Pretty Purchases

I'm still on a tight craft-supplies-shopping budget after splurging on fabric this summer, but I have made a few purchases in the past few weeks.

I got a yummy bundle of colour in the post on Friday: some lovely Liberty fabric!

I'm working on a secret project that involves small-scale florals... and no-one does nicer florals than Liberty.

So I headed to Alice Caroline and spent a while umming and aahing over which prints to buy. In the end I settled on a scrap pack and a couple of fat quarters. Aren't they lovely?

I also treated myself to a couple of small crafty things when I visited Thread last month...

I bought a wooden cross stitch blank from Cloud Craft (because I've wanted to try stitching on one of those blanks for aaaages) and some charming wooden snowflake buttons from Ray-Stitch. The lovely Nicole from Cloud Craft also gifted me a sheet of fab neon pink wool felt - I can't wait to find the perfect project for it!

I also bought a screenprinted notebook from Sarah Waterhouse Textiles and a couple of sweet sewing-themed notecards from the Farnham Maltings shop... because you can never have too much stationery, right?

P.S. I'll be blogging about my trip to Thread sometime soon :)

Tools & Materials

I post a lot of photos of scraps of felt and colourful threads but I use a whole bunch of different supplies and tools when I make stuff.

Here's a list of some of the things I've been crafting with this week:

Felt
Thread
Embroidery thread (floss)
Needles & Pins
Scissors (for cutting paper, embroidery and fabric)
Pinking shears
A pencil, pencil sharpener and eraser
A biro and pad of paper
White paper for sketching
An iron and ironing board
Interfacing
Stuffing
Tissue paper (for drawing embroidery patterns)
A ruler and tape measure
A fine black liner for drawing template sheets
An air-erasable fabric marker
Ribbons
A tea towel
A compass
A stapler and staples
Mini pegs (clothespins)
Bakers twine
Yarn
Scrap card
Sticky tape
Buttons
A glue gun
Pipe cleaners
Washi tape
A die-cutting machine
And lots of colourful felt beads

What have you been crafting with? :)

Bargain Felt Bundles

I've added some bundles of "not quite perfect" felt squares over in my shop.

Each pack is made up of squares that have a small mark on them / are smaller than the usual size / have some other imperfection which means they don't meet my usual quality standards... so I've listed them at a bargain price. Each bundle of 40 squares is just £12 instead of the usual £21.

You can find the bargain bundles HERE. UPDATE: these bundles have now all been sold.

I've also added some more "destash" listings to the Craft Supplies section of my shop, including lots of cute buttons.

Cloudy Skies

Thanks to a mix-up when ordering some felt recently, I've ended up with some felt squares in shades of grey that aren't usually available in my shops.

So... there's now a new felt bundle available in my Etsy shop, Cloudy Skies!

Each pack contains 12 grey felt squares (12 for the price of 10!), two each of the 4 new greys (graphite, slate, cloud grey and dolphin), and one each of the 4 grey shades included in my felt range (mist, silver, stone and dark grey).


This is a limited edition pack, with only 10 bundles available, and the new shades of grey will not be added to my regular range - so if you want to add them to your stash, now's your chance!


You can find the cloudy skies pack HERE.

Felt Colour Trends

I've added a couple of new felt packs to my Etsy shop this week, two collections inspired by current colour trends!


There's a pack of 10 warm tones - bright tropical colours, including pinks, yellows and coral:


And a pack of 10 cool tones - cool blues and greens and pale neutrals:


You can also buy both packs together and save! Hurrah.

I'll be updating these packs so they stay "on trend" as the seasons change.


These packs are currently only available from my Etsy shop but I should be adding them to my other shops sometime soon.

Mini Hoops and Zips

Packs of mini 3 inch embroidery hoops are now back in my Etsy shop after several months absence!


These tiny wooden hoops are super cute and perfect for framing small embroidery or cross stitch projects.

I've also added a pack of mini 4 inch zips to the shop:


The zip selection pack includes one of each of the 9 colours pictured. The zips are ideal for making small coin purses or for adding zipped pockets to bags, etc.


You can also buy the hoops and zips from the craft supplies section of my website, where you'll also find an assortment of buttons and ribbons and other crafty bits and pieces on SALE as I've got lots of things that are almost out of stock and I want to clear some space for shiny new things :)

Woollen Goodness

Look what the postie delivered yesterday - a big pile of yummy needlefelted felt sheets!


They've been made from two shades of wool, which then blend together during the needlefelting process. The result is thick, soft, textured felt in some fantastic rich colours.

I bought them from Woolly Gathering on Etsy while browsing for something completely different... (does this happen to anyone else when shopping on Etsy?) I just couldn't resist those colours and the prospect of experimenting with a different kind of felt.

(P.S. sorry if you've seen this pop up in your blog reader yesterday - bit of a hiccup when scheduling this post!)

