my whole house smells great after a batch making spree. As far as making lip butter goes, I adore the end product, I love knitting the pouches and packaging up the tins and pots, but I do not enjoy cleaning the dishes I use to mix the buttery ingredients! More often than not now I use disposable containers in order that I can just put them straight in the recycling bin when I’ve finished! I leave my products to set and dry for a day or so before packaging and labelling commences. I used to package every single bar of soap, every lip butter and every perfume oil in knitted or fabric pouches but this became so laborious and time consuming that I now mingle my items between little clear bags with ribbon trimmings and knitted pouches and fabric sleeves. Much more economical AND I get to recycle all my left over yarns and fabric remnants! Hoorah!

Winding Down

I wind down really by flopping on the couch in front of the tv! My husband has nicknamed me ’The Sleep Monster’ as I am unbearable if I don’t get enough sleep and every chance I get, I nab a nap! Before I put my jammies on, I like to get in a bath (funnily enough, bathing and pampering myself are a couple of my very favourite things - along with sleeping!), chuck in a lavender velvet bath ball and get excited about snuggling under the duvet and having a real good snooze! Works every time. However, if I am preparing for a market, you can bet your boots that there’s very little winding down going on in my house and that I’ll be up wrapping soap, knitting lip butter pouches and labelling bath balls into the early hours! It is ALWAYS worth it in the end though. I’ve not been disappointed by my market days even once and so I never grudge putting the time into Lady Wurlitzer. It is MY endeavour and it is up to me to decide the direction it takes. I find that really, really exciting and given the time and half the chance, I know I could expand the business, expand the product range and expand my customer base. I get butterflies in my tummy thinking about that day! :o) It will come . . . .

A big thank you to Carrie for putting this together for us. You can find Carrie at www.ladywurlitzer.com. And if you would like to find out more about Fuzzy Felt Folk, go to www.myspace.com/fuzzyfeltfolkparty.

Michelle Duxbury-Townsley of Pretty Crafty Things, Leeds Craft Mafia and Your Asinine Heart fame, recently attended the Craft Congress in Pittsburgh. Read all about her crafty jaunt below.

Memoirs of a Craft Congress

Earlier this year I was thrilled and honoured to be invited to attend Craft Congress in Pittsburgh on 31st March ’ 1st April, the first ever meeting of some of the key members of the indie crafting community to discuss how the movement is growing and some of the challenges it faces. Now Pittsburgh is a long way for a girl from Leeds to go for a weekend but it looked like a truly amazing opportunity to meet some of the most inspirational and active members of the indie craft movement so how could I refuse!

So I am now safely returned from my jaunt over the ocean, fully recovered from the jet lag and, I am delighted to report, I certainly wasn’t left disappointed! I have returned from Pittsburgh full of ideas, inspiration and motivation with an even stronger determination to spread the handmade revolution across the UK ’ are you with me, all those in favour raise your crafting weapon of choice!!*

Getting the Ball Rolling

Anyway, enough of the incendiary speak, lets get down to the nitty gritty. So what did we actually do at Craft Congress? The goal of the weekend was to bring together members of a largely online community in a real life setting and facilitate an informed discussion of the indie craft movement, how it can be sustained and how we can move it forward. Now don’t be expecting any great answers or solutions, this first meeting was more about getting the ball rolling, getting people talking, sharing experiences and developing and building networks rather than problem solving and decision making. There were specific discussion sessions concerned with practical areas such as organising markets and shows, fundraising and sponsorship, marketing and online selling. There was also a great deal of discussion around the politics of both the movement and the act of crafting itself, how we can best organise as a community, how as a community we can exert our buying power or have an impact on issues like copyright law.

Highlights

So apart from all the talking what were the other highlights of my visit to Pittsburgh and the Craft Congress? Well I got to meet some really cool people, including some of the people who first inspired me to get involved in the indie crafting community such as Cinnamon Cooper and Amy Charlton from the DIY Trunkshow and Betsy Greer from Craftivism ’ chances are if you have asked me what indie craft is all about I have pointed you in the direction of their websites! I got to pick up loads of great advice and tips from seasoned show organisers ’ thank you all! I got to meet fellow craft mafia members including Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching who is one of the original Austin Craft Mafia. I got to speak to Matt Stinchcomb from Etsy and find out about some of the fantastic work they are involved in to support and promote the craft community. I got my mitts on an amazing goodie bag that included, amongst many other delights, a copy of the sneak preview of the Indie Craft Documentary project with its brand new title ’Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y. Art, Craft & Design’**. And last, but by no means least, I got to visit the amazing city of Pittsburgh with its beautiful architecture and fantastic creative vibe.

