Ouch!

Hello everyone and welcome to my new followers, lovely to meet you :-) Thanks to everyone who's entered the giveaway and if you haven't there's still time, it's in the post before this one and you have until Tuesday to get your name in the hat for a mushroom cottage.

Been a busy week again, I don't seem to have any other kind lately! Firstly a card I stitched for the lovely Helen's birthday, you can find her fabulous blog HERE It was another of the new stitched cards I've been trying out

 
I also stitched this biscornu for Helen, I haven't made a biscornu for a while and it was fun to make.

I had a custom order for a set of eight napkins to be embroidered with a little bird design for a wedding present this week too, I love how these turned out. The buyer had already had a set of napkin rings custom made out of reclaimed slate with the couples initials etched on them. They were gorgeous!

A ruby wedding card too was on this weeks list, I've made this one a few times with different coloured flowers. It's a lovely design and always looks pretty.

Today I made this mermaid dolly :-) Isn't she lovely? I'm really pleased with her. She measures 16 inches tall so is a big one! She was made with a Dolls and Daydreams pattern from  HERE 

Here she is from the back with her lovely red hair.

On Saturday I was at the garden centre again with my new cloth on my stall. What do you think? I was really annoyed with the white sheet looking so battered and creased all the time and decided to make a better cloth. I went for the red with white spots as it looked like my mushrooms roofs!  I'm really happy with it but this is where the OUCH of the title comes in! I was busy sewing the cloth last week and one of my cats Poppy was having a blast jumping on the fabric on the floor, wrapping herself up in it. Well she pulled it hard and distracted me, the sewing machine needle went right through my index finger, in the nail and out the other side!! I have to say the air turned a lovely shade of blue :-) So for two days I was doing everything with one finger in the air because it was so sore! It seemed to heal really quickly though, I'm left with a hole in my finger nail and a little black dot on the other side but it's fine now I'm happy to say. But the cloth is fabulous and I didn't bleed on it, although it was the right colour for it!

There have been other makes this week too but they are for the travelling craft box which I've got at the moment so I can't show them until next time when it's on it's travels again. It's such fun getting to pick goodies out of the box and I have to say they are all fabulous, it's so hard to choose!

See you all Tuesday when I'll be back with the winner of the giveaway, good luck everyone!

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!

I'm back :-)

Hello everyone and welcome to the new followers, lovely to see you :-)

Firstly, sorry! I know it's been longer than usual for me in between posts. The things is, for the past few weeks I've been realising something has to give! I spend wayyyyyyy too much time on the computer every day, usually over 6 hours (I know it's riduculous!) with Etsy, Folksy and Wowthankyou shops, facebook page and blog as well as all the usual stuff that I've had no time to actually make much and really, that is very important if I want to keep selling! So this week I have been trying to be ruthless with my time online, that is why I've been away and not caught up with your blogs too, sorry! My big plan is to just turn the bloody thing off more so I don't waste time and get distracted, which by the way is very easy, I must be the World Champion when it comes a wasting time and procrastinating, lol!

Anyway, it means I will be around but it might just take me a bit longer to catch up with people, hope you understand, I love you all honest :-)

So lets catch up a bit here with things. Last Sunday was the craft fair at the pub, it was also the day of the Sunderland Marathon which went right past the place. It could have gone either way, the roads were all closed so if people were out to watch the runners then they might pop in and buy or the way it did work out which was no one went out because all the flipping roads were closed!  Not a lot of customers around unfortunately but still a good day, I did okay, and it's always a nice fair with lots of lovely people so happy day :-)

I took a pic of my stall, typically I only took one and it's a little  bit blurry so sorry about that, must do better next time! I have big plans to make some shelves for the stall, I can't find anything that I like as they all seem to be made of acrylic and I want wood so it looks nice. So I have a hacksaw and I'm getting some wood from B&Q tomorrow, what can possibly go wrong?!! I'll try to not cut my fingers off, promise :-) Wish me luck!

I had four Jubilee Cottages to make for sales last weekend and I made it, they were ready and off to their new homes no problem. I also made a new Party Cottage.

and in typical fashion, one of the first pictures I took...... Daisy really wanted to be in the picture :-) 

Then I was mushroomed out! I had sold my ami owls at the fair so made a new batch of those......I have no idea what a group of owls is called, a hoot maybe!

The red and white one is inspired by Sunderland's football strip, I need to make another as he sold this morning to the local butcher :-) I plan to make black and white too for Newcastle so I can tailor it to wherever the fairs are and keep everyone happy! As the  fans of both hate each other it can be swapped depending on venue, lol!

Also had a birthday card to make for the MIL, I came up with an idea for using charms that I bought ages ago, loved them but no idea what to do with them until now.

They are such beautiful butterflies and I loved how it looked with a simple ring of roses around it.

