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

Printable Craft Papers - Cats And Gardening, For Handmade Monday

This week's been all about getting my new Etsy shop (Free Spirit Designs Print And Paper) stocked up. Although i'm using my fabric collections as the basis for my printable paper designs, i've been making alterations and additions along the way to make sure they work well in this new medium so its been quite time consuming... i'm pretty much up to date with my design back catalogue now though - phew!

*BTW*Any Etsy regulars who like the look of my new craft papers, it would be lovely if you could drop by my FSD Print and Paper shop and sprinkle a few hearts around... its feeling a bit like the new kid at school at the moment... :)  thank you! xxx

Gardener's World Printable Craft Paper

This set of twelve gardening themed papers is available for instant download for £3.50. I've stuck pretty closely to the designs i used for my fabrics, although there is a new addition to round the collection up to twelve...

This mixed veg design featuring carrots, beetroot and runner beans is now also now part of my 'Gardener's World' fabric collection which you will find for sale over at my Spoonflower shop (here's a pic of the sample swatches i got recently, i have to say i'm really happy with how lovely they look in 'real life' :))

Black Cats Printable Craft Papers

Next came the cats. I decided to split them into two collections, starting with this set of six black cat designs (available for instant download for £2.50).

If you're a regular visitor to my blog you may notice that the new arrival in this collection is the mum and cheeky kitten design...

I hope you like it!

Colourful Cats Craft Papers

Next came the 'colourful cats', a collection of patterns featuring curly tailed cats, paw prints and love hearts. The palette is five bright colours - pink, green, yellow, purple and blue.

I came up with three new designs to complete this collection for paper - two stripy paw print ones which i thought would work equally well as a background for scrapbooking or cut into strips for things like borders in card making...

...and this diagonal design which i thought was fun!

This collection of twelve papers is available for instant download for £3.50 from my Etsy shop (If you are interested in any of my cat designs as fabric, you will find them for sale over at my Spoonflower shop).

As always, i look forward to hearing your thoughts on this week's creations in the comments!

Time is such a valuable commodity, i really appreciate you using some of your precious moments to engage with what is going on in my creative corner :)

Have a wonderful week all, and don't forget to drop by Handmade Harbour to check out this week's fabulous crafting adventures!

I will leave you with this cheeky chappy i spotted having a crafty snack from the bird feeder...  such ingenuity means he definitely deserves the title 'crafty'!

Printable Craft Papers And My First Knitting Project For Handmade Monday

I've got two brand new crafting adventures to tell you about this week, both equally exciting to me but very different from each other!

Printable Craft Papers

Ever since Etsy streamlined their procedure for selling digital downloads i've been more attracted than ever to the idea of branching out in the direction stationary, specifically, printable craft papers. I held back for a while because i wanted to focus on Free Spirit Designs home wares. However, now i have quite a few fabric designs which i figured it wouldn't take too much time and energy to convert to printable papers i decided to take the plunge... and this is the result!

My brand new Etsy shop "Free Spirit Designs Print And Paper"!

I have two listings so far... a six item collection of my rose garden designs...

(You can see three in more detail at the top of this post and here are the other three).

They come as 12x12 inch high-resolution 300dpi files, available for instant download and the price for this set is £2.50. Once purchased they can be printed off as many times as you like and used for personal craft projects or small scale selling.

*they may not be claimed as your own, given away, sold, used for mass produced products or reproduced onto anything other than paper!*

Here's listing number two, my 'birds of a feather' collection.

There are twelve patterns available in this collection and the price for download is £3.50. The observant among you may have noticed that i have created some new stripy patterns for the papers (although i may now add these to my fabric range too as i rather like them!)

Here's a close look at the selection...

I'd be very interested to hear from any craft paper users which patterns from the these two collections are most appealing... in fact any feedback on this new endeavour would be greatly appreciated!

(Once i have a few more listed i plan to offer a custom option where you can pick and choose a group of your favourite patterns from any of my collections)

My First Knitting Project!

On to exciting new thing number two... knitting! For those who missed it, a couple of week's ago i was told by the lovely and talented Penny of Planet Penny that i had won her giveaway of a gorgeous book, 'The Knitted Home' by Ruth Cross. How wonderful! The only problem being that i'd never knitted a stitch.........

All that has changed now though! Oh yes, i have undertaken the first project in this wonderful book, a knitted lavender pillow. I opened a skein of gorgeous blue/green wool i had in my stash of crafting lovelies and spent a little time getting a feel for things by knitting and then unraveling the first few rows.

Then when i felt more confident, i forged ahead and produced this!

My first ever kitting project completed! I'm dead chuffed. So much so that i couldn't wait to get started on another, so i raided my stash again and came up with this stripy companion to lavender pillow number one...

...which, as i write this, is winging its way to my brother as a birthday pressie... and i'm busy informing everyone in the family that they will be receiving knitted pressies only for me for the foreseeable future and to get their Christmas orders in soon :)  Oh Penny, what have you started! :)

I'm hopping over to Handmade Harbour now to see what kind of a crafty week my fellow handmade mondayers have had... care to join me?

p.s. Thanks for dropping by and thank you in advance for your comments, they are always much appreciated

p.p.s. All knitting tips welcome! :) x