Hello, sorry I'm late this week!

Hi everyone and welcome to my new followers, lovely to see you :-) I'm a bit late this week posting as been busy painting the hall, I hate painting! Now I'm hoping the smell of the gloss will go away quickly as it's awful! On the plus side it looks fabulous :-)

So this week and a bit has been busy. I got an email last Friday as a local craft fair had some last minute cancellations for their fair on Saturday so did I want a table, I thought why not, I had nothing else on. Not a great day for sales but whatever, you can't win them all! It was at the garden centre Plants R Russ in Sunderland and we were all outside in a polytunnel, WOW was that hot in the sun, sitting in a greenhouse all day! I was certainly wilting don't know about the plants! They have another fair tomorrow, the food and craft one this time as last week was just craft, and I'll be back there again. This one is the one I'm at every month this year. The weather is forecast for rain, obviously, it is a bank holiday weekend so what else would it be :-) Fingers crossed it doesn't put off people coming to a garden centre!

So lets see, what have I made in the last week and a bit....  a Witch's Cottage.

with a spider making lots of webs....

a broomstick and a black cat....

a ghost and a pumpkin.......

and a cauldron with something strange bubbling away inside! I added the bat button to finish it off and I love this one! It seems I wasn't alone as within five minutes of posting the pics on facebook it had sold, yippee! I've since made another one which is now in my Etsy shop and hope this will be a popular one.

Also this week, a couple more Little Ladies for Halloween,

Wendy the witch......

and Debbie the devil :-)

Also Snowball the cat, not very Halloween but I do love cats!

I was also approved to stitch and sell designs made from the fabulous patterns of Sublime Stitching :-) I love these designs so I'm thrilled about this! You have to apply and they check out your shops and send you a contract if your accepted to try to stop copyright theft which is a good idea. I've stitched two designs so far but not sure what to make them into yet, any ideas? I was thinking maybe little cushions or even just frame them but any suggestions are welcome :-) They need a good iron! The first is these cute little kokeshi dolls

and the second is this gorgeous pin-up fairy, I so love this one! I'll be adding some silver metallic stars around her. The pics aren't great as the weather is so dark and miserable here :-( 

Almost finished a new mushroom too, this one is Geranium Cottage and should be done today and on Etsy. So I guess even though I've been busy painting still a lot done this week. Three mushrooms (almost) and three bag tags and two embroideries not bad! 

Better get back to the preparation for tomorrow then, I'm making a batch of quick card bookmarks at the moment. Have a great long weekend everyone, hope the sun shines on some of you too :-)

Another week goes by

Hello everyone!  

Been a busy week for me which is good as it had been very quiet, I guess it's a between time of year with no occasions nearby! I'm getting on with mushroom cottages as I need to replace some and also working on a new one for Halloween which is fun :-)

I had a custom request for a large hanging mushroom with a fairy, birthday cake, bunting, snail and ladybird on it with a lot of pinks and purples. Also hearts for spots and a pink door.  I made this one.....

A close up of the front,

and the back with the snail.

I loved how it turned out and so did the buyer I'm pleased to say :-)

Next I thought I'd plough through my list of August birthday cards, it's such a busy month of birthdays for me! Here's the cards I made, not bad for one day!

I thought I'd get busy making the rug for my kitchen too, I started it a few weeks ago and had left it since then. The idea suggested by a lovely friend was to match it to my spotty kettle! But I have to say after making a plain white rug and lots of coloured spots when I laid it all out I decided it wouldn't work. One of the good things about crochet and knitting can be the way you can rip it out and start again! Love the colours  of the spots on the kettle though, they're bright pink, light pink, blue, orange and bright green, so I'm going to do stripes instead with white stripes between. The cats helped me decide it wouldn't be practical to leave it white with spots as when I laid it out on the floor they immediately started floor surfing, running and jumping on it and skidding across the kitchen, lol! White is not really practical then as it would need washed about twice a day! That was two days of crocheting out the window then!

I've also made another of the Little Ladies, now I want to know if you can tell this is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I like her but I wasn't sure if the stitched checks on her dress worked.

What do you think?

Well I'm off to put the kettle on and make a mushroom :-) Have a good week!

Giveaway!!!

Hi everyone, it's been a mad busy week so I'm a bit late with this post as I only finished the giveaway prize last night.

So lets start with that shall we, this is a giveaway to celebrate me passing the 100 followers and to say a huge thank you to you all  for being so lovely :-) Who knew when I started this blog that many people would be interested in my stuff!


Lets start with  the prize, I thought why not make it a mushroom cottage as it seems to have become my 'thing' so this is Sunflower Cottage.

All hand stitched by me, I hope you love it :-) 

As always the rules are simple, be a follower and leave a comment! I hate lots of rules so that's all I ask, if you want to mention the giveaway on your blogs go ahead but you don't have to, I don't mind. I'm happy to post anywhere in the world too so that shouldn't rule anyone out unless they live on Mars or something :-) I'll draw the winner on the 31st so you have the rest of the month to enter.

