365 / 219 - Wips, Beards and a New Challenge

I'm still working on an assortment of odd projects, here are a few of them from yesterday:
I started a pair of felt glasses (soon to be a nerdy glasses disguise), embroidered some labels for my lavender tea bags, and did some work on my big abstract circles piece. I also finished beard disguises in every colour (brown, black, blond and ginger) though forgot to take proper photos before the light went today so the listing is a little sparse looking. Must remember to take some tomorrow...

In other news: I am starting an exciting new challenge next week!!

Excuse the double exclamation marks, but I really am rather excited about this one: through the whole month of April I will be doing a "design a day" challenge, making (at least) one completely new thing every day and blogging about it right here.

I have so many ideas I'm itching to try out, and designs half-sketched on scraps of paper stuck in drawers and folders... and next month I will be taking them out of my brain and turning them into an assortment of felty treats. Even if I just get a prototype made and rework it later, it will be so great to be making new things and seeing my ideas "in the felt", as it were. Here are just a few of the ideas floating round my brain at the moment - as doodled during my "proper job" last week:You can join in the fun, too! If you've got an idea for a brooch design, leave me a blog comment this week letting me know - if I use your idea I'll give you a discount code for use in my shop during April (so make sure there's a way for me to get in touch with you - I can't give you a code if you post anonymously!) ... oh, and if several people suggest the same thing it'll be the first person to suggest it who gets the discount :)

UPDATE: no more suggestions please as the challenge has now begun! :D

365 / 216 - Stuffing Pincushions

Ah, stuffing pincushions is such an enjoyable task! Look how chunky they are:I finished four pincushions yesterday (whilst rather gorging myself on Poirot dvds) ...
... and have four waiting to be stuffed...
My favourite is probably the navy blue & teal one, but it's so difficult to decide. Note to self: I must remember to take some pictures of the pincushions actually with pins in them! It helps so much in judging the scale of them (they're a massive 8.5cm in diameter - that's just under 3 1/2 inches). I also finished the green textile art piece, giving it a backing piece of felt and photographing it nicely for the shop. Here's a shot including my hand to give you a good idea of the scale of it:
We went out to an Easter lunch today (lovely) and I wore one of my felt brooches and chatting to someone was asked if I sell my work "oh yes, I have a little online shop" "cool, have you ever thought about listing on Etsy?", rather amusing! I am finding that more and more people have heard of Etsy, though I have yet to randomly meet another seller... no doubt that time will come!

365 / 208 - Colour Therapy

Ugh, the weather is so horrible at the moment... I have been cheering myself up by indulging in some colour therapy courtesy of my ribbon stash and making stripey brooches. Here's the first one finished:
(seven different ribbons on soft blue felt, stuffed with a teeny bit of polyfill to give it some shape)
I adore stripey things, and these brooches are proving a great way to use small leftover bits of ribbon. Tiny bits of colourful ribbon are like tiny bits of beautiful paper, just impossible to throw away so I end up with quite a stash of teeny scraps. I'm very much enjoying putting lots of my favourite colours together, and have a series of these little stripey brooches planned. I'll be careful not to repeat myself though, and keep each colourway strictly one of a kind.

I am also loving making up my bundles of 60 mini felt squares - all those colours together! so delicious. Colour therapy at its simplest and best. One of my very first felt-buying customers has been fantastically sweet and blogged about her purchase: check out the great felt rainbow photo she's taken. Nothing beats a nice bit of customer appreciation! I can't wait for the first photo of something made with the felt I've sold someone. To encourage such pics, anyone who buys felt from my little shop and then sends me a picture of something they made with it will get a free 9" x 9" square of felt with their second order. Hurrah!

365 / 207 - Rainclouds...

UPDATE: my raincloud design is now available as a sewing pattern over on my Patreon.

Subscribe to get instant access to a growing library of PDF embroidery patterns and craft tutorials, and updates when I add something new! 

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It was a horrible day yesterday. Cold, wet, windy, and generally rather miserable. Appropriately, my crafty task for the evening was sewing lots of rainclouds!
A batch of Cloudy Skies brooches (one of my favourite designs), and also a raincloud needlebook:
The needlebook was a special request from a lovely Etsy lady with whom I shall be trading, and it's only my second ever needlebook. Note to self: make more needlebooks. I adore all those soft blues and greys together! Yum.

365 / 149 - Fame, Fortune and Felt

Well, two out of three anyway. After my tree stump being on the Etsy front page in the morning, my acorn showed up in the afternoon (thanks to Siansburys for the screenshot!)
... and then late in the night my Crafting 365 article was published. Hurrah!

Fortune as (as yet) escaped me but yesterday afternoon I got to go on a felt-buying spree in Hobbycraft (thanks to my very patient boyfriend) and on the interweb. I appliqued lots of green oak leaves, too, but it's the newly-aquired felt stash that gets to star in my 365 photo:
So much delicious colour...

Oh, and I got great Etsy post today - a print for my kitchen from Bombus, parcelled (characteristically) in a map:
She sent me a gorgeous vintage postcard of lupins, too! So lovely:

Eek, what a neglected blog!

Okay so first I was busy sewing things... and then our whole county got flooded and we had no electricity for 24 hours and no running water for about 2 weeks (all fixed now though, hurrah!) ... and then I had to help my Mother-in-Law move house (not fun)... and then our neighbourhood hosted a massive choral festival... and now I am recovering from all this! Basically I have been a little busy and muchly neglecting my blogging and crafting :(

Hopefully things will be back to normal soon and I shall have lots of new pretty treats to photograph and blog about! I have been greatly inspired to Get Crafting this week cos I have been on the Etsy front page on a most miraculous TWO occasions.

First up my "I love TEA" pins were featured - very exciting, my first ever bit of Etsy front page glory - thanks to the lovely heidiburton picking them in her treasury list.

This is a rubbish screenshot I took of my front page moment:

And these are the pins themselves - they are first up on my To Sew list this week as a couple of them very happily sold :)

Then today I logged on during my tea-break (a small break from dull Saturday chores like ironing and washing-up) to find myself on the front page again, along with lots of my fellow workers-in-felt from the UK street team! (Screenshot courtesy of Siansburys and lovely felt treasury selection thanks to KoolKookyKreatures).


The abstract mobile got over 1000 new views during the time it was featured on the front page and my "hearts" (people marking my shop and/or items as a favourite) have rocketed accordingly which is most flattering. Hurrah for lovely Etsy!

I'm off to get started on the sewing now...