Christmas shopping anyone?

Hello and welcome to the final x amount of weeks before Christmas!!!  Are you excited or just plain scared!!!! 

In the interest of your sanity please let me remind you that I have handmade goodies available for sale at very reasonable prices in my madeit store :)  I would love for you to pop by and have a visit :)

Sugarbird Madeit Store

Or if you are mega organised and are making your own presents I also have craft supplies available in my craftumi store :) 

Sugarbird Craftumi Store

Here are some of the things available and I have now finished self promoting for today - it is hard work and I am not very good at it lol

Sassleberry Creations

I love wondering through facebook and blogs to see what other people are making, creating and doing.  I have come across some amazing and lovely people, so I thought it was about time that I shared some of them with you.  

The lovely Sarah from Sassleberry Creations actually found me, when she was starting up a facebook page and was looking for a logo. 

 You can find her at

 https://www.facebook.com/SassleberryCreations 

Sassleberry's page is all about lovely hand crafted jewellery, reasonable prices and great customer service.  So pop over and say hi.  Who knows, you might find the perfect piece of jewellery you have been looking for, or Christmas presents that will be cherished because they have been hand made with love :)  Sarah is also having a 20% off sale at the moment that ends tomorrow night.

 Here are some of my favourites.....

Here Kitty Kitty Kitty......

Drawing and making cats is fun fun fun and if you haven't met Joey before, let me introduce you to my inspiration.

He is definitely an original and so loves the camera - as you can see.

This drawing was a very special order for a lovely lady who knew a cat like Joey.

And these are the latest and newest batch of magnets

Joey spends a lot of time sleeping on the lounge next to me while I create.   He is wonderful company :)

Oh what a day!!

As you should know by now - I HATE shopping - unless it is for craft supplies, and Saturday was spend doing just that.  Mum, Dad, the two kids and I went to the craft show at the Brisbane Convention Centre.  The 13 year old boy wasn't thrilled about the whole thing, but he took his ipod, so was occupied until it went flat.  Needless to say Mum (the patchwork enthusiast) the 9 year old (budding artist) and I had a really really good time :)  Want to take a look at what I got?

I still have to sort it all out and work out where to put it all, but at the moment it is just fun to look at a dream about what I am going to make.

The Quilts were also amazing and even managed to impress the 13 year old (not an easy thing to do)

And we all agreed that this was the most amazing quilt we had ever seen and the photo just doesn't do it credit.  The detail is truly amazing.

Aggghhhhhh Shopping!!!!

I didn't get as much drawing done as I wanted to over the weekend.  I am not complaining about Saturday.  We spend a lovely afternoon with an old family friend.  

But Sunday OMG I had to go clothes shopping!!  I finally had to give up trying to convince hubby the one pair of jeans I own would be fine for another year.  They got so thin that they tore across the bum!!! 

For those of you who view shopping as an enjoyable (time consuming) past time I apologise, because I managed on Sunday to break my last shopping expedition record (sorry Kim)  1 shop - 25 minutes - and 8 pieces of brilliant mix and match items.  I even impressed myself!!!  And for those of you who know me, even more shocking is the fact that there were no blacks or greys and two of the items were skirts!!!!  I even managed to get an outfit for my work Christmas party!!!  I am a legend in my own wardrobe!!

But I did manage to get some drawing done Sunday and Monday night and here is the first Owl Diary :)  Much more enjoyable than clothes shopping :)

Colour colour colour

I really enjoyed playing with blue and yellow on the last diary so thought I would keep going on the next one.

After the blue and yellow I then did a diary for Mich.  She wanted lilies and it has been a while since I have done any of them so, yes you guessed it, I had fun with them too :)  Owls are up next, they look really good in my head - wish me luck and stay tuned for the end results!

