Birds On A Wire Fabric And Easter Craft Paper For Handmade Monday

As you may have guessed from the opening image to today's post, this week my mind has turned to all things Spring... I have completed a fun new bird inspired fabric design in lovely fresh colours (coming up in a minute) and made progress on a collection of Easter craft papers too!

Birds On A Wire

From the chaos of Christmas to the seemingly endless January 'Spring clean' its been a busy couple of months with little time for designing. However, this week i've found time to start playing around with a few ideas, one of which is now my newest fabric design, 'Birds On A Wire'.

Its quite a small print size, this image represents a 8x8 swatch. You will find it listed over in my Spoonflower shop - its not available to buy yet but it will be soon!

The idea came from this photograph i took a while ago...

... i love the delicate silhouette of this little chap (or girl?!) and thought it would be fun to use it in a fabric design. It was perfect for creating rows of chattering little birdies. The hardest part of this design was actually getting the wobbly wires to match up to create a repeating pattern... it would have been easy of they were dead straight but i thought wobbly was more fun! :)

Easter Craft Papers

Its also been ages since i've put together a new collection of craft papers and i've really enjoyed working on some Easter themed ones - i'm so ready for fresh pastels after endless red of Christmas and Valentine's Day.

The set isn't quite finished but i thought i'd show you some snippets today and hopefully the completed collection next time. You might remember these eggs from last year...

...the design is still available from my Spoonflower shop and i thought it would be perfect for including in my Easter craft paper bundle (i also have a greetings card featuring this design in the pipeline... expect pics next time!)

The collection will also include a page of little chicks. Here they are on turquoise...

I will include them on traditional pastels too though i think.

I've also created a page of bunnies...

... and a page of these 'Happy Easter' banners...

... here's how they will look.

For some plainer pages i've done a simple flower design with colours picking up on some of the other colours i've used in the collection.

Here's the turquoise one on its own so you can see the design a bit better.

I've tried to make it so that each page coordinates well with a number of other pages to make them a useful and useable set. I've got two more pages still to create to complete it and i'm thinking that i'll focus on tying in the eggs with the other designs as i feel like they stand out a bit at the moment... Do you agree? It would be great to hear what you think would work best for the final pages :)

And that's all from me for this week, as always i look forward to reading your comments which are always so helpful and kind. I'm excited to catch up with the rest of the Handmade Monday bloggers too, time for a glass of something lovely and an evening stroll around Handmade Harbour i think!

Have a wonderful week! x

Ceramic Easter Eggs, Bird Coasters And Organic Rose Garden Lavender Pillows For Handmade Monday

Yay! We're into March and its officially Spring!! I've been busy with some seasonal makes... thankfully the sun came out after a week of cloudy gloom just in time for me to get some pictures of them to show you :)

Hand Painted Ceramic Easter Eggs

Making A Birds's Nest

Have you ever tried making a nest?  I've a new found admiration for birds having had a go at making one myself this week... its not as easy as it looks to get the whole thing to hold together!  I wanted one to display the ceramic eggs i've painted.

I have to say i had great fun foraging for the materials. It was one of those lovely activities that involve you so completely that you forget about everything apart from what you're doing... until one of your dogs runs off with a mouthful of your precious twigs that is!

Hand Painted Ceramic Egg Decorations

I painted these with Easter in mind but i think they'd make really pretty decorations at any time of year... what do you think? I'm wondering whether to order more of the materials and make them a permanent fixture...

They are 6.5cms long and have soft white, pure wool loops attached for hanging (which could easily be removed if someone wanted to display them in a bowl - or a nest! :))

Fabric Gift Bags

If you saw my recent post about my Birds Of A Feather fabric designs you'll know what i made these little gift bags for my eggs from...

...that's right, the samples i ordered have arrived! I'm loving how they turned out :)  The designs are much more delicate and subtle once they're printed on fabric - the eggs, you may recall, appeared quite bold as a digital image but hopefully you can see from these photos how much softer they are on fabric.

I'm really happy with how these little egg gifts turned out... I think they'd make cute Easter pressies :) I hope you like them too!

They're available in my Etsy shop now priced £9 for a single egg with cotton gift bag, or £18 for a set of three eggs on their own. (they will be listed in all my usual outlets very soon).

Nesting Birds Blue And White Ceramic Tile Coasters

Many of you were kind enough to leave lovely comments about the fabric design i came up with featuring the silhouettes of nesting birds gathering twigs (thank you!) I was pleased with that design too, so i decided to create a set of four hand painted ceramic coasters featuring the same images..

... they can be used individually for mugs or glasses or put together to hold something larger. They have wool felt bases so they won't scratch table tops.

I just love the blue and white colour combo... to me its a timeless classic :)

These will be available soon from all the usual places priced £25 for the set of four.

