Adventure, Discovery and Success!!

27th May, our first anniversary of the shop opening!

What a year of adventure, discovery and success it's been.

We've had a fab time choosing and buying all the lovely new stock items and seeing it go out of the door.  The vintage items have been amazing and a part of the business which has proved to be more successful than we ever dreamed it would. We're a great team Gav and i, he's my knight in shining armour, this lovely man, with a kind and gentle soul, who made all my dreams come true, i'm so glad we're together.

Here are some details of assemblage pieces i'm currently working on for my exhibition.  I still haven't decided on a date yet, but we're working on it.

I thouroughly enjoyed myself sifting through my very many boxes of found elements collected over the years for suitable bits to add to these assemblages, it's quite satisfying to be able to use elements that would otherwise be thrown away.  I spent a lovely afternoon last week taking apart an old 1950's radio, the switches were bakelite and the stash i managed to get from it was amazing, very dusty though and i'm sure there was a spider lurking in there somewhere!!!

I did some needle felting a few days ago whilst sat in the shop, it was pouring with rain and very quiet.  Lovely Jo came over and brought me a "Clover needle felting tool" with four needles, so i was able to produce them quicker.  I've had a huge delivery of pretty wooden buttons so am looking at sewing some on and selling them in the shop as brooches.

Ha! not satisfied with just needle felting i also did some wet felting, at the kitchen sink and made these gorgeous little brooches. I had a few (nice) distractions when customers came in, but was able to leave these whilst i served, which is ideal.  I sat sewing the brooch backs on them in the shop in the afternoon and had sold four before closing time (although the lady has to come back for them because i hadn't put the pins on them at that point).  I'm making some more today, but trying to be a little more adventurous with colours.

My new business cards i made a few evenings ago.  They look really pretty, i put what i'd made (about eight) in the shop and they've gone already.  Gav's scanned and printed some for the time being, but i like the hand made aspect of them with the embellishments, even though they're time consuming to make. so i have some more in progress

Awww, my lovely wedding dress all packed up and hanging on the side of my wardrobe, i love it when i walk past it, so many lovely, happy memories. 

Talking of which, i've had loads of  comments about how fab the band were at the wedding evening party

"The Fabulous Cover Sluts",

From Swansea.  George (third from left) is a friend of Gavs (well ours now) and has his own band "Son of Man".  As it was such a nice evening we were trying to think of excuses for another party (do we really need excuses?) and getting them to play again, and then i remembered my big birthday next year, so we decided to have another party then ...yaaaaaay!!!  Everyone's up for it, so should be good, better get organising.

I had a lovely evening with my friend Jen last night, we opened a superb bottle of wine.  She's just finishing her college course and wanted a CV done.  Jen is one of those lovely special people that came into the shop when we first opened last year and we became friends immediately.  She's so easy going, always smiling and happy and i love her to bits.  I hadn't done a CV for ages, doing all that typing took me back to my medical secretarial days.....shiver.... and makes me feel glad i moved on to much nicer things, but i was happy to help her out.

We're off to an auction tonight, i'm on the lookout for some specific pieces for my assemblage art and really looking forward to it.  Then, if we're back in time, we're off to the Checkers to celebrate our opening anniversary...cheers everyone.

“The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life.”

Hugh Walpole, Sr

New artwork finished today

This is another set of five in a series (one is missing, it didn't photograph well), the last set was called "Little Blue Houses", this set is entitled "Little Blue Birds".

Gav and i went to Manchester last night to see Roger Waters "The Wall" Live - the experience is best summed up by one of Gav's mates on the Manband Forum:

"Roger Waters and Pink Floyd, until fairly recently when I belatedly embraced very early Pink Floyd, have passed me by. I didn't really know this tour was about The Wall sort of revisited. I only fleetingly knew The Wall was a kind of concept. I thought this would be a gig.....as in a gig. That is a band playing and that's it. At risk of being pretentious, this was so much more than just music, as good as that was. From when the plane crashed into the wall, and onwards, I was as much entranced in the meaning of it all. And I felt there were so many ways of interpreting it. Frankly, that was fascinating me even more than the music, and caused me surprise that so many in the audience were drunk, screaming out as if it was Iron Maiden or Saxon!!. So much so, that i was thinking am I being a bit deep here, therefore at 8am this morning, I googled 'interpretations of Pink Floyd The Wall' to find reems on the subject, so I wasn't alone. In summary, I absolutely loved it, and am still thinking about those vivid graphics, imagery, and I did read a number of the epitaphs during the interval. Amazing".

