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Sat 18th Nov 2023
Ada Learns To Sew - children's book
Well, for grannies to read to children.
I’ve done a thing!
One day, about 4 years ago, I woke up with the desire to write a children’s story, and I couldn’t stop once I’d started. My lovely little granddaughter was about 4 but I wrote it about a little girl with her name as if she were 6 and a half years old. But I’m not a children’s writer so it got left. My granddaughter wasn’t old enough to read it or even have it read to her as it was a bit too old for her.
I wrote a few more little stories since but still felt that I didn’t know how to write stories for children. I finally realised that the stories I was writing were children’s stories for adults. for grannies like myself. They were written to read to grandchildren but that as much, if not more of the story was directed at the grandparents themselves. They were written as a bridge between the ages. And at the bridge between kids early reading books books and children’s literature. In short they are a bit ‘odd’ ⦠just like the granny in the story… Just like me, you could say.
You see they are about creativity and creative thinking and about passing on inspiration between generations. Because that… is what I am all about as a grandma and what I’ve always been about as a craft teacher and author.
Yes, Ada Learns to Sew IS an unusual little book. Is it unusual and different enough to catch the imagination of grannies and their granddaughters everywhere? Time will tell, I guess.
The first story finally became a book when my little sister (who incidentally I used to read stories to and make up stories for especially if she had bad dreams), read Ada Learns to Sew and offered to help me pay for an illustrator as that was what was holding me back. And now, when ‘my Ada’ is about to be 8 years old, the story based on her, on my own daughter and even on myself as a child, is on sale at last! It has toys and fairies and modern day themes but woven in it is history and the nature and nurture of creative families.
Incidentally, it was also my sister who provided me with the theme of another of the stories that is still waiting in the wings. Based on a funny thing that happened in her childhood. I wonder how many months or years before that one sees the light of day? Will I find I’m a children’s writer after all?
Mon 24th April 2023
20 books to 50k
Last minute conference in Seville
The last couple of weeks since my “Littleoldlady” birthday have been far from quiet. One of the first things that happened was that I found out at the very last minute and in an expensive month (for birthdays quite apart from my own) that there was a book conference just down the road in Seville. I’d never heard of 20Booksto50K before. The premise of this convention for (mostly) independent authors is that if you sell enough books to make 7.50 from each each day you only need to write 20 books to end up with an income of 50 thousand. We don’t earn anything near that with our 16 books some of which only sell a copy or three a month BUT it isn’t a ridiculous aim and if you start right now and only put out 2 books a year, it will take you a decade to get to that level of income. Its not at all a ridiculous aim and of course you can choose what your aim is.
Anyway I had to go even though I had to borrow to do it. Was it worth it? Damn right! It was clear to me from the outset that my biggest problem is not book production. It’s marketing! There were several classes to help me with that because although I have the basics. I know more than I’m self disciplined enough to do. The standout class of the 2 days was the one I was least likely to go to and that was Adam Beswick’s talk on TikTok. I was shocked by how much traction Adam gets from his very simple Tik Tok appearances. So in the next few weeks you’re going to see me all over that!
There was a lot of info which backed up most of the things we say in our “Self Publish your Craft Book In 100 days” But I did realise how very niche this book is and how much harder I’m going to have to work to reach out to buyers. Most of the people who need it don’t yet know we exist. Many of them don’t yet know that its one of the best ways to back-up their craft business.
I need your help! If you have a second craft beyond miniatures, would you share my posts on Facebook and on Tik Tok? The links are at the top of the page. And we’d love it if you talk about Our Your Creative Business books which number 3 now including the self pub one. Because what I really want to do is to help other people make a living out of doing what they love, like I have. Of course I want them to make a better living than I have too because I made all the mistakes over the years so that you/they don’t have to.
Living in Andalusia, Spain
Here in Andalucia we have 2 seasons. The green one and the golden one. The trick is keeping our garden in the green one while the sun tries to bake it golden. So we’ve planted up quite a lot of the garden already. We always go for garlic and courgettes and onions and aubergines as well as having raspberry bushes that need shading and a grumpy cherry tree. The orange, lemon and lime trees are all in floiwer and there are green almonds on the almond tree. Lots of work!
This year we’re also trying for Mange tout and so far they’re looking good whereas we’ve had no joy with peas before. Broad beans we do every now and then but plant in September and October for harvesting now. Our Artichoke plants are providing generously but the artichokes need hozeing down for greenfly and the surprise success this year has been lettuce, which actually makes a lovely soup! Oh and swiss chard is a regular thing. A physalis bush is throwing out fruits this year and Frank has just planted the okra seeds which did very well last year. Ooh yes I forgot the grapes which are just budding. We are almost self sufficient in veg at this time of year and sufficient in fruit all year. I bottle orange,lemon lime and grape juice. If you are interested in the difficult journey to our dream you might enjoy my book Making It Small and if you want to read how to live on less which we had to do for 6 years try The Frugalist by #Littleoldladywho who is of course, my frugal alter ego!
Wed 5th April 2023
It was my 66th Birthday yesterday!
And that means I’m retired … doesn’t it?
Guess what? I’m back at work today! But I’m at work with an evolving mindset.
Here’s a bit of the history of those changes.
