cliodhna’s wave

I have written a lot about mermaids,  not sure what the fascination is except maybe they are women who live in the sea and maybe because of that are the connection to our subconscious. Here is an older post about them. Maybe it is laziness on my part, easier to draw a tail than legs

Mermaids can bring wishes to the sea and make them real. She can find what we really want in our deep minds and tell us and bring it up to the surface for us to see.

This is my latest embroidery, the mermaid swims around a magical island. If anyone except the mermaid tries to go onto the island to take the fruit then the birds sing them to sleep and they are transported back home again

This took me a while to do, I beaded it more than usual and layered netting over a gauze over blue to get a depth in the colour. I love the fabric I used for the tail. I am enjoying doing some more detailed pieces before I have to get into production for the Christmas fair (fingers crossed I get a place!). I also bought more fabric for the quilt today so no excuses, get out the cardboard shape and get scaling!

xclio

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Ok, to officially open my new store at Etsy I am having a promotion and having a draw for an embroidery. I am giving away one of these three items you see here (the winner chooses). PLease visit the store at GreenBirdDreaming or click on any of the pictures. The pictures will bring you to the product page of that item and to get to the main store there is a little word ’shop’  beside the avatar under the words ‘GreenBirdDreaming’

so back to the promotion, please visit my store and have a noodle and then in your comment please tell me one thing you like about it and one thing you think could be improved. Maybe the pictures don’t strike you, maybe the product descriptions need outlining. Whatever!

For those unfamiliar with Etsy it is a worldwide online store for handmade crafts, supplies for handmade crafts and vintage items. there is everything here, from soaps to jewellery, from strange pictures of cats to king size beds. Its the best online shopping anywhere!

I put a treasury together on etsy.. called ‘Queens’ its a collection of queen related items from cool shops.. check it out and let me know what you think!

Queens on Etsy

i am in the process of getting my etsy store back together. This time under Green Bird Dreaming. I have been doing some embroideries for it, these are smaller.

The leaves are out on the tree in front of my workroom window. Now I work in a green shaded room with those squawky black birds that always remind me of dinosuars fighting in the branches.

Its hard here to find places to sell art work. I am joining a sunday art exhibition in a Park here in Chihuahua. Like what they have on Stephens Green except a lot smaller. Hopefully fingers crossed!

i am going through a reinvention, again… I am thinking of changing my etsy shop name and actually doing some advertising to get some sales… simple stuff yes but a side of things i am quite hopeless at. I am doing some small embroideries I can sell on the store and then the shopping bags of course.

I have found some stores here in chihuahua I can put them also, at last!

Also, now a new game for driving around chihuahua, keep the kids happy and its educational at the same time

Its called ’spot the traffic infringement’ and you choose a traffic violation like breaking a red light or not using indicators or turning left across three lanes of other traffic all going straight or pulling out veeerrrrrry slowly in front of oncoming cars or speeding and zipping in and out of cars. Each one has points based on the severity of the rule breaking, seeing someone actually cause an accident garantees a win. The person who sees the most (or gets the most points) of their violation wins. I am still sorting it out and it will be out in the stores come june.

I know I am being flippant about this but chihauhua is filled with terrible drivers! I am on my gaurd 100% of the time driving around here and I expect the unexpected constantly. The speed limit is completely ignored, i have come to the conclusion that the only cars that do go the speed limit are old and can’t go any faster. If you want to stop at a red light you had better make your intentions clear because up to three seconds after the light changes to red its still fair game to sail across. I see accidents everyday at traffic lights.

i did these for a ten year old called Megan who loves her dog called Odie. They are quite simple, I do a little applique and some beading and then I sew them onto good paper. When I put them in the frames that they had sent they looked really good.
I think I will do some more. Put them in cheap frames from the Local hardware store. the frames I got to fill for these were really nice and only cost ten euro.
I was thinking I could do the craft fair again with smaller stuff like this to sell for maybe 40 euro or 50 euro a pop.
For now I will do some and put them on my etsy site. See what happens!

Hi….

I have been neglecting the business side of things for the last few months. Right now I am pondering labels and outlets and how to market my bags and purses and the cards I do. I am not very attentive on these things, I tend to get distracted into the more interesting side of actually making a new thing. When it is finished I put it on etsy and then forget about it.

So, as part of a promotion for this blog and my etsy store I am having a giveaway. Please post a comment about some idea of promotion, some ideas about labels, should I use my real name or use a name for the bags only or a critique of my etsy store or blog. Something small. It can help everyone else reading them too. Ideas of how to improve the business side of things.

