Older Posts, Page 9 of 14

As promised, the next box frame.

This is again in a 10 inch squared box frame — this time the picture is un-mounted and takes up the entire frame.

Again, the possibilities for this frame are endless, but I really enjoyed putting this together on a cold, wet and windy January day. You can see a bit more detail in this one, like the padded cloud, the 3D butterflies and the flowers.

Again, with this frame everything is hand cut by me, the tree and the hills are machine stitched and the rest is hand stitched and embroidered. I have had a lot of very good suggestions from friends about how I could add to this and different ways of displaying different names, if you have an idea in mind of one you would like me to make then pop me an email to rose@redandrosy.com .

By far the thing I love the most about this frame is that it makes me feel all summery and reminds me of staying with my Grandparents during the summer holidays in the beautiful Welsh countryside, if I could have put grasshoppers in this I would have! And, as a little nod to my Aunt and Uncle and their flock of black sheep, I had to pop one in there.

This frame will cost £30 because of the detail in it, if you are interested in commissioning some Felt Box Frame art then please do get in touch — you can contact me by emailing rose@redandrosy.com .

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend — mine is going to be taken up with preparing stock for next week’s Bumps & Bairns sale in Haddington. If you local, you should pop along, there is a fantastic cafe with home made soup and proper coffee, and lots of bargains to be had (last time we got a giant rucksack full of Transformers for the boys for just £2!)  And if your interested in hiring a table, for either craft or pre-loved baby/child items then please contact Natalie on info@bumpsandbairns.com.

Finally, my new project I have been working on (and tweaking) since the start of January is ready to show you. I’m only going to show you one today — but there are more in the pipeline and one finished and photographed to show you tomorrow!

Again, along the lines of a personalised gift for a new baby, or for child who has practically everything (having three boys, I don’t think there is one boys toy out there that we haven’t / have owned!) — but a little more fancy than a Name Banner. So, here we go (gulp), I give you all my new Felt Box Frame

The art is in a white Square box frame measuring 10inches, this one is in a mount which makes the felt picture 4½ inches square. In this frame, everything is hand cut and hand stitched by me, right down to the little flowers lining the path. The toadstool is slightly padded (you can’t really tell from the picture, must take one from the side so you can see the details) and the butterfly overlaps the mount slightly.

This is an example of what can be done, and a few more examples will be coming over the next couple of days, but the possibilities are endless and this is something that I am genuinely excited about! I’m not going to give too much away, but the one I have to show you tomorrow is a lot more detailed than this one.

Prices for this start from £20, prices will vary depending on the amount of detail required in each picture — remember everything is hand cut & hand stitched by me and no two frames will ever be the same.

I really hope you like it, keep your eyes peeled for the next one tomorrow!

I have not one, but two new style Name Banners to show you tonight.

Girls one up first! I have been wanting to make one like this for a while and had the ideal opportunity when I got a text from a friend asking if I could make a banner for a new baby called Mya, and I could use whatever colours I felt worked. I am typing this like it was a challenge I relished — in reality being told to use any colours and a butterfly design that you haven’t tested out yet is a little scary, especially considering the little knock to my confidence I had a few weeks ago.

But, I managed it. Eventually. After much un-picking, re-cutting and abandoning half sewn still in the sewing machine because it wasn’t the same as what was in my head — I finally got it finished yesterday and felt sort of happy with it.

So — here you go (opening myself up to the nastiness of a few weeks ago is a little scary I have to admit):

So, in colours of my choice, the butterfly banner. Again, gulp!

Close up of the butterfly part…

…and a close up of one of the letters with the butterfly attached.

Again, I would like to point out the colours were entirely of my choice — I just have a bit of a yellow thing going on at the moment.

Secondly was another challenge, and as much as I hate to say it, the problem was solved by my husband.

The brief — he likes Woody, Buzz and Army stuff. Woody and Buzz were definitely out, but I guessed that if he liked Woody and Buzz he would also like Toy Story, then my husband stepped in with the "we have some Toy Story army men, why don’t you put them on a banner".

