Last post for 2011

Happy New Year everybody!

I am just squeezing in the last blog post for 2011! I have been frantically cleaning the flat as we are expecting four guests for dinner tonight. We got back from our Christmas trip in Italy yesterday. It was my first Christmas in Italy and it really was great! I have tons of food pictures!  It was interesting as everyone in Italy had very different meals for their Christmas lunch or dinner. Next year I am going to ask all of Francesco's friends to take pictures for me :) The meals were so varied and they have about 5 courses!

We had so much to eat! I put on 1kg just from the Christmas lunch!

The pulling of the crackers

I carried a box of 12 crackers in our luggage, from London. They do not have Christmas crackers in Italy and no one had seen them before.


We had lots of starters, then homemade pasta in a cheese sauce, rabbit, guinea fowl, many cheeses and panettone. I was close to popping.

The antipasto

Homemade bigoli

Rabbit, guinea fowl and potatoes with aubergines and artichokes

2kg Panetonne

Francesco's parents gave us one of these to bring back to London. We had to carry it by hand. Luckily we didnt have any trouble on the plane with our 2 big rucksacks and slightly overweight luggage and a big panettone. We had to leave some things behind in Italy, was impossible to carry everything.

We will open the panettone tonight for desert.

Chatting with my sister on my iPad

Chatted to Naomi after all the food on my new shiny iPad that Francesco got me for Christmas. Every year, I usually spend Christmas at home. This was the first time I was not at home for Christmas with my parents and Naomi. I missed eating with my sister, it has become such a tradition for us to stuff our faces every Christmas. We will have to have a little belated Christmas dinner. :)

Opening presents

These were made to match Francesco's parent's sofa

Lupi and Pilu pillows

So tonight we will have a seafood feast - stuffed mushrooms, oysters, clams, scallops and lobster tails. Lets hope all goes well!

There is so much more I want to write but I have to get ready and finish preparing the flat.

I will end with just saying that I have had an amazing and eventful 2011. I quite my job in Amsterdam after 5.5 years and began SukiSuki as a proper business venture. It has been one hell of a roller-coaster for both me and Francesco. It has been 7 months and I am slowly, but surely, finding my way.  Francesco has been so supportive and has managed pretty well so far at putting up with all my craziness :)

It has not been easy but it has been  a fantastic experience! And I hope my SukiSuki journey will continue and be a success. I am enjoying meeting new people and SukiSuki seem to be receiving positive attention. There are 494 SukiSuki fans on the fb page! It is very exciting every time I get a new fan. I am hoping I can reach 500 before the end of today. It is so close! It is very easy to get greedy with the fans. I always want more! Many thanks to all my fans!

There are a million SukiSuki things I want to do. Everyday goes by so fast there is not enough time to do everything. But the first thing I will do next year is my website! I have been so fussy with what I want, I am waiting for the perfect website to pop into my head and still, 7 months later I still have no proper website. So for next year, my biggest priority is the SukiSuki website! :)

I  will also have to do more with Stuff Me Silly next year, my food blog. It has been neglected. I will be combining my love for food and SukiSuki somehow! :)

This is my old blog:
http://stuffmesilly.wordpress.com/tag/stuffmesilly/

And here is my fb page
https://www.facebook.com/StuffMeSilly


I hope 2012 will be a very creative, fun and exciting year!

See you all Next Year!

New Flower - Violet

Violet Flower

  

 A new addition to the flowers!

Daisy and Pink Fiorellino

Altogether, they are so colourful! They definitely cheer me up during all this cold, wet and miserable weather. :)

Pots and pots of joy!

Winter Wonderland Report

So the Winter Wonderland at Coutts bank was on the 1st of December. I had a month to prepare, I was sewing like crazy!

It was my first time to experience the joys of  mass production! WHAT A NIGHTMERE!

I started with one of the things that take the most time... the flowers. Tons of cutting and sewing in order of colours. It was the most organised I have ever been.

I had a list with the Characters and how many of each I wanted to make. The numbers were constantly changing. Some days for sewing went better than others. 

Flower Heads

I only started stuffing right at the end. It was such a relief when the boxes were getting filled with completed items. It was only a few days before the market when this started happening.

 

 Ambitiously, I was aiming for 100 things in four weeks, but that was not possible.  75 things was the maximum I could make. I had a few items that went wrong, so I would have had a few more.

The mass production!

 I was sewing right up to the last moment. I was super stressed! Naomi was packing everything in boxes while I was getting ready. But of course everything worked out fine and we got to Coutts on time. However, we still had to set up everything on the table and put tags on everything.

There was not enough room on the table for everything so I used the wall in front to display the flowers.

Naomi and me at Coutts

My table

It was a very enjoying evening. There were lots of interest but by the end of the night I still had no sales.  Everyone wanted to buy online. But then, just as I was going to pack up, the 2 guys from Bottletops came and bought a Suki each!!!!   Thank you guys!!!! You certainly cheered me up! :)

Olly, my first customer of the night!

Cameron, my second customer

Overall it was a very fun night and a good experience. One thing is clear, I am a terrible sales person! :)


I am glad to have made so many things in a month, but hope to never have to do another month like that again! There were some days where I almost cried. I was so exhausted and my fingers were sore from all the sewing and the million pin and needle pricks! My poor fingers...

