The sun has got his hat on hip hip hip hooray, the sun has got his hat on and Julie Arkell is coming on Sat-ur-day!!

Woohoo today is a much cheerier day than the dreary rainy days we have had this week!

On friday mornings, just after we drop off a school a group of mums go for our Friday morning power walk, (nothing to intense, about 40 minutes to an hour depending where we go of brisk walking).  Its a nice chance for a chat and a catch up, with some feel-good exercise thrown in, and this morning the sun was shining and I saw my first swallow of the year skimming the fields!

On the way home I felt justified in stopping for a chocolate croissant to have with a big cup of tea when I got home and was doubly pleased to see The Fishman back at my local farm shop.  He comes all the way from Grimbsby with fish fresh from the market that morning on the back of his van, and his fish is the freshest and The Best. For a while he stopped coming as he didn't get enough support, so I'm telling everyone he's back so hopefully he'll stay this time!  I picked up some seabass which I'm going to do with some smashed new potatoes and lemony green beans for tea. Yum.

I also took a bit of deviation to my local The Works where I picked up this book which I am looking forward to flicking through on the sofa tonight. Isn't the cover pretty! Nice price too x

Back home now, big cup of tea and chocolate croissant going down nicely, and thinking about all my chores I want to get done and out of the way I can enjoy my day tomorrow guilt free. A workshop with one of my favourite artists! Yipee!  Yes the wonderful Julie Arkell will be at Hope and Elvis again and I can't wait!  I did a workshop with her last year, pics of our day are here.

I've been ooohing and aaahing over all the photographs lucky bloggers who have visted have posted of her recent exhibition "I've dusted the Farmyard in Liverpool" and am so looking forward to seeing what she will be bringing with her!  (Hop over to Lemonade Kitty for some lovely pics of the exhibition and she was lucky enough to come away as an owner of a beautiful piece!).

Last summer some of Julie's pieces were on display at a gallery near to me

and (after huge deliberation!) I treated myself to The Day I Nearly Lost Poor Lamby.

which takes pride of place in my sitting room x  Have a lovely weekend folks!

Making time for creativity...

I think I have found my new love, patchwork! How its taken me so long to have a go at making a quilt I don't know!  We had glorious sunny cold crisp days last week, and I decided to ignore the paperwork, cleaning, ironing and everything else on my list, head up to my work room enjoy the lovely bright skies and light and make my first my first mini quilt, Liberty Hearts.  

I bought this lovely kit from the Knitting and Stitching Show because I couldn't resist these gorgeous  Liberty Prints, and as someone new to patchwork I thought a kit would be the best way to start.

Once I'd started making it I couldn't stop, it was sooo addictive! 

I loved the methodical cutting of all the pieces,

  appliquing the hearts

deciding on the piecing

 arranging

and finally my favourite bit the quilting! 

 

As you can see from the back I kept the quilting quite simple but I am so chuffed with result!

 Here it is!

In total it took me a couple of afternoons to make, and it will now to pride of place on the wall of our bedroom.  I can't wait to start another one!!

*I've called this blog post making time for creativity, because I know can feel guilty taking time to sew or create when everything else is piling up, but I also know that even a few minutes of making something in the day can have such a positive effect on my mood.  It completes me. Yes I felt guilty ignoring the things I needed to do to make this quilt but sometimes if you are a creative person I think you have to give yourself permission to give yourself time to create even if its only 15 minutes. Have a look at this blog post If you don't make Time for Creativity Who Will?and Happy Creating  xoxo


** The Liberty Heart Kit is available from Sunflower Fabrics.

Skiis for efficient landing of fairies in snow!

Today I finished my fairy that I started on my Samantha Bryan workshop just before christmas.

I stitched her teeny fairy shoes, added her beautiful goose feather wings and used dried leaves to make her skis (necessary of course for efficient landing of fairies in snow!).

Ta da!

Here she is in pride of place next to my Julie Arkell piece (The Day I Nearly Lost Lamby) whose been safely unpacked and put out on display that all our dusty renovations are over.

I think they look fab together, and I'm very proud of my dainty little fairy!

xxx

A wonderful day in Fairyland

I was so lucky on Saturday to take part in what turned out to be my most favourite workshop ever (!), with the lovely Samatha Bryan, the mixed media artist behind the wonderful Brains Fairies, which was held at the brilliant workshops of Hope and Elvis. If you aren't familiar with Samantha's work I urge you to spend a few minutes and take a look at her gallery of wonderful fairies on her website, they are truly exquisite.

Samantha's pieces are inspired by Victorian Gadgetry and Invention, her fairies have wonderful devices to assist them in their day to day duties in Fairyland, including the Fairy Dust sprinkling aid, Special Flight Hats, Bottom Warming garments for Fairies (my favourite!), Fairy Flight Aids and so many more brilliant ideas and inventions!