Show and Tell #6

It's been a while since my last Show & Tell post, so I've got lots of awesome things made by my customers to show off...

Jenny used felt from my shop to make lovely leaf table names for her wedding:


Sara of Hey Pais Comics used her felt to make cute cat cameo brooches:


Meredith of Fix Design has been making pretty felt kits:


Stephanie of Naturally Heart Felt made fun felt cup cosies:


Deb of Pipistrelle used some of my super huge wooden buttons on her fab crochet bags:


Marcela used her felt to make incredibly detailed brooches:


Vicky used the small squares in my 60 Mini Squares felt pack to make a colourful birthday banner:


And Maura of Mgealach made a series of charming embroidered pictures using my mini embroidery hoops as frames:


You can see more lovely stuff made by my talented customers by checking out all the show and tell posts here. Want to show off what you've been making? Get in touch!

P.S. please respect the work of my customers as you do mine, and don't copy their designs :)

Bags of Sparkles

I'm busy packing up parcels, catching up with the "backlog" from my time off. The boyfriend will be making lots of trips to the Post Office this week!

Just time for a quick snap of some very sparkly post that arrived this morning...... lots of yummy seed beads ready to be sewn onto brooches and hairbands and some other felty things lurking in my work-in-progress boxes.

Knit Knit Purl Purl

I'll be doing lots of knitting this week as several of my Christmas-gift-scarves are still very much works in progress:
Lots of chunky man-friendly knitting on the go at the moment!

Not sure I'm going to get round to knitting anything with these in time for Christmas... ... but I'm really looking forward to trying out the soft grey yarn as I've not knitted with anything that chunky before & I'm loving the muted colours in the other (though it's not quite the colour I thought it was when I was in the shop!). Mmm... yarn...

Homegrown

My mum came to visit this week & brought me a present - lots of lovely lavender harvested from her garden:
I'm going to use some of it to make some yummy scented sachets as Christmas gifts... Here's some I made earlier (well, last year!).
There may be lavender themed tutorial popping up on the blog this week, too :)

Oooh, Shiny!

I picked up these fab silver & gold mini pegs in a local shop this week:
They're each about 3cm (1 and 1/4 inches) long and just so darn shiny! Not the best photo I know (the weather has been so dark and miserable this week) but I hope their awesomeness, er, shines through :)

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to use them for but I expect you'll see them showing up in my festive projects over the next few weeks...

Theme of the day: Parcels

Yesterday I packed up my last big batch of orders before my break - here they are, waiting to be taken to the Post Office by my boyfriend:Ah, it feels so good getting them all posted (and it feels even better having someone else to do it for me, heehee!).

While he was at the Post Office, I was busy unpacking and tidying away a big box of supplies which were delivered that morning by courier:Mmm... so much felt...

And then this morning even more lovely supplies turned up in the post - gorgeous fabric from Showpony, destined to be used for Christmas gifts and other goodies for friends & family:

Show and Tell

I often get messages from my customers, with photos of the awesome crafty stuff they've made with the felt and other supplies they've bought from me... and I thought it might be nice to showcase some of them!

Depending on how many responses I get I'll either do one big "show and tell" post sometime soon or a little series of smaller posts. All images will be fully credited and if you've got a blog or a shop where you sell your work I'll add in a link to it.

So, if you've bought supplies from my shops and want to share some of the results, please do get in touch! You can leave a comment on this post and I'll send you an email, or you can contact me through any of my shops.

Hope to hear from you soon...

Pick and Mix Felt Squares

Thanks to a burst of autumnal sunshine (for snapping some photos) a bit of photo editing and some website updating you can now buy individual pick and mix felt squares from my website.
Each square costs 55p and you can - as the name suggests - pick and mix your colours to suit whatever project you've got planned. I will obviously do my best to keep the colours well stocked, but if you want to order a large amount of certain colours please do get in touch before you order to avoid any disappointment.

Pick Your Own

Back in my shop after a long absence - custom packs of felt squares, so you can pick your own selection from the 60 available colours.I'm really pleased to have these back in my shop, and especially delighted that my boyfriend has offered to add "custom felt colour picker" to his role as "postal assistant." He's even (willingly!) sacrificed one of his bookcases to the felt cause:Mmm... so much lovely colour!

The custom selections are currently only available through my Etsy shop but if you want to purchase through another venue or direct from me, just get in touch :)

Shiny New Supplies!

I've been busy updating my website this weekend... I've moved my felt squares to a dedicated section and added lots of yummy new goodies to the Craft Supplies section.

Wooden buttons:Pairs of giant wooden buttons - 5cms wide! Black plastic buttons - these look like they've been embellished with jewels. So deliciously detailed.
Yummy white plastic bubble buttons:Cute duck buttons (only 3 packs available) Plus seriously sparkly, elasticated sequin trim in purple, gold, black and turquoise. I can't wait to make headbands from this!