Dala Horses everywhere!

Where does the time go?  Only a month till Christmas so I think I need to get into present creating mode!  I've always loved the Scandinavian style Christmas and Dala horses are a favourite image at this time of year.  My sister is a horsey person and loves adding to her Christmas decorations each year so I think she will like a set of these felt horses. I used the new papercraft dies from Eline Pellinkhof at Cuddly Buddly.  I simplified the patterned decoration a bit and didn't use all the tiny dies.

And there's more......  I found these wooden shapes on ebay from Wiff of the Woods - perfect for painting.  I used the same dies to cut the decoration pieces and used some of that horrible felt they give away with craft magazine free kits.  I can't make myself throw it away even though I never make any of those kits up.  I knitted a few of the little horse sachets for a recent craft fair and filled them with Christmas spices.  They sold out but I found this one left behind under a chair the other day - absolutely love that spicy scent.  And finally I've stamped some simple cards using a small stamp set also from Eline at Cuddly Buddly.

There's a nice history and video on the making of Dala horses on The Swedish Wooden Horse Company's website.

St Dwynwen's Day

Here in Wales we have our own day for lovers and love on 25th January - this Saturday.  You can read about Dwynwen here.  To celebrate I made these little felt brooches (yes, pompoms again!) and cut and stamped celtic tags to present them on. 

I've some Rowan Kidsilk yarns in my stash - leftovers from Christmas gifts I knitted for the family a few years ago.  Its a very expensive yarn but these tiny pompoms use such tiny amounts you could make many many brooches (or just pompoms) from one ball.  The Celtic circle die is from Tonic Studios and there's a square too.  So pretty - but if you're not of a Celtic race there are other lovely designs such as flowers, stars, butterflies and vines. 

This is a Celtic cross erected in 1903 on Ynys Llanddwyn in memory of Dwynwen.  I've never visited but it could be one of our expeditions this summer as its not far away.  It looks a beautiful  spot.  Anyway, back to the brooches - Welsh language stamps are not common, even in Wales, so I used an alphabet set to stamp the words round the tags.  Cariad is our word for sweetheart or dear and I remember my Nain (grandmother) used it all the time when speaking to us as children. 

Happy St Dwynwen's Day to you all.

Autumn leaves

Daytimes are still Summer around here but I have to admit there is a whiff of Autumn about as the evenings draw in.  And there is a definite change in the look of the trees, as if they are preparing to put on their Autumn colours.  So I thought I'd make an Autumn garland in readiness.  I used leaf dies from Papertrey Ink, gorgeous plant dyed wool felt scraps from Myriad, plastic pony beads I found in a charity shop and some delicious thick orange bakers twine.

With garlands there is always the difficulty of how to photograph them satisfactorily and here I resorted to the old tumbledown shed outside my backdoor once more.  I just love its faded grey paintwork.  Sadly its slowly disintegrating as bits fall off it every now and then - the window fell out last year but it made a perfect sunny morning sitting spot for Titch. :-)

PS - I've hear nothing about the little bat since the bat man took it away on Wednesday - but he did promise to let me know how it gets on. 

Bits and pieces

As I'm sure you are aware, crafters just hate to throw anything away and I'm no exception - as a single glance into my craft space will confirm.  I keep the teeny tiniest scraps of fabric and felt - especially the left over bits of the old embroidered linens I have been turning into scented sachets for my craft fairs.  I've been experimenting with the tiny embroideries as brooches and made this little collection over the last couple of days. 

And these little peace brooches are a perfect use for those tiny bits of vintage printed fabric I hoard too.  I often browse through the dies sections in my favourite on-line shops for inspiration and thought this set of two peace signs from MFT Die-namics would be useful.  The smaller of the two dies makes a sweet little brooch.

Thank you all for continuing to visit and your lovely comments.  They really do encourage me in my crafty endeavours!

Fairings

I freely admit that in the past I had an addiction to craft magazines (I'm over it now - honest!) - especially ones with free gifts on the cover.  I couldn't resist buying them but after an initial browse through I rarely picked them up again and when the pile got too high they ended up in the recycling box.  I kept the free gifts though - you know the type, a kit to make a small item from felt or fabric, but I never made any of the items as the felt was not nice to sew with, being very thin and stiff.  I much prefer my lovely plant dyed 100% wool felt offcuts from Myriad for my felt brooches.

