Oh I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside

...Oh I do like to be beside the sea!

Tomorrow in our shop the theme table will be visiting the seaside!

Just imagine a table full of pretty seahorse cushions and bags and all sorts of other ocean themed items that would just love to go home with someone new!

These two cards of my creation will be there:

my whale is still with us, I don't know why, if I saw that for sale I'd snap it up - I'm going to get a memory box/photo box and make another whale to live inside it, maybe he's just too nice to be only a card, I'm not sure.

And my seahorse will be there keeping the whale company!

Lilly Cottage & Friends

in Coutts Cottage

at the Petrie Markets

Sundays from 8am to 2pm!

Look forward to seeing you!

xnata

So Much More

If Paris themed cards aren't what you are looking for, I have much more to offer.

Baby bootie cards

Wedding dress cards - great for giving with wedding or engagement gifts

Thank you cards

And even some Dad related cards for those buying last minute Father's Day gifts.

There is more, but I'll let you come and find them for yourselves :)

If we don't see you down at Coutt's Cottage this Sunday, I hope you have a nice day with the fathers in your family, and Happy Father's Day to all daddies from me.

I love my Daddy,

xnata.

Ooh La La!

At Lilly Cottage & Friends we've got a special theme table on which we display our precious items in a different theme every week.

This week our theme is French, so I've been working on some Ooh La La items!

The Eiffel Tower with a pinky paper to compliment

A French Poodle

A tribute to the romantic city

Cute, oui?



I've always loved French, I learned it a bit in primary school and learning to speak it fluently is on my life 'to-do' list. I'll take lessons one day (when I have time), but for now I practice by learning french songs, which is lots of fun. I know quite a few now, and I'm actually starting to be able to tell you what the words mean, so that's a step in the right direction I say.

So, if you love gay Paree, come and spend a spring day at the Petrie markets with us!

C'est si bon,

xnata

Shop Treasures: Through the Eyes of a Little Girl

While we were setting up our shop, a little girl kept my husband on his toes :D

Rosey's youngest girl, the adorable, inexhaustable Claudia.

Before we went home from the day I gave her a little lesson in photography; here is our shop through her eyes.

Pretty good, don't you think?

I say there's another artist in the family :)

xnata

Moving In Day!

Today I joined my shop friends at Coutts Cottage to move our goodies in to one of the two rooms we will have! We'll be open this Sunday, the 29th, but we are saving our Grand Opening Day for when the place has had a coat of paint on the outside and hopefully we'll have our second room too.

Now I'm not going to go showing you the whole glorious thing at once, if you want to see it you'll have to come down this Sunday or wait for our Grand opening, but here's a sneak peek for my loyal blog followers:

Out the front there are pretty pink flowers...

So many treasures lie beyond that window...

Like these goodies, made by my two market buddies!

My cards are there of course, in a new display case that I decorated :D

But really there is just so much more to it than this, you really should come and see the rest for yourself.

Although shortly I'll be posting a few pictures of our stuff from someone else's point of view...

looking forward to Sunday the 29th!

We'll be open from 8am-2pm folks!

xnata

A Big Announcement

Hello my devoted blog followers, I am back from Cairns!

More on that in my next post though. I have something else to tell you about.

You know that poster I made and showed you in the last post? I kind of don't need it anymore.

You see, I won't be having a market stall anymore.


Rosey and Linda and I are making a move, into Couts Cottage at the Petrie Markets!

That's right, we're moving up in the world and our goods will be available for purchase every Sunday! My cards will be there every week! I'll be there some Sundays, we'll be working out the finer details soon.

I wish I had a picture of my own to mark this momentous post, but I don't, if you click on Linda's link above you'll see the beautifully magical place at which my cards will be from the 29th of August on. They'll be there every week people, every week. Very exciting, and I'll continue to detail this exciting new chapter of Renata Clarke Designs right here on this blog so stay tuned.

Happy dance time!

xnata

New Poster

Just thought I'd make a quick post to show you the new poster I've made for our market stall. I've done this on two pieces of about A1 sized paper (so really big paper), and apart from the flowers and clouds this was all traced, so don't give me too much credit there. As I said I've made two of them so that we'll have one for either side of the blackboard we use at our market stall, and I coloured it all in with these cool pastel sharpies I bought ages ago and until now hadn't actually used. Now its just a matter of having them laminated and then they'll be all ready to go!

