Monday's lineup

I managed to eek out what little sunshine came into our living room this morning in order to finally take these photos. New fabrics to appear in the shop on Monday!

Firstly, Houses & Bicycles in lots of colourways:


Houses & Bicycles in Teal on cream


Houses & Bicycles in Robins Egg Blue on cream


Houses & Bicycles in Oranges on cream


Houses & Bicycles in Chocolate on seed

And some old favourites:


Birch Forest in Robins Egg Blue on cream


Birch Forest in Gold on cream


in Robins Egg Blue on cream


Riverside Adventures in Gold on cream

I'll be popping this lot up into the shop at about 10:00am Monday 23rd. It's a very whimsy themed update I reckon.

Oh - quick question! The houses print is available full width for once! Do you want it available in both full and half width?

oh so ground breaking stuff

The cool thing about having a little fabric mafia is that we can ride on each other's successes. After Shannon did something oh-so-groundbreaking and printed light ink on dark cloth (our printer had concerns about quality, but it turned out to be fine), Bianca and I followed suit :)


Ginkgo in Snow

I've been dying to print white ink on natural fabric for ages now, and I love the results! Given that the ink is opaque, it's tactile and sits more on the surface of the fabric. To me this helps emphasize the screen printed nature of the fabric and helps set it apart from digitally printed stuff. Especially because with digital you can't print light on dark cloth. Yay!


Ginkgo in Red Orange


More mix packs ahoy

Anyway, I reckon this lot will go up in the shop on Monday morning, along with some other goodies (including some more mix packs and some Birch Forest).

Let's say Monday 26th, 10:00am Melbourne time?

Rainy Day in Autumn

Oh my gosh, 103 comments and suggestions on my last post! Thank you all SO much for your name suggestions, they were brilliant! Definitely kept me entertained over the weekend. I loved all the suggestions that related to trees and forest (I love trees, did you know?) but in the end I just couldn't get past the fact that it looks like rain to me.

So ..... I decided to go with 'Rainy Day in Autumn' :) 'Rainy Day' as the print name, and Autumn as the colourway, so later I can do Spring and Summer etc, as per Retro Age Vintage Fabric's suggestion.

Some free fabric will be heading over to Mia for the name, and Retro Age Vintage Fabric for the colourway/theme. Send me your details - thanks so much girls!



On that note, the shop is updated right now! I'm sorry that the price of Rainy Day is a little more expensive than usual - although I reduced costs on screens, 4 colours still costs more to print. But I think it's totally worth it :)

new fabric print - yay!!

I have been waiting for this for what feels like SO long. Finally my new 4 colour print has come back from the printers, and I am so happy with how it turned out. Here's a little preview!



One of my favourite things about this print is that all 4 colours are printed off the one screen. Tricky and complicated yet fun to set up! It helps keep the production cost down and makes multiple colour prints actually affordable.



There's only one problem though. I have NO idea what to call the print, and what to call the colourway! I've already done a print called "raindrops" so I can't use that. I was thinking something like 'rain', 'water', or just 'drops'. Or 'winter rain' which describes the colour at the same time... but maybe thats too depressing.

Anyway, I'm totally open to suggestions at this point. If you manage to suggest a name or colourway that I end up using for this print - I'll send you a free piece of the fabric :)

Hopefully something will be decided before Monday 28th, 9am Melbourne time, which is when I'm putting this up in the shop :)

little tags for mix packs

Thanks everyone for the lovely comments about my sketchbook! Definitely inspires me to turn some of those drawings into actual things. Looks like the 'book tree' is number one :)

I finally got around to making some more fabric mix packs this week. For awhile now I've been unhappy with the presentation of the packs - it seemed a bit stale, not cute enough. I like the idea of putting the fabrics in a cute little bundle, but you have to be careful doing that because if the thickness exceeds 2cm it becomes a 'parcel' rather than a 'letter' and therefore a gazillion times more expensive.

Anyway, I think I've found a good middle ground. And with the addition of some old fashioned swingtags (gocco printed at midnight last night), I think they look much better all round.





I'll be putting these up in the shop probably Monday 28th :)

Gocco tip - I've often had problems with the large solid areas of my prints being a bit patchy. I believe this is due to excess carbon in the original artwork which overheats and stick to the screen. However - there's some special stuff you can get called "Artwork Clean-up Paper". It looks suspiciously like baking paper and you iron it over your original and it lifts the excess carbon off. Worked for me!

the case of the completely absent banner

I can't believe this - I just realised that the banner image on my shop was COMPLETELY MISSING when viewed in Internet Explorer! And nobody mentioned it! Maybe they thought I was trying to be all minimalist and cool with that big white empty space at the top of my site. No, not quite. Instead there's supposed to be a pretty slideshow banner there. Sigh.

