WOYWW - Shropshire Hills

Hello and welcome to my weekly blog post, sharing an insight into what I'm currently working on, via 'What's on your workdesk Wednesday '.

This morning my desk is covered in goodies I purchased on a little day out yesterday with Twiglet and Ben.

You can also see a large pile of frames which are to mount all of those dumflings I made a few weeks ago.

I'm excited to say my work is about to go on sale at the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre, which has a fab exhibition space for local artists. I've been mounting work ready to display and making more sheepy pictures which really represent the Shropshire Hills theme.

I've also been busy this week preparing for my first workshop of 2016. Here's a shameless plug...

Finally I've been busy chasing a toddler round again now that Ben has had his plastercast taken off his leg. Other than a slight limp you'd never know he'd fractured it less than 3 weeks ago!

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog. If you've enjoyed reading about my workdesk, why not check out my gallery, workshops page and shop! And don't forget to hop on over to the Stamping Ground to meet dozens of other crafters busy at their workdesks!

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - Things to do with bubble wrap and a roller blind

Hello all!

I took a brief sabatical last week to look after a toddler with a leg in plaster (more about that later) so didn't manage much sewing.

Here's my workdesk this morning. A bit of everything - a customer order, some mounting and some new background pieces to needle-felt later.

You can see a large piece of wet felting that I made yesterday as a background for a larger sheepy picture I've planned, inspired by the Shropshire Hills.

If you're not familiar with the process of wet felting, essentially it involves layering pieces of wool roving (dyed sheep fluff) loosely on a piece of bubble wrap, squirting it with liquid soap, trapping it between net and another piece of bubble wrap, rolling it round a rolling pin wrapped in a bamboo roller blind and rubbing vigorously. The picture below might give you some idea of this...

It's quite a spectator sport...

My customer order is yet another personalised picture - this time for a lovely little girl called Ligeia. Ligeia loves lions and I thoroughly enjoyed designing this little lion for her picture. Here's a sneak peek and I'll share the whole picture at a later date.

My last share is a picture of my little man who fractured his leg just over a week ago when he tripped over kicking a balloon. He's been a very brave boy adapting to his plaster cast well (though thankfully it will be taken off next week).

Of course, with his football practice on hold, he's had much more time to focus on his reading!

That's all for today folks. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my work. Pop over to Julia's Stamping Ground to meet dozens of other fab artists sharing a snapshot of their workdesk with you.

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - feeling sheepish

Hello all, welcome to my first post of 2016! If this is your first visit to my blog, this is my weekly WOYWW (What's on your workdesk Wednesday) post giving you a snapshot of what I'm working on at the moment.

So here's my workdesk today...

You can see I've started the new year with some dumfing (needle-felting). For New Year's Eve we stayed with friends at a sheep farm in Powys. A walk around the farm on New Year's day inspired me to work on some new 'sheepy' ideas in needle-felting and embroidery.

These are waiting for a bit of hand stitching to give some foreground detail...

Here's a close-up of the finished one...

I guess my toddler, Ben, is hoping I'll needle-felt some cows next as 'mooooo' is his word of the moment (although he also uses this to refer to moon and balloon).

Also on my workdesk is the second of two pairs of fleeces onto which I need to sew the hand embroidered logos I've made for my in laws' gardening business. Here's the first pair I completed earlier this week...

Getting four hand-stitched logos to look as close to identical as possible has been quite a labour of love!

Well that's all for this week. I've got to get cracking this afternoon with my latest customer order, another personalised picture - 'L is for...'  with a hand embroidered lion.

Thank you for visiting my blog :-)

Happy crafting,

Max x