So onto the other things I've been up to this week and a bit. I had a lovely day yesterday as I had the chance of setting up my stall in the gift shop of a local garden centre. It was such a lovely place to be and I got half price lattes in the cafe all day too :-) I'm back there on Saturday too so that'll be lovely. Here was my stall yesterday

I really need to find a way of getting my cloth to stay ironed while getting it to these fairs! It starts out so nice then seems to crumple itself to bits on the way, what's that all about? Anyway I have an idea to change the cloth for something better soon :-) 

For the day there I made a batch of daisy hearts last week, lots of them! You can see them in the basket in the middle of the table. 

I had an order last week too for a toadstool, which I had fun with.....

and an embroidered Peppa Pig card for a little boys 2nd birthday, he's called Sebastian but is known as Sebbie,

Pleased to say they were loved :-) So that's what I've been busy with for the last week. Oh yes almost forgot, my big brothers birthday is on Wednesday and I thought I'd try something new, a stitched card where you stitch it on the card itself by pricking holes in it. I did this motorbike for him and loved doing this! Just what I needed another craft to cram into my life, like I haven't enough already, lol! 

So that's what I can show you this week, there are a couple of things but they are for a birthday present and can't be revealed yet. 

Well I'm off to try and catch up and everyone's blogs again! Have a great week everyone and don't forget to enter the giveaway :-)

Catching up, ami swap and I've reached 100 followers!!

Well hello everyone!  Welcome to my new followers, lovely to meet you :-)  That means WOOHOO I've passed the 100 followers!! A giveaway to celebrate is in the offing, details to come next week so keep watching :-)


So this week I can show the things that I couldn't show last week because everything is in it's new home now and it won't spoil any surprises. I'll start off with ami swap time!! A quick expanation to those who don't know what this is, the lovely Steph over at Dolly Dolly Daydreams and me swap a crochet or knitted amigurumi (cute softie) at the start of every month. The swap is always fabulous and getting a present every month is great :-) 


So for this months swap Steph sent me Daisy the donkey! Isn't she sweet!!! 

I love her gorgeous face and the cute bee button in the middle of the daisy :-)
I sent Sally the bear to Steph,

Now I admit, she was hard to part with, I can see me making another one to keep :-)

Also this week was the fabulous Laura's birthday! So her pressies were also in the top secret pile until now. 

I stitched her one of the mushroom needlecases, a Union Jack keyring and a crochet owl

and a bookmark too, I loved this quote by Louisa May Alcott 'She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain' :-)

I'm pleased to say Laura loved them :-)

For my makes this week I was making things for my stall at the craft fair this month. Being at a garden centre I seem to have come over all flowery! First up I made some embroidered butterfly brooches, 

then the flowers started to appear. Daisy felt hearts, which I really like, I can see these in a few different colours.

Then an explosion of keyrings appeared! These were really fun to make, I got to pull out all my ribbons and make up the colour schemes to suit them, I got a little carried away and I'm not done yet! 

Next I'm back on the mushroom cottages as I want to build up a few more for making a fab village on the stall :-)


So have a great week everyone and I'll be back with the giveaway next week so don't forget to come and enter!

Mushrooms everywhere :-)

Hello everyone!

Well I've been lost in the land of the mushrooms this week and had great fun :-) I started out with making cottages, three of them in fact!

Ta-da!

First up is the 4th of July Cottage with the American  flag flying outside the door. The flag has 6 French knot stars as I couldn't fit the whole 50 on an area that's so teeny! 

Next I made a replacement for the Celebration Cottage as it sold at the last fair I did, so this is the new one.

The third one is a new one which I named Marigold Cottage. I got a new hanging basket full of lovely Fuchsia's which hangs outside the window near where I stitch, I guess it inspired this one!

Then a hanging mushroom too in the Jubilee Cottage style,

 After that I moved onto some more needlecases. Two new ones are done so far and one more is ready to embroider and stitch together.

I've had a busy week of mushrooming :-) The cottages and needlecases are now in my Etsy shop.

Oh yes and two Father's Day cards appeared too,

Now I'm onto the sea! I have a craft fair on Sunday at the quayside in north Shields and it's themed Spirit of the Sea and it's International Fairy Day too!  I'm just finishing off a baby octopus and next on the list is a mermaid so that'll be fun.

I have found what looks like a great fair at a garden centre not too far away which will be every month on a Saturday. It looks so promising that I rang up to book for next month and ended up booking in for the rest of the year, lol! I don't do things by halve and the dates were filling up quite quickly so I figured why not. Since the last fair I did every month finished I've been looking for a new home which suits my makes and me to be my regular place and this fits the bill nicely and I admit I have a huge love of garden centres :-) It's a craft and food fair so there'll be cake too!

Well I better get back to my seaside makes. Have a great week everyone!