Back to Crocheting... Modern Granny Shrugs

I'm back to crocheting, yay! Also, this is my first entry in almost two years, yay again! I took my sweet time posting another one, busy mom of two indeed. Back to crocheting because I had to set aside this hobby to venture to a new one which turned into a great business, my beaded wire trees. Unfortunately, I had to take a break from it as well when I got pregnant with my second child and I had to really rest. It was a difficult pregnancy. Then I just had to completely give up my beading craft because it is a little bit dangerous with a crawling baby and now a walking toddler. My work area is not in a separate room and there might be beads, wire, pebbles, or clay that my little one might pick up. Anyway, crocheting is much safer and this is my first love so I'm happy to be hooking again.

I made costumes for my second baby for her monthly photoshoot until she reached one year. Then, I got a hold of these gradient yarns which I fell madly in love with so now my favorite things to make are shawls, shrugs, scarfs, and ponchos. These projects show off the beauty of the colors of the yarns. I now have over 200 cakes of these gradient yarns.

Last holiday season, my husband gifted a few of these shrugs and got a bunch of orders for them in return. This lovely pattern is the Modern Granny Shrug from the The Crochet Crowd which was made even lovelier by the colors of these yarns.

This is a sample of the gradient yarn cakes I kept on talking about. The yarns I usually buy are cotton and polycotton multi stranded yarns. I get them from online sellers here in the Philippines. The maker manually winds the yarn, changing colors a few strands at a time to create that gradient effect. I'm not an expert but that's the gist. 

These are some of the shrugs I made. Simple yet beautiful, aren't they? For my other works, you can visit my FB page Justise & Jordana. This is a new page because I had to deactivate the old one due to a lot of inquiries and requests I was still getting for the beaded wire trees. I only ship within the Philippines because unfortunately, shipping cost to other countries is even more expensive than the cost of my creations.

For the yarns I used here, you may visit the following FB pages:

Ashley's Crochet

Crocheted by Carisse

WANDerful Creations

Artsy String Fiber Crafts

Icee Crochet

These are the online yarn shops from where I always get my gradient yarns. There are other yarn shops I frequent which sell other types of yarns. That's probably for another blog entry. They are all here in the Philippines but some, I think, also ship outside of the country, you may inquire from them directly. 

That's it for now. I'd probably be back next year, lol. Would like to feature my other works next time or maybe a list of my favorite crochet and knitting supplies store. See you!

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Soap Giveaways

It's been a while since my last blog entry because I was so busy with my small business as I've shared on this post. We're always fully booked month after month that I forgot all about blogging. Anyway, I have this chance now because I'm pregnant with our second baby and all I want to do is to relax and enjoy pregnancy so I'm taking a break from making souvenirs. 

We started out with just the beaded wire trees and, as I've mentioned, we're always fully booked so whenever I had new inquiries and orders that I couldn't accept, some would still beg me to try and fit them in my timetable. Of course, I would only accept orders that I'm sure I could finish on time without stressing myself out. I'd always explain that the trees take time to finish and I could only make around 200-250 trees in a month, with weekends as my days off. Some people would also  try to order with only a week before their event and would ask me if I have other products to offer when I'd say that I couldn't possibly make the trees with that amount of time specially when I have other clients already booked. So I came up with another option for my would be clients...

Soap bars in different beautiful packagings. I found a supplier for organic soaps online so I ordered a few pieces to make my samples and posted photos on my Facebook page. The soaps are already wrapped in plastic and I just have to add sticker labels to indicate the variant. Depending on the packaging and number of pieces ordered, I could finish a batch in one to three days. Also a nice alternative for clients on a budget because the finished soap souvenirs, with the clients' chosen packaging with customized tags, only range from Php 30-35. 

Above are the sample photos I posted on my Facebook page of the packaging designs to choose from. 

Below are the souvenirs for my previous clients.

Over 1, 200 soap souvenirs in a span of eight months and in between my beaded wire tree orders, not bad. But now, I'm on a break from all of these. Good thing, too, because I miss crocheting. 

Bye for now! 

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