To be fair it’s been ‘evolving’ since I was sick at 60. All my thoughts at that time were on how I could pivot my life to make a living whether we were sick or well. Because at that time we had literally nothing. What we did then was start to make a blueprint for the rest of our lives however long, or otherwise, they are.
Fortunately I’m well, and so is Frank and that’s our most important asset.
I was also a little angry at the time I was sick, with Brexit and with politics and with the idea that a wealth manager on a high salary was more valued in this world than an artist or a nurse or a teacher. And that social media ‘influencers’ had more clout than real influencers such as artists, nurses or teachers etc.
I began to revalue my life at that time because, like most artists I had always suffered from a sort of inferiority complex based on the fact that it seemed that I had hardly spent any time in my life in ‘proper jobs’ and in fact that was true. I realised that I was amazingly unafraid of possibly leaving this world because I had left something behind. I’d left books and music and people who I’d influenced for the better. That was a surprise to me and to those around me.
All of this was going into my thoughts about how we were going to climb out of the hole caused by my illness and there being no benefits for me here in Spain, and no pension until 66. I suddenly realised that I was the problem! I really was because far from having NO value I had been holding myself back and undervaluing myself forever … as artists often do, and that my way out was to stop doing that right then and there, and pull myself out of that and along the way motivate as many other creatives as I could to do the same.
Funnily enough as I started to read books about business, I noticed that a major crisis was very often the triggering force behind many entrepreneurial ideas and especially those who needed to change their income from active making and selling in real time to a more long term business plan containing more reliable passive income streams. That’s what we did.
The main initial focus of this work was to invest MUCH more of our time into long term projects (like books) which didn’t pay quickly. For a time we had to learn to live on almost fresh air!
Fortunately Patreon was a newish idea back then and I thought that the creative people I’d helped along the way might help me, and a lot of them did! I promised to share my ideas and thoughts early with them and they helped me make the changes I needed to make.
I’m going to skip through quickly as its all a very long story but believe me it was like having an average of 2 pregnancies and 2 births every year since then!
My first book since the illness was my memoir Making It Small. Written ‘just in case’, of course! I didn’t expect it to sell a lot of copies. But it was something I just wanted to do.
Then I did The Miniature Gardens Book which had already been in progress when my illness hit. And then 3D Pen Colour and Construct Fairy Houses and Fantasy Gardens which had also been a work in progress since my daughter bought me a 3D pen. Then came The Dollhouse Flower Shop which came out of a challenge I’d set myself to create a flower or a leaf stencil each day for 100 days. That was a tough challenge but was a great business and personal decision because it made me maximise on a new technique I’d hit upon during the dark days of chemotherapy, to stencil polymer clay for very fine floral elements. I was also learning to be much more businesslike and repurpose content I’d already put work into including both writing and designing.
During that time Frank also re-released my old Challenges (and part 2)from the magazines into 2 small books.
We didn’t make a big fanfare of these ones because they are basically a reprint of articles that were out of print but they are still popular!
All that time I was compiling my experiences of living very frugally while building our business back up, and that became The Frugalist (under the name LittleoldladyWho). We published that one just before Covid and lockdown hit. Just a little late for people to do the frugal prepping in the book! Oh well Covid wasn’t fun for any of us. For us it was less difficult because we could concentrate on the books and didn’t have to spend money on travelling to see family because it was simply not allowed. So then we worked on Your Creative Business which I was lucky enough to be able to work with my daughter Kira on. She gave our readers and myself so much information on keywords and SEO while I put into words everything I’d learned in 30 years of being a full time crafter especially the new more businesslike ways of looking at everything I did, especially the maximising of income from each piece of work.
The re-using and repurposing continued when I realised that other plotter cutter users had started making miniatures using their machines (I’d been using mine just for the stencils). We learned the different mindset you had to have when the item you wanted to make was the cut out bit rather than what was left! That gave rise to our Cricut and Construct book when instead of cutting flowers out and throwing them away I was keeping the flowers and throwing the rest away!
Then on a bit of a book ‘roll’ we finished off a book that had been waiting to be produced for years and years about the really creative uses of moulds. Simple Mold Making was very much a work by Frank pulling together a lot of my work with moulds ever since I first started using them. It became something of a retrospective as well as an explanation. People get moulds wrong and think they are only about repetition. They aren’t, they can help with creation of very complex items. They take just as much creativity to design and use appropriately. I realised that Frank needed to be listed as an author again the next time he was going to do this much work on a book!
Finally and just in the last couple of weeks we brought out the second in The Your Creative Business series called How to Self-Publish Your Craft Book in 100 days. Because we realised from answering loads of questions from other creatives that this book was really needed, and there was a gap in the market.
It seems that I’ve moved from being a miniaturist to a designer, author and craft business mentor, and so I have. And to top that off now I’m a pensioner!
Back to the question of an artists validity in society. It almost surprised me to find out I had indeed paid all my National Insurance dues but then I realised how very many years it is since I got my first pay cheque at 15! Even when I went back into education I still had part time jobs and paid NI just like everybody. As a miniaturist I was always ‘on the books’ after my first ‘tinkering’ year while I was a mother with little Kira.
Of course I’m not giving up yet! Its just that life will be just a little less frugal!
AND I’m not completely finished with polymer clay yet as you will see shortly.
