Paraphernalia

Rain, rain, go away

An old photo, from last year - it seems centuries ago. It sort of illustrates what has been going on lately, I'm slowly despairing in the rain. I have no new photos - it's been so dark with the constant cloud cover I don't even bother trying.

I should be used to it by now, but I can't. It's normal for one's body to crave some sunshine and warmth, and opening the curtains day after day after day in July and just seeing gray skies is very much starting to take its toll on me.

I want to go out without a coat in my espadrilles. I want to enjoy Didsbury in my last Summer here, go out for coffee, go out for ice cream. I'm craving the easiness of spirit and body that should come with Summer. I have cabin fever on overdrive and am going stir crazy.

We'll only be going to Portugal in September, and probably won't travel anywhere else in the meantime. In the rain, I don't even feel like going out, but at the same time I'm getting claustrophobic. I keep looking at apartments on-line. I can't wait to move. Manchester is making this very easy.

Looking forward to the Manchester Craft Mafia meet up next week - even if it's raining!

We scream

Amongst the craziness, there's always time for parks and ice cream!

Incidentally, I just bought this and this, that I've had my eye on for ages. Yay!

Hope you had a fabulous weekend!

Crazy

See the eyes on this little guy? That's pretty much how I feel like now. My Anatomica Red Heart necklace was featured on Boing Boing yesterday and it's been totally insane in terms of sales around here.

After a major Etsy kerfuffle last week, I was really really needing this. It just goes to prove that, at this moment in time, blogs are so much more powerful to bring in sales than any magazine.

I'm going to disappear off the face of the planet for a while while I take care of the hundreds (!) of necklaces I need to make. Thank you thank you thank you Boing Boing > Craft: zine blog > decor8. I love you all!

The Moving Collection is up!

An experiment with tokens, love, personal experiences and recollections.

The Moving Collection features tokens to be exchanged for actions and recollections; a little bit of ourselves to be passed on in a sharing gesture.

Remembrances, affection and emotional mementos make us who we are, and so the Collection is meant to move from person to person, facilitating the exchange of what should be dearest to us.

The brooches are printed in lightweight acrylic, and have silver plated clasps.

Available in the shop now!

I confess

I'm a terrible blog writer! When life gets too busy, it's always the first to give. Shame, shame. (it can also be the case that my life isn't that particularly interesting, but we'll gloss over that).

We went to Portugal a couple of weeks ago and it was a fast-paced holiday - in fact, it was hardly a holiday at all, with all the family meals, going out with friends, and generally falling in love all over again with the white city (there are more pictures here!). A romance blossomed between two of my favourite people (hi guys!), which will hopefully see one of them joining us when we move from the UK to Portugal (it's still a long distance thing, sniff). Very good news indeed! It served to attenuate a big family kerfuffle that has no end in sight, but that I'm trying to forget for as long as possible. Families, eh?

Cisco's interview at the University went incredibly well, beyond our expectations really, and so we're pretty set to be back in Portugal in a year's time. In the meantime, however, he has to finish his PhD, and I have to work pretty hard, so we're not anticipating going back home in the near future - we're trying instead to get all out friends over in the meantime. Sounds like a plan!

I have a million things on my To Do list, like organizing my taxes (yikes), submitting my work to Hidden Art, and start contacting Museum shops, since that is my plan B for the Summer when on-line sales always go down. There are new ideas to be implemented and collections that have been ready for ages I have still to launch. I also got a lovely mention in the Dutch Marie Claire. Cool, uh? (now if I could only understand Dutch..)

I'm launching something new tomorrow, so I'll be back!

Going home..eventually

With Cisco's PhD ending in January, we started thinking of what would happen next. We've been in Manchester for 8 years now, and although we love the area of the city where we live, it's time for a change - a change hopefully with better weather and more affordable cost of living!

We left Portugal because the Universities there are, to be honest, a bit sub-par, particularly in the area of Humanities. But things are changing over there, slowly, and we figured that if there was any time that it might be a good time to go back, this would be it. So Cisco got himself an interview to go into a post-doc at a Portuguese University, and we started counting our pennies and looking at houses and quotes for international moving agencies.

Since we have a room just for the books, and whole bookshelves just for DVDs (not to mention a cat!) this will be, as you can imagine, a logistical nightmare. Do we take furniture along? Kitchen stuff? Do we buy everything when we get to Portugal? Will we even be able to afford furniture, after shelling £1000 for the move (and this is pre-VAT!)? Argh!

But I'm happy! Hell, I'm ecstatic! Portugal will always be home to me, Lisbon in particular, and after almost a decade in the rain and gray of Manchester it never occurred to me that we wouldn't go back, eventually. It's the sun, and the sea, and the river, the smell of food in the early evening, the white houses with the red roofs, the flowers in the windows,the coffee and pastries, the four aisles of yogurts in the supermarkets, family and friends.

Now we just have to figure out if we're buying, if we're renting, how we're taking the cat, if we go home for Christmas and then come back to start the move of the century... anyone have any fabulous pearls of advice?

Oh yeah!

3000 items sold on Etsy in a little under one year and a half!

*Happy dance*

No rest for the wicked

The Moving Collection

These have been in the making for a long time, and will be available next week - An experiment with tokens, love, personal experiences and recollections, as well as generosity.

I've been mini-blogging over on Twitter, and now on Tumblr as well, since I'm a bit too tired/busy to write proper blog posts!

See you soon!

xx
Vanda

Happy Easter!

We won't be going home this year (we're going on our Anniversary instead) but I might try to make some caramelized almonds tomorrow!

Have a fabulous weekend!