I haven’t decided yet whether I will pull the name from a hat or choose the most useful comment. But the winner will get one of the three new oil cloth bags I have on my store. Pictures here. Winner chooses which one they want. I figured I would use a good prize to entice some good ideas! Open for the next week so post before Sat 4th of october.

I have figured a fun thing to do would be to pick a colour and see what i could find. I decided on yellow for no other reason than it jumped into my head.

I love yellow.. a rich warm sunny yellow. I don´t wear it I paint walls of kitchens and bathrooms with it (and eat it, paul just handed me a yellow M&M) and revel in the warm light it makes in these rooms. I would probably paint my whole house yellow if I could.

Yellow is sun, warmth, light, happiness, simplicity, joy, childish playfulness. At the moment here there are yellow flowers everywhere, shining in the sun and making far away hill look orange. I had an idea to make a coat. A chinese cut, green with yellow flowers all over it. It is forming in my mind as one of those future projects I might just accomplish if I don´t get distracted by more in the moment ideas.

I found this wonderful book on the web. I like her style. Julie Paschkis is her name

And these soaps on etsy.. there are so many yummy soap shops on etsy, I had about thirty tabs open and had to be really strong, favourite a few of them and take just two for this blog.

Skin Journey Shea Butter

Dennis Anderson Lemon lustre shea butter massage bar

These victorian tags are kinda interesting, from Farouche

Yellow citrine, one of my favourite stones…. from Lee Ohio Designs

Quince, known here as Guayabana. It sets into a jelly when mashed up. They use it make a sweet called membrillo here. really good. I also have a recipe for quince cake which I took with me from Ireland to try. I will try it soon I think and let ya`ll know…

a cute baby wearing a yellow hat….

and of course please refer to my yellow umbrella two posts down for extra cheer in an already sunny climate!

x clio

I have become the proud owner of a collection of umbrellas! I have had cool umbrellas in the past but only ever one at a time. I had a pink polka dot one for about two weeks before I lost it and for a while I had kids umbrella with a ducks head on the top and two wings out either side. I would walk down the street to a symphony of nudges and cries (in tough inner city dublin) of “would ya look at the state of ‘er”. It made people smile though, made a rainy day a happy escuse to use my bright yellow duck umbrella.

Women use the umbrellas here as Parasols. To stay out of the sun and I have taken up this habit. When you live in the sun you actually spend most of your time staying out of it rather than taking your clothes off and smathering yourself in quick tan lotion and lying very still for hours. I never had the patience for tanning.

Here they are in a row from big to little. The smallest one is a kids one and the blue one was my first and the brown one is a very pretty parasol and the yellow one I just bought in Los Mochis because it was raining.

Paul after I persuaded him to let me take it.

He said I could put this one on my blog if I put another one of him looking tough and being a miner so here is one of him looking tough at his son Arthur and Art very obviously taking him seriously.

I also bought some new oil cloth to make some new purses from. Very excited!

Here is a fish I have done in the last while. It is good to get back to fabrics. I got some cool new fabrics in mochis too.

My butterfly embroidery.

On the way to the mine in the morning the air is filled white big white butterflies. They are beautiful and fragile. I used a fabric that dissolves in water to do the outside lacy effect (i wish I had more of it now) and then the butterflies and background were done on chiffon that I pulled and stretched and embroidered over. I want to explore these fabrics further…

check these really cute shoes out! I want a pair. I have them in my favourites list and I go and look at them every now and then. It is a site called Fairysteps

She makes them herself. You measure your feet and send her your measurements and she makes them to order. She has certain ones ready to sell. I love the idea of getting shoes made up for me. I want a pair of high leather lace up boots in bright red.

I just showed these to Paul and he hated them! we have very differant tastes in clothes and things. I think they are adorable.

Also for the girly girl working in a mans world I love this site. Oshatoes

Its safety gear and steeltoes shoes but they are for girls! There are pink hard hats and pink safety glasses. So cute. I look around this mine site and I think it would be great to have everybody wear pink hard hats! I shalll take some pictures today of this place for this blog.

What else, oh yes, the puppy turns out to be a girl so she is back being Pala again. Its strange how we treat things differently as to whether they are male or female. I found myself thinking differently about the puppy when I found out she was a girl.

And I sold two purses from my etsy store! surprised I was, I haven’t sold anything from there for ages. I had kinda left it alone. Cool.

xx clio