Last week I had another belated christmas / birthday treat when I met up with an old work chum. I was treated to a delicious feast for lunch at The Little Organic Bakery in Brid and we exchanged some lovely pressies.
My friend is as big a craftoholic as myself and she had made me this fabulous covered sketch pad with a craft ninja embroidery :)
In amongst some other very groovy things I received this tin mug with all my favourite ice lollies on.
I think I've done christmas with everyone now!
Mega busy with work at the moment but having a morning out with some of the networking crowd tomorrow so quickly had a go with my Russian doll biscuit cutters from previous post.
I only had a couple of icing colours kicking about so not the most exciting of decoration for a first attempt, but they taste nice!
A week today I visited one of my longest standing customers who use my design service. I took Bob, I thought some of you might be worried about him as he hasn't been seen for a while and of course rabbits don't hibernate so here he is.
You can see we went to the Wold Top Brewery, high on the Yorkshire Wolds and it was the most lovely, bright, sunny winters day.
Had a great meeting and came away with lots of work in the pipeline so handmadey things will have to take a back seat for now.
Although I do have one or two things which just need finishing for the forthcoming Harrogate event. I have moved from gloves to birds.
Brooches and a pendant with one of my seaglass wrapped beads and little cotton pouches to package them in.
In amongst the 'ups' for the week was a lovely birthday parcel from my dear old school chum.
Look at this cute book of felt zombies,
And what fun I'll have making and decorating Russian doll biscuits :)
Bought myself some Liberty fabric from the new range of art fabrics, these are Mackintosh inspired.
So I had a good day and then as usually seems to be the case living here, I get slapped around the chops with a wet fish the next day and have a bad day.
The strong winds have whipped off one of the new roof tiles leaving a hole again to the elements. I had the stress of the dreaded call to inform the landlady and I had the more or less expected response of not really being that bothered to get it replaced and protect her property. It does get me mad when some people must be so well off with their property portfolio that they do not have to worry about maintenance like us normal folk would.
Anyway I've informed and sadly the only one worrying about it now is myself as the rain is battering down again and the winds are picking up with the potential to whip off some more tiles near this hole.
Lets end on a slightly more positive note, I've had some fabric samples back from a UK print place and they are excellent, just as good colour and quality as Spoonflower so hopefully I will be able to move some of my designs there and have more fabric for sale in my shop and maybe a bit more competitively priced. If you fancy a go at digital fabric printing (free delivery too), check out
http://www.wovenmonkey.com/
Happy Valentines Day everyone and hope you are managing to stay dry!
Hello February, still a bit damp and miserable. not got off to the best of starts with the hassle of a tree down here in the winds. However, it's a birthday month for me (lets not mention that any more, too old to get excited!) and as we all know it's the month of love or luuurve!
I was asked to create a love token for the Valentine selling exhibition at the Art & Rose Gallery in Pocklington so I set about thinking of something a little less obvious to the hearts I was going to do.
I had a tah da! moment, I thought nostalgia, romance, Victoriana opulence, hands and hearts and eventually the Love Glove brooch evolved.
This was the first one.
I then embellished a bit more for the next one.
No machine stitching, it's all hand stitching on these as they are quite small and delicate.
The gloves are a great way to use up little scraps of reclaimed fabric and lace. I have made about 7 so far, I think they actually make quite a nice gift beyond Valentines so I will be making a few more for my friends selling exhibition at Harrogate in March (see poster at end)
I wanted to present these nicely so I created some little textile love letter pouches to keep the love tokens safe. These are 2 which went to Pocklington.
I have added a couple to my Folksy shop and I've also made a 2 piece set with a heart pendant and a glove.
Thank you if you stuck it out to the end, I think I went a bit mad with the pictures but I reckon it's a reflection of how I've enjoyed making them :)
These pictures will nicely sum up January, bleak, wet, grey, damp, miserable, cold. I made a trip across the Yorkshire Wolds today to the lovely Art & Rose Gallery in Pocklington to deliver a few brooches on the theme of Love Tokens for their Valentine selling exhibition, brooch pictures will come later as I need to get practising for ukulele group tonight.
Not much blogging going on here at the moment. January blues and all that sort of thing, cold hands & feet, wet grey days and lacking in inspiration.
So pleased January is nearly over, my car scraped through the MOT but I've been advised to get new tyres and have the brakes looked at soon, more expense and hassle but hopefully I can wing it until slightly better weather and when I feel like sorting it.
I've been trying to crack on with some Valentine brooches but the day I collected my car something twanged on one of my fingers and a finger on my sewing hand went blue and hot and tingly but calmed down a day later and just looked bruised but it seems to have faded now, it did slow me down though, very odd as I hadn't trapped it.
I've been updating some of my Spoonflower fabrics. There is a new shade in the camping fabric, dusky lilac and a lady has already bought 3 yards to make curtains which I was delighted to hear.
I've also created a yard of camping fabric where you get 4 different coloured fat quarters on the one yard which would be quite good for making a cushion panel, quilting or small projects.
I'm currently researching a couple of fabric printing places in the UK to see if it possible to have the designs printed here and whether that would be cheaper than the expense of Spoonflower in the US. I'd love to have more of my fabric printed so that I could sell bigger than just fat quarters in my shop.
Another design I've reworked is my butterfly waltz below
I liked the lilac of the camping fabric and have updated the above to a slightly more gothic design called Butterfly Skull Waltz, I'm currently waiting for a printed sample.
It's been a pretty soggy week, grey and gloomy and typical of everything I dislike about January. Maybe I should be greatful that we haven't had the white stuff yet!
The lack of maintenance around here is becoming more visible with this soggy weather, the driveway is in a complete state of potholes and mud, I hate mud.
The driveway comes down hill and if it was my driveway I would divert the flow of water away from the house but what happens is it all comes down the hill and gathers infront of the house. It needs new gravel down too and potholes filling but as usual it's another thing going to rack and ruin.
Our cars are in a right state going up and down through this and the picture below shows part of the 100m I have to drag the bins through to get them on the top road for emptying, it's a nightmare, the wheels get stuck in the mud and the fuller the bin the worse it is.
Something nicer, more new brooches finished and listed in my Folksy shop and then I'm on with Valentines things for the gallery, a chance to go mad with hearts and flowers!
A spot of biscuit making this afternoon with some new cookie cutters.
