Some Kind Of Disco Fever

Last weekend was our September Made With Love markets. Think big hair, flailing around like second-rate versions of John Travolta, laughter, awesome buskers, and a questionable dance floor.

Crooked Stitch

As always, it was fun, it was silly, it was social, and we had a blast. Thank you to everybody who supports our little market – you rock our collective socks, and we couldn’t do it without you.

Now, onto the photos…

A little bit of Turning Trixie

Lisaloo

Awesome live music from Third Vine

Sweet Mia

Kicking it ABBA style with Michelle

Myself, Michelle & Claire

Photos are taken by the wonderful Naomi, who we are very lucky to have put up with our shenanigans. View the whole set here.

If you are interested in having a stall, drop me a line at decoy_roadie@hotmail.com We’d love to have you!

In A Land Far, Far Away

"A land called Wynyard. We held a market. It was rad.


And they lived happily ever after.


The end."

Our June Made With Love Market Bazaar was last Saturday, and as always, it was a great day. The dress-up theme this month was Children's Storybook Characters. It was our eighth (!) Made With Love, and it just feels like we're growing in leaps and bounds. We're getting an incredible response from the community, and it's just the best feeling to be surrounded by so many crafty folks one day a month - I feel like I could burst from all the warm and fuzziness happening. But I won't - bursting is most unbecoming for a lady.

The other thing that has been great is to not only be a part of the markets, but to be part of the behind-the-scenes action. Yes, sometimes we get a bit cranky pants. Yes, sometimes we just want all of the admin work to go away. But really, it's just us networking with the aforementioned crafty folk, and you can't be cranky pants about that, can you?

It's also kind of novel to have to prepare yourself for a dress-up once a month. This month's preparation went something along these lines:

A month beforehand - Have idea to dress as Puss In Boots. Feel very smug with self that in order to dress as this character, I only need to buy ears and a tail.

2 weeks beforehand - Purchase ears and tail. Continue feeling smug with self.

4 days beforehand - Curse self for not thinking outfit through completely. All well and good to have ears, tail and boots, but general decency and social niceties require me to cover up the bits in between. Panic.

3 days beforehand - Call Mum late at night, requesting her to express post a shirt that I'm sure I left in a suitcase at her place. Or in the wardrobe. It's possibly in the set of drawers...

2 days beforehand - Curse stupid self.

Day of market - Sleep in. Realise have hit snooze button 3 too many times. Have shower. Realise that nose ring has fallen out during the night. Search bedding for nose ring. Curse stupid self. Find nose ring. Attempt to put back in nose. Have sneezing fit. Sit down for a minute to regain composure. Try again. Cue second sneezing fit. End up getting facial bling in. Hurriedly get dressed. Draw on crooked whiskers with liquid eyeliner. Run out door. Forget about attached tail when sitting in car. Awkward moment.

So, as you can see, being a marketing crafter is quite an involved business. It is not for the fainthearted.

And now that you've been educated, onto the photos...

Sweet Mia

Lorise from Clever Zebra Designs. Totally cute as Heidi.

Rock My Roll

This particular dress-up gave us great scope to make a lot of jokes, bad puns, and misquote things. And when I say we, I mean me. But you knew that.

Sandra from Grace of Autumn & Wendy

Lisa from Lisaloo

We ended up having a Red Riding Hood (Michelle - Rock My Roll), Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz (Naomi, our awesome photo taker lady), Pippi Longstockings (Sandra - Grace of Autumn), Heidi (Lorise - Clever Zebra Designs), and the best surprise of all - a customer dressed as our fairy godmother. Bless her cotton magical socks.

Grace of Autumn goodies

Puss in Boots getting all swordy on Red Riding Hood

Naomi as Dorothy

To see more of the awesome shots that Naomi got, check out our facebook page. And a big thank you to Naomi for the photos, and everybody who supports our lovely little crafty day. We hope to see y'all next time!

Bringing The Trash To The Craft

Saturday just gone was our May Made With Love market bazaar, and what a day it was. Our dress-up theme this time was trashy housewives (in honour of Mother's Day). I cannot describe to you how much I actually enjoyed deliberately dressing like a trashbag. Although one thing that we collectively figured out is that it actually takes a bit of work to look trashy. You can't just roll out of bed - oh no! Leading me to wonder exactly how long some people I see around take to get ready. They must get up WAY early to look that trashy.

Baby Boudoir

In the interests of having properly smudged makeup, Michelle applied her makeup the night before, and slept with it on. Fool proof, right? We've all done it. You end up looking like an emo with a clown wig. Or is that just me? But no, her makeup rubbed right off during the night.

Avy Loves Ned

I was concerned as to the welfare of my new pillowcases, so I applied my makeup just before going in for a shower on Saturday morning. Seriously, it never fails. I've done it before, and then was subsequently informed that I looked like Alice Cooper. And lo and behold - my makeup washed off. I'm telling you - it's hard to look trashy.

Lisaloo

I also had to deliberately put a ladder in my tights. It made my heart cry. For years you spend every day wearing tights with the innate fear that certain ladder-hood will befall them if you so much as move the wrong way. It made me sad to do it, but I laddered them like nobody's business.

Nom nom nom

Anyway, costumes aside, it was a great day. We had the usual suspects, plus some fancy sushi and homemade pasta. I had sushi for breakfast, chocolate for morning tea, and homemade pasta for lunch. And I wonder why my jeans don't fit. But hey - I'm a trashbag. I'm allowed.

Extra nom nom nom

We also had the excessively radtacular Naomi with us, recording the day with her fancy picture machine. Naomi is a fab photographer, and also has a heart-warming turn of phrase - you can check her blog out here. And she did all of this for us for the price of a beer. What a chick.

