Holiday Sale

My annual Thanksgiving Holiday Sale is on!!  Now through Tuesday 11/27 all pleated and flat pouches are 30% off in my Etsy shop.  That's only $10.50 a piece!  The perfect pretty and useful gift to fill with makeup, art supplies, or just give by itself.  Plus, I've got a few tote bags and art prints just waiting to go to a good home.

I used to do my yearly sale every August, but dropped the ball last year.  So, I'm bringing back my August / Back to School sale in both my online store and Etsy shop.  All pouches are now 30% off!  The sale ends on the 31st.  Maybe it's time for some extra early holiday shopping?

new prints - fall / winter 2012

Just finished a marathon print run.  My poor hands are so dried out and itchy and sore from washing ink out of screens.  They look like puffy scaly pink raisins.  


I know, you're thinking "wear gloves, genius".  Unfortunately wearing any kind eventually gives me a rash.  Even the doctor is like, "Yup, contact dermetitis. Don't do things that make it inflamed.".  Not helpful.  I'd include a gross photo for maximum sympathy, but I like you too much for that.   


Luckily, it turned out to be worth the pain and now I can give my angry little hands a break for a few days.  

My favorites so far are "alpine forest" and "fig. 1 in yellow".  It's weird to finally feel like I'm designing stuff I truly love after all these years.   I have no idea where it is coming from.  Of course, that doesn't always mean anyone else will like them too, but my fingers are crossed.  


I'm feeling really energized and motivated for this upcoming season.   Still a bit behind where I wanted to be by July, but I'm doing much better than past years.  Little things keep coming up and take precedent over other plans...you know how it is.  

Part of the reason I need to stay extra motivated this summer is that I'm also prepping for my first fine art show in years.  Eeeek!  It's going up mid-Oct.  It will be totally different work than what I do for Modern Radar.  Lots of assemblage and scupltural pieces.  A very much needed change for me.  I'll try and share bits and pieces as I experiment.  The only issue is I'll need to wait and start building most of the final pieces closer to the show since I have to store it all in my work space.   Hence, getting printing related stuff done before then is a must. 

Check out the other new prints in my Etsy shop if you have time!  Oh, and I'll also be expanding the Moder Radar Online Store again sometime in Sept. so most of the same merch will be in that shop too.

more experimenting

A few new pouches are now on sale in my Etsy shop.  This time I went simple with the form.  The first two patterns are "arrows" and "snowflake".  They are just like my pleat pouches, but without the pleats.  Btw...I'm not at all sold on the name "snowflake".  Unlike the visual part of my brain, the 'naming things' zone is incredibly fl.......lazy (errr - I'll leave the grampa-worthy puns to the professionals,  a.k.a.- my husband).  Any brilliant naming suggestions welcome!


I'm thinking about one or two more patterns for these, or maybe a second colorway?   I'm really liking the colorful zippers.  Maybe I'll work contrasting zippers into my older bags to freshen them up for fall?  

what's new?

I know I always say this, but has it really been seven months since my last post?  Time gets lost these days, among months filled with contemplating and creating new merchandise for 2012.  To be completely honest, I lost a lot of my motivation this previous year, mostly due to being overwhelmed by my new duties as mom, but also being uninspired from making the same old designs I have been living with for almost three years now.

Thankfully, these days I am finding more ways to balance work and family.   I've had to make a few tough decisions...like discontinuing my line of tote bags.  My greeting cards will now be available through retailers and at events, but not in my online stores (unless you ask, of course).  My classic pleat pouches still sell really well in stores and will be available through awesome retail shops like the Little Otsu Mini Store (at Rare Device in San Francisco) and Domestica (Des Moines), but I will keep a more limited range of the older designs in stock online to make room for new experiments and limited edition items.

This week I will start rolling out some of my new experimental designs.  These will be available in limited quantities through my online shop and Etsy shop.  Producing them on a larger scale (esp. for wholesale) will be something I'll wait and decide on later.  Being a one person operation makes these fancier designs difficult to sew in bulk while also leaving time for other important things...like sleeping.
.

These are the first batch of bags I just finished.  They are basically fancy updated versions of my pleat pouch.   I had been wanting to create a lined pouch and do something with colorful zippers.  Well, I guess the yellow zipper is the only color that made the cut, but I am really liking these bags overall.  At $22 they are more expensive than my simple pouch, but a lot more work and detail goes into these so it is definitely worth it.

Next I'm starting a pattern for a larger flat pouch/clutch big enough to hold an iPad or tablet computer.  They'll be a similar style and pattern to the ones above.  I also find myself wanting to revisit pillows, but take the designs in a different direction than I have in the past.  Other plans for later this summer include producing a 2013 calendar that should be ready by Sept/Oct.

That's all the news for now, and a much longer post than I had planned.  I'll try to be better at posting on any progress and new projects I'm working on.  Hope you like my new bags!

prints are ready

I just listed the first of my new prints in my Etsy shop this morning.  It took forever to find time to calculate the shipping, test the packaging, etc.  I can't repeat enough how much I missed the straightforwardness of printing on paper!  After some of the marathon sewing sessions I've been through over the years, it it so refreshing to print and be done.  Plus, not being limited on how many colors I can use, like with greeting cards (because otherwise I'd have to charge too much) is very liberating. 

I should have more new additions over the coming weeks, including a few select mash-ups of some of my old designs, and another colorway of the design above (those are actually ready to go, I just need a bright day to take good pics).

Hopefully with all my ideas for future prints, they'll keep getting better as I go along.  I've got some 3+ color prints with lots of cool layering in the works now.  I'm really excited to get them finished.  It's always such a struggle to find the time to do any work that's production related during the week, but I at least got a bit of sketching done last night while Dad had the Peanut running laps around the house to wear him out (this was at 9 pm, mind you).  Despite our best efforts we are stuck with a little night owl, at least for now.  There's only so much you can do to manipulate the sleep patterns of a one year old.  But who knows?  In a few months maybe, hopefully, that will change.  Just got to find those workable moments when I can.

first fall prints

I finally finished the first set of new prints last week.  Today I'm ordering protective sleeves and rigid mailers so I can officially start selling them in my shop, but I figured I'd offer up a sneak peek.

They all measure 11" x 14" and are printed on a heavyweight cardstock from French Paper Company.   More colorways are in the works.  Some of these will also be repeated on pillows too...slightly larger though.  Still deciding if I want to make some or all of these as pillows, what colors and fabrics to print on, etc., but I hope to get those started by next weekend.

I had planned to work on the new print colorways this weekend, but a scuffle with a mini tree stump on Saturday morning put me out of commission.  This evil tree and I have been battling for years and I needed to dig out the stump so I could transplant a shrub there.  Normally I love trees, but this is a super invasive Mimosa tree that is right next to our fence.  I swear it grows a foot a day and makes babies everywhere. So, in a moment of laziness I decided I would stand on it and use my weight to knock it over instead of hacking through the last large uncut root.  I'll save you the nasty details, but basically a piece of the stump broke off and my foot hit the ground at the wrong angle wrenching my knee.

I triumphed over the stump in the end though, thanks to my husband agreeing to finish the job.  I'm almost better today, so maybe tomorrow I can handle standing awhile to finish those prints.  Otherwise I'll be announcing their arrival in my shop as soon as the mailers arrive.