​​When you walk around a busy craft market, you don't often get the chance to take everything in. There are so many amazing things to see that it can be a sort of sensory overload. This feeling is why I always recommend that people take one walk all the way around first, then come back for a second, more detailed look. If you only go around once, there's so much you can miss!

​We're going to break up our visit into manageable chunks. This post will cover the last 13 stalls in  the hall (in yellow).

​When you walk around a busy craft market, you don't often get the chance to take everything in. There are so many amazing things to see that it can be a sort of sensory overload. This feeling is why I always recommend that people take one walk all the way around first, then come back for a second, more detailed look. If you only go around once, there's so much you can miss!

We're going to break up our visit into manageable chunks. This post will cover the first 13 stalls around the outside walls of the hall (in yellow).

I spend a great deal of my time on Facebook. That's an established fact. Memes fascinate me. I like to stay up-to-date with the latest lingo, the music, the things people are into. It's fun, and it keeps me connected. So when the fascination with mudskippers came about, I was right there in the forefront, keen as mustard. This was just one of many mudskipper photos being shared and re-shared, but it stuck in my head.

So many of my designs are inspired by photographs or comments that people make, and this one is no exception. My step-father is an amazing amateur photographer; combined with the fact that he and my mother do a great deal of travelling, this means that my feed is often filled with beautiful photographs of amazing places. These water lillies were in a small body of water outside Le Meridien hotel in Tahiti in August 2016.

With the move towards making more fabric items, we also need some fancy branding - and care labels! Luckily, Labels by Shelley was there to help!

Not only did Shelley work with me to make sure I was happy with the end result, but she also helped me to custom-print some ribbon with my Manuka print on it! I'm looking forward to finding just the right project for it!

And now it's time to start attaching them to new fabric products!

Put simply, it's a continuous, or 'infinite', loop of fabric, designed to be looped around your neck twice. 

We currently offer jersey and chiffon scarves. 

Every scarf features a quirky combination of two custom-printed Copper Catkin designs, carefully chosen to work together without being too matchy-matchy. Here are some examples:

The fabrics are custom-printed via Spoonflower in the USA, so they're expensive to bring into the country, plus there is the cost of making them.

If you prefer, you can choose to buy the infinity scarf fill-a-yard project directly from Spoonflower and make your own combinations. They offer a selection of fabrics! You will then receive two yards of fabric with two scarf designs, ready to sew.

A few months ago, I started making small bags and other items to show what can be done with a single fat quarter. In the process, I developed this simple little design - it fastens in the middle into an adorable little bow, and opens out into a trinket bag.

I developed the design into a larger bow purse, and arranged it so that the smaller bags can even clip onto the larger ones.

The bags can also clip onto a wrist band, which is cute. I'm experimenting with other ideas for using the bags as cute, practical ornaments.

​I've always been a big fan of tentacular creatures - so much so that we used them as inspiration for our wedding table centrepiece.

Many of my designs are inspired by our beautiful home up here in the Western Hills, in our own micro-climate, away from the rest of the Hutt Valley. The idea for the 'meadow' theme came from all the lovely flora and fauna with which we are surrounded. I also keep being asked to incorporate more reds into my designs, so that drove the inclusion of the amanitae muscariae and the ladybirds. I wandered around the property for some more inspiration, and it came together really nicely.