Well, that teaches me to indulge in my little Firefox world and not test things more thoroughly.

In brighter news, check out these gorgeous one-of-a-kind hand stitched softies by Cat Rabbit!


These ones are sitting on the counter at Cocoon, looking so adorable I had to take one home.


And here he is keeping me company on the couch where I spent the day unwell. He's a cat dressed up as a rabbit and you can take his hood off and everything. Too cute.

first batch o' 2008

I've been eagerly awaiting this latest print run - some reprints of my favourite & most popular prints and colourways. And the best bit is that the colours all go well together - I like it when that happens:



There's plenty of Ginkgo again this time. I've made a slight adjustment and made the robins egg blue colour slightly greener. It goes better with the olive green. Plus, this time the printers managed to get a wonderful 'overprint' effect on both the colourways , so you can see the dots through the leaves like I originally imagined. Yay :)

I'll be putting these ones up in the shop first thing Monday morning - 9:00am Melbourne time. Hope to see you there :) :)

xx

Couldn't resist...

I know it's borderline narcissistic of me, but I couldn't resist purchasing this gorgeous Peg Bear Salsa from Jhoanna of One Red Robin. It is just tooooo cute!! He will sit in my office and keep me company. I hope she makes some more of these cuties!!


Peg Bear by One Red Robin

Hey come to think of it, he makes a great form of advertising for my next shop update! I have a couple of rolls of bulokku in robins egg and burnt orange that I've been meaning to put up for ages now. I just wanted to get the new shop 'broken in' first. So the next update will be this Thursday at 9:00am Melbourne time!

Thanks to everyone who bought some of the fabric mix packs and also gave me some critical feedback on the new shop. I've now included a 'sold items' section like on etsy so people can see what they've missed. Any other suggestions - keep them coming!

xo

new homes

Firstly I just want to say a quick thank you to everyone for their lovely comments about house hunting. I feel heaps better about it today and we're back on the prowl. Meanwhile I'm having a great time focussing on my new internet patch o dirt: the new shop! Which I can now reveal the ever so secret location of:

www.laracameron.com/shop

I bet that wasn't too hard to figure out. I fact one clever chicken already did, and has signed herself up for a customer account already. So get in quick before she buys up the whole lot! hehe.

New shop & fabric mix packs ahoy!

Tomorrow morning is the launch of my new shop! I've done a bunch of testing, tried to break it in every which way, and so far so good! The main thing I was concerned about was two people trying to order the same thing simultaneously, like what used to happen on Etsy. And sure enough, the shop software would actually let two people check out the same single item at the same time! Gawd that was a recipe for disaster, so I've changed the code to fix that.



Anyway it'll be just a small launch tomorrow with a bunch of fabric mix packs. The shop will open at 9:00am and I will do a post here to tell you the URL :)

oops!

I was sitting at my computer at 7:30 this morning doing shop-related calculations thinking - something's not quite right here. I've sold most of what I put up in my shop yesterday, but I'm only just breaking even with my production costs.

And then I figured it out. I only listed in my shop HALF of what I actually have! For example I entered 10 quantities (5m) instead of 10 metres!

So, to anyone who missed out on something they wanted, there's more in the shop right now! If you've already placed an order and you'd like me to combine shipping - just include a note to the seller and I'll send you a revised invoice (it'll only be $1 less, but hey :) ).

Sorry about that!

fabrics in the shop

The shop is now healthily stocked up with the new Bulokku print and some other old faves:



The Birch Forest has all sold out in a snap though. I really need to do something about that. Birch is printed from the same screen as Riverside Adventures which doesn't sell quite so well, so I think it's time to separate them!

I can either find another design to print alongside it (maybe My Little Town??) or, I can modify the Birch to be full width. I'd probably do this by increasing the scale of the design slightly and adding more branches at the top. But I'm not sure - would that design really work 1.5m tall?? Is a full width Birch fabric even useful to crafters? Would love to hear people's thoughts on the matter...

Stocked up

Woohooo, my shop actually has a decent amount of stock in it for once! I uploaded a bunch of mix packs this morning, plus the two ginkgo designs, and I think for once there's enough for everybody... plus more :)

And this might seem like Deja Vu if you've read Kristen's post - but check out this lovely little package I received from Suz of Cocoon in Launceston:




How did she know I have a lip balm obsession!?

We've only spoken over the phone but she sounds sooooo lovely, and bought a bunch of my stuff for her shop. And check out how gorgeous it is! (I pilfered these photos from Kristen's blog too):




More photos here.

It's funny how you suddenly get a whole new impression of a town you've never been to once you know there is an awesome, funky shop there. I might catch the boat over to Tassie one day and check it out!

