Owls in embroidery hoops

From my last post owls hanging nursery mobile I decided to make some more simple gifts using the same owl characters. I sewed the pieces onto some pale grey needlecord (left over from my dungaree dress which I made - blog post to come when I get around to photographing it!) I stuffed some wadding into each owl too to make it a bit 3D, then I framed them in a painted embroidery hoop and hanged with a matching ribbon.

Please do get in touch if you would like me to make you anything similar :)

 

 

Hand sewn Christmas cards

I thought I'd show you my Christmas cards for my friends and family this year (only special people because they take quite a while!!).

I used white embroidery board by Paper Poetry from Rico design, it costs about £4 for 10 sheets which are 17.5 x 24.5 cm. I painted the board silver, black and gold, though I think you can buy it in different colours.

The card is perfect for stitching and embroidering into so I decided to sew some Christmas images which I drew onto squared paper before sewing properly. This card is really versatile and you could use it to create all sorts of interesting projects.
I managed to get hold of some two fold cards with windows which were perfect for mounting up the images, ready to give people for Christmas!

 

The Contemporary Craft Festival 2016 - Favourites Part 2

Here is part 2 of my favourite artists and designers that I discovered at the Contemporary Craft Festival, in Bovey Tracey. In my last post I covered Ceramics and printmaking, today I have Homeware, Fashion, Art and Jewellery. You can find out more about the festival and all the artists here. 
I also visited last year and you can find that post here.
  

Jewellery 

Coyosa Design

Sayoko Kobayashi hand crafts her lovely jewellery using ethically-sourced materials, and features natural ordinary things like poppy seeds, wood and washi paper, her work's focus is on "the expression of wabi sabi, the understanding that the nature of things is transient, imperfect, and incomplete." I particularly liked her items that had seeds suspended in resin.

 

Libby Ward Contemporary Jewellery

Libby also uses a lot of natural materials within her jewellery work, combining unexpected materials to make thought provoking pieces. She uses loads of different processes like etching, coating, layering, stretching, heating and breaking. The unusual colours and textures attracted me to her work, it's very different to most of the jewellery I saw.

 

Art 

Little Burrow Designs

Claire Read uses unloved or unused objects to make her unusual mixed media artistic creations. I loved the techniques she's used to make these objects into something attractive and that you'd want to keep and display, instead of them ending up in the bin! I admire her imagination and ability to sew and assemble these tiny objects.

 

Anya Keeley

Anya's cute characters are made from wire and paper and various other vintage bits and bobs. They're so sweet and carefully made and so obviously unique they really caught my eye! It must be a lot of fun making these little beauties.

Hen's Teeth Art

Hen's Teeth Art is Viv Sliwka. Viv's work is somewhat similar to Little Burrow Designs', in that she uses lots of recycled materials and stitching to create tiny works of art and tell stories, though her pieces do look very different. I love the tiny story boxes like the one below, they are so delicate and beautiful.

 Homewares

Twool
Twool are a company that make lovely woollen bags and twine. "Twool® products are made in Devon from the ‘lustre’ long wool of the rare breed Whiteface Dartmoor sheep." Apparently these sheep are quite rare but their wool is really strong and soft which means it's great for making bags! I bought a brown one and I'm really enjoying using it. The straps are made from off-cuts of leather from a westcountry handbag company, and they smell lovely.

Tess Wakeling
Tess makes beautiful handmade lampshades from layers of paper, into which she cuts geometric patterns to create beautiful effects , both when the lights are on and when they're not. Each lampshade is hand cut and so no two will ever be the same.  

 

 Thanks for reading, definately worth a visit to the show if you're in Devon next June!

Chevron Cross Stitch

This is my first attempt at designing a cross stitch/embroidery, which I created to use up some of the massive pile of embroidery cotton that I have recently acquired!  Quite pleased with this for a first try!