This month's inspirations

Zinnia flowers waiting to be planted in my window flower box

Neighbour's garden poppies against the dark blue sky

My children's crayon shavings

And here is a bag I made for myself recelntly (yes, on very rare occasions I do make stuff for my personal use).

First I meant to use it as a shopping tote in which I could bring home bread and other dry groceries but now I mostly use it to carry parcels to the post office. I wish I could take it for a walk more often but when I do, I do so in style...

More colour!

I decided to combine two of my favourite fabrics, vibrant corduroy in fresh, spring colours and patches of striped canvas from Maison d'Artiga.

The result are these (so far) two Maia zippered clutches, one in red, pink & purple combination and the other in robin egg blue & yellow mustard. I lined both purses with cheerful floral prints in matching colours and decorated the zipppers with handmade polymer clay beads.

I love saturated hues of these new purses but somehow their true colours don't always show in the photos of Etsy listings. I thought my computer screen was to blame so I opened several photos in different programmes - it turns out Etsy makes all pictures look duller and less sharp compared to same pictures, published on Flickr, Facebook and other places...

Other fellow Etsyians confirmed that it is the case in their shops as well. So for future listings on Etsy I will have to push the contrast and saturation up in PhotoShop and sharpen all the images.

:: same picture on Etsy and in PhotoShop window ::

Are any of you having the same observations? Please share!

Freshly baked

Lately I have been in the mood for colour, lots and lots of it, so I started sorting out the most vibrant textiles in my supplies closet to make a few new zippered pouches. But then I realized I don't have many colourful beads left, those large glass or wooden ones I like to use as zipper pulls (and I find them not just beautiful but pretty handy, too...).

So I thought I might make some beads myself - the only available material I had was polymer clay though it has been a while since I worked with it the last time. I have a small collection of basic hues of Fimo soft polymer clay and it took some effort to blend them into pastel colours I was after but at the end I was very pleased with the result.

I used some tiny plastic beads to decorate each large piece, sinking them into the soft clay before baking it according to instructions (half an hour at 130° C). I laid the beads on a small baking tray - a miniature one from Ikea that my children use to make playdough cookies.

I made the holes large enough for the leather cord I use to attach them to zippers.

This project was fun but I am still very far from mastering the clay modeling technique - I admire those Etsy artists who make lifelike miniatures out of polymer clay, like Stephanie from PetitPlat, or jewellery artists like Maja and Sonja.

Nevertheless, I can't wait to use my new beads in future Loddelina projects!

:: P.S. ::

Thank you, Sonja, for pointing out a few more things about polymer clay beads, I will consider them when I make my next batch. Those that I won't use for Loddelina purses I will keep on my sewing table - they will come in handy when Lily comes to play at my feet, she loves to string beads!

The colours of Alsace

Last week my husband and I spent a couple of days in Alsace - the home country of storks.

We stayed at a budget hotel in Colmar (and rather spent the leftover money on delicious food) and on the second day drove a few miles further north to a small vine - growing town ofRibeauville. It is just as beautiful as Colmar but much less crowded so we could enjoy our walk and take pictures without ending up having (too many) tourists in them.

Everywhere we turned there was a podstcard-perfect view and at the end we couldn't say which house, street or doorway we loved more. Even with the harsh midday sunlight, the pictures I took with my tiny camera still came out ok.

The flowers and the colours of Ribeauville are an endless inspiration - may they spice up your September creativity!

Photoshopping the afternoon away...

I took this picture of Lily at the playground the other day - she decided to explore a small wooden hut in the middle of the sand box and I was just fast enough to switch on my camera before she peeped out the little house's window.

There was no time for adjusting the settings, composition, focus, like with most children's photographs and automatic functions on my camera gave the picture dull, bluish hues. On top of that the sun beam that came through the door of the hut made a bright distracting pach on the wall behind Lily's head.

This "Ha!" moment was too precious for me to waste so I spent an hour or so behind the computer today trying to clone stamp the patch away - at the end I converted the picture to black and white to get rid of the strange colours and cropped it a bit. All I have to do now is find the right frame...

These are a few of my favourite things

Enjoy...

Clockwise from top left: illustration by Nicole Wong at PainterNik, bridesmaids earrings by Mollusa, The bandit bag by The small object and painting by artquirk.