Looking at it makes me smile, I hope it does the same for everyone :)

xnata

Seahorses and Hot Air Balloons

MARKETS THIS SUNDAY!!!

Petrie Markets Sunday 8th of August

8am-2pm

That's right, its the second Sunday of the month this Sunday, so my market buddy and I will be at the Petrie Markets from 8am-2pm. I'm very busy with uni and various other life stuff at the moment so I apologise for my slack posting both last week and I'm guessing in the week that is ahead of me.

I'll be heading off to Cairns for five days on Thursday of next week, a much needed break from everything, but I promise to take pictures and have a wonderful time. But before that I'll be doing a test for one of my uni courses, cleaning this house and packing everything we need, and of course, going to the markets.

I've made thirteen cards for this market, and I won't show you all of them but here are some of the treasures to be bought by willing customers:

A happy birthday cupcake, of which I have another in purple and green.

A seahorse to keep the whale card company because it is still with us at the moment.

Some green trees for a change, because Autumn isn't the only season.

and a hot air balloon to float away in.

I've also made some flowery cards, some dragonflies and some butterflies. All good fun and pretty.

So if you like what you see there's more where that came from, I'll see you this Sunday!

xnata

Markets In the Wet

Today's market featured a guest that can be nice sometimes but spoils outdoor events, rain.

As we arrived it was dry (picture above was taken exactly 2 minutes before the rain began) and not too cold and we thought it would be a good day, but alas it began to spit and continued to spit on and off all morning. This of course meant that the crowds were smaller than usual, and most of those there were hurrying along under umbrellas and only stopping to go into actual buildings or to buy food.

However, while I did have my lowest number of customers ever, one wonderful woman saved the day for me by buying...SEVEN of my cards. Wow. I hope she enjoys them. Thanks to her it was another profitable market adventure, and I must get cracking on making lots more before I have the next market, which I believe would be the 8th of August. I do have two assignments coming up that month but I'll balance them out as best as I can and see how we go.

Before this market day I managed to make eleven cards, which was good, and six of them are baby bootie cards, only one of which actually sold today, but oh well, I've got them for next time I guess.

These are the baby bootie cards, in 'its a boy' and 'its a girl' varieties, I also have ones that just say 'congratulations' and are in non-gender specific colours for those who are giving them at baby showers or perhaps to a grandparent rather than the parents.

This cute little flamingo has gone off to a new home already.

This bunch of roses has also already been bought...

...As has this tree.

It wasn't a brilliant day seeing as the rain came and the sun never showed, but it was still a pretty good day seeing as both me and my market buddy made profits. So we'll be back on the 8th with rings on our fingers and bells on our toes. But the rain is not invited and will be very unwelcome if it shows up. Rain rain go away, Please don't come on market day!

Whatever craft you do, go do some!

xnata

Bags, Lessons and Markets

Well, I forgot my camera (again) on Sunday, but it was a great day at the markets!

I broke my record on profits (only by $5), but not on number of sales, 17 is still the winner there. It was a really nice day, not too windy, and while it was very cold when we first arrived, the sun warmed us up and it was lovely.

We had an unusually large number of requests for baby related cards, so I'm trying to get lots of those ready for this Sunday! Yes, that's right, this is our one off two weeks in a row at the markets! Next month we'll be back to the usual once a fortnight deal of every 2nd and 4th Sunday.

I like to learn and improve on my efforts when it comes to the markets, and do whatever I can to make it a smooth and easy service for both me and any of the customers. And on Sunday I made a final decision on one thing: my cash box was not working well. As brilliant and handy as it was in the beginning, (made by my husband back in his high school days), the bending down out of sight of the shoppers to fiddle, and the fact that it had no divisional compartments, and trying to get the right money out of the little sealed bags I had in there, was all just too time consuming and inaccurate. I felt like it all goes smoothly until someone hands me money, and then my salesmanship is replaced by an awkward clumsiness that undermines the whole transaction.

So I had a bit of a think about possible solutions, ruled out a cash box all together, ruled out the 'bum bag' look, I simply can't pull that off, and decided that what I needed was basically a wallet on a handbag strap. A small bag with lots of handy compartments to separate the silver from the gold, the pink from the blue, the red from the yellow. I did not know if such a devise existed, but yesterday I set out with my determined face on and lo and behold, I found something!

On SALE no less!

It is small, simple and cheap, yet not ugly! There's a combination that agrees with my wallet. So I've handed the cash box back to its real owner and divided up all the coins and notes in this little cutie.

