Yarn Fetish

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly musings, articles and mostly babble...


Yarn Fetish I think I need to be chained down or something when it comes to buying my weekly groceries. There just happens to be a HUGE Hobbycraft store on my way to my local Sainsburys and since my first trip there and the discovery of the 2 AILSES of yarn, I have been ahem... hooked hohoho!!!! (pun totally inteded lol). I have the excuse at least that I can buy yarn for work in my new store, and each piece that I now have is designated to new ideas that I have swimming through my brain... but I seem to find myself in there weekly and my supply is growing faster than my little hands can create LOL! But it's nice that I have a passion at least for something besides photography. I feel a little more intergrated into the crafting scene since opening my new shop BabaMoon even though I have been knitting and crocheting now for about 5 years. The realisation of that has made me wonder why i didn't separate my original photography store from my textile stuff to begin with, as my original store actually had both going on in there, including leather goods! But I'm glad for the exclusivity of my time being given to my photography as without that I wouldn't be planning my business outside of Etsy so soon!

Now I have found that I'm not so pushed (or more like pulled!) to find the time to create, I have nice flow going in all aspects of my day including the start of homeschooling my little boy. My next challenge will be a new dynamic to my "professional" life as my Fiancé will take over the keeping of the house and children on his days off whilst I start self employment outdoors... as some of you know I'm hoping to get a portraiture business going soon. Only on his days off mind you... I don't know if I could cope with his dishwashing more than a few times a week... it's atrocious LOL! So in all this yarn wallowing and flowing ideas, I am enjoying what seems like a great early success for my new store. I have managed to secure at least a sale a week since listing items now, and finding that the more i renew items and list new ones, I have been getting more enquiries for custom orders and have already completed a few for some parent's babies around the world! I am loving it, I find it so rewarding being able to make clothes for my kids and it's really nice to be able to expand on that a little and do the same for others :) It'd be lovely if i found myself making a sale a day for Babamoon! And I'm confident that sometime there will be that opportunity given :)

Recent Altered Photography And Baby Accessories
Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com and babamoon.etsy.com...

Lust 5x7 Inch Fine Art Photo

Solar Skies 8x12 or 8x10 Inch Fine Art Photo

Cold Heart 5x7 Inch Fine Art Photo

Newborn Baby 0-3m Knitted Vanilla and Pink Sun Disk Roll Brim Hat

Newborn Baby 3-6m Red and Charcoal Big Flower Chunky Newsboy Cap Hat

Baby 3-6m Crochet Black Spooky Pointy Shell Lace Little Witch Hat

That's it for now. Have a great weekend all!


moonangelnay x

Folk Festival

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly musings, articles and mostly babble...


Folk Festival It's been a couple of years since I have really had a break without having to watch my kids, and yesterday my partner took them both for the day whilst I got to spend some time with a close friend enjoying a local Folk Festival. My goodness I needed it! And what a fab day I had too! I got to listen to some great music from the likes of Donovan, Spider John Koerner, Dan Walsh and Will Pound to name a few. I brought along a small picnic for myself and spent the day knitting and taking pictures whilst drinking a few beers.

Part of the way through the day they decided to throw giant balloons into the audience which was great fun! All the kids that were there literally jumped and dived there way through all the people to get a hand on one of the balloons to keep them flowing in the air. But unfortunately they popped on by one at different points, which drew large heavy sighs from us audience members lol! We enjoyed them too much I think lol!

But yes, it was great, and today I get to go again but this time with my children in tow which I think I'll enjoy more. I'll probably be made to get my son's face painted, and I know that he's going to look forward to the story telling pirates, the trampettes, tight rope walking for kids, and the hand powered fair ground :) And with my daughter more alert it'll bring a whole new dynamic to the day! This has been a great week so far. As well as this Festival, on Thursday I got to spend the day in a training seminar with Mark Cleghorn and his team from PhotoTraining4U. I found it to be an inspirational day and I am finally confident about where I want to be with my out of house photography business when I get it going. More on that next week :)

Recent Altered Photography Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com Warmth...


That's it for now. Have a great weekend all!


moonangelnay x

Positive Steps

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly musings, articles and mostly babble...


Positive Steps It has been lovely this week to see Babamoon on Etsy take off with it's first 3 sales! 2 of them were back to back aswell, with the one listing only been put up hours before! I'm really glad for the signs of progression already as it took a LOT longer for me to make my first sales in my photography store, and to be honest I have faith that Babamoon may over take it quite quickly as the demand is probably higher for baby knits over wall art. I am not thinking negatively about that when it comes to my digital artwork as I seem to have progression there in other ways. Like my shop hearts, web presense, style, and of course my blog. So that for me is an incentive to keep it running along in the foreground alongside my other store.

One thing I am now gearing myself up for is a training course with Top UK photographer Mark Cleghorn soon, on the topic of family portraiture which is the career I am hoping to have in the time my partner is at home from work. The course itself is supposed to talk a lot about the business side of things which is what I am hoping for mostly as I am not as savvy with how to conduct the business, insure myself etc yet when it comes to babies I can quite easily and confidently turn into squish mode, and I know my camera plus all the related do dally inside out. It'll be a fabulous opportunity to ask important questions to someone who is ahead of his game, and has countless awards behind him to back him up. VERY excited about it all. As hopefully when I return, my business plan may actually go past the title lol!!! Once I am insured and upgrade some of my older equipment so it's suitable to go mobile, I'll hopefully get things ready before my Craft show in December which is where I am hoping to begin widely advertising it offline. Should be good!

So what's new in store then? Well I have made a new hat in Babamoon... well there are 3 actually but I have only listed one lately which is the Reversible Pumpkin hat! Very cute. And in my photography store I have listed 2 brand new prints which I am very proud of. They are in the mosaic below :)

Recent Altered Photography Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com Warmth...


