... on Sydney.

I've just come back from an early birthday present to myself: a long long weekend in Sydney. I'm always amazed that it takes just over an hour to fly from Brisbane to Sydney. I used to commute for longer than that.

My window-seat was outstanding, as was all things Sydney, apart from one incident involving some bird poo and a park bench!

'Etsy Success Sydney' was both inspiring and intimidating. Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson's address was about courage and the finding thereof. (inspiring.) Georgie and Milenka from TMOD spoke about how their brand has grown from being a handmade start-up into a business with products stocked in stores around the world. (intimidating! but they gave a great talk!) Bel and Robyn from Brisstyle presented to a packed room about Etsy team management, and it was so lovely to meet them (and Mel from Kimono Reincarnate) in the break. The 'Tips from top sellers' session was full of laughs and great advice, and we heard from Sam (Matou en Peluche), Jess (Epheriell) and Lloyd (Tummy Mountain). Lara Hutton (stylist) and Heidi Adnum (photographer) presented good info about getting better results from your camera, and they demonstrated with pics they'd set up and shot in a hotel room that morning! I left before the final session as I was wrecked, and wet from a drenching at lunchtime - I think I steamed lightly all afternoon.
The venue (new function rooms at the top of the Museum of Contemporary Art) was beautiful, the view amazing, the catering good and the conversations with like-minded crafty people excellent. Three cheers for Etsy Success!

Was that the highlight of my weekend? Hard to say. I loved re-visiting the Brett Whiteley studio in Surry Hills, and then finding the huge version of his matchstick artwork out the back of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

I also spent a long time drowning in the lovely blue of one of my favourite paintings of his.

The Balcony 2 1975. 

I was particularly taken with the succulents in the Botanic Gardens...

... and I loved the wintry-ness of the falling leaves everywhere I went.

So... home to a crazily-windy day and a cranky-looking cage of moulting chooks. To zucchini plants that have taken over the whole garden. To a modem that wouldn't work and a leaking gas cylinder. Home to full water-tanks as it'd been raining all weekend! Home to a tin still full of meringues as C had forgotten about them! (crunch, crunch crunch...)
It's lovely to get away, isn't it?

... on getting busy.

A week ago I started to itch. Most of the moving boxes were unpacked. I'd got going with the vegetable garden, and overblogged about it as a result. Me and the new oven were getting acquainted, and I'd tested it out with a few roasts, biscuits, a cheesecake and two apple crumbles. The Pekins were settling in and although they have been the cause of itchiness in the past (mites, bird lice, uuurgh) they weren't the culprit.

This was a 'making something' itch. It was time to get busy.

Task for the week? 'Make a stack of plaster eggs'. Cast, dry, trimmed and sanded.

C bought me a set of my very own drill bits. I was delighted!

As I don't yet have my old Airspeed fan at the new house, I had to find an alternative! This woven lightshade worked pretty well while the undercoat dried.

Colour coat. I'm planning on be-speckling most of this lot - I might leave a few plain too.

Aaah! The itching has eased somewhat.

Although I haven't been making anything for the past months, Etsy has been on my mind. Now that our house is finished and we're comfortably moved in, I find myself in a rather delicious place. I can have my dream job - that is, to work from home as a maker-of-things, full-time. All those 'give up your day job' Etsy blog posts - that's me now. And I'm terrified!

In the meantime, there've been a few good things happening on the making-things front. I've rejoined BrisStyle, originally a small group of Brisbane Etsy sellers. Since I went to their very first coffee-meet-up four years ago, this group has turned into a large incorporated organisation running a variety of markets around Brisbane. They also host information sessions about crafty business, and a few weeks ago I attended one about 'Pricing your Work' which made me think rather hard about whether I had ever really thought about this. The answer? Not really. Beyond 'a dollar's worth of plaster + a bit of paint + some glue + a finding + a piece of ribbon + some of my time equals... oooh about that'... no, apparently there's such a thing as a 'profit margin' that I should be very interested in. It was also great to meet all those lovely people with craft in their hearts, and I look forward to getting to know them better.

Another good piece of recent news is that there's going to be an official Etsy symposium in a couple of weeks. Called 'Etsy Success Sydney', it's a one-day event held at the Museum of Contemporary Art featuring a variety of workshops and speakers, including Etsy's CEO, Chad Dickerson. Any excuse for a trip to Sydney - I promptly bought a ticket.

***

So, what's next? I'd like to have or share a stall at at least one market before the end of the year, and the challenge will be to build up enough stock to fill it. I'm advertising... starting small with ads on Etsy, Facebook and in a shared BrisStyle print ad coming out in the next Peppermint magazine. I'm thinking about new products. I'm excited about a possible studio solution, as it's become apparent that me working in the lounge room just isn't feasible in the long run. And for a moment, I'd like to stop and reflect on just how blessed this all feels, even though it's terrifying too!