Rose Garden Lavender Pillows (Organic Cotton)

Do you remember when i showed you my first fabric designs a few weeks ago? (catch up here if you missed it!). Well, i ordered some small swatches printed on organic cotton to see what i thought of both the design and the fabric and i'm happy to say i am really pleased with both!

I'd really like to use more organic cotton in my work as regular cotton has pretty dismal eco credentials... the Spoonflower one i got my rose garden designs printed on is soft and quite fine with a faint sheen.. really pretty and perfect for delicate pretty things - so i made more lavender pillows!

I'm so in love with these pretty spring colours :)

They will be available to buy in the next few days from the usual places - priced £12.50 for a set of three.

All of my 'rose garden' and 'birds of a feather' fabrics are also now available to buy from my Spoonflower shop, should you feel like making some pretty spring things from them yourself!

In Other News... Economics

Its been another busy week for me... as well as nest making etc i've begun the process of adding UK postage charges to all my listings... the sums have been done and i just can't afford to offer to post for free anymore, however much i would like to! It won't necessarily be the full amount - i'm charging £1 for the lavender pillows for example. The crux of the matter is, i need Free Spirit Designs to be a financially successful as well as creatively successful business if i'm to continue dedicating the time to it that i do. I do hope my lovely customers understand..

Has anyone else had to make adjustments like this recently? I've found that the current financial climate makes it increasingly difficult to be as generous as i would like to be. I've lost count of how many times i've had to restrain myself from purchasing beautiful items created by fellow crafters that i would have snapped up in an instant in more buoyant times! I do still try to support small businesses where i can though. I'd be interested to hear your thought's and experiences of buying/selling handmade during tough times...

I'm off to find out what those super duper Handmade Monday crafters have been up to now, do pop along too if you have a moment, there's always lots to see and learn!

Thanks for popping by x

 

'Birds Of A Feather' Fabric Collection For Handmade Monday

Hello :)

I've got a new fabric collection to show you! I've called it 'Birds Of A Feather' and its inspired by spring nest making and the soft, nurturing symbols of eggs, feathers and busy birds feeding hungry chicks :)

I've gone for a simple, classic colour pallet of pastel sky blue and white (for its versatility and freshness) although these designs could be adapted to any colour scheme (contact me for more info). As with all my fabric, the images have been hand drawn and then converted to digital format to create the fabric patterns.

This post is going to be pretty much all pictures now! I would be hugely grateful if you could let me know your favourites (or 'not so sures'...) in the comments... thank you!! x

Bird Fabric

This is the design i came up with from the image pictured at the top of the post. To give an idea of scale, this is what a 25x25 inch square would look like.

... and here's a design i created from three silhouettes i drew of birds gathering twigs for nest making (image represents what an 8x8 inch swatch would look like).

Feather Fabric

If you popped by my last Handmade Monday post you may remember that i showed you this picture i drew of a feather (thank you all for your encouraging comments!!).

You may have noticed that i used this images as the single falling feather in my first design...

... and i have also used it alongside some other feathers i drew to create this feather heart image...

... which became this fabric pattern (this represents a 25x25 inch fabric square).

I also used the feathers to create this pattern of falling feathers spelling out the word 'love'. This image represents a 12x12 inch square of fabric.

My final feather design was this simple one. This picture shows what a 10x10 inch square of fabric would look like.

Egg Fabric

With Easter coming up, i couldn't miss out eggs! So i drew up a few speckley ones like this...

... and turned them into this (Image represents a 6x6 inch swatch).

That's it for the designs... i hope i haven't overwhelmed you with all these pictures! 

Variations

There are some colour variations you might like to see though... I reversed the blue and white for the twig collecting birds and egg designs...

... and i also tried most of them in pink and white which i rather like!

You will find all of these and more over at my Spoonflower shop. These won't be for sale for a couple of weeks as i need to check samples of the prints first - if you'd like to be notified when they become available just let me know.

There is also plenty of scope for customisation... if you would like one of these designs in a different colour combination or to a different scale, do contact me.

In Other News...

In amongst snow flurries we've had more encouraging signs of spring in these parts this week which has induced in me an uncharacteristic enthusiasm for spring cleaning! (I saw a quote on Pinterest the other day... "A clean kitchen is a sign of a wasted life" and am still seriously considering hanging a sign with it on in my house  :))

However, a sprinkling of daffs and a snatch of bird song on the spring breeze some how transforms me (briefly) into a house cleaning fiend... i'm sure the rest of the family will enjoy it while it lasts!!  Any one else caught the spring cleaning bug this week...?!!

I'm going to take a well earned break from the dusty corners and soapy water now though, to wander around the crafty wonderland that is Handmade Monday...

Thanks for dropping by :) x

Silent Sunday