That's it for now. Have a great weekend all!


moonangelnay x

What's Different?

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly musings, articles and mostly babble...


What's different? From the dawn of my blog donkeys years ago, I have been trying to find the formula that makes it seem right and connected to me. And I am still looking as with all web pages they also need to be right for the internet and the search engines. This week I did another layout change which I found a bit frightening because I didn't know how it would effect my current readership, which in terms of feed subscriber count is nearing to 600 now, on top of my already 650 odd follower count! (Thanks so much everyone!) I initially thought a change of color scheme was in order but I reckon a huge change like that could have alienated my followers as a lot of people are used to my darker layout. To be honest, excuses aside it's me that will be alienated by it lol! I think in time I will change the colors, but I'm trying to wean myself out of my comfort zone, and weaning is all I can comfortably muster lol! For now, I have included a recent posts list in my right hand navigation which to me is a million times better than my post archive (although I have kept it), as it gives more opportunities for my readers to check out my past posts, and in turn will be better for the artists I feature when it comes to more exposure. I have also changed the look of my Friday Finds interview which for those of you who know the format I used to use, will have noticed that it now resembles my Wednesday gratitude posts with larger-centered images. I think it's the best change I've ever made on the blog, as you will have noticed with my last post it looks a lot clearer now with the items featured being easier to see. The biggest success to come out of it is lissionetsy made a sale from the feature so I am really chuffed that my new layout worked for her fabulous interview and business!

Another difference recently has been my ability to function lol! It's getting a bit easier now that my daughter is in her fourth month. She is a lot more alert now, and is really smitten with her big brother, so there are more moments in the day of them interacting with eachother and less of me or my partner fretting over our son flattening her like a pancake. We purchased one of those awesome "Bumbo" chairs and that has been a a lifesaver for our sanity. No longer is her world full of ceilings and passing giants, but now the world surrounds her and she loves it! she can now watch my son play and he can play with her without the temptation to lie on top of her for cuddles lol! And importantly she can see where I am at all times which right now in her "seperation anxiety" phase (already yes I know) is seeming to make her feel a lot more comfortable. So now that I'm back in normality I have found more time to do things like housework, schooling my son and working on bits and bobs for my craft show at the end of the year.

I have made a start on making bottle cap pendants which are so frikkin cool, I am going to get a bunch up in my shop soon! I thought I'd include a picture as a sneak preview of what I hope to post on there soon (the image is of my print "Angels Glow"). I have also made a start on officially planning the start of my job venture in family portraiture. I will partake in a training seminar with multiple award winning UK photographer Mark Cleghorn on this subject infact which I'm very excited about! Onwards and upwards! :D And then there is Babamoon. I am just so happy that I have the time to knit and crochet with purpose now! I have found it relaxing just being able to do it in my free time, but so far it has been to make multiple things for my own children which as you can imagine has piled up over time! So now that I have my store of baby knits I can really apply myself to it and can be more productive about my outlook with each creation. I have also decided to use my shop accessories and props in my new business venture when it's up and running so I will have more images in my shop. But that may not happen until the end of the year. All in all there are big things going on and hopefully soon I will find contentment in earning a regular income, have a registered business, and be self employed on the days my partner isn't at work.

Recent Altered Photography Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com Fall Colors...


That's it for now. Have a great weekend all!


moonangelnay x

Ouch

Sunday - Coffee and Cake
weekly musings, articles and mostly babble...


You can catch my previous Handmade Spark articles here:
* Product Photography 101


OUCH Oh my goodness did I have a fright this morning. I woke up to an almighty crash and a loud wail from my son, to find him curled up on the floor with a hand over his eye. Turns out he tripped when running out of his room, and in a freak accident went flying into the old style open stair gate... the ones that have those long screw type stops on the end. My heart stopped dead when I saw him covering his eye. I had honestly prepared myself for the worst when I try to pry his hand away so I could see but my gosh he is one of the luckiest little boys in the world!!! The thing had JUST missed his eye by literally 1mm and bruised his eye socket, leaving a little scratch also. the bruise itself is about a finger width across and crosses his eye socket from under his eyebrow to his cheekbone at a diagonal. Merely missing his eye like I say. I am so glad it wasn't any worse, he certainly had an angel watch over him in that moment.

Well, it's been a few hours since the accident and my other half is making it a task today to take the gate down, and I'm in the frame of mind to have it destroyed. It's very old and seems a lot more unsafe to me compared to the more modern gates. It's a shame it's life if keeping kids safe from dangerous falls, ended in causing a dangerous accident as it was kindly donated to us by some very lovely family friends who wanted to do the best for our little boy. I think it's had it's day unfortunately. I wouldnt want to have a similar thing happen to my baby girl or any other child for that matter, so incinerating it is the way forward methinks!

Anyway on a higher note this week has been productive. I've been busy working on my new store, building backlinks, finding advertising and taking up a slot on Craftcult.com for the next week. I used it with my Photography store but it didn't lead to any sales back then. I do hope that it gives my new store a fair amount of recognition as I do recall receiving a nice amount of traffic back then. I've also listed a few new items of which you can see in this post. the images are clickable and will take you to the larger images and listings in Babamoon on Etsy. Currently I'm making a pumpkin hat for halloween that I'm excited about as it's a bit unconventional due to the types of colors but it'll look lovely and feel wonderful against a baby's skin too. I'm writing the pattern for it as I go along which I have done for all of the items in the store. If I am able to, someday I make offer the patterns up for sale in the shop. I just need to get myself a Pdf file converter again (as I lost it on my very dead PC) and I'll work on it later in the year.

Recent Photography Posted to moonangelnay.etsy.com Halloween is coming...


That's it for now. Have a great weekend all!


moonangelnay x