Help me be creative again ...

I remember when Tori was Nicholas' age, I could sew with her playing on the floor of my sewing room. We had a game, she would put the pins into the pin cushion and then take them out (and then repeat). Unfortunately Nicholas puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. Different baby, different habits!

What this means is that I have to be a bit more inventive about how I create things. I've been playing around with putting some of my ideas down into patterns. Playing around in inDesign and illustrator.

I've created a PlanBig identity to go along with this mini project, hoping that it will be the kick up the bum I need to get one finished and get some feedback from some testers.

I love sewing and creating it keeps me sane. But I am discovering through my Librarianship work this year that I also love enabling people. Guiding and mentoring them. In an ideal world I would be confident enough to go into mentoring for small businesses, but not quite at the moment. So pattern making allows me to do this in the crafty world and I am in awe of friends who have ventured down this path and have kicked some serious goals.

So what can you do?

• Head on into PlanBig and give me the kick up the bum that I need or some advice to keep me going ... volunteer to be a tester when I *eventually* get this done.
• Give me some feedback .. good idea to market these patterns under "Pin, Cut, Sew" or should I do it under "Konstant Kaos"?
• Any additional advice?

Have you checked out PlanBig yet? There are some great charity organisations that need your help!

Saturday morning goodness

I can't believe I have made it to the end of the week!

If you know me, you will know that I can't start the day without a cup of tea. The fact that I lost a crown from a molar on the weekend, has made the hot cup of tea all the more challenging.

And yes I have my favourite mug ... this is it. A beautifully designed Nicola Cerini mug. Big enough for a decent cup of tea, but not too big that I don't make it down to the bottom of the cup.

Nicola Cerini designs wonderful things including mugs and bags. There are a lot of "knock off's" of her bags kicking around. She was the first to use PVC in front of beautiful fabrics in her bags (I believe).

One of my pet hates at markets, is other stalls that blatently knock off someone elses design. There is a regular market stall that repeatedly knocks off the style of "Mattt Bags". Everything except the Mattt tag. The one advantage that Matt has is that, a lot of his bags have handmade printed fabrics from designers such as Ink and Spindle (you must check out their fabrics, they are to die for!).

I am working on a few design ideas for some bags, but I am quite conscious that I want to create a unique product rather than something that someone else has done. It would be too easy to knock off someone elses design and I would probably sell lots of them, but at the end of the day I want Konstant Kaos to have some kind of integrity in what it sells. All of my patterns are developed by me! Trialed and developed prototypes kick around the house and generally make it into someone elses possession to trial. Yes there are similar things out there, but the patterns are all mine .... with this in mind I have created another blog/shop ... Pin Cut Sew is my space to sell my patterns and to also some of the unique fabrics that I seem to be good at finding (to of course make more money to spend on more fabric .. it is a vicious cycle!).