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

WOYWW - crafty gifts

Hello all, hope you're well and have been spared by this week's stormy weather.

Without further ado, on my desk today I have a pile of lovely goodies I received for Christmas from Twiglet.

There are some beautiful Tilda fabrics, threads, ricrac, spray glue and bondaweb which should keep me busy on the New Year. Also there's a fab thread bin Twiglet has made for me. She's so clever, aren't I lucky?! There isnt much work in progress on the desk at present. I haven't had much time for sewing over the last week - I've spent much of my time watching my toddler explore his new toys and books (and tidying away the carnage after!)

I did promise to share some of the pieces of work I produced for customers once Christmas was over so here they are...

'M is for Marlowe'

'E is for Elodie'

I also found time to make some last minute gifts for friends and family. This little fella is a Christmas present for Ben's bestie, Isabelle.

My final piece of news is that my business cards arrived yesterday and I love them!

I had several different designs made up for each area of my work. I used an app called picolage on my phone to produce the designs from all my photographs then sent them to Moo.

Well that's all for today folks. I hope to have a busier workdesk to share with you next week. I'll be dropping by Julia's Stamping Ground later to catch up with other artists taking part in What's on your workdesk Wednesday - why not join me?

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - Chubby and plump, a right old elf!

Yes, dear reader, a line from my favourite poem 'T'was the Night Before Christmas'. I thought it an appropriate verse to accompany my workdesk photo this week...

You'll see up front my latest make. Last year I made Ben a sack for his first Christmas and added to it a little felt Rudolph decoration with 'Ben's first Christmas 2014' on the back. This Christmas I have stitched a Father Christmas and so the fun will continue year on year (or at least until he twigs that Mrs Claus's stitching is uncannily similar to his mummy's!)

Now that Twiglet's sewing room is finally tidied, we managed to share half an hour of sewing time this week while the boy was asleep...

What fun! Good job I'm better at sewing than I am at taking selfies!

Also this week our tree went up. I had feared all sorts of mishaps would occur when toddler met tree, but we've been lucky and Ben hasn't been nearly as curious/destructive as I'd feared.

He has taken a shine to all the handmade goodies that mum (twiglet) has made for my tree over the years so I thought I'd share them here so you can enjoy them too...

My final share of the week is a collection of fab photos that my dad has taken of my work. I've been grumbling about how I need to have better photos of my work to improve my Etsy listings and so dad, a professional photographer, set up the studio for me and took these fab pics! He even got round the problem of reflections on the glass in my box frames!

That's all for today folks! Hope you've enjoyed visiting and reading my blog. I'm off to visit some other fab bloggers' workdesks on What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday so why don't you join me too!

Happy crafting x

WOYWW - dumfling breeding programme

Afternoon all! I've no workdesk photo this week as we're round at Twiglet's house so I can use the space in her sewing room for mounting all my needle-felted dumflings. Here's a shot of her ironing board this morning instead... I'm sure these dumflings have started breeding!

This week I've been working on another customer order for a little girl's first birthday. Like my post last week, I can't share the full finished piece but here's a quick peek...

Finally I've got to share some pictures of my toddler - or should I say climber...

We've had a couple of bright days this week so we've enjoyed playing on the big kids' play equipment in a quiet play area while the big boys and girls are all at school. The rope netting bit was definitely his favourite bit!

On the windier days we've donned our fab new bobble hat made by Bobble & Squeak. Cute, warm and snuggly.  It certainly does the job!

 

That's all for today, these dozens of dumflings won't mount themselves! Thanks for stopping by for What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday :-)

Happy crafting x 

WOYWW - The Shropshire hoard

Hello all and a warm 'happy December' to one and all this fine 'What's on your workdesk Wednesday'!

Firstly, forgive me for my absence last Wednesday. I took a sabatical to help mum (Twiglet) organise the sewing room following the arrival of new furniture and a huge hoard of craft stuff from storage. More about that later.

You're here to see my workdesk today aren't you? Here it is...

In the foreground are yet more little needle-felted backgrounds ready to work on, so there's lots to keep me busy on these long, cold winter evenings.

One day I'll get round to framing them all (but then I'll have nowhere to store them... note to self: must organise some exhibitions for 2016!) Did I just make a New Year's resolution already?!

To the right is a top secret project - a customer Christmas order- so I haven't been able to share it with you in full just yet. But here's a quick peek...

...or perhaps I should have said a quick squeak!

Now I explained earlier that I'd been helping sort Twiglet's sewing room last week. 'Can it really take a week?' I hear a few of you say. 'Can it only take a week?' I hear others chortle. Well it has...there was quite a hoard. I certainly owed Twiglet some help as much of my sewing time is spent there and a good portion of the crafting hoard that has been amassed is actually mine! The full horror of the task would be too grim to share with you, dear reader, so here's the edited highlights!

Needless to say, neither of us need any more crafting bits and bobs and we could both craft every day next year and barely make a dent in it! Did I just make another New Year's resolution there?!

That's all for today, thanks for stopping by. I'll swing by some WOYWW desks later on today and see what other WOYWWers have been up to.

Happy crafting x