Ginkgo

Thank you to everyone who commented on my pricing post the other day. I really appreciate your honesty when it comes to such matters - especially tough ones like that.

Meanwhile, the shop has been cleared of fabric yet again and I worked hard this weekend to get all the orders packaged and posted off before I get swept away with other commitments. Really glad to have got that all done.

So, onto something new. Since I started producing textiles, there are three things that I have always aspired to achieve. 1- to print on a really lovely, natural feeling base cloth. 2- to print a 2 colour design, and 3, to produce a design that I feel wholeheartedly confident about and proud of.

And finally, at the risk of sounding conceited, I think I've finally managed to pull off all of those three things:





I'm reeeeally happy with how this one turned out. I was fretting about it for ages until I finally got it back from the printers and saw how the colour & scale turned out. I really hope you like it too.

I need a bit of a break before doing another shop update, so these two colourways will be up in the shop maybe Thursday or Friday this week, along with some mix packs. I'll confirm the time later on :)

a long day

It has been somewhat of a mammoth day! The shop has been cleared out of all fabric except for some of the gold raindrops and poppies. Which is funny because they were my favs! But each to their own :)

This morning was more stressful than usual - Etsy threw it's hands up in the air a couple of times when two people tried to buy the same item at once, dropping items out of their cart and all sorts of things. Many upset emails were received. But all was smoothed out in the end.

In the midst of it all, my letterpress tags made their way up into the shop also:



Thanks again to Lynn from Satsuma Press for doing the printing :)



Definitely time to clock off. Dumplings and Kareoke time I think...

New fabric and a note about pricing

New fabric is in the shop right now!





Now, I don't assume for a second that you guys haven't noticed my prices steadily increasing over the year. Pricing is a really difficult subject and something I do a lot of thinking, research and stressing about. This time, the prices have gone up again for a few reasons. 1, to accommodate the fact that the USD has been weakening, and with Etsy forcing us to list in USD us Aussies have been losing out. 2, to be more fair to my wholesale customers and not be undercutting them so much (thanks to Bianca and Craft Inc. for this advice!). And 3 to be more fair to myself, if I want to be able to make an actual living out of doing this. So yeah. Prices will continue to go up slowly, but will stop when they reach a point that's fair for all :) I promise it won't be crazy expensive :)

Fabric Notebook Cosy kits

Well, the fabric mix packs have all been snapped up already, but the fabric notebook 'cosy' kits are still available in my shop as of right now. *UPDATE* - oops sorry! They've all gone again already! I'll get onto making some more :)





I had fun putting these together and choosing the fabric combinations, and printing out the instructions in colour and guilt free with my new printer jigger!

whoosh...

Uh okay, wow. Whilst I spend 3 hours out of the house at a dinner party and doing this...


(my friend is a vet and was looking after this huuuge bunny)

...you guys are snaffling up all of my fabric packs! Sorry to those that missed out - I had no idea they'd be so popular! Lesson learnt - i'll be sure to reserve more of my fabric in future for little mix packs!

I actually do have a few more pieces that I can put together into kits, so i'll do that in the next day or so. I've also reserved a bunch more fabric for notebook kits - basically a similar amount of fabric which comes with instructions for making a reversible notebook cover. They'll be going up into the shop this week also :)

Bed time for me, but thanks sooo much for your keen-ness! It was a lovely thing to come home to.

4 new fabrics - finally!

Whee! My new fabric designs got back from the printer on Friday and they turned out great! I'm really happy with how the colour turned out particularly the gold. I was quite fussy about how the gold should look (I'm sure Kristen can relate). The pantone-based samples I originally got from the printer were either too greeny, or too orangey, so I got them to hand mix a colour that was in between. And they did a lovely job!



I plan to put these up in my Etsy shop on Monday morning, about 9:00am Melbourne time.

Oh also, I owe a belated but big thank you to Victoria E for doing a little interview/writeup about me on her blog (all about green, crafty, and DIY living). She wrote some really lovely stuff and obviously did her research :) Thanks Victoria!

More in the shop

Wow thank you so much for the lovely comments on my last post! Some fantastic suggestions of places we should visit in Japan - I don't think there'll be any shortage of things to do! We're going in August for two weeks and are staying & traveling with a friend who lives in Tokyo - perfect!

I haven't been a very good blogger lately it seems - quite a while between posts and most of them have just been fabric updates. But some cool new interesting stuff is coming up which I'll post about in the next few days. Meanwhile, there's some more fabric up in the shop today. This is the second last run before my printer takes a break, and then I go away. So no more until September or so. But that's fine - I don't want to oversaturate the market or anything ;)


All available here.

Have a great weekend :)