However I recently found a good use for this felt - its perfect for cutting with dies and the stiffness is just right for these felt garlands I've made for my next craft fair.  I die cut two shapes, stitched them together and threaded them onto twine or cotton yarn with some wooden or felt beads as spacers.

There's a crochet version too.  And I had the idea to package them in small glass jars, generously donated by a work colleague's baby grandson (thank you Denise), and decorated to match.  Hope they tickle!

Rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit.......

If you've never heard of Chas & Dave the title of this post won't make any sense at all!  Search on Youtube if you are curious!  Anyway, its been a while I know but I have been getting creative and working hard towards the first of the year's craft fairs next Saturday.  I've made lots of my felt brooches with an Easter theme, mostly these cute little rabbits.  I found the Impression Obsession die set at Dies to Die For online craft store.

I made some more using my Papertrey Ink egg and rabbit dies and as usual I've carded them up for sale using the Button Boutique stamps and dies, also from Papertrey. 

Finally I made animal brooches using the On the Farm die set, again from Papertrey.  These dies are quite small and fiddly to sew so I used iron-on adhesive to avoid having to stitch the animals to the brooches which apart from being very tedious, would have distorted the shapes. 

I'm sure she thought she was helping but..................

Eira Fach, Eira Fawr

We crafters do suffer for our hobby!  Sitting still stitching, hooking and stamping in this freezing weather is not easy, especially when hands are cold and you need to make tiny stitches.  This morning my hands and feet have been like blocks of ice and I think I must get my hot water bottle down from the bedroom and refill it to warm my hands.

My new kitty Titch is very young and has probably never seen snow before.  She's not quite sure what to do with it.  Its still snowing tiny flakes at the moment - just one or two ice crystals stuck together.  I remember we used an old Welsh saying when we were little and it was snowing - eira fach, eira fawr, which literally means little snow, big snow.  In other words if the flakes are small there is lots more to come!

With St Dwynwen's Day just a week away I managed to create some more felt brooches for my Folksy shop this week.  I found this lovely celtic style die last weekend and decided it was perfect to present my brooches for our Welsh lovers' day on 25th January.  I added some suitable Welsh wording with wooden peg alphabet stamps - rather time consuming but the font was just right.  If you'd like to see more you can find them here in my shop. 

 

(source)

Coming home over the mountain this afternoon we saw several fields where people were sledging.  While it's nice to see the kids enjoying the snow, I'm always dismayed to see the aftermath once the snow has melted...... I just hate to see broken sledges left behind, litter and even holes in fences and hedges.  No wonder farmers will hit back by spreading manure on popular fields

St Dwynwen's Day

Now the Christmas season is over crafty blogland is awash with Valentine's Day projects.  There's plenty of time to create some lovey-dovey cards and gifts but here in Wales we only have a couple of weeks before St Dwynwen has her lovers day.  I've been experimenting with my new heart dies from Papertrey Ink - they were expensive but as there was nothing else that appealed to me last month I didn't mind splashing out on them.  And I'm glad I did as I've enjoyed creating these little hanging heart decorations with them.  Yesterday was dark and wet and not conducive to photography but today the sun has returned (though as you can see above, there are strange clouds hanging on the mountain) and I was able to snap them pinned to the old shed outside the back door this morning. 

They are quite easy to make.  The patterned edged dies cut my favourite Myriad felt really nicely - even the lacy edge cut perfectly.  I then stab stitched fabric hearts to back and front and added buttons or Die-namics rolled felt roses to decorate.  The little leaves were cut using another Papertrey die from the Lovely Layers collection.

Easy-peasy as you can see from the photo.  I did use iron-on interfacing to ensure the fabric hearts cut cleanly and there's a smaller felt heart layer underneath each fabric heart to add a bit of subtle padding.

As you might imagine, good Welsh language rubber stamps are impossible to find and I'm too lazy to stamp a greeting out with individual alphabet stamps today, but I found this lovely card on the Visit Wales website (its a free download), along with St Dwynwen's story and some suggestions for romantic breaks and restaurants -  if you should need that sort of thing!!

More felt!

Well its been rather a fraught week - two airport runs, busy days at work, more heavy rain and blocked drains, and....... this

I can just hear you all saying awwwwwwwwe! We found this little kitten UNDER the bonnet of a neighbour's car on Tuesday and yes, he looks very sweet, but my ancient blind cat Sausage certainly did not appreciate being play pounced on every five minutes, nor did he like his food being pinched from right under his nose.  Keeping them apart was not an easy job!  But there was a happy ending tonight when his owners were found, peace descended once more for Sausage and he could sleep easy in his bed.  He was a sweetie though!