So what's next? Get my website done!!!!

Another SukiSuki Giveaway

I love getting facebook fans on the SukiSuki page! Right now there are 462 people in the world who like SukiSuki! :)

And to show my joy and appreciation of getting fans I will do another giveaway when reaching 500 fans! The giveaway will include some very colourful SukiSuki buttons, postcards and and magnet. I will do a random draw so any of the 500 fans will get a chance to win. And there will be 5 winners!
 

So if you you are not a fan yet, please pop over and LIKE away! Like,  like, like! :)    Take Me There Now

 

The Werebear Donut

There is a new addition to the Dark Donut Series!

I began by making a Bear Donut. Once she was complete, the Werewolf  Donut bit her and she turned instantly into a Werebear Donut!!! Now she will carry the curse of the Werebear forever...

Hiii! I'm awake at 7am!

Ooh!! Why am I awake at 7am??!!

  A very happy Werewolf Donut with his new companion.

TA DAaaa!!!

 It's always a relief once these furry creatures are finished. It is crazy how much mess is made from the fur!!! I have to hoover about a million times!

Me with my Werebear and Werewolf Donuts

Even though these are a pain to make, I have to say that these fluffy donuts do make me smile. Let there be many more fluffy donuts to come! :)

Werewolf Donut

My new favourite donut

A new addition to the Dark Donut Series! The Werewolf Donut!

This Donut was placed under a curse. He still maintains some physical traits of a donut but posses super-donut strength and senses beyond those of wolves and donuts. They are extremely rare and love nothing more than cuddles and a scratch behind the ears. But beware of him during a full moon!!!! :)

Vampire, Werewolf and Devil Donuts

The fur is really lovely and soft but when this fabric is cut there are a million hairs EVERYWHERE!!! Arrrgghhh! It really is horrible!!! I must have hoovered a million times just to control the hair mess from cutting. And there was a lot of cutting!

 I was undecided about the colour of the ears, wondered if they should be pink, white or grey. Francesco suggested to make them green to match with the eyes. I was worried the green ears would look strange. After some doubting, I decided that green might be a good choice after all and it was! Good call Francesco! :)

Back view

Fluffy tail

Me and my new creation

Rrraawwrrrr!!!

Winter Wonderland!

I had a meeting with the Events Manager of Coutts Bank and I will be taking part in their annual Winter Wonderland Market 1st of Dec!  VERY EXCITING!!!!

I have been preparing as many things as I can like crazy! I am aiming to take at least 100 Suki's with me. Last week I was working on flowers and misfits, and that was just cutting them out!

My little sister Naomi started her 10 months internship last week.She is studying Product Design.


Now I have only 3 weeks left till the market!!!  And I am also juggling orders! Eeeeeeeeeek!!! 

THREE MORE WEEKS!!!

Halloween at Torture Gardens

I am never leaving Halloween shopping to the last minute again! On Friday the queues for the Halloween stores were ridiculous! It was so stressy inside the shop I made panic purchases and I still did not find anything for myself! In the end I went to fabric store minutes before closing and got some stretchy black PVC.

It was perfect, I made a top for Francesco and a dress for me.

I went as a Voodoo Witch with my own voodoo doll. :)


The only reason we knew about this event was because my friend Natsumi Scarlet was performing that night. Dressing up and makeup took much longer than we expected and we arrived to the club 20 minutes before Natsumi's act. Unfortunately no body in the club knew where any of the rooms were - the map was unreadable! We were rushing all over the place, upstairs, downstairs following wrong directions. In the end we were sent to the wrong room and watched the wrong performance! As soon as I realised the person we were watching was not Claire, we ran around again looking for the aorrect place. We finally found Claire! We saw the last 5 seconds of her act, doing the splits! 


Torture Gardens Halloween Ball was amazing! It was an incredible experience, it was the first Fetish Club we had been too. The variety of costumes and lack of was just fantastic to see, and the atmosphere of the entire night was just amazing! It was the most fun Halloween we ever had! This article sums it up very well!


http://www.timeout.com/london/features/2242/Torture_Garden.html




Despite all the costume stress, our costumes turned out very well and this definitely is a place were you can be creative if you like making costumes :)

First Giveaway

Suki Stickers printed with Moo.com. The quality of the stickers are great!


The number of fans of my SukiSuki facebook page was at 246 so I decided I would give a page of stickers away when I reached 250. It was really fun doing a giveaway,  The draw was done using a random number generator then announced the winner on facebook. She contacted me immediately. I have not posted them to her yet,  I am waiting for my new business cards to arrive and they are taking ages!

When I reach 500 fans I will do another draw. I still have to decide what the giveaway will be....

First Etsy Sale!

My first international sale on my new Etsy shop

I finally put up two items on my Etsy page, the Vampire and Devil donut and within a few hours I had sold the Vampire Donut! I was absolutely thrilled! I made a new Vampire donut and shipped it off to the USA. He got there safe and sound and his new owner says she loves him. :)

Let's hope there will be more sales to come! :)

Daisy Daisy...

To add to my to my Suki flower collection - The Daisy! A pretty and delicate flower!

I have been getting a lot of flower orders. They are proving very popular gifts for all ages. :)