Monday 30 June 2008

Sea Treasures Home Collection


The inspiration coming from the sea is endless…


Now in our gift shop, the beginnings of a home collection made with treasures from the sea.


Friday 27 June 2008

Scary views from our yard

Today no friday findings as we had a very scary day. A fire in the mountains suddenly spread so fast that our town was in panic. These pictures where taken from our yard, as you can see the fire was very close.


'Luckily' the wind was on our side and didn't brought the flames too close. From many other places firemen, helicopters and firetrucks came to extinguish the fire before the neighborhood would have to evacuate. One very big hotel was right next to the fire and the guests had to leave the hotel.


The helicopters have a 'bag' they fill with water from the sea, fly to the fire and then drop the water on the fire. It is a pretty lousy system as normal water is usually not enough and the amount of water is very little.

And of course the 'result' a dark dry place where used to be green green trees...

Thursday 26 June 2008

Other sights of Izmir

You might remember our last blogpost about Izmir. We where running out of some important supply again so another trip had to be made. Woke up at 6 a.m. and hit the road to manage everything on time. As we already showed you some beautiful views the last time, this time some other sights.

During the road a truck in front of us was going very slow, but when we got closer, it was quite normal considering it's luggage of 6 cows!



With one of them I became friends and she gave me a warm look with her lovely cow eyes...


And since the last time the supply shop pictures got alot of attention, I decided to show you the better work, here is the bigger supply shop of izmir, yummmm.
If you are worried that you have enemies or 'bad eyes' on you, this is the place to go.




Although the shop is HUGE, it is so full that even the ceilings are full with handmade beads...



All the colors and structure are such a great inspiration.



Yummmm, yummm.


My mum is usually quite a slow walker, but look at her here between the goodies, she is so fast that I couldn't get her in focus!


We bought many many supplies, also sterling silver (sterling earrings coming up soon!), new package boxes and we went to IKEA for a big wardrope to put all the items in that we emptied from the room that became our workplace.

Monday 23 June 2008

Book Project

Some members of our European Street Team are participating in a book project. The plan is that each participating member makes a page, a folded A4 paper. As front we would introduce ourselves, in the middle part an artwork (what can be anything you want like a painting, felt, mixed media etc.) at the back of the page would be pictures of your Etsy shop.
All pages will be sent to Kreativlink (who makes and sells gorgeous journals), who will bind them all to one book. We are planning to sell this book in our Street Team's charity shop for a good cause.
Well I finally finished ours, here it is.


The inside of the page is made with marbled paper that I made a while back during a short course in Istanbul, it reminded me immediatly of sea urchins, so perfect for the project.



I'm really looking forward to see the end result of our Team's first project!

Friday 20 June 2008

Friday Findings: Doggies

yellowmonday-dog walk


yaelfran-French bulldog Ring


Matilou- Puppy Love


kittybutt- Little Stevie


KatrineK- Postcard


HeliS- Dog wallhanging


fragments- Dog


BowWowBeds-Unique Tough BIG DOG BED


AmeliaMakesArt- Custom Needle Felted Likeness of Your Dog

Tuesday 17 June 2008

New beginnings

It was a bit more than a year ago that we moved our too small workplace at home to a rented place downtown. Lots of space there and we invested a lot of energy and of course money to make the place nice and adequate to our needs. Unfortunately we got quite nasty neighbours at that place and we didn't feel safe there any more. Rather than expend more effort to make nice again somebody else's place, we decided to move back home.

Easier said than done, of course, because our house, although big enough, is already full to the nook. So a big reorganization was necessary, first moving lots of 'stuff' to the place under the roof. We needed three rooms altogether, or rather four.

For the first room, 'the atelier' (workplace) itself, a tiny guestroom and bathroom had to be joined. Those two rooms were in use as sewing room and garderobe room respectively. Here you can see a glimpse of the old situation, it took a few days to empty it:





And then the demolition fase:


The ceilings had different hights, and so did the floors.



The beginning of the building up, plaster work, tiles:


The 'painters' at work:


The moving in (which took 10 days):


And the results:



Nice, huh?
Coming soon: Fase two : The sewing room
Fase three: The Office
That is, if we survive, of course...