Painted wood

 

So this week I am trying to finish all my painted wood projects, some lovely decorative wooden spoons and standing wood peg dolls, I’ve been playing around with ideas of how to display these little dolls and am developing some little flags and banners, the idea being that you get a choice of flags for different celebrations or you could make your own. The dolls would then make lovely table decorations or even cake topper’s and when not in use they can decorate a shelf or sideboard with a patterned flag. I’m still working out the little flags and I imagine it will be another week before these are available in my shop. The spoons are purely decorative, maybe with a tag attached for personal messages. The last three photos are of little kokeshi dolls with bunny ears, they are available here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drawing

 

 

So I just had my weekend without the children, I always miss them terribly but really really enjoy the break!! I like to watch movies whilst I work. I loved watching Wes Anderson’s ‘The life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ whilst I finished of these drawings for new small art brooches. I am insanely busy again getting ready for the Selvedge spring fair in London  on the 22 & 23 March and Paper Scissors Stone in Bristol starting mid April. Also some images of new brooches completed and available in my shop now as well as lots of new small art necklaces.

 

 

 

 

 

Happy valentine

 

I am working with clay this week as the children are at home and it’s easier to work on a smaller scale, I’ve also got pages of sketches that have waited to be transformed into little clay creatures. These are an extension of the shrink plastic and painted paper clay jewellery that I am working on as well. I have some lovely polymer clay colours that I wanted to work with, I didn’t want to use paint and am experimenting with drawn features. Above is a little valentine love bug. Below are some of the first little characters I made, love bugs, an easter bunny bunbun, a scarlet house mouse and Burgers a moose mouse.

 

 

 

I have also made some magic bean necklaces below, the last image is a close up of Burgers the moose mouse.

 

 

A Dachshund called Gus

 

Today a little Dachshund called Gus has arrived in my shop, he is made from black linen, wool felt and velveteen. Finished off with a dashing red leather collar and cool plastic bead necklace.

 

 

A Fox

This lovely fox joins the white puppy and little rainbow pony in my shop today. She is made from linen with lovely details including a wool felt collar with a bell and beautiful sea green recycled glass bead. I am loving these new animal dolls! it is a lot of fun adding all the little details. Watch this space as more animals are on their way!

 

 

My 2013 so far

I’ve ignored my blog for a while!! not intentionally, I have just been so busy through January. So here is some of what I have done, lots of new designs  and ideas on the work table with some older designs reinstated with a few little improvements. Above is a mini rainbow pony and mini molly dolly bear, below are some knitted pocket animals, I used to make these a couple of years ago and have waited for an opportunity to revise the pattern and add them to my shop.

Above is a lovely new Molly Dolly with a linen and Liberty tana lawn dress and little felt fox purse. Below are a couple of new yoyo baby dolls available here. And a lovely Molly Dolly mouse in knitted pants and vintage cotton top.

The white linen puppy and rainbow pony were just completed today and will be in my Etsy shop soon. I love adding just enough kitsch details, like flourescent bling, rainbow hair and cartoon like features to contrast nicely with the linen, hand stitching and vintage cloths. I’m also working up a lot of jewellery samples, some painted clay, some shrink plastic drawings and some leather and cloth wrist bands. The last couple of photos show me half way through sorting out my workspace, with Ikea shelves and boxes, still a lot to do but it’s looking better organised already! so I hope your new year has got off to a swinging start as well, I’ve got to get back to work now, see you soon.

Teeny tiny Molly Dolly’s getting ready for Christmas stockings!

I have been working hard on lots of new ideas for Christmas, nearly completed are my first set of teeny tiny Molly Dolly’s at about 6″ tall they are perfect little stocking fillers, like the full size Molly’s they are made from linen and cotton some vintage some new, they have hand knitted skirts and silk ribbons in their hair. I am also making tiny woodland hoots, christmas trees and mushrooms. The Christmas fairies are about 6 – 7″ tall and are inspired by those wonderfully kitsch tree ornaments from the 1950s and 60s, I wanted them to be glitzy and sparkly like they are off to a Mad Men cocktail party, their dresses are vintage silk and they have fabulous apricot and peach wool hair. The last image shows a large Molly Dolly in progress, the first of a special edition of retro themed dolls, this lovely girl will be 1940s. I know I’ve been a little slow posting recently, just so much work to do but I will try to keep updated on whats new for the holiday season, birds and stockings next!

Frankie Magazine

 

 

I’m so delighted that my dolls made it into one of my favourite publications, Frankie!! This is issue 48 (last months but just out in the UK as this is an Australian magazine) I was so excited I took rather bad photos at the end of the day, but it gives you an idea.

Badges Brooches & Printed dolls

 

I’ve been working on new designs for badges and brooches, I will be selling in Bristol through August and September at paper scissors stone come along to the launch on Wednesday 1st August. Above are some of the drawings I have made for a series of Molly Dolly inspired badges, also putting together new felt brooches and small printed Molly Dolly girls who like the badges are a fox, an owl and a bear, they each have little wool felt party hats. Also in progress are some fine detailed black and white ink drawings, also for badges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puppet girl embroidery

The puppet girl embroidery is finished. The hand embroidery is very different from using the machine, slower and more precise which suits what I wanted to achieve here, a delicate detailed drawing, like something I might create with ink and water-colour. I’m interested in bringing together  my quite eclectic styles of working to see what happens, I’m experimenting with adding embroidered stitches to paper work, I’ll post about this later. In this work I wanted to explore different stitches but I’ve mislaid my embroidery books! so everything here is largely from memory or made up. I also used a mixture of threads for different effects, silk and cotton floss, gold and sparkly pink and some space dyed thread (I’m not sure what it’s called)