Exciting Post

Look what was on my doorstep this morning!


I'm going to curl up with it + a cuppa and have a good nose through all the projects this afternoon...

A Self Portrait

A big rainbow of felt and a new dress, what more could a girl want?


Working with all that colour will never get dull!

Festive Freebie

Christmas in July continues over on Sew, Mama, Sew! ... you can read a little interview with me and (rather excitingly) my gingerbread house ornament from Fa La La La Felt is now available as a free PDF pattern - you can download it here. Hurrah!



UPDATE: Fancy some more crafty goodness? Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns:

Workbox Challenge: Update

Way back in April I set myself the challenge of finishing all my boxes of neglected "work in progress" so I could start afresh with a clean crafty slate.

It's taking me a while to get through it all but I've been doing a little extra sewing each week and my WIP-to-finish list is gradually getting smaller!

Here are some of the things I've completed in the past couple of weeks...


... I won't say anything foolish like "I should have them all finished soon", but it's very nice to be making some progress and emptying some boxes :)

(click on the photo if you want more info about what I've been making)

Christmas in July

It's Christmas in July over at Sew, Mama, Sew! this week as they're celebrating the upcoming release of FA LA LA LA Felt a lovely crafty book featuring 45 festive felt projects... including 4 by yours truly.


The book was published as an e-book last year and will be available in hard copy from August. I can't wait to get my copy to show my mum!

Check out the Sew, Mama, Sew! blog all this week for interviews with lots of the crafters featured in the book, exclusive projects from Fa La La La Felt and a chance to win one of five copies of the book.

Crafty Maths

A nice cup of tea and some homemade cake...


... plus a box set of Poirot mysteries...


... plus lots of sewing...


... equals a very relaxing afternoon!

Secret Scraps

I've been working on a couple of projects this week that I can't show you yet... in the meantime here's a peek at some of the offcuts:

Sale Shopping

I saw via Twitter this week that the lovely Lucie Summers of Summersville is having a sale over in her Etsy shop and I couldn't resist snapping up a couple of sale bargains.

I bought a pair of screenprinted felt coasters which are destined to be a present for a friend (who hopefully won't read my blog this week!) ...


... and a fabric-covered notebook for myself. Oh and a few pieces of fabric may have found their way into my shopping cart before I checked out (you can never have enough fabric, right?).


Lu's having a big clearout of all her current stock of fabric-covered journals to make room for a new design involving screenprinted felt - I can't wait to see them and what else she uses the patterned felt for.

She also very sweetly sent me some of the felty offcuts to experiment with:


I'm a huge fan of her patterns and you all know how much I love felt, so I'm sure you can imagine how chuffed I was to see these in my parcel when the postie delivered it this morning! Ah the joy of having crafty friends! Now, what shall I make with them I wonder...?

Taking Photos

After a week of rain we had some amazing sunshine yesterday, which was fantastically well timed as I'd arranged to meet up with a kind friend to take some photos...


... including snaps of my "new" crowns which have embarrasingly been "in development" for about two years now (and which will finally be listed in my Etsy shop later this week, I swear).

As I learned when trying to photograph the prototypes way back in 2008 (2008!!) it is almost impossible not to start giggling when you're wearing a crown. Swan masks are also quite hilarious :)

July Giveaway Winners

Wow, there were an amazing 258 entries on this month's giveaway!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered :)

The three lucky winners are... Catherine, Giddusadik, and Milenamb ... who will each receive a mini rainbow of 35 acrylic felt squares. (Leave me a blog comment with your email address - this won't be published - and I'll get in touch about sending your prizes).

Candy Stripes

I got a lovely stripey parcel yesterday...


... a small mountain of cute pink and white paper bags.

I'm never going to have to buy another paper bag ever again!

Trying New Things

Summer is the quietest time of year for my business, which means it ends up being about four things...

1) taking some time off, and swapping sessions at the computer for picnics with friends and snoozing in the sunshine
2) catching up on admin and all those other tasks that don't get done during the busy season
3) preparing for when the busy season rolls round again, making batches of things, sorting out new stock lists, stocking up on things like envelopes, etc
and 4) using my extra free time to try out new things and to do some creative brainstorming.