I’m also just about to overhaul my Patreon to be more suitable for both the semi-retired me and for my patrons who have supported me so unstintingly through the hard 6 years of this process. If you want to join them for the next chapter you can do so here Patreon
If you enjoy hearing about what we’re up to and to get any offers and early info into your mailbox, do sign up to our mailing list through our contact form Check all the areas you want to hear about. We promise not to do spammy posts so when you do see one please open it. If it goes to your Spam box please unspam it! If you want to unsubscribe you can ask to be unsubscribed at any time.
Sun 26th Mar 2023
How to self-publish your craft book in 100 days
New creative business book.
Some housekeeping first! ‘How to Self-Publish Your Craft book in 100 days’- If you are thinking of doing a 100 day project here are the downloadable sheets we promised Click for FREE planner PDF files from the book
Have you ever wished you could write and publish a book about your craft, hobby or talent but don’t know where to start, or think you lack the funds?
A friend of mine just before she died expressed a regret that she had never written that book that she wished she had written. I asked her why not but she didn’t really have an answer? I still wonder this because these days you only have to choose to write to be a writer and you only have to publish to be an author. And its never too late. Until it is. It’s for people like her (maybe like you) that we’ve just brought out our latest book. Click for your nearest Amazon site
One of the things that puts people off, is the idea that you have to have some special writing talent or a degree in creative writing; but to write any book you really don’t. You just have to find your own engaging voice. This is especially true of craft books. It doesn’t matter if you have trouble spelling and you certainly don’t have to have a huge pompous vocabulary!
Whether you are a Craftsperson or a Hobbyist. An Artist or a DIY-er. A Gardener or a dancer, whatever your craft or skill you can share, teach and inspire your audience. And they will love how you bring your abilities within their reach!
You can increase your authority in your niche while making an extra long-tail passive income as part of a multiple income stream business model.
In this second book in the Your Creative Business series Frank and I help you to find your author style as well as your marketing ability. Frank, after answering lots of questions from friends who wanted to self-publish realised that he had some knowledge to share on the subject and so this is his first ‘proper’ author journey but he’s been self-publishing with me for over a decade. So Frank guides you through the sometimes scary technicalities of self publishing, and I help you to find the confidence to plan your book and find a style which inspires.
Our book helps you produce both informative and “eye candy" photographic images. It gives you ideas to push through artist “imposter syndrome" and procrastination. We also suggest ways you can get a professional looking result on a shoestring budget if necessary. Then it gives you tips to market your book cost-efficiently.
Is publishing your own book on your bucket list? Would holding your own book in your hands give you real joy? It gives me joy every time and that joy never fades. And I can truly say that I feel fulfilled and like I will leave something behind me when my own journey is done.
Take ‘How to Self Publish Your Craft Book in 100 days’ along the journey with you, and we’ll hold your hand every step of the way.
We’re really proud of this book but because it reaches out into craft areas that we have no contact with we need your help to bring it to those makers. Can you help us to do that? What other (non miniature) crafts are you in contact with? Could you share the link to this book in those groups for us? Maybe, your simple suggestion will encourage a friend to bring out their first self-published book. And just maybe that friend will go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, as another of my friends did after I suggested self publishing to her.
Fri 9th Feb 2023
Happy Valentines day!
Love is in the air!
So Frank and I want to give you a little Valentines gift AND since Lisa Sones-Peck and I love each other’s work we wanted to collaborate again on a giveaway this year.
Lisa is sharing her pretty Cricut corner unit files for free and I’m sharing files for a couple of plants with heart shaped leaves/flowers as well as a simple Valentines card.
The files are separate but as you can see they complement each other perfectly.
These files are available free for all of February after which they will be added to some other plants in development to make a bundle on our Etsy digital store.
Hugs
Angie and Frank
Sun 18th Dec 2022
Cricut & Construct #1 Book
New Year, New Book, New Kit
Happy Xmas everyone! It’s been a tough year for a lot of people not least in a financial sense, so I hope the winter festivities give you all some respite. For me Xmas to new year is the time I let myself do something different that I’ve been wanting to do all year. Because its always creative it often leads to whatever the next year’s project becomes. Last year I was juggling 2 ideas and so that led to 2 books. Lisa (Sones-Peck) had been ‘egging me on’ as we used to say, to produce a Cricut and Silhouette book and Frank had been equally sure I should do a Moulds Book. Well somehow, and I still don’t know how, we’ve got both done. Just! Actually I do know how, I gave a lot of the work to Frank! For that reason Frank is Co-author on the Cricut and Construct book which is only just out in time for Xmas after some delays.
Note from Frank: The spiral staircase has proved very popular as a cut design so we thought we might offer a limited number pre-cut in the next week or so for those without a cutting machine. Let us know if you want notifying when I have them cut, in either 12th or 24th scale.
We work very much together these days feeding off each other’s creative ‘vibe’ and he has all the cutters in his office where he hangs out as Mr Geek. I’m Mrs Ideas Woman in my messy office or my craft-cluttered living area. This is where I like to be and where, as I approach retirement age… though not complete retirement, I really need to be.
