OCTOBER CHALLENGE

"Changing Times"

Must have been a busy time for all our team as we only had a few entries this month.  

However, there are always enough gorgeous and interesting items in team members' shops to fill in the blanks.  It was great fun looking around all the shops to find something.  We have such a talented team. 

Here is how our October challenge treasury finally looked.  Check it out here.

Only a few votes but the winner was decidedly this lovely corset from byCecile.

 Click on the items to take the link to the Etsy shop for a peek.

Items submitted were:

Patriotic WWII London Scarf from foulardfantastique.

Novelty Cotton Fabric Teddy Bears from fabriquefantastique

An original ACEO from silentmagician

A Specialized photograph of an abandoned building from CandyMountainPhotos

Hanukkah 'Festival of Lights' gift tags from handmadeinisrael

Karen's gorgeous cobweb felted scarf.  Check it out at KarensLoom

1960's Seamfree Stockings from JustOneLook

Thanks to all members who entered, commented and voted once again.

Our next challenge with be a double one for November and December.  Look for it towards the end of December:  'Tis The Season.  

At The Water's Edge

SEPTEMBER TEAM CHALLENGE:

What a varied and interesting treasury this was!  From vintage fishing bobbers to a South Seas citrus yellow vintage scarf.; Sea shell artwork to a carved ostrich egg.  Amazing, imaginative items.  

Our winner was Shirl of artophile with her superb intricately carved ostrich egg depicting a dolphin leaping above the waves!  Brilliant!  

Check it out for yourselves:

  

Winning entry

Thanks again to all team members who entered, commented and voted in this fantastic treasury.

Now don't forget to check out our next month's challenge.

AUGUST CHALLENGE

'A FRESH START'

This was our winning entry from thehopetree:   

Our last team challenge theme "A Fresh Start' was another wonderful eclectic mix of items and whether vintage or new all fit the theme really well.  Take a peek at our gorgeous treasury.

LaBelleOmbrelle's lovely vintage tea strainer was neck and neck for votes with thehopetree's fabulous vintage coffee grinder then coffee came up trumps and beat out tea by a narrow margin!  Well done both of you.




My monography's fresh and pretty seaside grass photo 
also came in close behind.



Lovely to see so many involved and voting.  Thank you all for participating.

Join in the fun next month with our theme: 'At The Water's Edge'
See you there!!

July's Challenge: Celebrating Red, White & Blue

July's Challenge

CELEBRATING RED, WHITE & BLUE

Winning Entry

Monique's lovely dragonfly glass flower bouquet suncatcher

Mid summer seems to be a slow time for all of our team no matter where we are located. 
Some are moving, some are vacationing and some are just too hot to do much.  
Nevertheless we had enough members participate in our team challenge to get a treasury together.
  
Our theme for July was centered around all the events happening so close together in USA, UK. Canada & France and of course the Olympics for all the countries who share these colours.  Our title:  

'Celebrating Red, White & Blue'

We had several lovely items in shades of blue, red and white to make this gorgeous treasury.  

Many different items were picked but one stood out as the most popular and that was uniquenique's beautiful dragonfly and flower bouquet.  

Thank you all for participating, promoting and sharing this fabulous treasury.  
Please come by next month to see our August challenge and vote for your favourite.  
Don't forget to tell your friends to help with the voting!! 

MAKE BELIEVE

Winning entry from realfaerie

June's challenge theme was titled  'Make Believe '.  

The Expats, true to form, let their imaginations run free and came up with some wonderful items for our treasury.  

Many items were favourites.  Betti of realfaerie entered this very imaginative felted fairyland picture and it was voted as the winner.  

Well done and Congratulations Betti!! 

Thank you all who entered and supported our team challenge.  

Don't forget to check in on the first Monday in August for another team treasury featuring our July theme:

Celebrating Red, White & Blue.   See you there!  

The Ties That Bind

May was a busy month for most of us Expats but we still managed to get a lovely treasury challenge together:  "The Ties That Bind" 
So many of us missed out on Mother's Day and Father's Day is coming up soon. With expats far from home this gave us chance to share what we miss. 
A wide variety of items were displayed from a family of sheep to apron strings, it was a strange and lovely mix in this month's treasury .

This charming cushion cover from tailorbirds got the most love and was chosen as our winner. 

Our winning entry from tailorbirds. 

Thanks to Hayley of www.etsy.com/shop/thehopetree for putting this treasury together and everyone who supported our team challenge.  Look forward to seeing all our entries for June.  

Dreaming of Gold

For April's challenge the Etsy Expats let their day dreaming take over and many wonderful items were contributed for this treasury titled: 'Dreaming of Gold.

In fact we had too many for just one treasury so for the first time, we had a part 1 and a part 2!
Hardly surprising that many items were favourites but a count showed Maria of mariacorcuera's lovely, delicate gold earrings and Jan of foulardfantastique's charming scarf tied for first place.

Jan's gorgeous scarf.

Maria's beautiful flower earrings.

Thanks to all who entered an item in this fabulous two part treasury.

In my garden

Etsy expats are back with a challenge. For the month of March we celebrated the return of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (us Southern Hemispherer's were just happy to pretend spring was on the way). And we submitted our favourite garden-related items. The challenge was: In my garden.

I'm happy to announce that the winner for this challenge was Monique from UniqueNique with her gorgeous dragonfly.




Dragonfly - from Unique Nique

 

Then Elena from Peony Forest and Jacqueline from Jacqueline Fouche Design Studio both get an honourable mention for their entries.