Here's some footage on youtube it's worth watching

We're feeling shattered as we didn't get in until about one am, it's a two hour drive from Manchester.  The shop opened at twelve today and when we shut at 4pm we went for a lovely walk up to the Montgomery Monument to make the most of the beautiful afternoon sunshine.

 We've beem meaning to get up there for a while to scatter Alice's  ashes (our beautiful cat who died last December).  She always liked to be high up so we thought it was a good place for them to be scattered.  I'm sure it was quite emotional for Gav and as he released them they blew towards home and then settled in the grass!  The beautiful box that the ashes came in we placed in the fenced off hedgerow - it's so beautiful up there and you can see the monument from most directions driving into Montgomery, it's nice to think of her there!

The views are so stunning, the Shropshire Hills in the distance (I think Twiglets house in there somewhere, those are the hills she sees from her window!!)

...and back home, Lizzie enjoyed it too

Look at this beautiful, gorgeous girl, she loves being outside running around, she's smiling

My window boxes i did just before the wedding...still going strong

We felt so refreshed and invigorated when we got back, it's still hard to believe that we're surrounded by so much beauty right on our doorstep, we quite often think how lucky we are and try not to take it for granted.  Our lives are like constantly being on holiday, we never tire of the things we do, we both love the shop (and our other businesses) and all that they entail and when we do go away it's no hardship coming back here.  We have our first anniversary of the shop opening on the 27th May (can't believe it's been a year already), we could never have guessed the success of it in such a small rural location.  We've built up a following too with visitors to the area returning with friends and family and other people telling us they've been told they "must" visit, it's amazed us.

Have a quick look around Indigo Moon, it's looking quite gorgeous at the moment

 New Button delivery (well half of it anyway)..aren't they gorgeous

"Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success".
- Louisa May Alcott

Well......that was the best Manics gig i've been to, and i've been to a few!!!! The place was rocking and my favourite song "Motorcycle Emptiness" was the second one they did, but for one awful moment i thought "Design for Life" was relegated to a spoken version by Nicky Wire, but they came up trumps in the end and JDB did a fab solo accoustic rendition of "Everything Must Go" - truly amazing!!

These are some close-ups of my latest brooches i've done by special request of Indigo Moon customers. I've done a huge batch and each and every one unique. Some are in the shop and some are going into my Etsy Shop, once i get the hang of listing again, which i promise i'll do by the weekend. These went out a few days ago and i've sold three already!! They have a piece of an original letter dated 1919 to a Mr Kidson at Radley College Cambridge (where he was training to be a vicar) from his mother. The letters were lovely, but the paper was already deteriorating as was the ink etc, i like to think this is a way of preserving them for another hundred years or so. One lady bought one to take back to Oxford for a close friend and couldn't wait to tell her the story behind it.

Now..."what's this?" i hear you say!

"it's a plug" obviously

"well, it's not attached to anything!  Should it be?"

"oh yes!  it was and should be attached to the vacuum cleaner"

so......" Who unattached it?

"I wonder!"......

"It wuzen me, honest"

"maybe Gavin did it?????"

"ok, ok, i own up, it was me"

"but...you still love me don't you?"

"you can have my favourite toy"

..."well...you'll have to chase me for it first!!!!"

I took these photos of Lizzie today, she'd been for a walk with Viv and Tony down to the canal at Berriew! she was already in the dog house so to speak following the plug incident and yes she jumped in! she came back stinking dirty and soaking wet.  But....awwww bless....she looked so cute and happy...untill she got chucked into the yard to dry off that is!!!

“The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog"

Sooooooooo excited....

This is Venue Cymru, in Llandudno and it's where we'll be later...watching the Manics.....yaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!

My most favouritest all time, ever, band.....
This is the second time we've seen them at Llandudno, so we're shutting up shop at 5pm today and heading off into the sunset...well probably rain actually...but hey...it's the seaside, bound to be a little sun!!!! We've got a B&B booked for the night and are going to grab fish and chips to eat on the beach (how romantic!!) before the band........so fab!

and then.... on Saturday night....more exciting stuff again.....

This is the Manchester Evening News Arena...

and it's here that we'll be going to see....

...Roger Waters "The Wall Live"

Amazing ...i can't wait!!!

"What have we here laddie?

mysterious scribblings?

A secret code?

No! Poems, no less!

Poems, everybody!

The laddie reckons himself a poet!

...money get back/i'm alright, Jack/Keep your hands off my stack/New car/caviar/four star daydream/

think i'll buy me a football team...

Absolute rubbish,laddie

teacher slaps pupil with a ruler

Get on with your work"

- Pink Floyd