So what happened to my polymer clay work? I’ve been asking myself this as well, Well, I think I just moved on. After an illness 6 yrs ago, I think it was just time for a change. That’s not to say I never go back to polymer clay caning, but I want to let the ideas settle. Not to repeat work I’ve done before. I still use polymer clay for stencilling and there are still so many avenues I want to explore in this work. But since I opened up my fields of exploration I’ve been able to encourage more crafters to explore their ideas and to look at how to turn them into a business. I’ve become a bit of a crafting agony-aunt. Currently I’m playing with paper and card, which is funny, because that really is full circle. My childhood was full of colouring and cutting out. The most important message I can send at Xmas is to give the gift of creativity to your family and your friends and teach them to value that in themselves. Whether you give craft materials or books or the even more important gift of time and mutual enjoyment of the creative process. In these uncertain times those who can create and who learn to solve problems, are the healthiest and the happiest and that creativity never leaves, it grows, supports your mental health and should be nurtured. Have a happy Xmas and a healthy happy, and of course a creative new year.
Hugs
Angie and Frank
Thu 18th Aug 2022
The Colour Book - Larger
I saw a sad little Tweet on Twitter this morning from a girl who said she feels like a failure. You might not believe me but I really identified with her, Creative people often suffer in their lives from ups and downs in their moods and of course their creative energy. This has been true of me. As I get older though, I’ve allowed the natural rhythms to take over and have stopped fighting them or trying to smooth them out. I take it step by step and project by project with sometimes just a little push of self discipline. So when the mood takes us to get another book done we ride the wave as far as it will go!
So, If you’ve ever wondered how some polymer clay miniaturists get truly realistic colours that jump out from the rest, this is the book for you and it sits very well alongside its brother. Colour next to shape. So for those friends who are thinking of writing their own craft books we are always happy to help. In fact in my list of half written books there’s one on exactly that subject! I wonder when I’ll get round to finishing that and the other 3! If you’re in a creative business and you’re on a down and need a boost checking out a new book a new material or buying yourself a new tool may be all it needs to trigger a new ‘up’ because sometimes we all need a push don’t we? For me this morning’s push was seeing how many of you did want the bigger version of the Colour Book. Check out all my books in the book section. Even I’m surprised how many there are there now. Taking it step by step and book by book. By the way, I have a little favour to ask. Most of us can’t be bothered with reviews, I get that but if you can review any of my books especially the newer ones please do and if you’re too busy I understand but please ‘rate’ (Give star numbers) if you can. You can be honest. In fact it was a negative but fair comment that made us change the size of the Colour Book.
Sat 16th July 2022
The Moulds Book
How hot is it for you everybody? We are just melting here! But of course we’ll be complaining in mid winter won’t we? We are very lucky that nobody except mad English people wants to use the pool in the mid day heat so we have a huge municipal pool almost always to ourselves every day when we go. Luxury! Shame its only 8 weeks a year.
We’re very excited here because we’ve just finished another book. This never gets old believe me.
It's delayed gratification at its most delayed. You spend months with your head in one place barely coming up for air and certainly never getting a proper pay cheque. Thank goodness for my Patreon patrons or I wouldn’t be able to do this. Anyway we’re absolutely itching to see the proofs when they arrive this coming week, fingers crossed. So for those who aren’t patrons and so haven’t been getting regular updates here’s a peek at the cover and a little look at some of the projects in Simple Mold Making. Please note we know that its the American spelling. This was a business decision based on our major demographic. The text in the book is in British English though as is explained in the intro.
The book will have a very wide appeal among crafters, but of course it has a leaning towards miniatures. There are a few projects some of you may already have seen. Because this book concentrates on moulds it picks up all the different uses that I’ve put moulding material to over the years. There are plenty of new ideas in there to inspire your own experiments with what the material can do. I feel sure that this book is going to be a popular one. I always intended to have a shape book to go with my colour book and this is it! One of our next plans is to re release the Colour Book in a larger format so that they do sit happily side by side. The Colour Book was squashed into a small format because of postage costs when we were having to ship them from here, so the freedom of having books sent directly by Amazon or Ingram and the availability of Prime makes this a little less of an issue. I’m getting older now and so I’m making fewer and fewer miniatures for sale, preferring to leave that to the amazing and talented younger ones among you but I do still occasionally get the urge to make a few things so its still worth checking my marketplace out. If you are a Silhouette or a Cricut user we have an Etsy shop which sells digital downloads and the last things we uploaded have been a really lovely street flower vendor shop/orangerie and some crates to make up display stands for it. We’re really enjoying these experiments with paper and card and have some exciting news coming up soon on that. Now I can get my head out of the moulds book! Watch this space. www.etsy.com/shop/AngieScarrCrafts.
I always love to see what you’ve been making so if you have recently made something you’re proud of whether its based on something I’ve taught or not I’d love to see it either on Facebook or you can get in touch with me through the contact form.
Tue 26th Apr 2022
Up to my ears in flower stall!
My inspiration is often based on a scene I've seen on my travels, and I love flower shops and especially street concessions. Of course there haven't been many fairs to go to for a couple of years. My travels had already slimmed off a bit as I entered my 60s. So often I look for inspiration on Google. This design is based on photos on the internet of one flower which actually was Frank’s choice, and a completely different street flower concession which I’d photographed in Malaga. And then there was a third picture of a flower art installation in Madrid I think. I hate to copy slavishly but love to blend inspirations. This is our mix of 3 ideas. I just love working with Frank on designs like this because he takes the stressful computery bits on and I get to play and tweak and sometimes be very demanding. All in the name of business of course!
