Words #1 - Surrender Control

I've seen a lot of lovely images on Pinterest recently, illustrated words, words that make you stop and think. Initially I have to admit I thought this kind of thing might be a little cheesy (I have a real bee in my bonnet about all those awful 'Keep Calm and..." posters! I swear if I see one more I'll headbutt my macbook screen!), but as I saw more and more really good quotes, or short poems, or interesting words - some illustrated beautifully or with great humour - I realised that there's nothing wrong with a bit of good advice, or just something to make you pause for a moment and go 'hmm... I never thought of it like that before'.

I've been a reading a little about the 12-step programme set up by Alcoholics Anonymous recently - actually in a book entirely unrelated to alcoholism - because these ideas can actually be applied to any repetitive, damaging, compulsive behaviour (not just the usual addictions). The first step was to admit surrender, that you can't control everything in your life (in my case, I was trying to control my feelings and control situations and other people) and I thought it was such a fantastic idea that if you try to hard to control something, it ends up controlling you. If you try too hard to control your emotions, bottle them up, push them down, they start to control you, and the stress of denying your feelings starts to work negatively on your body without your control at all. Anyway, I thought this was a pretty interesting idea so I took a short quote and decided to try and illustrate it. If I really do get around to it, I'll do all twelve ideas and make a poster... but... we'll see! I'm really not good at sticking to things like this!

Going back to the word pictures I saw on Pinterest, the first I pinned myself was the wonderful one below. I spent a good hour or so searching and searching all over the web to try and find out who did this, but I can't find it out! So if anyone knows, please let me know, and I'll add credit! It really made me stop and reassess all those things I'd been moaning about not having the time to do (more drawing) or not having the energy, or money, or blah blah blah. I realised that if I was making excuses for something it might just be because either it wasn't that important to me after all (and therefore I should just stop moaning about it!) or that I needed to make more of an effort and 'find a way' if I really did think it was important. I've been trying to 'find a way' for the more important things a lot more recently, and I've managed to drop a few goals which I never made enough of an effort with, and things seem a lot clearer now.

Portrait

MochiPan loves... Zipper! ジッパー！

I haven't properly written about my recent trip to Japan yet, mainly as it is going to be such a huge task I haven't quite worked out how to handle it yet! But I can say that one thing I did while I was there was to stock up on magazines.

If you've never seen a Japanese fashion magazine before, they are AWESOME (get down to Japan Centre or Mitsukoshi dept. store and have a look! They cost about three times as much here though.... boo!). Compared to British/European/US magazines (which are pretty much all the same if you ask me) Japanese fashions mags are stuffed full of photos of clothes and outfits, and street shots, and items, and all sorts of funky things... with HARDLY ANY ADS. Also, Aside from the mildly entertaining and worrying pages at the back that advertise cream to make your nipples pink, or gadgets to give you eyelid creases, they don't have loads and loads of articles about how to make yourself thin, youthful, attractive, sexy, fix your relationship, blah blah blah blah, (Ok, they have a few bits about losing weight but to be fair my Japanese isn't good enough to read them so I spend all my time looking at the abundant pretty pictures!). They focus their energy on giving you what you really want, lots of interesting ides for clothes, and lots of pretty things to see!

I'm not scanning in any interior pages as I don't want to infringe any major copyright thingies, but what I did do was spend all of today doing an 'homage' to one of my favourites - Zipper! It's awesome. I love it. So I did my own version of the cover of the December issue!

Tokyo Fashion

I've been so busy recently, I've hardly had time to write on here! I can't even think what I've been doing, but I feel like most of my time is spent studying Japanese at the weekends. I'm not complaining about that, as it's all by choice of course, but I do wish I found it a bit easier. I keep forgetting things I've learned a while back, some really obvious things, and I am not sure what I can do to remember everything. Still, I'll be patient with it and keep going I guess!

I've managed to squeeze in a couple of doodles this weekend though! Yay! Although, still not sure about what I'm doing really, but I guess I'll keep going. All comments are seriously welcome!


Some other highlights of the week would be adding Tokyo Fashion to my twitter feed! Now I get to see some awesome clothing throughout the day, which is very inspiring for me! I'm really not into fashion as such, I really don't give a toss what is in fashion and what isn't, and celebrity culture bores me rigid, but I LOVE the way some of these girls (and boys) in Japan just put on something new every time, they aren't afraid to push boundaries, or risk looking daft. But the funny thing is, they never look daft! I wish I could look cool in a granny nightie in the middle of the day, but if I tried it I think someone would definitely call the police.



If you are interested in Japanese street fashion you should definitely check their site out! Their tweets make my dull commute much more colourful and inspiring!

Stripy Socks & Bloomers

I'm not very good with colour, so I've only coloured her rosy cheeks!

Cutie in legwarmers

It's August today, but it's so chilly and rainy outside, I could do with a nice pair of woolly legwarmers on this evening!

MochiPan loves... 'The Handmade Marketplace' by Kari Chapin

I mentioned in my last post that I'd been reading a book which was really motivating me to improve my sites and my shops and what I do, and as I've finished it now, I can reveal that it was 'The Handmade Marketplace' by Kari Chapin.

If you are like me, you never seem to have the time to read through all the fantastic emails from Etsy on how to make the most of your shop, and how to improve your marketing, your logos, spread the word about your products etc. etc. Every time I get an email or see a new blog post from Etsy on selling tips (and other craft sites of course, not just Etsy) I think 'Oh, yes, I must read that when I have the time, that looks really interesting' and then. I never find the time.

Well, I got a nice Waterstone's voucher for my birthday from my work colleagues, and as I was in the amazing Gower Street branch last Sunday I thought I'd have a little mooch in the craft section to see if anything caught my eye. This book did, and within seconds of spotting it, it was in my greedy little paws and I didn't want to put it back on the shelf.

To be honest, the first thing that attracted me was the cover and the size, which just shows I really do judge books by their covers! I love the design of the book - with simple and sweet illustrations, and a quirky typeset- and it's a miniature book, probably the right size to fit in most handbags. A quick flick through the book told me that it was written by someone who knew the online (and offline) crafty circle very well, and although it isn't a hugely detailed book (which explains the size) it had a great general covering off all the ins and outs of the craft business.

I've been carrying it with me on the tube to work and back for the past couple of days and I've read it through once, and then gone back through it taking notes. It's a little bit like a refresher course. As I said, it doesn't go into great detail so don't expect it to answer all your questions (for that you'd need to read all those Etsy emails I suppose) but it covers all the basic areas - most of which we tend to forget in the day-to-day making and doing and listing of craft items - and reminded me of gaps in my blogging/selling that I knew were there but had been avoiding looking at for months.

I'm now armed with a list of things I want to do to improve everything, my selling sites, my products, my blog, and even my attitude to what I'm trying to do. I found myself saying 'Of course! I can't believe I've been doing it like that for so long, when I could be doing it like this.'

I liked the tone of the book too, it was like a lovely gentle nudge in the right direction, it was written in a personal style, but without flagrant self-promotion, and I loved the way Kari could tell the reader what they should do without being patronising or taking on a lecturing tone. I also loved the way she brought in the voices and stories of other fellow crafters and bloggers, to show that there are lots of us all in this together, and if other people have found success or happiness selling their crafts, then we can too!