Pre Christmas Craft fairs.

I'm finally getting around to catching up on some blogging and I'm determined to do more this year.
Did a couple of stalls before Christmas the first was with the local WI group at the end of November. As I had commitments with clients in the shop I sent Mum to man the stall for the first half of the fair I didn't get chance to take a picture of the stall but a good one appeared here  on the village website. (scroll down past the church fair and my stall is the one with the little red stockings and green gingham cloth.) At this fair lavender bags and tatted bookmarks sold well as nice little gifts.
The other fair I did was the annual event at the windmill, this is always a nice event with really community spirit, unfortunately the weather was rather rainy and windy so turnout was abit low.
However Alex came to help me set up and took some lovely shots of the stall.

 General shot of the stall, this year I was in the second room with a couple of the regular stall holding ladies, we had a good laugh despite the weather.

 Lovely shot of the quirky birds, on their new wooded tree, they display really well on this.

 Shot including felt decorations and tatted bookmarks.

Last shot showing pincushions, friendship teas and lavender bags, which again were a good seller at this event.

I'm really great full to Alex for taking these pictures for me and making the stall and stock look so lovely he really has got a nack with a camera.  More of his pictures can be seen here.





Again this stall managed to make it on the village website I'm the girl in the antlers.
So that's the pre Christmas stalls for Hannah's craft cottage, looking forward to the fair we will be doing this year, more about that soon.

Must be getting closer to Christmas

It must be getting to that festive time of year again as I've just completed this new set of partridges.

In rich and sumptuous colours of felt these elegant birds are ready to adorn anyone's tree or festive display. As usual some have been done with hanging loops and other with loose ribbon ends which can be tied to your desired location.
I'm really pleased with this batch I think the mixture of tradition deep red, green and yellow matched with the pink, plum and coral gives a quaint and appealing quirkiness.

 As always they are completely hand stitched and are embellished with delicate free hand embroidery. They are lightly stuffed to give shape.

Each one has a character of is own and I look forward to them finding good homes this season, although many proud owners of my felt partridges tell me how they adorn their homes thought out the year not just at Christmas time.
So why not treat yourself or someone else, available for £9.50 each.

What have I been working on recently

In between some of my other craft projects I have been completing a crochet commission which is why it may appear that I haven't been crafting much recently.
A friend of my Grandma's wanted to make some blankets to send to local care home so she got busy knitting and ask me if I could crochet three blankets to add to the pile.

 The blankets I created were worked in granny squares each five rows deep and the blankets were made up to the size of 8 by 8. For this first blanket I worked in solid colour and simply mixed squares each with a grey border. they were arranged in diagonal lines.

For the next blanket worked in solid colour and varying mixed squares with no boarder. and arranged the squares in lines coming from each corner.

 The last of the three was made up in diagonal lines alternating solid colour and very mixed colour and pattern squares I really liked the effect this created and used up alot of scraps of wool.

After completing the three crochet blankets the friend asked if I could sew together and edge the knitted squares they had been creating. The bag contained 220 squares so I am turning them in to three blankets two 7 squares by 10 squares and one 8 squares by 10 squares. this first one had been created in diagonal lines and the next is being done in an oblong stripe pattern the last one will be more random as it uses up all that is left.











This has been a really fun and colourful commission and its nice to know that all the effort is helping people.

Be back soon with some more blogging about another new crochet project and all the Christmas crafting happening for the shop.  

New felt decoration "flown" in.

As my hand stitched felt partridges and matryoshka dolls have been well received I have decided to expand the range. I really enjoy making felt decorations and coming up with designs and colour combos.

 So here it is my latest design is a cute little bird house with bird. I'm rather pleased with this design. and feel it is quite on trend and quaint.  The front is done in a cream so the bird, bird hole and hand stitched climbing flowers can be seen. I've made the roof and base section the same colour as I think this works well and frames the other elements of the design.  The back section on each decoration is done in the same colour as the bird with roof and base pieces to match those on the front.
It has a hanging loop on top of thin white satin ribbon.

 A close up detail showing how the bird had an embroidered flower motif and is blanket stitched before being attached to the front of the bird house.

And a close up of some climbing flower embroidery on the front of the house. I do this free hand which helps make every decoration unique and adds a skilled touch you just don't get with mass produced decorations.

Like with the matryoshka dolls I have added a little ricrac and a button to give it abit of an on trend folk look and add interest to the front roof section.

 Here is a picture of the set of six I've made so far, I like working in sets like this as it is more time productive to cut all the pieces in one go and makes it easier to get a good spread of colour combinations.
These are now available in the shop and some will be appearing soon on Folsky for £5.99 each.

So what else in new in my crafty makings, The crochet quirky birds continue to fly off and find home with people who adore them so a few new ones have appeared to take their place and hang out on the tree with the others until someone comes to give them a home.

  Friendship teas also continue to be very popular and I suspect they will continue to do so with Christmas coming they make a lovely little gesture to pop in with a card and post to a friend you'd love a cup of tea with but they are too far away to do so easily. So iv'e made up this new set I'm really loving the colours and sentiments I've used on this batch.

I've also recently made a new batch of cards, as they are selling well in the shop and at events I attend, This is the third batch I've produced in this style but they always prove very popular here I have done six with mixed sentiments, such as Thank you, congratulations and for you.