And finally..........drumroll please, TA-DA!! Fame at last! The Craftseller magazine with the feature on Hippywitch Crafts came out this week. Love the big mushroom cottage picture they used as it stands out :-) Here's hoping it pays off!

Now I've started an ami for an order, a polar bear with a brown mouse on it's shoulder! It's a friend of my boyfriend who asked him for this and like a man he never asked why!? Why are men so useless at gossip? I really want to know the story behind this idea, I mean there must be one! So I guess I have to make my own story up then :-)

So that's me for another week, hope the sun is shining wherever you are :-)

Finished 3D cottage and the craft room is done!

Hello to my new followers and of course the rest too  :-)
Hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend and the weather was better than we had here, rain and cold and more rain :-( Still I didn't go anywhere so it didn't really matter!

Had a busy weekend though as on Friday morning I decided to finally sort the craft room/room where everything ends up getting chucked if it has no home. This was no small undertaking I can tell you! Over the space of the four days I got 5 big bags for the charity shop and the same in rubbish. The huge wardrobe that lived in such a small room and took up half of it was smashed up and chucked out. Then the boyfriend was despatched in with a paint brush and tin of white paint. Monday I finished off by rearranging the furniture and tidying everything away and now it's fabulous :-)

The big box on the floor will disappear as soon as I can get through all the cross stitch mags in it and file the charts away!

the leaning tower of wool boxes, it's four huge boxes piled up and Poppy and Daisy have claimed  basket of fabric on top as a new bed!

So here's the end result, waiting for me to make some bright colourful things to decorate the walls. I'm thinking crochet flowers for a start and some of the finished cross stitch that I had no room to hang...... oooooh Vin Diesel! I still have to frame him and that would be perfect! Just found him on my blog post HERE so you can see him in all his glory :-) Embarrassing that I finished him in February last year and still he's not framed though, hadn't realised it was that long ago!

I also finished off the 3D cottage, yay! That was a real pig to stitch together, the stitched pieces are wrapped around plastic canvas to make them rigid and I now have a hole in my finger end off pushing the needle through the plastic too many times! However it does look good and I'm happy with it as well as happy to be finally finished! So a ta-da moment.......

the front....

side....

back complete with bench, tiny watering can and basket of flowers....

and the other side. I do love these cottages but think it might be a while before I make another :-)

I'm off then, busy making a custom order for a mushroom decoration that needs finishing.

Have a great week!  

Lots of gorgeous post and it's ami swap time!

Hello :-)

Hope everyone has sunshine back again after the cold and snow of this week and  I thought I was being a pessimist last week in the gorgeous weather when I thought 'we'll pay for this!' lol!

Well this week has been interesting. I was out on Saturday night with all my family for my parents golden anniversary, posh hotel for dinner, ooo fancy! Then I was up all night and ill all Sunday throwing up so I guess it wasn't that fancy, lol! Turns out it was only me that was ill so I have no idea if it was a bug or something I ate but not fun. Luckily it didn't last and I was fine again Monday :-)

So while feeling awful and trying to stay focused I had an order for a Tulip Cottage to get stitched and posted for Monday morning. I made it! I loved the red door that was requested, I hadn't thought about red for a door as there was so much red with the cap of them but it looked good.

Lots of tulips around the garden and purple climbing flowers round the door.....

I also made another Jubilee Cottage for a customer, I do like stitching that one :-)


Now I'm back to the 3D cottage I'm cross stitching, it seems to be taking ages to get done but the walls are stitched and I'm onto the roof then I just have to build it! Here's a progress picture so you can see how much detail is in it with all the backstitch and French knots.

The bit at the top that looks like a barcode is the start of the thatched roof!

It's getting there! 

Ami swap was this week too yay! For those who don't know this it's a swap I do at the start of every month with the lovely Steph over at Show and Tell. We have been doing this for a couple of years now and it's always brilliant to get lovely presents every month :-) So This month Steph sent me this gorgeous pink sheep, isn't it so cute! Also a little bunny, very sweet and a little stitched friendship cushion with gorgeous beads around the edge. Thanks so much Steph it's fabulous! 

and this fabulous card too, it's the sheepish sheep, lol!

I sent Steph this cute bunny and chick and embroidered card. 

This was the first of these bunnies I made, it turned out so cute I made another for my Etsy shop :-) I can see more bunnies in the future! 

Got a lovely surprise this week too from Laura with a Easter pressie arriving! Thanks Laura! She sent me the cutest little blue birdy with a sweet tuft of hair, three gorgeous stitch markers and a bag of Creme Eggs :-)  

Two lovely cards too from the lovely Helen and Laura.

And if that wasn't enough gorgeous post I got this! My lovely friend Jeanne in Canada made me this fabulous business card case...............

Isn't it perfect for my cards? I was amazed that this is the first felt thing she has made, wow! It's gorgeous! It's been a great post week :-) 

Whoa, that was a lot of stuff! So that's me for the week,  have a good Easter everyone!

Now back to the cottage building.......