Blue and Yellow

I do really like pink and purple, but it was so lovely to play around with blues and yellows for the latest diary.  Sharyn, this one is for you and I hope you like it - I do :)

Ikeaing

We have been Ikeaing......... You know how it is, when you are a crafter, you can never ever have enough supplies.  But eventually you have to have more room to store them all (heaven forbid you stop collecting supplies) This has happened to me, so we took a trip to Ikea last week and finally this week we put the new shelves together for my work area.  We have Ikeaed many times in the past and (God love him) my hubby will actually glance at the instructions, so there is not a lot of stress involved, as you can see......

And now my new shelves are in position, but until I sort things out and find a home for everything.......my work area is the messiest it has ever been and is completely unusable.  Oh well, that might be a job for tomorrow.  I am a bit tired from Ikeaing now:)

Christmas Pack Winner

Yes it is Monday evening so that means it is time to announce the winner of my latest giveaway.  I really need to thank you all for your lovely comments and for so many participants!!  You people are awesome!!

The winner for this giveaway, randomly chosen, is..........

If you could please contact me Jo we can arrange for the pack to be sent to you :)  

Once again thank you everybody, and the way the pageviews are going it won't be long before we have another giveaway :)

Diaries for Maddiee

Two more diaries all finished.  These ones are for Maddiee and they are my first dragonflies, but I am sure that there will be more to come :)

Christmas Tags

**Just a reminder - Enter the CHRISTMAS PACK GIVEAWAY HERE.  It ends tomorrow evening**

Yes I know, more tags!!!!  But I LOVE making tags.  They are little works of art with a purpose and Christmas ones are even MORE fun.  So here are the next batch :)

These ones are made from cardstock and the images are drawn freehand with the ever faithful white pigment ink

Diary update

I am still busily working my way through orders for 2013 diaries.  It blows me away that you wonderful people like my work enough to pre-order :)  I have had some wonderful feedback from those who have already received theirs.  So a BIG THANK YOU to you all!!!

If you haven't ordered one and are interested here are the details.

 Last year's diaries were a HUGE success, so if you are interested in having a diary with an original Sugarbird drawing on the cover, let me know.  Either email me (click on my profile for the email address) or PM me on facebook and we can discuss what design you would like :)

They are A5 in size and are a week to an opening.  They are also made with vegetable inks and recycled paper and cardboard, so not only will you get a one of a kind diary but you will be helping the environment - how good is that!!  They will be $15.00 each plus $3.00 postage within Australia.
They would also make great Christmas gifts for friends, family and teachers at the end of the year.  Here a a couple of the ones that have already gone out to their happy owners.

Tools of the trade

I have had a few people ask me recently what type of white pigment ink pen I use on my work, especially the polymer clay love birds and white line drawings.  So I thought that I would show you.  It is a lot of fun, and rather time consuming but the results are durable, they don't fade and I can get the kind of detail I want.  So if you are interested or have a budding artist in the family (hi Kelli)  why not give it a try.

**I use Art Spectrum Pigment ink that I get from Riot Art, but any good art supply store or online should have it.

**As you can see, the top of the ink only has a small pouring hole so I use little resealable containers to dip my pen into when I am working.  I also have blue tac on the base of the container so no spills happen.

**I bought these fine nibs in bulk on ebay a year or so ago.

**The nibs slip into the pen and are easy to remove and replace when they start to wear out.  The pen also came from Riot Art

** I also use a lot of tissues to wipe ink build up of the nib while I am working.  (but they looked very unattractive in the original photo)

I LOVE this white ink.  It is quick drying and appears almost glossy, and like I said, unlike some white pens, it does not fade or soak into the material it is being applied to. I hope this info helps and if you give it a go, I would love to see the results :)  

Tag!!!!!!

Fun, fun, fun with polymer clay this week.  I really enjoy making these tags.  It takes no time at all to make and bake the disks and it is so relaxing drawing on them with the trusty old white pigment ink.

And then I started playing around with some ideas for new magnets.  

I think I will call these Meow Magnets :) 

Margie's Diary

*** Don't forget to enter my Christmas Pack Giveaway.  Simply click HERE and enter ***

We had a lovely long weekend and hope you did too.  We did some family things, some things around the house and I also got some time to work on my diary order list.  This is one of two diaries for the lovely Margie.