We're currently designing the stands to go inside and outside it and of course will set the second one I make as an orangery! The files for this stand for Cricut and Silhouette etc. are now available on our Etsy store. Watch out for the accessories coming up.
If you’re looking for your own inspiration and flower ideas Just type ‘flower shops’ and ‘flower stalls’ into your browser. What a feast for the eyes!
I’m always happy to answer your questions and to share longer demos with my Patrons if needed.
Just give me a couple of weeks. I'm being 'dragged' off to accompany my Sister this week - to see how the 'other' 10% live on a luxe cruise!! Its a hard job but somebody has to do it. I'm offloading my camera so I can catch photos wherever I go and I hope I can share some with you.
When I get back we’ll be finishing off the designs for the interior and exterior stands. So that should give you time to get the shop ready for them!
www.patreon.com/angie_scarr
www.etsy.com/shop/AngieScarrCrafts.
My street flower stall. I’ve just loved imagining your surprise when you all try it. Yes, its just medium weight (300 gsm/110lb) card. The strength comes from the construction. Of course it could be styled as a coffee concession, a cosmetics shop ... all of the above and more!
Flower Stall SVGs
Monetising your intellectual property.
While I was ill 5 years ago. Or year zero of my new 6 year business plan as I like to think of it. I was hit with how much I've done, invented, innovated and designed over the years and how little I'd been paid for it as a creative. I was sick in bed unable to move or create and with almost zero income ... but the ideas were still flowing. The main idea that was flowing was how the hell was I going to make an income when I didn't seem to have anything physical to sell. Then it hit me. My books, though they were few at that time and i was underpaid for the first two, had never stopped selling. I was doing nothing but I still had a tiny trickle income from my books. It was obvious to me that I needed to write more books.
I still had some sales of my moulds. Clearly I needed more products that I could design and hand over to my husband to continue producing. At that time I began my transformation from largely a producer of desirable craft works who then told people how she did it, to a person who specialised in making craft work accessible to all and easy for all. And on top of that, as the realisation dawned that I had taught a couple of generations who were all making some part of their living through the work they had started due to my teaching, it was time to recognise that what I was in fact was not a high artist but a teacher. And what I had was not so much an ability to make a living as a maker but a style of imparting my knowledge that broke the difficult down into easy steps. My third revelation was that if I concentrated on making products that helped others achieve their creative ambitions I was going to be able to utilise the very best of my abilities AND put them into several potential income streams at once. Those three ideas were foundational to my new way of working.
In that way my husband and I have built back up from near zero to a healthy number of “investments" in work that will pay off in the medium and long term. Now here is the admission. It’s really not a quick fix. It’s like the beginning of the gardening year. We are planting many more seeds than we are gathering profits. This is because we are investing to recoup so that, as we only expect a small trickle income from each product the payback is not rapid but is good if we keep on stacking up those incomes. It’s taken us 5 years so far but I can say that now if I were to fall ill again there would be a small and nearly adequate income for months even years into the future … just. The final year of my 6 year plan intends to consolidate into a good and measurable income by leveraging each of the separate streams and connecting them in a way that joins the jigsaw pieces where now I am reusing content or only producing one set of content for several different uses. And this year I absolutely MUST tackle my antipathy towards video.
Fri 25th Mar 2022
Polymer Clay vs Paper
Most people who know me know my first love has always been polymer clay … and more than that Food made in polymer clay. So some may be wondering why first I flipped to flowers and plants and second why I’ve further moved to making paper flowers. Well there are several reasons. The first is that I love to invent easier ways of doing everything. So when I first found polymer clay I found caning a really exciting way of recreating nature in miniature. I wasn’t the first to use caning in miniature but I do believe I was the first go quite as far with it. Developing ways of re-enclosing and peeling slicing etc. to reveal the insides. Since then of course the world of miniatures has embraced these ideas and moved on and my early ideas are now part of the way things are done these days. And, of course I got bored with cabbages. Don’t get me wrong I do still love making the veggies and fish etc. but I’ve explored it very deeply and now I’m happy to leave it to the next generation of talented miniaturists who are taking these ideas even further. There is also the feeling that as I get older I don’t actually want to buy or handle that much clay. I used to buy my clay in batches of hundreds of pounds worth when I was making the canes for the nail art industry.
5 years ago recovering from an illness I started playing with other ideas and hit upon the idea of stencilling polymer clay as a way of producing flower petals and leaves. I simply wanted to make some poppies for a Jug kit we were selling. I had been really ill and we’d decided that if I didn’t make it Frank was going to take the business in a slightly different direction. I did make it but I was still having fun. I realised that you could build up layers of colour adding veining and colour patterns to leaves and flowers and that then we could assemble them in 3 dimensions. The colour layering is simply something you can’t do in paper. Paper is also prone to moisture where polymer clay is not. Polymer clay has its problems but I started to solve those one by one and this is an ongoing adventure for me. I’ve moved into using a heat gun directly on to the stencilled clay and in certain cases (like my honeysuckle) 
directly on to dipped clay. Initially the leaves looked rather flat and often over translucent. I solved both those problems by adding a veining layer Then I’ve played with up to 4 layers on the same flower. It really is a new challenge and that’s what makes me happy.