However  I did have a little time for some craftiness during the week when this delicious bag of plant dyed organic wool felt scraps arrived from my favourite on line shop Myriad. I just had to try out a few more felt brooch designs.  I used PTIs Strawberry Patch dies to cut a strawberry shape and added some glass beads and embroidery for this stick pin.  And of course I couldn't stop at just one and tried a few other dies.  They are definitely an addiction.

Red, White & Blue

It seems almost the whole of London was covered in a sea of red, white and blue over the Jubilee weekend and as its my Mum's 88th birthday tomorrow, she's a great reader, and she's an ardent admirer of The Queen, I thought I would mark the Jubilee for her with this bookmark.  I was inspired by Susan's wonderful Strawberry Patch project last week where she had transformed a stamped image into an embroidery with the aid of a super-duper sewing machine.  My project is a bit more low tech however, but if I win the lottery one of those machines will be high on my shopping list!  I stamped onto a die-cut felt circle and hand embroidered in simple backstitch over the image.  Then I backed the embroidery with a larger blue felt circle and sandwiched the hairband between with a bit of acrylic stuffing to pad it out.  I found the Bev's excellent tutorial for the bookmark at Flamingo Toes. 

Stamps: Stitches & Swirls (PTI)

More Felties

I made some more felt brooches this week - these are on their way to Aimee and her girls.  Aimee is one of the kindest people I have come across and she granted me a great favour a few weeks ago.  These are a very small thankyou.  I hope they like them.

I was rather pleased with how the ice cream cone turned out.  Its the first time I tried this design.  The die comes from Papertrey Ink.  A bit of embroidery makes all the difference here I think and French Knots are just the right size for sprinkles.  I like to package my brooches on button cards as I feel this makes them a bit more presentable as gifts - and I have to admit I LOVE making them!

Cutting dies have rather taken the papercrafting community by storm over the last couple of years and I've become quite addicted to them myself.  They will cut paper, card, felt and fabric easily, which makes them very versatile too.  I do have one tip though.  If you want to cut fabric with small dies you will get a much better shape if fusible interfacing is added before cutting. It also stops the fabric fraying and I find even tiny die cut shapes stay defined.

I buy my felt from Myriad Toys - its 100% wool and some of it is organic and plant dyed too.  Its absolutely lovely to work with.  In the past I've been lucky enough to nab their off-cuts bundles but these have not been available recently.  However the Seasonal Sample packs are perfect for my small projects and very reasonably priced too.

Supplies: Papertrey Ink dies - Sweet as Can Be, Tea for Two, Beautiful Butterflies, Heart Prints; Button Boutique stamp set and dies; Bitty Backgrounds stamp set and dies

Little Grey Rabbit's Birthday

Contrary to popular belief I have been getting crafty recently! I just haven't had time to blog!

I made this little rabbit brooch for a great niece's birthday. I love Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit books and have a number of modern duplicate copies bought in charity shops that I don't mind cutting up. There are some lovely illustrations in Little Grey Rabbit's Birthday perfect for creating birthday cards. This one shows Little Grey Rabbit, Squirrel and Hare making their preparations for the birthday party. I stamped a background directly onto the card blank using Papertrey's Tag-Its #1 and #3 stamps and simply added the illustration. There was a perfect space in the picture for the Happy Birthday sentiment. A quick and easy card.

Ginger Melon's Etsy shop has some really cute patterns for dolls and animals and I couldn't resist the little animal brooches. However I wanted the little rabbit brooch to look like Little Grey Rabbit so I added a grey dress, blue apron and white collar and attached her to the front of the card. My gift was completed with an uncut copy of the story book.

Two birthdays in May

So there are two birthdays to celebrate next week. My great niece J turns 11, and Claire at Waltzing Mouse Stamps is holding her second birthday party. I can't believe its already two years since she started producing her wonderful clear stamp sets. And as well as stamps, she has a great talent for designing clever templates - I couldn't resist this month's offering of a cute cupcake box.
So I've turned it into a small birthday gift set and as well as the felt hair clip I'll be adding something delectable to the box before presenting it with my birthday card. I found it hard to get a good photo of the card showing the second tiny bee properly. I've punched him out with a quarter inch punch! and mounted him on some fine crinkly silver wire to look a bit like he's flying.

So I'm joining in the birthday party and as Claire always says - hope it tickles!

Stamps: Papertrey's Tag-Its #3; Green Thumb