Copper flowers

Coco the Lop-eared Bunny

Have a look at all the gorgeous entries the Expats submitted for this challenge.

And a special thank you to Linda from Sew Fine Fashions and Just One Look for pulling it all together. Don't think that we'd miss thanking you for your hard work!

Post by: Jacqueline

Meet the expat: Spirrel Monkey

The lovely Lorna runs her Etsy shop Spirrel Monkey where she sells beautiful cushion covers, purses and fabric buttons amongst other things.

Lorna was kind enough to take the time to tell us a little about herself.

I’m originally from a town called Stevenage which is 30 miles north of London, it was the first New Town built after WW2. Although Stevenage Old Town has been there since the 1100’s. My family have lived there their entire lives as have my husband and I. That was until last year at the age of 28.

We now live in Up State New York near Albany. We got here in the summer when it was unbearably hot. I didn’t mind too much as it was nice to get a feel of having a holiday after the stress of moving. We also happened to experience the worst winter in 25 years! I never knew it could get so cold and snow could get so deep. Yet everyone got on with life, roads were cleared, paths salted, schools open (apart from the days we actually had blizzards). It put the British reaction to snow to shame.

I have a degree in Applied Art with a specialism in Textiles something I have been into since I was a child and I enjoy creating especially when it comes to fabrics. My career though since leaving university has not been in the textiles area, as any job will do when you leave uni. But coming here has given me that chance to finally just go for it and do what I love, being creative!

 My husband works for an American company and had been working in their London office for 4 years, before he got transferred to their New York Office. I am the trailing spouse.

Being away from the family and friends you’ve grown up with your entire life. It was very hard saying goodbye, and I feel like I’m missing out on lots of things such as, weddings, births, funerals and ill grandparents.

I also miss certain foods. I know you can get similar things here but it’s just not the same.  Also there is a language barrier, even though we both speak English. Sometimes I find myself talking to people and I realise I lost them 5 minutes ago because they can’t quite understand some of the words I’m using.

Being different, most people are interested in you as soon as they hear your accent especially here in the US. Everyone asked us what we thought of the royal wedding and had we met the Queen.

We also have the opportunity to explore a vast and diverse country. We have already taken a road trip down to Florida and it’s amazing to see such a difference in climate and culture from just going north to south. This summer we have more travel plans to visit Niagara Falls, Boston, Philadelphia and Montreal.

I think everyone should live in another country at some point in their life. It’s such an experience and you learn so much about another culture, another country and about yourself. I know I will go home one day with a different perspective of the world that I wouldn't have had if I hadn’t lived abroad.

Find Spirrel Monkey online:

• Etsy shop
• Blog

Are you a soon-to-be, been-there-done-that or currently an expat? If you sell on Etsy come and join our team.

Post by: Jacqueline Fouche (Tangentine)

Meet the expat: Tialys

The lovely Lynne runs three shops, Tialys, LaMance and Tour de Force on Etsy. Phew! Three shops, that sounds like a lot of work.

When this busy lady finds the time to chat with us she always manages to give me a chuckle with her wry sense of humour.

Lynn took time out of her busy schedule to tell us about herself.

Born in London, I’ve been living in France for the past 6 years with my husband and two daughters who are now 17 and 16. We sold our house in the U.K. because we wanted a change and we thought, whilst looking for a new property, we’d rent. Of course, we rented a big house, expanded into it for 4 years and then couldn’t afford to buy anything of a similar size as U.K. prices had rocketed. We already had a holiday home in France so it seemed the right time to make it permanent.

My husband works in IT in the finance and investment banking sector (yawn!!!) so he commutes to London on a Monday morning, returning Thursday nights and, with the girls at school, I needed to find something with which to occupy myself – apart from the dogs, cats and chickens we seem to have acquired.

I started my handmade shop, Tialys, because I always seemed to be making things and then not quite knowing what to do with them – friends and family already overstocked with my creative outpourings!

I absolutely love rummaging in junk shops and flea markets and, to save my house having to be registered as a shop itself, I decided to start offering some of my finds in La Manche which, I must admit, is now my favourite.

I recently started Tour de Force combining my vintage and handmade passions by making one of a kind cake display stands and jewellery holders but I haven’t really had a lot of time to promote that one yet so it’s a bit of a slow starter.

Biggest challenges living in my part of France

• The language
• The school system 
• The shop opening hours (almost everything still shuts for 2 hours at lunchtime here)
• French websites (abysmal)
• No fish and chip shops
• The language (I know I’ve already said that but it needed saying again!)

Best things about living in France:

• The wine
• The weather
• The peace
• The mountains
• The lack of traffic jams (compared to the U.K.)
• The lack of crowds everywhere (ditto)
• The health system
• The fact that my daughters are now bilingual
• The wine (ooh, have I already said that??) 

Of course, there are more serious challenges about being an expat. My father is unwell at the moment so that’s difficult but, in reality, I can be at their home in England in around 5 hours so it’s not as bad as it could be if we had decided to move further afield.

I have a blog which some of the expats kindly come and read from time to time and I ramble on about everything and nothing on there when I get a minute.

All in all, I’m glad we made the move but I certainly don’t rule out moving again although next time it would definitely be to an English speaking country – any recommendations?

Thank you for taking the time to talk about yourself Lynn! It's nice to get to know you better. Hmmm... no moving recommendations from me at the moment. Give me more time to settle in South Africa before answering that.

Are you a soon-to-be, been-there-done-that or currently an expat? If you sell on Etsy come and join our team.

Post by: Jacqueline Fouche (Tangentine)