Personalised Gifts For Handmade Monday

Happy New Year folks! I hope you all had a wonderful time over Christmas and a well deserved rest after all that frantic crafting on the run up!

There's been a lot of flooding in these parts... i took this picture of a local carpark on Christmas Eve on the way to visit family near by...

Luckily we live up on a hill with little danger of flooding but my heart goes out to those who had a wet Christmas. Anyone else in the same boat as these poor people? (pardon the pun...! :/)

I had a lovely time with family and it was nice to finally be able to give them the gifts i'd made (some quite a while ago!) Happily, i've also had some positive feedback from customers too, especially from those who bought personalised and custom gifts.

Today i've picked a couple of my favourites to share with you :)

Custom Squirrel Mug for a Lovely Mum

My dear friend Sandhya (creator of gorgeous handmade bath products) asked me to design a mug to give to her mum as a Christmas pressie featuring squirrels and some wording too, a quote on one side and 'lovely mum' on the other.

The nature theme was right up my street and i loved the whole process of design through to painting the finished mug. The best bit is that Sandhya and her Mum are really pleased with it - yay!

Here are some pics...

I hope you like it too!

Coffee Lover's Cushion

The other make i want to show you today is this cushion cover i made as a Christmas pressie for a coffee lover in my family.

I used gold fabric paint, frayed edged applique and a pretty lace trim to decorate the front which is made from some lovely faded linen which i've upcyled.

The reverse is made from a lovely cashmere jumper which was ready for a new life, and a hand sewn patch as a finishing touch.

I'm really pleased with how the 'cosy coffee house' look came together and the soft cashmere makes is super hugable too :)

In Other News...

2013 was a great year for Free Spirit Designs. I had lots of fun with new creative avenues like fabric design, printable craft papers and greetings cards and have learnt so much along the way. Sales were a lot better than in 2012 too (yay!) and i'm hoping to take another step in the right direction this year - i've got lots of ideas for new collections and directions which i'm looking forward to sharing with you very soon.

This seems like a good time to say a huge thank you to all those who have supported my little business over the last 12 months - customers, blog readers and of course my lovely friends and family too - i wish you al the very happiest of New Years and hope that 2014 has wonderful things in store for us all!

Now, i can't wait to hear about how all the crafters over at Handmade Monday have faired over the last few busy weeks...were they, like me, queing in the post office on the last posting day layden with last minute orders? Did they get 'everything done' in time for the big day? I'm off to find out :)

Thanks for stopping by! x

Custom Mug Designs For Handmade Monday

Happy New Year to those of you i haven't encountered in blog land over the last couple of weeks, i hope you are feeling refreshed after all the festive fun?!

I had a fantastic family Christmas but now i'm itching to get started on a host of new projects i've got planned for this year... i will tell you more about some of them very soon!

Custom Mug Designs

I love being given the opportunity to work together with a customer on an idea they have for something they'd like made, especially when its a gift for someone special - somehow their enthusiasm rubs off on me and i'm always super inspired and excited by these kind of projects!

Today i'd like to share with you a couple of mug designs i've created over the last few months, both were for talented crafters which added a bit of extra pressure to create something special! They were both very pleased with the results though i'm happy to say :)

Mugs For Men - The Kite Surfer Design

If you've been reading my blog for a while you may remember me showing you this drummer mug which i painted back in August.

Well, a lovely lady called Zoe saw it and asked me if i would create a similarly styled silhouette mug for her husband. She wanted the image to be a kite surfer, with a wrap around design, a splash of colour, and the words 'i'd rather be kite surfing'. This is what i came up with...

The wrap around design makes it a bit difficult to photograph but hopefully you get the idea with these shots. I had so much fun working on this design and i'm super grateful to Zoe for trusting me to do it!

Rainbow Umbrella - Best Friend Mug

Sandhya is a lovely lady who i connected with through Etsy. She has a gorgeous Etsy shop of her own (which i'll be doing a feature on soon so watch this space!) and i was thrilled that she wanted me to design a special Christmas gift for her to give to her best friend.

She wanted something based around the Rihanna song, 'Umbrella', with a rainbow colour scheme, and we put our ideas together to come up with this design.

I love all the bright colours and had so much fun painting it - happily, the recipient of the mug loved it too!

Commission Your Own Custom Design Hand Painted Mug

If you have an idea for a mug design that you'd like my help to bring to life then do get in touch (my email is in the sidebar, or you can contact me through my website, Etsy or other shops) i'm more than happy to chat things over, share my ideas and let you know what is possible!

The price for a large mug is £14/£15 and a regular mug, £12/£13.

Christmas Pressies! A Colourful Pen Roll

I haven't forgotten that i promised to show you some more of the Christmas pressies i made for friends and family. I have to confess that i neglected to photograph most of the things i intended to show you before i gave them as gifts! Such is the way of things during the franticness of pre-Christmas preparations :)

However, i briefly borrowed back this colourful pen roll (complete with a much coveted set of coloured fineliner pens) from the lovely young lady i gave it to, just to get a couple of photos for you!

I'm really pleased with how it turned out (and am sooooooooooo in love with this Michael Miller fabric!) i hope you like it too :)

Handmade Monday 

Its time to say thank you for visiting for another week and fly off through cyber space to Handmade Monday to find out all about what my fellow crafty bloggers have been up to... see you next time! x