Here are some examples of her work, there are so many more on her website.

Introducing Brains Aerodynamic Flight Hat for Fairies

Each Fairy is Beautifully made and the attention to detail is exquisite

Look at the sunflower seed earmuffs

Beautifully made tiny flying goggles

Teeny Tiny Mirror, Beautiful handstitched leather clothes

To make our own fairies, the first stage was to sculpt our Fairy Faces. We all made a few faces in different sizes in air drying clay so we could choose the one that best suited our fairy body.

 Then we made the bodies, arms and legs ...

  Painted the body

Throughout the day accompanied by suitably seasonal music, Louise kept us supplied with cups of tea, crumpets and festive bites, as our fairies gradually took shape.

 We cut out our fairy clothes from the so soft leather that Samantha had brought for us to choose from

Two fairy arms

We added our arms to our fairy body 

Then added our main body 

  And the scariest part for me not being very good at painting, creating the faces, now they were really started to take on their own personalities!

They soon started to take shape, here we are adding the teeny tiny fingers! 

Samantha brought lots of natural seed heads, pods, feathers and beans to use on our Fairies. 

 This is one of her example heads, the hat is an acorn cup!

We had so much fun and achieved so much in a day, but we had to wait to fully assemble our Fairies, as the center of the heads weren't dry enough in a day to attach them to the bodies.  I am finishing mine later today, stitching the teeny tiny shoes, attaching the wings, and hope to post her fully finished in the next couple of days!  

Samantha exhibits her pieces at galleries, if you ever get the chance to see them do go along, and she also runs workshops which as you can see are totally absorbing and inspiring!

(Can I also add that Louise has just released her workshop list for next spring and there are so many wonderful workshops to tempt, be sure to book quickly as they are always so popular! I will be!) xox

Hair Clip Organiser Tutorial

I thought I'd blog about something which caused a lot of comments on my stall on Saturday, (mostly "Oh what a good idea - I could make that") so I thought I'd show you and tell you how I made it.

Its a hairclip organiser!

 This is one I made one originally for my daughter, as every morning we have a frantic search at half past eight for school hair clips (preferably two that match) no matter how often they are replenished seem to vanish into thin air never to be seen again.

This is the one I made for my stall on Saturday.  Its so easy and you can probably see immediately how its made, (so it feels a bit silly calling it a tutorial!).

Find a nice frame, this one used to be gold I think, and paint it your colour of choice. I like to use spray paint or Annie Sloan paint.

Take the backing board and add some wadding to pad it out slightly, then staplegun your chosen fabric and the ribbons to hold the clips onto the back of the board.

Cover up the back of the board with some felt, (I glued this) and that's it!

A pretty solution to the hair clip problem!

If you'd like one but don't feel like making one, I will be putting this one for sale in my Etsy Shop!

Sally xox

Don't panic!

One week to go until my next craft fair and I haven't got a great deal in stock!

Luckily my wonderful parents in law are looking after the children today and I am looking forward to spending the day whizzing away upstairs on my sewing machine. Here are a couple of things I did manage to make this week.

Some button and pearl brooches and a kiltpin brooch..

And can you hear the

its the first of my christmas collection!

one of my mini christms stocking garlands with jingle bells!

Have a lovely day everyone. Strictly's back tonight too, whoo hoo! xxx

Fantasy Creature Making

We are lucky enough to live near a fantastic gallery that during the school holidays offers family workshops in all sorts of things from sewing, printing, working with clay, and even bread making and hot cross bun making.

Today we were very much excited to be booked onto Fantasy Creature Making. When we arrived we looked at the sample creatures laid on the table made by Ruth Waller.

Teachers Pet - pocket shaped to fit into a teachers pocket.

A sock slug (which could be turned into a snail). Don't you just love the lips on this one!

Another sock creature

An apple collecting monster, with long springy legs to jump high into the tress and put the apples into his apple bag!

To get started Ruth suggested we take some felt balls and string them together to make caterpillars, which we could make into brooches. Here's my daughters' brooch.

Here is my son's long caterpillar that I was very impressed that he sewed together himself!

We then chose a creature we would like to make. We chose the Apple Collecting Monster and the one eyed sock creature.

I did the sewing on the machine, and they helped with the cutting, stuffing and adding the details. The Apple monster was soooo fiddly as he had verrry long thin legs to turn through and stuff, but with a little patience we did it.

The one eyed monster has a rubber ball in his bottom which means when you throw him on the floor he bounces. What a brilliant idea!! Needless to say he was a total hit with my son and was thrown all around the courtyard.

Here are our finished creations!

My daughter finished her monster off with a dress out of an elasticated fluffy sock, and completed her with a necklace of felt balls.

I'm not sure who had more fun today, them or me!