"Creative brainstorming" sounds pretty fancy but really it's just me and a biro doodling on scrap paper and seeing if anything interesting comes out of it! This week's experiments have resulted in this layered lovely... very fiddly to make, but possibly worth it?


P.S. This is a repost from Wednesday as I tried out the Disqus comments system and found that I much preferred Blogger's own system from the comment-moderation side of things, so I'm reposting this with Blogger comments enabled. Apologies to anyone whose comments have been lost in the process!

The Truth

Being a crafty blogger involves lots of editing - deciding which projects to share, which works in progress to photograph, and carefully cropping shots of workspaces and domestic corners to be as interesting as possible (and to hide that pile of ironing in the corner!).

But today I present to you some unedited chaos...


Our lounge has gradually disappeared under a mountain of crafty debris this weekend as I've been working on about a dozen projects at once. As we actually might have to use that sofa and the coffee table at some point I think today's project might be tidying up!

Vintage Yarn

Our knitting club has received lots of donated bags of yarn since we started, including everything from basic acrylic dk to 100% wool, 3ply to super chunky, and a whole assortment of fancy, fluffy, patterned and sparkly yarns. We're trying to gradually put it to use knitting for various charity projects (currently lots of little hats for the Big Knit).

I love all the different knitting labels, especially on the older yarns.


The blue one on the top row still has its price sticker from Woolworths: 14p.

July Giveaway: Felt Rainbows!

This month's giveaway is a crafty one - to celebrate the new range of acrylic felt available from my website I'm giving away three mini acrylic felt rainbows:


Three people will each receive one bundle of felt, including 35 squares of acrylic felt tied with cute gingham ribbon. Each square measures approx 11cm x 11cm (4.5 inches x 4.5 inches). I won't be adding the acrylic mini squares to my range so if you want one now's your chance!


As always, I'm happy to ship internationally, so anyone can enter. Just leave a comment before midnight BST (British Summer Time) on Saturday 17th July on this post and I'll pick a winner at random on Sunday (18th July).

Please make sure you leave a name or pseudonym (no anonymous comments please!) and be sure to come back to see if you got picked :)

Experiments with colour

I'm working on some new sparkly flowers at the moment, and am having lots of fun playing with colour combinations... mmm... lovely colours...

Little Hats for the Big Knit

The Big Knit is back! I've made a start on this year's collection of little hats...


I've been knitting these for so many years now it's starting to feel like a crafty tradition. I've only knitted two little hats so far, but have plans for many more... and lots of the ladies at my knitting group are knitting them too, and they're all much speedier knitters than me! Hopefully we'll end up with a veritable mountain of little hats to donate to the campaign.

Teatowel Addiction

My name is Laura, and I'm a handmade teatowel addict. It's sad but true, one of my very favourite things to treat myself to is a nice teatowel from Etsy... I'm building up quite a stash of them: (Including designs from Skinny laMinx, Mr.PS, Showpony, Flowerpress and Abigail*Ryan) Honestly I don't think I need to buy another teatowel as long as I live, but keep adding designs like this and this and this to my wishlist... Are there any other tea towel addicts out there? What do you like to treat yourself to on Etsy?

New Packaging

One of my projects for the summer is to finally get packaging sorted for all my designs. At the moment I wrap everything in tissue paper, and just add a thankyou note and a business card to the parcel but have long dreamed of having "proper" packaging.

I ummed and aahed about the best option, weighing up the need to present things "professionally", protect my pieces in the mail, and to avoid creating lots of waste or raising my postage costs. In the end I settled on reusable grip-seal bags, with an info card inside + a bit of bubblewrap for the brooches to help protect the clasps in transit... and for larger items (like my masks) I'm working on matching swing tags.


I'm pretty happy with how it looks, though I had been swearing at my printer quite a lot this week! It prints perfectly on white card but really doesn't like the coloured stuff so until I can find a brand of card it will print on without smudging (and wasting loads of sheets of card in the process) I'm going to have to stick with white. Oh well.