All this time Frank has been helping me by cutting my designs, mostly with a laser cutter but occasionally with a plotter cutter (ours is a Silhouette). I realised that there was a difference between what could be achieved in polymer clay and what could be achieved with Paper. So I started playing with the differences and similarities. If you want to get started with stencilling polymer clay, my book The Dollhouse Flower Shop is a good start.
I’ve had fun with paper and will continue to adapt the designs that we work on for polymer clay for paper cuts. This is half the work already done once its ready for stencil making but there are differences to be taken into consideration so there is always some adaptation from the originals. Some items are almost impossible to make for stencils or at least really difficult, especially items like these little cheese plants. There is a way but I have still to trial it ;-) And the palms
are just so complicated and the force of nature combined with heat would make them droop. So those are ones I’m unlikely to make as stencils and may always only be made in vellum.
How you can share in the inspiration and support my work
Of course as an artist I still have to make a living and the way I do it is to bring my ideas to you to play with. In the hope that you will enjoy the craft so much you will buy my books, or my designs and just sometimes my miniatures although that is not my main income right now. I do also spend quite a lot of my time mentoring other people who want to make their living as full time or part time craftspeople. Sometimes they buy me a
Ko-fi but I don’t let other people’s inability to pay stop me supporting them. However if you want to support my ongoing creative journey and my idea sharing, Or you want a bit of extra one to one mentoring please support me on Patreon. www.patreon.com/angie_scarr
Another way you can support me is to buy your supplies through my recommendations Amazon affiliates page
But whether or not you support me in one of these ways, I’m still here for you. Just think of me as your creativity/creative business agony aunt.
Mon 10th Mar 2022
The life of a crafter lurches from periods of intense creativity to periods of reflection and investigation. And of course there are times when you have to get down to marketing. When sales are slow you don’t work less you work harder.
But when the international news is depressing some of us go out into the garden! So this year once again, rather like 2020 our garden is beautifully clear and ready for planting!
In 2020 when everyone else it seemed was panicking and rushing to the shops to stock up on … toilet roll of all things! We were in the garden ‘digging for victory’ or rather for our sanity. So when the Sh** is going down across the world the horse sh** goes down on our garden. During the early days of Covid, we were already prepared for lock down because I’d just that month released my book “The Frugalist" exactly about the times when we all have to live on less and be more prepared. I couldn’t of course have known how useful this book was going to be in the Covid situation and again now when people are nervous and wanting to retreat to a more certain and simple way of living. While all the world is losing their heads it helps to keep yours I always find. This is what I call gentle prepping. Not the crazy kneejerk reaction that many people have but the zen like knowledge that you are prepared for most crazy human behaviour by just being able to keep out of it. Not having to drive when the fuel prices are high for example.
I think crafting also keeps us sane in a mad world. So the last few days I’ve been playing with the shapes in nature and what the Cricut and Silhouette machines can achieve. What I love best is working with ‘impossibles’ and making them possible. Both with our laser cutter and our Silhouette Frank often says ‘that can’t be done’. He knows by now that I see that as a challenge to the problem solving area of my brain and so it was with our most recent release the palm, and fern leaves. We had just released a window box design and I wanted to fill it. I saw a lovely largely green design including palms and ferns. Both have caused difficulties before but I’m not one to be beaten so I applied myself to the cutter’s limitations and worked out exactly how the machine could cut such a complex design as the palm leaves! These last designs have used my own drawings as their starting point and then we’ve refined them on the computer. Using my own drawings means we just get a slightly more ‘organic’ look. We’re really pleased with the results. And that gives me real joy. I can spend my evenings peacefully painting paper plants. Ahhhhhhhhnd relaxxxxx!
If you have a machine and fancy making some plants take a look at our Etsy Digital store www.etsy.com/shop/AngieScarrCrafts.
If you don’t we are selling some of our designs as ready cut unpainted vellum and we’re adding more every week. Check out the craft area of our website Craft Materials.
Hope you feel that you’re within touching distance of spring, a more normal life after Covid and hopefully the world situation will calm down, but if not, we’ll craft our way through whatever comes up won’t we?
Mon 14th Feb 2022
Happy Valentines day miniature lovers!
It’s been a busy old February so far here at the Spanish version of the “Love-shack", now known for its size and scope as “love mansions". We have always had the habit of naming the places we live. Our first home was bought with the cost of a quarter of a proper house. That is to say for a quarter of the inheritance that came from my parents house. It wasn’t much, but it was our first house together and as such we called it “The Love Shack" after the B52s song. Then came “Sun House". A much bigger project at an even cheaper initial price so called because it faced the morning sun and because I was a Blues slide guitarist. Those in the know...will know. Then came a pair of places only known as “we never lived there" a rental that smelled very strongly of its previous occupants, and “The Scabby Grove house" which was in a very bad condition and we only bought for its opportunity to make some of the money we needed to start our build in Spain. It was always hard work and always a risky business trying to get from nowhere to where we wanted to be! Anyway, enough of the Valentines day diversion into house names. I just wanted to explain why our lives can be so busy both trying and exciting. Whatever the financial perils its never ever been boring (and all described in my book - Making it Small)
This brings me to ‘Dear Daughter’. Kira has always been a writer (much better than me!) and a creative, and she’s always encouraged my writing too which is nice. Sadly Kira’s dad died very recently. He and I never fell out, so it hit me pretty hard too. About the time Kira was writing her eulogy for Steve she passed on an open invitation from the BBC for the public to write a piece called “Dear Daughter". I could have written the easy to write piece. The one that says “Fly free and do what you wanna do". Kira knows that anyway. I wrote the difficult to write one about the tricky teenage years. The one that was emotionally charged and full of the unspoken bits many of which may still be unspoken for some time to come. It did have a lovely denouement which jumped from the past to the present and described how a mother’s worst fears didn’t come to pass and how happy I am to have been proven wrong. Anyway there must have been something in it because the Beeb picked it up for their programme on the subject and are going to interview us later this week for the podcast of the same name. So if you’re interested keep an ear open for that. It won’t be live of course and may be weeks in production. Meanwhile Kira’s Eulogy for her Dad was lovely and summed his life up perfectly and I think writing and being generally creative helped us both through the tricky weeks at the end of last year.