Clever Zebra Designs

Turning Trixie

And a little more Turning Trixie

New cards by, you guessed it - Turning Trixie

Claire

Michelle, Claire and I

Michelle and random handy child

Fishwives

Who Ya Gonna Call?

When you want an 80's revival? The Made With Love gals of course. Yesterday we had our April market bazaar, and here's a sneaky peek of the fun we had (whilst dancing to David Bowie and Cyndi Lauper).

Allana in her prom best

Gorgeous paper flowers

Lisa going all Olivia Newton-John on us

Incredible Cambodian-made bags and accessories

From L-R: Madonna, Bold and the Beautiful, Kylie Mole

Claire, myself and Michelle

NEXT MARKET:
Saturday 14th May, 9am-1pm

45 Jackson Street,
Wynyard, TAS

Why Is A Raven Like A Writing Desk?

This is a slightly belated wrap-up of our March Made With Love Market Bazaar that was held on Saturday.

I’ve been struck down with a nasty version of the common cold, and yesterday I was sure that death was soon to come knocking at my door. I spent the day in bed, alternately coughing, cursing and whimpering, and just generally feeling very sorry for myself (in other words, woeing my boat).

I now realise that I may have been a tad hasty with the prediction of my untimely demise. It still sucked though.

Saturday was a great day, with a few less of our regular stallholders than usual, but a good vibe nonetheless. I got my hat finished in time for the dress-up theme (March Hare and the Mad Hatter), with only a couple of technical difficulties on the day (I think I pretty much ended up gluing the hat to my head). I looked a little less like the Mad Hatter, and a bit more like a deranged circus ringmaster than I’d hoped, but I think that people got the idea.

I also had the pleasure of taking care of Michelle’s stall this time, as she’s gone on a caravanning trip with the family (lucky gal). When I was unpacking her stuff, it was like a magic trick – every time I thought I’d grabbed the bulk of the stuff from the boxes, I’d find more. The woman is a machine.

Susie from Susie Lee Designs

Grace Of Autumn goodies

Myself, Allana and Wendy

Some little High Maintenance Hippy guys

Saward glass

Sandra looking gorgeous in her hat

End of day tally:
Amount of people that thought I was Michelle's sister - 2
Amount of people that thought I was a statue - 1

The next Made With Love Market Bazaar is on Saturday 9th April, and we'll be getting our 80's style on. Can anybody say Xanadu?

Working 9 To 5

I have so much news. So, so much news. I was going to break all of this up into separate posts, but the lazy in me scored the upper hand, so you’ll just have to deal with me talking crap for a little while. Or not read the whole blog post. Whatever.

First things first – I got a job. And no-one was more surprised than me. The job interview was one of those that you walk out of, as gracefully as you can, but on the inside you’re berating yourself, and your hand is itching to connect with your forehead. I didn’t think that I’d answered questions as well as I could, and I’d generally made a bit of a tool of myself. Afterwards, I considered doing a blog post about things to avoid in job interviews (What? You mean it’s been done before?!?), but I was too ashamed. Now, seeing as I actually somehow got the job, I have a few little tips.

I have long legs (yes, this is related… just keep reading). Don’t get me wrong. I like my legs – they’ve come in really handy for walking and stuff. However, they can become a troublesome thing on public transport, and when I sit at tables at cafes and restaurants and job interviews. There’s just not enough room under the table for me to sit comfortably. I spent the interview twitching and shifting, and trying to get comfortable – it didn’t work, but may have given the interview panel that I’d taken some illicit drugs.

Hand shaking. I am a hand shaker when the mood crosses me, and I know all of that stuff about how to shake hands, using the correct pressure, etc. The bit that I DIDN’T think through was the position of people in the room. I shook the hands of the first 2 members of the panel, and then realised that in order to shake the hand of the third, I would have to walk behind everybody and approach her from the back, which made things awkward for both of us. Upon the realization of my faux pas, I started walking in this hunkered down, crab crawl-type gait. I was thinking that it was probably one of the more unimpressive things that I’d ever done, but maybe they dug it. Who knows? The moral of this story is to think of placement. Location, location, location.

Secondly, the March Made With Love Market Bazaar is happening THIS WEEKEND! I’ve done so very little for it, but I know other people have actually been constructive. We ran a competition on our facebook page for this market, so that one of our followers could come up with the dress-up theme for it. We had some great entries, and the winner is “MARCH Hare, and The Mad Hatter”. We’re all a bit excited about the possibilities of this one. The winner will receive a vintage suitcase full of Made With Love goodies worth over $200. We’ll be running another competition in July, so if you’re interested in scoring some rad stuff, keep an eye on our facebook page.

I started making my hat for the market the other night at Stitch ‘N’ Bitch, and it seems to be going pretty well… Somehow I just guessed measurements and everything, and it seemed to come together. It made me realise that one of the most painful assignments from my TAFE days (making 3D letter using cardboard and glue and lots and lots of tabs) actually put me in good stead for making a top hat. Go figure.

Ridiculous TAFE assignment

I’ve been getting my papercraft on lately, and have done a scrapbooking layout for Allana, demonstrating how radtacular her fabric tape is. She’s made it from lovely vintage fabrics, and it’s self-adhesive so it’s really easy to use!

I’ve also made some cards for the markets.

And as of this week, I’m a fully fledged Tasmanian driver. I already had my Tassie driver’s license, and now I have the license plates to prove it. It was actually a bit of a sentimental moment when I took my ever so slightly crumpled New South Wales plate to swap over. But it’s the start of a new driving chapter. My car no longer gets egged on a regular basis, I’m not getting tailgated nearly as much, and she’s actually clean at the moment. Love it.

Quick update on online dating: Dear random toolbag, I am not here to stroke your ego. Please stop fishing for compliments, as I will shut you down in a heartbeat. Kind regards, Sarahla.