Originally, they were hanging upside down between the letters and looked, well, naff. So we ended up settling on this:

(Apologies for the picture quality, it was dark outside and we were dropping it off pretty much as soon as it was finished).

The two bits either end are parachutes, with army men dangling from them. And his name is in camouflage printed felt.

Again, please try to overlook the awful, awful photograph. I hate using a flash, and hate seeing people’s badly staged photos with the flare from a flash on their business pages, but I had no other way to light this at all.

Onto the boring, explanation stuff. The letters in these are 4½ Inches tall (so quite a bit bigger than my other banners) which makes the length of the banner longer too.

These are priced £12 for up to four letters (£2 for each additional letter) until the 28th February 2011; I will be having a complete price re-structure on the 1st March and these will be considerably more expensive because of the amount of time put into making each one.

If you would like to order one then please, pop me an email on rose@redandrosy.com . I really hope you all like them!

Rose ×××

Wow — my last post was on the 31st January and not entirely a positive one either! Lets just say that the events leading up to that post sort of put me off my stride for a couple of weeks, my home telephone line went down in the stormy weather which in turn knocked off our broadband, which only went back up this week. And that was just my technical problems!

In all that, I did manage to get making a few things, the biggest of which will be revealed on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how this weekend goes. However, I do have a few makes to show you all, just to show I haven’t been sitting on my bum doing nothing for a fortnight.

Firstly, some new hair clips. It started out as a very sweet idea from my eldest son, this was the first Valentine Day that he understood and patiently sat one evening while I worked, drawing a Valentine card for one of the girls in his class. He then asked me to make something for her, drew a rough diagram of what he wanted, picked out the felt I was to use and sat and patiently waited while I whipped it up for him. He then selected how to present it to her, wrapped it up in tissue paper and nervously popped it inside his bag ready to take to school on the Friday (it was half term here this week, so he wouldn’t have seen her on Monday). And look how cute a job he made of it:

He was terribly nervous giving it to her, and did the six year old thing of "give and run". She loved it, and had a little gift for Jack as well, I’m impressed too as she knew exactly what to give him (Doctor Who book and sweets!), oh so cute!

To be honest, it inspired me. I sat and made more, many, many more…

It’s a fantastic way of using up my larger felt scraps, and I think they are really pretty too. I have a batch for the next few events I have, and once I got started I continued with the large felt hair clip theme and came up with these too:

Pretty flowers, and then went onto the butterflies…

And, when I noticed how many red felt scraps I had after Christmas, I couldn’t resist making these:

I feel lovely and summery whenever I see them, and that’s a fantastically positive thing in this weather!

I also made a hair clip holder for a friend’s little girl, butterflies and purple was the brief, and it was mainly to store those little Alligator clips you get, which she had a lot of.

So we went with thin ribbon, and this time made it with three bits to hang clips from — the middle ribbon still has the loop in the bottom for hairbands but the other two are just ribbons with the butterfly at the bottom to weight it and keep the ribbon straight. And the pocket at the top is a little bigger to store all those hair bobbles.

I’m now loving the detail of the two heart shaped buttons too, I got a large pack of various coloured heart shaped buttons last year but they were so small I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, but I think I am going to make a few more hair clasp holders for the different events I have coming up and use them to add a little more detail.

To be fair, aside from a few Name Banners that’s all I’ve really felt like making, I haven’t really been pushing the Facebook page as much as I should as I haven’t really felt like making the effort with it — nothing like a good old bit of cyber bullying to put you off your stride, is there!

But while I am here, I didn’t upload a picture of the hair clasp holder I put in the party bags for little girls who came to Toby’s birthday party — I finally found where I filed it on the Mac!

Those I have spoken to seemed to like it, and I think it’s a fantastic idea for a party bag (perhaps that’s because I make them though…).