Kira has also always been very supportive of my post illness efforts to completely re-make my business in a more businesslike fashion. Those efforts ultimately let to the writing (together) of Your Creative Business. And Kira has been helping me with efforts to get this old lady’s head around the concepts of SEO and hashtagging and my online presence, all of which are tricky for an old bird like me! She was here for such a short time we really only had time for fun and chat and not much in the way of the stuff I really want to learn and she really wants to encourage. Kira knows a lot about how short time is for fitting all that in to a creative business because she’s had to give her own embryonic business up recently for lack of time... for obvious reasons. So she doesn’t just give up on me when I say I haven’t had time. She KNOWS what that feels like.
So this week Kira offered to find enough time to encourage me in bite sized tasks, in my work on marketing and specifically on my online presence. Most of us older miniaturists are falling way behind our younger counterparts who are often blogging, vlogging, Youtubing and Tik-Tokking with what is often, in essence our work. And they’re doing it very successfully too. You can’t blame them. Crafting is fun! But now I want a piece of my own pie! What I’ve done all my life is encourage other crafters to craft (and make a business) and clearly Kira is a chip off the old block, breaking down tasks into those bite sized lumps. She’s beating me at my own teaching game here! The thing about challenging yourself (or someone else) to do something that’s so small, that its no longer fearful, is that it helps people take the first step. And, If you’re anything like me that first step ends up not being enough and, far from procrastinating, you often end up doing much more than the tiny challenge you are set.
This week Kira’s challenge was to get to know Tik Tok. Just to get over that initial nausea caused by all the bobbing heads, pouting selfies and unbearable noise through that first onslaught to a place where I felt in control. The final object being to put some of my work up and make it appeal to the right audience.
Of course once I took that first step I just had to take a step or two more. There’s nothing like a small success to motivate you on to a bigger one is there? Anyway yesterday I slayed the demon Tik Tok and made my first frankly terrible piece of me playing guitar pretty badly.
Today I want to change my frankly awful profile pic so we’ll see if I manage. Eventually I’ll learn what is and isn’t allowed in the advertising sense. Meanwhile if you’re running a Craft Business including Miniatures businesses of course, please feel free to Join us on https://www.facebook.com/groups/yourcreativebusiness I held back on inviting more miniaturists until now in case it became top heavy with our particular craft as its a group for all creative businesses. Please also invite your creative business owning or starting friends. Lets make this a big mutual support group.
Just a little housekeeping on the Website. I’ve asked Frank to make a part of the page dedicated to Miniature craft materials as they were sometimes hard to find. Don’t forget that Patrons have a special extra page. You should already know how to access this if you’re a Patron. If you don’t just let me know.
Valentine's day hugs X Angie
Mon 24th Jan 2022
Brr it’s cold outside and actually inside today. In the room I’m in at the moment it’s just 14 degrees.
Spain is a cold country with a hot sun!
Weirdly though I’m getting used to it and don’t usually light our log burner until lunchtime. I think the fact that I’ve started wearing more layers and Merino wool vests has something to do with it. But I am dreaming of spring and especially of spring back in England. I have no desire to be there but remember gardens and woodlands in spring very fondly. So this last week we’ve been designing (and in some cases redesigning) spring flowers for the plotter cutters (Cricut and Silhouette etc.). Here are some pictures of what we’ve released and a sneaky peek at the most difficult to assemble set (just because they are so super small) which is coming up next.
If you’re a plotter cutter user and haven’t yet visited my Etsy digital shop here’s a link. www.etsy.com/shop/AngieScarrCrafts
People love them. Just take a look at the reviews. If you have reviewed thank you so much for your great comments. These reviews are worth so much to us!
If you think you can’t afford a plotter cutter but really want one you can get a lot of the earlier models cheaply second hand as people upgrade to the newer ones with more features. For my flowers the cheap ones do the trick! We actually cut all our flowers on an old Silhouette Cameo that cost only 50 pounds including postage to us in Spain. We are such ‘Cheapskates’ (that used to be Frank’s boyhood band’s name because they packed the whole band, excluding a drum kit, into a mini!) By the way if you are suffering from rising prices and want to live more frugally have you seen my The Frugalist book? Under the nom-de-plume Littleoldladywho. I wrote it after we hit our own sticky patch 5 years ago and had to learn to live on much less.
