Author Archives: Teri Berry

New Year New Goals

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I can’t believe we are already 3 days into 2015…. so I am already late setting my new goals; not the most auspicious start! 🙂

My first 2 goals are essentially carried over from last year but they really worked for me so I will carry on with those with just some small edits.

  1. Post to my blog at least once per week and to Facebook twice per week
  2. Maintain at least 90 listings on Etsy
  3. Attend at least 2 workshops with other feltmakers to further develop my felting repertoire
  4. Start teaching felt making
Number 2 is an interesting one for me, as we approached Thanksgiving last year I set myself a target of having 90 items listed in my Etsy shop and I noticed a significant increase in sales soon after (not difficult to achieve, you might think, given that I had only sold 8 pieces in the 13 months prior). Initially I put the sales spurt down to a Christmas rush but I have had 5 more sales since Christmas (I’m still bouncing round the house with joy that other people like my work! 🙂 ) so it can’t just be people buying Crimbo presents.

Number 3 is a bit of a cheat since I have already signed up for a hat making class with Judit Pocs (I am so excited I can barely sit still) and I already have an idea of what I would like to do for the second one (more on that once it has been confirmed). But I do think it is important to keep learning from each other and expanding our horizons.

Number 4 is still just a handful of seeds in my mind, a few people have suggested I write a tutorial and I have ideas for at least 3 but the new EU VAT rules that came into force on January 1st put a spanner in those plans for a while but after much reading and networking I think there may be a work-around if I email the tutorials (it still isn’t clear if ALL the EU countries will agree this is acceptable). I also like the idea of doing some face-to-face teaching although it scares the hell out of me! There is a studio near me that runs a variety of workshops but as far as I can see felting is not on their menu, so I have plans to go and have a chat with the owner…. watch this space 🙂

I hope you have been taking a few days from your day job and have found time to be creative over the last week or so?  I have been having a whale of a time, here are a few images of the things I have been working on:

A pair of fingerless gloves to match my felt jacket:


Another pair of fingerless gloves with silk hankies for decoration:
A couple of nuno felt scarves:



A black-widow spider inspired cape – in this photo it looks more like a dangerous creature from the deep 🙂
Rolling the tassels for the fringes took forever, I am so glad it is now finished and busy drying!


A new nuno felt top for me 🙂

layout of the silk over a resist

layout of wool over the silk

I plan to wear this next week – will try to get a photo of it on, seeing it laid flat on a table under artificial lights really doesn’t do it any justice…

What have you been up to over Christmas? Have you made any resolutions or set goals for 2015? I hope your start to 2015 had been great and reflects how the rest of 2015 will pan out.

Linking up to nina-marie, off the wall Friday

Review of 2014

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I started 2014 with a handful of objectives:

  1. dedicate more time to creative activities (I have already “bought” some extra annual leave at work that should allow me to spend 1 day every 2 weeks dedicated to felt making and other creative interests)
  2. create at least 50 good quality pieces for sale
  3. find alternative sources for selling my works, including at least 2 craft fairs and improve marketing of my work
  4. complete my City and Guilds felt making course before August
  5. post at least once per week
Here’s how I feel things went (with a few pictures of my favourite pieces to break up the text):
1. I haven’t really spoken about this on my blog but mounting stress at work combined with a family bereavement and months of legal battles trying to get rid of the tenant from hell led me to have a bit of an emotional wobble in the middle of the year that saw me signed off work for 4 weeks.  I am more grateful than I can express that my employer also let me take a couple of months of unpaid leave, especially given the rest of my department have been leaving in droves and there is a hiring freeze. Long story short, I spent 3 months almost exclusively being creative and making felt. It was heaven and just what I needed! 
2. Taking 3 months off work was a bit of a cheat here but I was doing pretty well on this one, averaging 2 or 3 pieces per week. Towards the end of the year I set myself an additional goal of listing 90 items on Etsy by Thanksgiving, it was close but I did it and my sales have increased in the last quarter but I can’t be sure if that was due to the Crimbo rush or my increased presence on the site.
3.  I did scout out a few craft fairs and was shocked to find that fair organisers will charge upwards from £20 but provide very little or no advertising (they apparently expect the stallholders to do that for them!). I felt really sorry for the handful of jewellery sellers at one fair, quietly waiting for customers to arrive. Needless to say I didn’t sign up to those fairs. Of the events I did sell at, those I attended with my local Guild of Spinners and Weavers were the most enjoyable and lowest risk (they just ask for 10% of any sales, so no sales = no charge).
4. Regular readers of this blog will already know I did achieve my C&G qualification and received my certificates in November. It was an interesting course and I learned a lot and did some strange things with paper and card that I am sure I would never have done if left to my own devices. I also feel blessed to have spent 3 days with Yvonne Habbe in May and 6 weeks with Fiona Duthie in October her online SDO course. Both are excellent and generous teachers, and come highly recommended. I would like to study feltmaking further but think I would benefit from more face to face teaching. 
5. July was a struggle with only 2 posts but most other months my enthusiasm for blogging has shone through and this blog reached its centenary just a few weeks after it’s first birthday (that’s an average of nearly 2 posts per week). This goal has had the unexpected benefit of pushing me to make time to be creative, even when I feel overwhelmed by the rest of my life and just want to curl up into a ball, knowing that I needed something creative to share on my blog has proved to be a useful tool to drag myself out of self pity. On a related note, and after much encouragement from friends I finally set up a Facebook page too. So now I have 2 portals to keep me out of the doldrums 🙂
The New Year is just round the corner, I need to put my thinking cap on and decide what goals I would like to reach in 2015. What are your goals? Where would you like to be in 12 months’ time?