Anyway, hope you all have a lovely weekend — I’m having a rare night out tomorrow night (woo hoo!) but first I have a huge pile of orders to get through, housework to do, clothes to put away…

See you all next week, with a fantastic new idea!

Thought it would be nice to do a Blog post where I wasn’t saying “look what I made” (although there is a little of that underneath) and where I say hi to all my new fans (hi!).

It’s almost a year now since I started making things to sell, and it’s been full of ups and downs. The up’s being the fantastic support I have had from people I don’t actually know, fans of my Facebook page, customers online and in person and suppliers. Down being the one thing I didn’t really think about when starting out — my work being mimicked. I have edited out most of this as it has caused huge debate on what can and cannot be copyrighted, and what is copying and what is just having a similar idea). I can’t stop any of it, but what I can do is be honest in what I do, make sure I don’t tread on anyone’s toes, forget the whole aggressive marketing nonsense and trust that karma will do it’s job. After all, the majority of us in this position are all Mum’s trying to earn a living around childcare/house constraints and demonstrate a good work ethic to their children.

But onto far nicer things, like making things. I had a bit of a huff on Friday night as I was home alone, attempting to sort through my office and make some sort of sense of it (I have moved into the smallest room of the house, and now have to share with my husband’s work stuff too). I have five massive boxes packed with fabric, and a small filing cabinet full too. That’s before felt. And I haven’t been motivated to do one thing with it all — I just couldn’t think of anything I wanted to make. Fortunately I have some wonderful Facebook friends who gave me lots and lots of suggestions, and today I took some fabric out, turned it around and sort of waved the scissors in front of it, but still I just can’t get my head to where it needs to be to start making these new things. I’m hoping that motivation comes and gives me a good kick up the backside soon and gets me back into gear, but right now I am faffing and not really getting very far with any of the projects I want to try. Which I suppose, is one of the problems with working for yourself — only one person responsible for an un-productive week and no–one to motivate you to get your bum into gear. Very. Frustrating.

But forgetting things like that at the moment, I forgot I hadn’t shown you my hand-made masterpieces I made for Halloween. We had a little bit of a party for our children’s friends at our house (we do the first year, hopefully we have five more years of parties not in our house, score!) and they all came in fancy dress. two of my children were very specific about what they wanted to dress up as, the 3rd could only grunt, which gave my husband this idea:

Honestly, how cute are my children!?!? My eldest son, who is in the middle, wanted to go as Doctor Who. But new Doctor Who, so no going to toys r us and purchasing that 11th Doctor fancy dress that was reduced! This was a total eBay trawl to get everything right down to the boots. I can’t claim any of the glory for this aside from paying for it all, my husband found it all and spent many a Saturday night during X Factor (when eBay is really quite quiet) attempting to grab a bargain.

My middle son was determined to go as Mr Tumble. Have you ever tried to get a Mr Tumble costume, it really is difficult. And making one so he looks the same — well that’s just bloomin’ impossible! I couldn’t find the orange fabric with the blue stripe for his trousers anywhere and just used some I had in my fabric stash. The waistcoat should be blue with yellow stars, and the bow tie much smaller and totally different colours — but Toby didn’t mind and really loved his costume. I made the trousers drawing around a pair of his jeans to get the width, the waistcoat was made using their pirate fancy dress waistcoat as a template, and his freckles were made with my now ruined eyeliner (as he likes to dress up as Mr Tumble as often as possible).

My youngest son, quite possibly the most grown up 18 month old you could ever meet, was only able to grunt. So my husband decided he should go as cave baby and yes, that is real mud on his face fresh from our back garden.

The costumes were a hit, and have been worn many times since which made all the hard work worth it. Hopefully they will remember the time that their Mum made their costumes and they got to go as exactly what they wanted rather than a shop purchased costume that everyone else got to wear, although they may remember that as a bad thing rather than a good one!

I need to now go and find my mojo and do some sort of work, maybe I can go and wave my scissors about at some fabric and magically come up with something.

P.S. to anyone new, my Blog posts are usually much more upbeat, honest!