Of course my heart is still with Polymer clay and there is some colour work you can do with the clay you just cant do with paper so the items that aren’t yet available as stencils we’ll be designing for those too. People have asked us if the SVGs are interchangeable to make your own stencils. Yes you can but they are a bit different. The designs for stencils have more detail just because of the way the laser cutter works and we can do multi layer stencilling, Veins, different colours and smearing etc. You can’t do that with paper and the techniques using the clay/liquid clay mix use much less clay than caning, which is why I’m loving it so much! It’s really quite fun hopping between the two though!
I’m also currently preparing for the first visit of any of my (adult) children since before Covid hit so I’m very excited about that. I want to show our house otherwise known as our ‘build project’ in its very best light and of course we’ll have to get it really warm for an English girl who is used to central heating!
And the other work in front of me is my Moulds book. I’m currently working on using moulds to help create surface effects. You can see that the primroses and violets are in what looks like a rusty cast iron tub. This one was created using a mould and the areas where the rust will show were made in the moulds process. You’ll have to wait until the book is out to see how. Or join my Patreon Patrons who support my book writing and get to see a lot of the work in advance and free digital files and other ‘perks’ as their thanks from me. I simply couldn’t do it without them! www.patreon.com/angie_scarr
Warm Hugs X
Thu 13th Jan 2022
Hi Everyone: miniature collectors, makers and other crafty friends.
This is my new semi-secret Blog page. Everyone who signs up to my mailing list can access this page and get any digital freebies or tips that we leave here at any time so keep looking back!
Here’s your first Freebie! This is for those people who have a Cricut, a Silhouette or even a laser cutter. In some cases my designs might even work or be helpful towards work on a 3D printer. You are allowed to use these files for your own work to sell if you are a maker but you are NOT licensed to share the files in any form.
Here is Lisa's Trellis and planter complete with my leaves (plus a few accent flowers from my Etsy digital range) finished in 2 ways by Lisa and I. To download the branches use this link
click here And we’ve teamed up with Lisa of Spellbound Miniatures who is offering the planter / trellis for free to her customers and followers. If you want her files follow this spellboundminiatures.com
So. If you’re still here. Here’s the round up of what we’ve been up to here at Angie Scarr Miniatures in the last year or so.
Many of you already know the story of our self-build in Sunny Andalucia from the book Making it Small so you know there have been ups and downs. Actually the book has a bit of a down at the end as I find out I have cancer. But that was almost exactly 5 years ago and we have definitely climbed out of that deep hole.
This year we got back to the DIY and I ended last year by climbing on the roof of our tall 2 story house to fix the leaks in the internal guttering. This was like a rite of passage back into life and back into self building. Since then we’ve been finishing off lots of unfinished corners and mounting door runners for sliding doors and preparing for fitting our second bathroom as time and finances allow.
Last year I put 3 books out! The first one on new years day, Your Creative Business, was co-written with my e-marketing guru daughter Kira who many of my long term mini-buddies will remember as my right hand girl at Miniatura. Kira is ‘all grown up’ now and copywriting for e-marketing is her job and she’s also dabbled in a sideline craft business herself so she had plenty of experience in the younger online marketplace where my knowledge was lacking. The book is getting great reviews and we followed it with a workbook to go with to help crafters to start or grow their business. This is a bit of a mission for me in my older years. To try to encourage other creators not to make the mistakes I made, especially in valuing and pricing our work. This is absolutely key to a successful and sustainable business and too many of us get it so wrong! Then I wrote up and published my Bladder Cancer Stories which is the only one of my books which I hope not many people will want or need.
So this coming year is the 6th year in my own 6 year plan (you can read about business planning in the YCB workbook). I’m going to reach retirement age in 18 months and, although I will never retire I’m planning to go part time. Write more, live in a more finished house, maybe have more guests for classes too. And I’d like to travel more. Visit family and friends more. Because life is too short not to! And, of course because travel is less fun alone I hope Frank will also be able to keep his hours low.
This year therefore I have plans to get a lot of my half finished book work finished, all the while sharing with my patrons who have supported me through this journey. This will probably mean another 3 books this year! 2 Miniatures and one more under my Littleoldladywho writing name.
Miniatures wise I’m currently working on a mould making book and right now working on mould making for a new polymer clay finish technique. Exciting!
I hope whatever plans you have for this year come to fruition and that you have all the flexibility and resilience you need to face any challenges that crop up. Please do keep checking back on this blog for more stories, freebies and general miniature mayhem!
Finally I have a request for my mini friends. If you see one of my books cloned under another name and cover please let me know. And if you see another miniaturist’s book similarly cloned please let them know too. There has been a spate of this copying recently. The copyists are literally stealing our ‘wages’. It’s much easier to steal from the little people, than from those who can afford lawyers!
My Etsy digital range for cutters, 3D pen, etc.www.etsy.com/shop/AngieScarrCrafts
My facebook page where I let everyone know what is going on www.facebook.com/angiescarr.miniatures
My Instagram account www.instagram.com/angiescarr
for tutorials, howtos and videos about crafts and miniatures www.youtube.com/user/angiescarr
We have a facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/yourcreativebusiness where creative business owners can share wisdom and successes and failures.
Please join my patrons on Patreon, to support my writing and get advance peeks. www.patreon.com/angie_scarr
If I have helped you with advice etc. please feel free to buy me a coffee ko-fi.com/angiescarr