Happy Halloween!

I've been a busy bee lately starting my Christmas orders, but let's not forget there's another celebration coming up that, arguably, is just as much fun but without all the present pressure!

Should you want a little something to mark the ghoulish occasion, be it gifts or decorations, you can rely on makers of handmade crafts to come up with the goods. To prove that the devil gets all the best goodies (as well as music), here's a small selection of my favourite handmade Halloween items. Some eye candy to go along with the sugar candy, if you will. Click on the links below the pics to go straight to the product.

Enjoy!

Handmade Monster Costume

 This monster costume from GuuGuuGa makes me *snork* with laughter. If I had a child it would be in fancy dress ALL THE TIME. Whether it liked it or not.

Skeleton Hands Halloween Headband

Janine Basil makes the most incredible hair accessories. This would be brilliant for a halloween party - or even a halloween wedding. In fact, please, someone wear this at their wedding. And send me pictorial evidence. Kthxbai.

Jack O'Lantern Cat Collar

Mustn't forget the furbabies at Halloween! I love the little pumpkin charm on this cat collar from Mogs Togs. They've got candy corn, spiderwebs and skull and crossbones versions too. If only Doug would stop losing his collars....

'Trick or Treat' Handmade Spiced Soap

Yup, you can even get spooky soap! This 'Trick or Treat' soap from Oakwood Soaperie looks as good as it smells, with layers of black mica swirled throughout for a spine-chillingly luxurious bathtime.

Hollow Pumpkin Earrings

How on earth Sulwen Arts manages to hand-carve these teeny polymer clay pumpkins so that they are hollow like real jack o'lanterns is utterly beyond me. Eagle-eyed Tim Burton fans will also spot earrings shaped like the Boogeyman's dice in her Folksy shop.














I'll leave you with a word from our sponsor, Angry Lemur. Don't have nightmares, now.

Oh, hai Internets! Long time no blog.

In my mind, this is what the ice sculpture will look like.

So today I remembered I have a blog, and that it's been a metric eon since I updated it.

Well, lots of things have been happening in the world since we last spoke. Ice ages have come and gone. Huge gangs of disaffected yoof attempted to set fire to London in pursuit of new trainers. I finally finished watching every single episode of The X Files (can I get a 'hell yeah'), and Lemur Lady's Awesome Emporium has been going from strength to strength.

Turns out people seem to like my goodies, so I have been spending more and more time sitting, tongue-out-for-balance, at my sewing machine, batting away the cats and creating new items of awesomeness for all my lovely customers.

Oh yeah, and I'm getting married next month. That'll be where all my time's gone, then.

The wonderful thing about a wedding, to a crafty sort of a badger like me, is that the DIY possibilities are endless. The bad thing is that, well, the DIY possibilities are endless.

So far the handmade bunting has gone out of the window, figuratively speaking. 150feet of the stuff has been duly purchased from an ebay crafter with much more time on her hands than me. Paper chains, ditto. Handmade 'Woo Yay' flags (a la Offbeat Bride), origami bouquets, handsewn garter - all consigned to 'good idea at the time' pile.

On the other hand, I've been keepin' it crafty. My flowers and hair thingy (this is the official term), are from Etsy, my cake toppers and place cards were specially made by Folksy sellers, and my dress is being run up as we speak by my wonderfully talented mum (from whom I learnt all I know. Including the bad habits).

But I do still have my own to-do list. It's more modest than it originally was, but with just over 6 weeks to go it's still bringing me out in cold sweats. Once I've got the four bridesmaid's boleros cut and sewn (seriously, have you seen how much these things cost in the shops? How hard can it be?), I've just got 100 muslin teabag favours and boxes to create and label, a TARDIS shaped card box to make and a three tier cake to bake and ice the night before. All while keeping the Lemur Lady stuff ticking over. Simples.

Excuse me. I just have to go and run around in a panic for a minute.

*returns*

Ah, that's better.

Since some of the details are still secret-squirrel, I will be posting pictures, links, and thanks to all the wonderful and creative crafters who have contributed to the Wedding Of The Century once the day is over and I have sobered up and picked the confetti out of my hair.