Finally I want to give a big huge thank you to the fine ladies of Handmade Arcade who did all the hard work in organising the Craft Congress. These super cool ladies kindly welcomed us into their city and their homes (special thanks to Gloria, Shelly and Brett for putting me up!) and left us with a great big Pittsburgh shaped impression on our hearts.

*be careful where you point it though I take no responsibility for injuries sustained or inflicted!! Alternatively drop me a line and we’ll talk!

**A trailer for ‘Handmade Nation: The Rise of D.I.Y Art, Craft & Design‘ is available to view online.

Michelle Duxbury-Townsley is the founder of the Leeds Craft Mafia and is responsible for inflicting prettycraftythings, a fun-tastic indie craft market on the unsuspecting folks of Leeds once a month.

Picture Credits

Picture 1 - Craft Congress Folder (courtesy of Amy Carlton ’ DIY Trunkshow)

Picture 2 - Craft Mafia girlies (courtesy of Tamara Dourney ’ Craft Revolution)

Picture 3 - Pre-Craft Congress Dinner in fab Pittsburgh joint, Remedy ’ see my glowing red hair!! (courtesy of Erin Merryweather ’ The Girlie Show)

Picture 4 - Craft Congress is in Session! (courtesy of Faythe Levine ’ Handmade Nation)

Picture 5 - Mmmm yummy yummy yummy Craft Congress cupcakes (courtesy of Elizabeth Prince, Handmade Arcade)

I’m casting my net further afield today to sample the delights of Moose. If you haven’t visited this cool online Australian store, click on over there. Moose stocks the work of over 50 local artists and craftspeople, with the aim of spreading Aussie creativity far and wide.

To give you a taster, the beautiful brooches above are made from southern ice porcelain by Sandra Bowkett. The cute ‘Lullabird’ has been lovingly created out of vintage fabrics by OMA and the jingly, jangly ‘Circle Earrings’, brimming with silver, freshwater pearls, coral and silk are by Mary Odorcic.

Go and rummage at www.shopmoose.com.au.

We’re off to Harrogate this weekend for the British Craft Trade Fair. We’ll be talking to a number of exhibitors and putting together a feature/podcast which will appear in the blog next week.

The British Craft Trade Fair is now in its 26th year and brings together a number of talented designers/makers in a variety of disciplines, including ceramics, glassware, canvases, sculptures, soft furnishings, jewellery, handbags, hats and fashion accessories. Each exhibitor will reveal his/her collections to buyers from across the UK as well as from Australia, Canada, USA, Germany, Belgium and Norway.

The BCTF organisers are also looking forward to Design Edge, which will take place at Sandown Park in Surrey from 16th to 18th September. Design Edge attracted around 250 exhibitors and 800 buyers in its first outing last year.

If you’re interested in exhibiting at a future BCTF or Design Edge event, please contact Margeret Bunn on tel +44 (0)1444 246 446 or email info@bctf.co.uk. Further details can be found at www.bctf.co.uk.

And don’t forget to check back again next week for coverage of the event!

Happy Easter everyone! Hope you’re all enjoying the long weekend.

Jenny and Richard

Hot of the press! UK jewellery designer Elisie Belle has just launched her online shop. Take a peak inside to find a range of Americana tattoo inspired, kitsch and vintage reconstructed jewellery. Choose from Russian dolls, angel wings, knuckle dusters, handcuffs and everything in between.

Go to www.elsiebelle.com.

If you haven’t already taken off for the Bank Holiday weekend, have a look at these vintage inspired handbags and belts by Bari J. Each piece has been designed to evoke a sense of memory and history but at the same time caters for today’s busy lifestyles. The Ready to Buy collection features hobos, totes, shoppers and make-up bags in patchwork, plaid and damask.

And the designers have come up with a nifty little feature where you can choose a style and fabric and design your own bag.

Take a look at www.barijonline.com.