And I've also got six that say Happy Birthday as this is always the most popular sort of card and with the mix of colours and patterns on the embossed cards there's something to suit everyone.
I'm hoping to be able to add more cards to the selection available in the shop soon, its just finding the time to sit down and make batches.
I'm also soon getting stuck in to me Christmas Crafting so check back soon to see how that is coming along.

Crafting for a party

Both myself and my Mum are celebrating big birthdays this year so we thought we would have a joint party with lots of family and friends. I'd thought it would be nice to do a blog post sharing all the little crafty bits I added to to the day to make it ours.

First off I had a collection of small jars (mostly herb and spice jars) which my sister had collected up to possibly use for her wedding last year. However she changed her mind and had these rather stunning tall vase arrangements which I made for her. These went much better with the overall theme and look of the day

So. I took the jars and dressed them with a mixture of things including ribbon like these two which had lace ribbon and a rather lovely green velvet one

These ones has a real rustic look with jute ribbon layered with lace or gingham and tied with paper covered wire.

 I was rather pleased with this set I have stamped them with stazeon ink which works on glass (it wont rub off but it will wash of thou so had to mind when I filled them) These also had bits of ribbon added.

and the last set I wrapped some washi tape around, its such versatile brilliant stuff.

 I then filled the jars with a mixture of flowers including September flower, achemilla, chrysanthemums , roses, poppy seed heads and pittosporum foliage to create an easy pretty county look

I popped a couple of jars on each of the tables

 Mixing up the different styles of jars.

I think they worked rather well since the tables were only small.

 To carry on the easy county theme I also dressed the hall using various bunting. I have two very pretty cardboard ones which went across two corners

 And some larger fabric ones across the end. The boys managed to sneak in to this photo they had just finished assembling the bbq and were popping it outside.

 I did also have lots of rain proof union jack bunting in the garden but I seem not to have taken a picture of it.

The other decoration in the hall consisted of this collection of pictures of myself and mum which I attached to the sliding doors. Our family and friends really enjoyed looking at these sharing memories and storied behind the pictures.

 The other bit of craftyness I worked in to the party which I was really pleased with was the cakes. We had purchased plainly decorated large cakes from costco and I add our own flourish to them. Here is mine decorated with icing buttons make with my lakeland button mold. Some of the buttons didn't come out as defined as they do when its used with chocolate but the colors are nice.

 I added my name using some printable bunting which I found on line this is super fun. I picked a chalkboard banner style and strung it between two skewers across the top corner.

 Each end had a wooden button on to carry on the theme here's a close up on the little wooden sewing machine.

 Mums had butterflies on which were made using these punch stamp things mum had picked up. They flutter across the corner of the cake.

 Mum also had some bunting made with a set of traditional shaped pendents which had pastel colors on and the end of her's had butterflies on to complete the theme.


I hope people liked seeing how I added some crafty touch to our party we all had a really good time.

Partney Fair

Like last year I decided to have a stand at Partney fair and I'm really glad I did. This year was an improvement on last year in many respects and I'm pleased to be supporting this local community as it resurrects this village tradition. Here's some pictures of my stand. 

 A change from last year we have purchased a new shelter as our traditional style gazebo didn't fair to well in the wind last year and it is prone to be a windy field. this Coleman event shelter is easy to put together and packs up in to a smaller bag than the traditional one, its is also incredibly sturdy and has numerous pegging points on the feet and useful guylines. (please excuse the scouter in me enthusing about a tent, I'll talk about the stall now)

  I've also picked up a new table which allows me more display space and opportunity to create this pleasing corner arrangement  meaning people can walk and flow around the stand rather than just being a flat table. I've created height and intrest with my white wooden crates.

Discovered this shelter really lends its self to displaying my crochet bunting we managed to string some across the back and one of the side (as seen in the first picture) and it managed to catch peoples eye.

 A new Item for the fair was these cute note cards which I'm making and selling in sets of six, Simply stamped in complimenting colours these sets are done as thank yous and a religious theme. Perfect for when you just need a little card to something or even to use as a gift tag. Sets of six three of each design for just £4.50 a set.

We had a good day even thou it was much hotter than we were expecting (or had dressed for) and look forward to attending again next year. 

My next stall will be at Orby Summer Fete being held on Saturday the 22nd of August at Orby Opportunities center and after that we have a small stall at a Skegness WI event in early September then it will be time to think about Christmas events and crafts.

 

Stampin up goodies.

So back in June while my other half was exploring the wilds of north west Scotland (Check out his blog here ) We decided to have a stampin up party, it had been a while since our last one at our house (although we have attended two brill ones at friends so far this year).
Our super fab demonstrator Zoe Tant did a lovely evening where we made these cards.

 These were made on crumb cake bases using the awesomely artistic stamp set, I like the gentle tones and mix of style of stamps in this set, from the detailed delicate floral motif to the grungy fern and very useful border section.
We also decorated the envelopes.

And here is our stash of stamp we got, including the awesomely artistic picked up with our hostess rewards.  We got a couple of good bundles including the wondrous wreath with die set and the other matching stamp set circle of spring. Also homemade for you set which came with the bakers box die which I had had my eye on. Also as something a bit fun I got no bones about it a polymer set which layers up dinosaur shapes and skeletons.

And here is the bakers box in action made up just perfect for a little thank you for some friends. The die is clear and easy to use and fits wonderfully with the set it came with as well as having many more ideas. You will be seeing lots more of this on my blog as I think it is awesome.