(Incidentally, the best thing about the whole wedding stuff so far has been having cause to say "Of course, the dinosaur ice sculpture will need to arrive through the side doors during the table changearound". Brilliant.)

In which I very nearly begin to act like an actual grown up but get distracted by furniture joy

New desk, avec half-made Doctor Who cushion cover. Note Useful Pen Tray to right.

It's been a while since I last blogged (bless me internets, it has been many days since my last confession). And that is because I have been terribly busy building my All Conquering Sewing Empire.

My little virtual shop has become a doorway to a veritable virtual world - a new, bright, shining, slightly geeky world of Folksy forums, Facebook business pages and, let's face it, a lot of sewing.

So much sewing in fact, that my Significant Otter decided that he had had enough of carting the kitchen table the length of the flat to the living room, where I can sew in the light of the massive windows (they of the legendary curtains), and, more importantly, in the light of the television.

So he trollied off to the Oxfam and bought me my Very Own Desk. I can't begin to explain how terrifically exciting and important this is. Right now I am typing this on a laptop, on my very own desk, with my very own ANGLEPOISE DESKLAMP. Imagine! This is what proper grown ups do when they work at home. I've got a cutting board on one side - which one day I will even use - and my sewing machine on the other, and a huge pile of papers in between to make me feel important, and there's still room for the laptop!

This stamp makes everything better, even filing. Thanks skullandcrossbuns

And what's more, there's drawers. Mmmm. Storage joy. You know that lovely feeling when you get a new handbag and you allocate a whole afternoon to emptying your old one and reordering everything into all the new pockets and bits of the new one? Yes, you do. Don't pretend you don't. Well these drawers are like a humungous version of that. I don't know where to start. I've even got one of those little shallow ones at the top with the little bits in for paperclips and wotnot and I've already spent a happy half hour finding little thin things to fit in it.

Earlier this evening I even did filing. For fun. Now I have an accounts folder and a desk. I've got to get a swivelly chair and then I'm pretty sure the next stop is total domination of the world of business.


Must go. I've just realised that I can fit all my bobbins in the pen tray.

Playing at Post Offices

Right at the beginning of this blog I said "I'm not Etsying or Folksying". Well, that's now only half true. In a U-turn that I would compare to something to do with politics if I knew anything about politics or could be bothered to think of an example, I have given in to the capitalist machine and started to put my wares up for sale.

This partly came from the fact that, as mentioned in my earlier post, I can't stop buying pretty fabrics and making stuff from them. After a while, this becomes unsustainable. That's just maths. Having had some nice feedback from a few friends who have received items of mine as gifts, I was finally convinced that maybe I could try and recoup some of my outlay by garnering a few pennies from the paying public.

Also, I've always wanted my own shop. Like Emily in Bagpuss. Damn I hated that smug little bint. How did she even get a shop? How was she paying the business rates? What, if anything, did she ever sell? I digress.

Actually, there was a time before I wanted my own shop. When I was very little my mum had a friend who worked in Debenhams and I thought that was the most impossibly glamorous thing in the world. Debenhams smelled of perfume and the leather from new handbags, and everyone had to wear a silk scarf as part of their uniform and use tills with an immense and unfathomable amount of buttons that were incomprehensibly exciting to a small proto-nerd like me. When I grew up, I wanted to work in Debenhams.

A thing. From my shop. Maybe someone will buy the thing.

Sadly Debenhams isn't like Grace Brothers any more and the excitement of the till system has waned, but I still have a deep-rooted sense of unfulfilment that I never got my own shop. I want a tea-and-gift shop, where I would sell all sorts of wonderful kitschy things and serve tea from real china and have book clubs on Thursday afternoons and go next door to the bookshop every day for long liquid lunches with my friends Bernard and Manny and develop a new laugh with a turn and I'd be a summer girl.

But since apparently I can't live in an episode of Black Books I'm doing the next best thing for now.

Because I am an expert in digital marketing and computermabobs, I have managed to get a clicky box thing on the right of this page to link to my little shop.

It's called 'Lemur Lady's Awesome Emporium'. Because I like things that are awesome and I also like saying the word 'Emporium'. That's the sort of sound business judgement that will make my tea shop a success. One day.