Macrame Plant Hangers

Last summer I learned how to make a macrame plant hanger, so I made lots of them for christmas gifts. I think my favourite is the top one, I'll have to try to recreate it for myself! They're not very difficult once you get the hang of it.

 

 

 

 

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!

New handmade Lampshades

Having made a few lampshades in the past, I decided I'd like to create some that were a little bit more original, so I have been experimenting a bit with crocheting a weaving tshirt yarn to make some unique shades. More to follow soon.

 

 

 

The following lampshade is a more traditional drum one, just thought I'd add it in to the post to show everyone. I can't remember the name of the fabric design but it is by Riley Blake Designs.

Crochet bowls

Lately I've been working on some crochet bowls, it took a while to get the hang of it so I practiced some different shapes and sizes. The best thing about crochet being that if you go wrong, you can just unravel and start again! 

I've been using Tektek tshirt yarn, which is made in Portugal, leftover from garment production. Each different roll of yarn varies in thickness and texture, so if you want to make a few matching things it is best to get a large roll so that you'll have a big quantity that'll be consistent. I found this tutorial from The Makery really useful in getting started. You can buy the yarn from there or else from eBay.