Etsy Open, leather bag, commission work and new product

There has been very little movement regarding my online activities. But I have been absolutely flat out offline. Following are some of the things I have been doing.

Etsy Open in Leiden

Leiden is a small but dynamic university town in Zuid Holland province, the Netherlands. There are a lot of art and cultural activities taking place throughout the year. One of them is “Open: Makers aan de Markt” (Open: Makers in the Market) a project of the Cultural Funds Leiden. It is an event where local artists present their work to the public for a few months, mainly on the Kunstroute (Art route) of the city. Etsy also takes part on this activity in September – October this year. Led by our lovely Dutch Etsy personnel, Marta and Elles, Etsy sellers are invited to take part in Etsy Open, where we are allowed to sell our items in the shop. Participants also take part in the setting up of the shop and being present in the shop at least one full day when the shop is open. The main objective of Etsy Open is more of a meeting point for everyone to come chitchatting, sharing experiences and inspirations, than the selling of our products.

I was there one day cleaning the floor and painting the old tables. And I will be there again the whole day on the 21th of September. Visit us if you are in the area. The address is Almarkt 14, Leiden.

This is a picture of Elles. She went to a second hand shop and bought all these chairs and tables for the Etsy Open shop.

I painted three of these tables!

And now the tables are used as display shelves looking so lovely inside the shop.

All pictures courtesy of EtsyNL on Facebook.

Leather Bag

A few months ago I blogged about a new leather bag, which I was making. I finished it before my holidays already but have not had a chance to take its pictures and blog about it until today. It is a big sporty bag and you can put a lot of stuff in. Not for sale this one, I will keep it for myself!

Commission Work

I have a small number of customers whom I make clothes for on a regular basis. I would like to share with you pictures of the recent pieces I made.

One customer loves wearing clothes made of jersey fabrics because they are comfortable to wear. I made these three pieces for her after I came back from my holidays last month.

And one customer needed a party dress. Very sexy with lovely handwork decoration.

New Product

I do have a plan to work on a number of autumn/winter items. But is goes very slowly because there are always many things to do at the same time. In the past days I put other things aside and worked on my new sweatshirt. The real jacket will be made of thicker jersey sweatshirt fabrics. But for the samples I used normal and medium weight jersey fabrics.

The new design will display patterns with raw hems/edges. I first experimented on small pieces, washed them in the sewing machine to see how the edges would curl. They look great!

Then I made one sample jacket in brown and black with red accent, which was later washed in the washing machine. This is how it looks now.

Not only I have to test the fabrics but also work on the structure of the jacket itself. I found that the first jacket was a little too short, the sleeves were a little too long, neckline too high, etc.

Then I adjusted the pattern and made another jacket. I would like to share the pictures of work in progress:

I am quite satisfied so far, but still need to make adjustments, ie higher collar, sewing techniques on certain parts, etc. Now I have to go to the shop to buy long zippers that match the sweatshirt fabrics that I have. Hopefully, I can show you my real New Product soon. Please stay in touch.

Back from my holidays

I have been back from my holidays for a few days now. And my Etsy shop is open again. It has been a great break. I thought I was going to work on the new clothes, but my pace has been very slow. I am now getting back slowly to my routine.

During the break Rob and I travelled with a car to 5 countries: Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Hungary. I took lots of pictures and met many interesting people. I will blog about them in 2-3 blog posts. Here is the first lot of pictures of the places we have visited that I would like to share with you.

Venice is a very romantic city, thoug it was super crowded with tourists the day we were there.

Following are pictures of a very old but famous amusement park in Vienna called the Prater.

And below are some grand buildings in Vienna.

A wall covered with prints of drawings by local artists of Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. This wall was inside a castle.

A very colorful market in the capital city.

Also a very colorful wall ....

Maribor is a lovely, cosy little Slovenian city where we stopped while on the way to Hungary.


We visited a few places in Hungary. I liked the nature and the rich culture, where a few places in Budapest, the capital city, have been named World Heritage by the UNESCO. And yes, Budapest was one of my favourite cities, whose pictures will be posted in a separate blog post later. But here are some pictures of other parts of beautiful Hungary.

Lake Balaton is the biggest lake in Europe.

Tihany is a touristic little town on the bank of Lake Balaton. The picture above is an outside wall of a suvenir shop selling local products, a lot were made of chillies.

So sweet these two boys. Note the typical Munchen suede trousers.

I hope you enjoyed part 1 of the virtual tour of my summer holidays.