Unfairytales

The time has come! Finally, I've got all of the business stuff, all of the sensible reading up on stuff, and a fair bit of the making stuff out of the way, and am very pleased to announce that I have just put my very first listing on my brand new Etsy store! Yay!

I can be found trading as Mythillogical- Myths & Fabrications here: www.etsy.com/shop/Mythillogica…
Presently, there is literally only one listing (I read somewhere it's best to put listings up slowly and steadily) but there will be more items added over the coming days.

I also got my backside in gear and set up a facebook page for my business too, which is here: www.facebook.com/Mythillogical so I'd be very very very grateful to any of you who go along and 'like' it (you'll get a sneak peak of some of the items that will shortly be up for sale as they appear on the cover photo), and extra superly massively fantastically grateful if you would share it with your friends too!

I'm pretty excited about this new little venture of mine- it's just nice to be actually doing something practical with my art!

Right- I'm off to go and write more product descriptions!

I thought I'd let you know about the Circle of Love Hand-crafted Give-away-

The basic idea is that craft bloggers can join in and donate an item for people to win, they blog about it and there are all sorts of different ways that anyone can enter from following one of the participating blogs, following facebook pages, following on twitter, blogging about the Circle of Love and all sorts of other ways to spread the love!

Once the winner is drawn they win not one, but all of the donated crafty lovelies!

There are terms and conditions and unfortunately only UK and EU residents can enter the competition (it's to do with UK insurance laws, not cos we wouldn't love non-EU residents to enter!) but you can be from anywhere to be a participating blogger and donate an item.

Full details can be found here: mythillogical.blogspot.co.uk/2…

My donated item is a needle felted Love-heart Tattoo brooch: unfairytales.deviantart.com/ar…

Hope some of you can join in and spread the love!

...not those briefs, obviously!

I've started a new page on my blog for 'audience participation'.

Basically if you would like to join in you just give me a brief to answer- it can be as specific or loose as you like, and if I think I can do something with it I will answer it, blog about the whole working process, and link to your blog/deviantart page/website as a thank you for your involvement.

More details can be found here: mythillogical.blogspot.com/p/s…

Anyone is welcome to put a suggestion forward! Please come and challenge me!

It would appear that since my last little flurry of activity on here I have fallen back into my old ways of not actually doing anything much. Thankfully, this time appearances can be deceptive. I have been creative (woo hoo!) just been so busy elsewhere on the world wide web and at my dining room table that I haven't put anything up here yet.

I have finally given in and started my own blog: mythillogical.blogspot.com/
It is currently being populated every few days with posts about old stuff, so some of the stuff on there you will have seen if you have already looked at my gallery, but I have tried to give a little insight to each piece as I post them, and there is also some really really old stuff on there that I don't think I've ever put up anywhere but on the studio wall at Uni before. I am also getting closer and closer to current day stuff, so after that the intention is that I keep going with the creativity in order to keep going with the blog.

Besides that I am toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop. I've made a few items with thoughts of possibly selling them. I'm just currently wondering whether it's actually worth it or not- weighing up whether the joy of making a sale is worth the pain of registering as self-employed, keeping records and receipts for everything and filling in a self-assessment form each year. I don't know if anything will even sell, but I know HMRC are cracking down hard and investigating people on Etsy to make sure they are registered, and I'm really not keen to get fined for selling nothing, so I'm trying to do my homework first. Any of you helpful souls- if you have experience of being self-employed in the UK- is the whole tax thing as scary as it seems or should I not let it put me off? If you don't have experience- would you actually be inclined to buy any of my stuff (I'll try to put a few bits in my gallery so you can actually see the products!) or is it really not worth me even trying to sell any of it?

Lastly- I've finally started needle felting and I love it! It is so addictive, and I love the way characters just appear out of what is essentially a big ball of woolly fuzz! It's incredible! I do need to try not to clench my jaw so hard while I'm stabbing away though- I gave myself awful jaw ache after making three consecutive pieces! If I go on like this I'll end up with lock jaw!

So, the last time I wrote or posted any new work on here before today was over three years ago! Yikes! Time really does fly. The time before that there was a whole year that went by, so by my calculations the next time I'll write or post anything new will be in five years time!!!!! Hopefully not, as now my daughter is a little older and a little less demanding on every last spare moment of time I have I am hoping to slowly let the creativity seep back into my life! I've started a new children's book project (with my daughter in mind) a rhyming book about a cat (because she likes cats and she likes rhymes...simplistic way to start a book but I'm hoping that brings me luck!) so hopefully at some point I will get round to actually making the model and photographing it and putting it on here.
Cross your fingers for me!