Frog Notebook

Today after I finished all my orders I thought I would try something a bit different – a true DIY craft project! It is not something I would often do although I used to do that a lot in my past. Nothing used to delight me more than covering a notebook of any kind with magazine clippings. Always something inspirational and fun so that you would be inspired to write, take notes, draw etc.
And today I did exactly that, although instead of magazine clippings I used our pattern that was created for some of our packaging trials but then got a little forgotten.

I love the pattern that has a photographs of Croaker the Frog (who watched the whole process eagerly, I think he was rather pleased to be featuring on the notebook) with lily illustrations by Faisal Khouja. My printer refused to print the entire page and the quality isn’t the best, but the main thing is that I am thrilled with it!

For such a long time I’ve been concentrating in designing and making something that needs to be repeatable or at least sellable, but today was wonderful to let go and just make without a worry how it would actually turn up!

And boy did I need that. Lately life has expertly thrown one obstacle after another and instead of getting too upset about it all, I decided trying to see the silver lining. It is not the easiest to see, but after enough squinting I think I managed to see something and hence I added a lovely quote by Einstein to the cover of my new notebook to remind me how difficult moments in life can be the very ones that changes the course of the world for better.

Mandalas!

I've been making hare ears today.
And I never knew how much fun you could have with 12 pairs of ears :))

Flower Therapy

After a long break I am back here on this rainy morning. 

I cleaned my studio and are now having a lovely cup of coffee and sorting our photos on my computer. I came across a lot of flower making photos and I thought they might bring a little bit of colour to this miserable morning.

Most of these flowers were used in our photographs for greeting cards and others I made into brooches.

Hope you are having a good end of the week! x

The end of the 'official' Making Challenge

I suppose officially the two week Making Challenge finished yesterday...
Wow, where did the weeks go? I didn't get even half of what I wanted done, but that is ok, I enjoyed it all anyway and it has been good to be back here in the blogosphere . So I will carry on making and writing :)

Last week our greetings cards arrived! I've been busy folding and putting them into their cello bags and now I have to start updating the website! But before that I just have to start making new animals that I've been thinking about in the last couple of days. I'll keep you posted how they are coming along. xxx

Spring Owls

Today you are going to have two blog posts for the prize of one! Lucky you :))

Reason being that I never published the first one! Can't quite worked out how come... must have lost the plot momentarily, since I'm sure I did publish it! I was probably just happily reviewing the post and never actually pressed publish button... Oh well, never mind.

The good news is that I am still making owls so everything ties on nicely :) So here comes Thursday's making! (I think it was Thursday...)

As the weather was picking up today (Thursday), I just couldn't help, but making a few more Spring owls!
This time they are a little smaller in size than yesterday, only about 6cm tall, but they are so much fun to make too.
I continued with the yellow colour and then tried a couple in Liberty fabrics too. Perhaps they are a bit busy with the colourful stitching...
And they have a little loop so they could be a nice little bag charm or chunky key ring. Just like I used to make them some time ago :) xxx

And then yesterday (Friday) I carried on with the owls and made these, blue to contrast with the yellow :)

As I was making these owls I remembered I made some keyring experiments about year and half ago that were based on these same owls, just a very flat version of them. So I dug out the patterns and voila! This was the result! And now I can't wait to make more,  with different colour combinations.

So in the end of the evening I had this strange little group together with all sorts of owl experiments. Now I just need to decide what to do with them. Some will definately be made into making pattern or a kit, and perhaps nice little boxes for them would be nice too... And perhaps I should put some of them on Etsy as that was part of the original Making Challenge.... xxx

Felt Owl Trials

Ok, I'm a little bit confused as what day of the Making Challenge it is today? Day 7, I think...

It looks like today is going to be another rainy and cold day and the weekend's warm sunshine is just a memory. On Monday we took our little terrier to Crickley Hill Country Park which is this lovely little, but tall hill just below Gloucester and Cheltenham and the views are just fantastic.

Plus you can apparently find dinosaur fossils from there too! Not that we tried although Pixie did a fair bit of digging of her own. She found a mouse hole and while we enjoyed our lunch of leftover lamb roast sandwich she was well on her way to decimate the entire ancient hill. (We patched up beautifully the hole she created and the mice lived another day!)
 

On our way back we stopped for a lovely pint of cold cider and sat by a river and just relaxed. What a bliss that was! Pixie on the other hand seemed to have been on the hunt of more mice or water rats, who knows, but she was visibly licking her lips so it must have been something good!

So there we are, a little introduction to the life of our terrier and now we can get back to the Making Challenge.

On Tuesday I was completing orders and yesterday I was trialling felt owls that I am hoping to start teaching how to make. So hopefully there will be some owl making workshops here in the Brewery Arts in the autumn if not earlier!
I haven't listed the owls for sale, but I think that is ok, since they are trials for workshops and workshops themselves are something that I've been planning to do for so long, so in that sense they fit into the Making Challenge :) I am also planning to make a proper pattern with instructions so that will certainly go on sale when it is all done. And maybe a little owl making kit too...

For now I just took what seemed like hundreds of photos and here is a tiny selection of them. xxx

The first trial was a pink hanging owl.

I experimented with pearls in the eyes, but decided to remove them. In the workshop you can decide or even use buttons :)

Then I made yellow "standing" owl. The idea with these owls was that they can be do all by hand stitching and it was working better than I thought. It would also give a lovely choice to use different colour threads to make it different!

 

Once I got going I made yet another one, this time hanging owl as well, but not such a flat version as the first pink one :)

Day 4 of the Making Challenge

I've been making this bear throughout the week, but since it was a birthday present I didn't want to post it earlier, just in case the lovely recipient would see it!

It wasn't strictly speaking part of the Making Challenge, but on the other hand it fitted in well, since it got me making teddy bears again. I can't even remember when I last did a bear before this one! That is a bit sad, don't you think! I have tones of lovely materials, joints, eyes etc. so I will be making more :)

There is not much to say about this bear apart from that I had a couple of choices of fabric and eventually went with some really lovely and soft grey wool knowing that person that the bear was for loves grey. I also added a bow tie in the end – for the party :) – which was held on Saturday and I think there will be more bow ties coming along since I think it looks so sweet on the bear!!

So here is a photo gallery of the making the bear. If you are interested in more how the bear is made, about any techniques etc. just ask me. I might even try to put a some sort of tutorial together in the future :) xxx