I've adjusted the strap so that it fits comfortably across my body, and the husband likes it so it officially has been welcomed into my world. (note the beige door it's hanging on, right next to the beige wall? Yeah, THAT'S why I'm painting this place)

I also bought myself a very cute jumper that I've had my eye on, which I will be wearing at the markets this Sunday, AND, I stopped in at my favourite scrapbooking shop to find that they were having a sale, and that what I wanted was 20% off. A perfect shopping day.

Today I'll be making some baby cards as highly requested, and continuing the painting of the trim of my house. On the subject of the painting I've learned a lot from this experience and all the parts I've fully completed look wonderful, but in future I will paint the trim first, then the walls. Not that it hasn't worked the other way, it's just caused me stress that I didn't need at that moment when you have to pull the masking tape off. Once I've finished the trim of the living/dining area, I'll be moving on to the painting of the bedroom, and the husband and I will set up camp on the fold out couch for a couple of nights.

And lastly, once again I had several requests for lessons throughout the market day, so now I just need a place and a source for the tools of quilling, preferably at wholesale to keep it an affordable lesson for all these future students. *sigh* So the search continues for that part. The last place I looked at was very promising, until I found out it went out of business four years ago and just never closed its darn website.

See you at the markets on the 25th!

xnata

Eye Candy

Tomorrow we'll be down at the Petrie Markets once more, and I have made lots of cards in preparation, though not nearly as many as I wanted to have done, but there's not much I can do about that at this late stage. In the last week I've painted the walls of the dining, lounge and hallway areas of our house, and I did such a good job that now my husband wants me to do the whole rest of the house 0_o. This has taken up a lot of my time, thus leaving me only one full day to try to quill as much stuff as possible. But hopefully the items I have made are enough and we have another lovely day at the markets.

Come and see us please, we love our customers and friends :)

Now I'll quickly show you some of what will be on offer, and remember, if you want it you need to come to the markets to get it because the early bird catches the worm!

Speaking of birds...

He's so tweet.

And for the Christmas in July theme I've made a whole bunch of these gift tags:

Then there's a very girly rose card that looks like it'd be perfect for a girl with attitude:

And some lolly cards...

and some dragonfly and butterfly cards...

I love these long skinny cards and want to make more, but they are sooo expensive compared to the ones I usually use. Must seek out a source for them at a much cheaper rate, because these have turned out so very well that I desperately want to make them again.

These and much more will be with me at the markets tomorrow, and then we'll be there again the Sunday after, so next week I'll be making lots more cards to keep my stocks up, so watch this space for more pretties.

One last thing before I rush off to my saturday night plans - I've had a lot of requests for teaching quilling when I've been at the markets and other places, and I am attempting to find a way to make that possible I promise. If you are one of the people that wants me to do this, keep checking this site regularly and hopefully I will soon have the resources and a venue to be able to do this with you!

See you tomorrow!

xnata

It's Christmas in July!

That's right, the theme of our special market day on the 18th of July is Christmas in July! Yay!

I love Christmas, it is such a joyous occasion, but we here in Australia don't get to enjoy a traditional Christmas in July, all rugged up in beanies and scarves, making snowmen, eating cookies and milk by the fire. Here in Queensland it's even worse, because it doesn't snow here at all! But someone, I don't know who, invented Christmas in July just so that we can enjoy Christmas from the perspective of those on the other side of the hemisphere. So no koalas in christmas hats or santa wearing thongs and boardshorts this month!

At our special Christmas in July market stall I'll be displaying the cards about the cold Christmas only. Here's just three of the ones I've made so far:

We have a dapper little snowman in scarf, top hat and two types of cane. His little carrot nose really does stick out like a carrot!

Then there's the fully decorated Christmas tree, complete with tinsel, coloured baubles, and star. Very festive.

And finally, the favourite of the Christmas collection thus far, a wintery Christmas scene. The fire is going, there's snow falling outside the window, and the lights and Christmas tree stand out in this warming scene. There's gifts under the tree and cookies and milk on the fireplace's mantle. Looks like a great place to be doesn't it?

So there you go, Christmas in July is our special event! There'll be more like this and plenty of my non-Christmas stuff there too. Come down in your scarf and hat and buy some Christmassy goodies, and keep them to enjoy in December!

Oh the weather outside is frightful,

xnata

(signoff - Let it snow by Dean Martin)