Walker Art Gallery

Here is me at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool yesterday - in awe of the sculpture with the toilet behind me there, and just loving all the abstract Art.
We went to see the Rolf Harris Exhibition, WOW!!! is all I can say, I was totally gutted we got there quite late (about 11.30am) so the book signing had closed as the queue was just huge. I did manage to get a glipse of the great man though, he looks amazing, I think he is 82 years young this year. I purchased the book about his paintings on show, some cards and a t-shirt (I just love the t-shirt), we had to queue to actually view his exibition but was well worth the wait, I loved his work but most of all enjoyed getting to see the actual painting he did of the Queen.

As the husband had taken me we were not there as long as I would have liked, as its really not his thing - so I dragged him round till he did start to appear a bit weary then we went for lunch. I will go back in a few weeks with my friend, who loves art.

This visit and a few weeks of deep thought has brought me to the conculusion I am going to have to return to work, so I have started designing a new bag today for the Etsy shop. I love art and painting, but it will be a few years before I am good enough to make any money from it and the pressure of trying too hard is not a good thing. Somehow I am going to have to divide my time to going back to sewing and having some fun art time too.
My designs have changed, If I am going to sew its going to be designs I like.. so at this rate it might take me all week for bag number one of the year, but should be worth it.

If blogger continues to behave I will show you when the bag is done later in the week, I have gone back to 'old blogger' while it will still let me, unfortunatly I lost my old page design so still have the awful colours but at least I can follow everyone and post again.

I have done a few hours sewing today, so must be time for painting now.

have a good week x0x

Dream Design Achieve

Dream, Design, Achieve - what a fantastic motto to live by, I am wearing this round my neck too. Above is my lastest bag design, some of you may already know I did try to become a little more conservative with my designs.. But I woke up this week and realised this is not me, and not what I want to do. I want to be bright, loud and noticed, and hopefully others out there do too and therefore will enjoy the bright and loud.
It occured to me (again whilst dreaming) this is how I started, and impatience told me it didnt work, but looking back it did. My very first custom order on Folksy was from a lovely lady called Liz Dyson, you can find her supplies shop here:



Liz requested a loud bag, so we set to work and achieved this one - turned out to be not quite what she wanted.. which was great as we got to try again..



As you will see this bag sold too, to the lovely Wenona from "Nithria Craft" you can find her shop here:



The next creation was just right, and loud enough for Liz, I have no idea why I dropped the 'Loud Liz' title, again perhaps inpatience on my part as this one has had a lot of interest on Flickr and proved popular, so why did I not stick to these and what I enjoyed the most? Here is Liz's Loud Bag



I wonder if Liz realises how much inspiration she was? I did create a few other rather loud bags and thinking about it now they all sold too. Starting on Monday there will be more bright loud bags, and why not? Also this wonderful motto "Dream Design Achieve" will be available at my other shop 'Special by SimJaTa' as brooches, keyrings and bagcharms as I think we all need to share this.

If you are out there designing and dreaming and swapping and changing STOP - enjoy what you do. A wise man once told me about photography to enjoy it, this reflects though in the pictures - therefore same must apply with our designs. Remember to enjoy what you do and create from the heart.

Dont forget "DREAM DESIGN ACHIEVE"

Hope you enjoyed the surman.

~Bags of Swank by SimJaTa~

New Design ~Work in progress

Here is a new one for me, some work in progress.. as it will take me some time to get this finished thought you might like to take a look at how things take shape. I am hoping this will be fabulous when its done, but remember my first attempt at the raggy bag? so who knows, lets see how it pans out during the week (or so)







I started off by selecting some fabric, decided to go for green's, with the zillion and one boxes in my craft room to go at this took some time.
So,fabric selected off to the iron to press the fronts and backs. Then (and here is were I really wish I actually did do any maths at school) cut all the batting to fit inside each fabric sandwich.
The first of the new bit, some fancy quilting done on each piece of fabric - must say this was a fun part too, hope you can see on the pictures once it was all laid out to be almost bag shaped.
Then all sewn together to actually 'be' bag shaped.

Still a very long way to go, most of the bits I need I am now at the mercy of the postman to fetch them so that could slow things down. I still have the handle to decide on, and made a decision on fastners which of course I didnt have any of so just ordered them too, again to begin that wait for the postman.

Tomorrow I am going to practice some embellishments for this bag, and for others in the future.

I just hope I can achieve the designs that are in my head, and that they will be loved as much as I enjoy creating them.

I will update my blog with the finished article when its ready, but I wouldnt hold your breath, may well be next weekend.

~Bags of Swank by SimJaTa~