Lavender Pillows, Mother's Day Bunting And Rose Garden Coasters For Handmade Monday

Having recently spent most of my time immersed in the new and exciting world of fabric design, this week i decided that as my shops had begun to look a little depleted, it was about time i got creative in the 'real world'... so, i have some new spring inspired makes to show you today :)

Mother's Day 'Best Mum' Bunting

Suddenly Mother's Day is just around the corner (March 10th in the UK)! so the first thing i made was the colourful 'BEST MUM' bunting pictured at the top of the page. Its not too big (150cms long and the flags are 10x10.5cms) and would look great on a dresser, or bookshelf i think... what Mum doesn't want to be reminded all year round that she is the best!! :)

Here's a couple more pictures...

... I felt so happy working with these cheery fabrics and it really got me in the mood for more spring/summer makes :)

Its priced £16 (free UK delivery) and available now from my website, Etsy shop and other outlets.

Summery Lavender Pillow Gift Sets

Next i got going with some lavender pillows. Simple squares perfect for popping in drawers to keep them smelling fresh or under your pillow at night as a sleep aid. They are stuffed with a combination of dried somerset lavender and pure sheep's wool, both with wonderfully calming and restorative aromas...

As you can see i've been raiding my colourful Summery fabric stash again for these! I'm selling them in pairs, tied with coloured string and a pretty tag priced £9.50 (free UK posting) - i think they'd make lovely little pressies for so many occasions - including Mother's Day! :)

Here they are individually..

You will find them on my website, Etsy shop and other usual places!

The idea is that i will be making similar sets as part of my permanent range once i get organised with my fabric designs - i will keep you up dated! (the latest is that the first samples i ordered of my designs have begun to arrive and i'm really pleased with how they've turned out :))

Logo Stamp

The observant among you will have noticed i've been trialling my new logo stamp on the tags for these little gift sets - its from The English Stamp Company which i can't recommend highly enough! You can upload any design and they get it sent off to you as a lovely stamp super quickly. The quality is great, i'm having to restrain myself from getting lots of lovely custom stamps made now! :)

Rose Garden Coaster Set

If you're a regular visitor to my corner of blog land you may remember me mentioning that i'd painted a coaster set to go with my rose garden collection... well, here it is...

The idea is that they work as individual coasters, or fitted together to put something like a teapot on (perfect with my matching cups and saucers!)

The whole set is priced £25 and is available now from my website, Etsy shop and other outlets.

In Other News...

Whew! That's me for another week :)  When i look back at my handmade Monday posts i realise i must have been quite a busy bee :)  I do hope i'm not overwhelming you with information overload... do let me know if you're finding my posts a little long these days regulars! :)

On that note... I got the most amazing comments on my post last week about my "Birds Of A Feather" fabric.. so detailed and insightful and kind and very helpful too - thank you thank you to those who took the time to leave lovely words, you know who you are!

I will leave you with my newly photographed packaging (most of my listings have been accompanied by a christmassy gift wrap photo up until this week.... oooops!)

See you over at Handmade Harbour, home to the not to be missed crafting adventures of the wonderful Handmade Monday bloggers! x

'Rose Garden Collection' My First Fabric Designs For Handmade Monday

This week i've been taking my first steps towards a new and exciting venture... fabric design! Its all part of a decision i've made to be more organised with my output and create more cohesive collections and fewer random one offs (although there will always be a some of those around i suspect!)

Rose Garden Collection

If you popped by my blog last week you may remember the rose garden inspired cup and saucer i showed you - if you didn't catch that post, this is what i'm talking about.

Rose Garden Cup And Saucer

Thank you very much for you kind comments by the way :) They helped me decide to make this design my first 'collection'! I've painted some coasters to match but the weather is too gloomy here for photos today so i'l need to show you them another time. I also have plans for a tea pot... watch this space!

Rose Garden Fabric

What i can show you though is the fabric! Well, a digital representation of it anyway... when i have the real thing i will be sure to show you what i make with it :)

If you're wondering how i made these designs and if they are available to buy, bare with me, all will be revealed a little further on in this post...

There are five designs in the collection. The first is a small print, perfect for little projects and details. There are three to five roses per square inch to give you an idea of scale.

I'll be using this for things like lavender pillows and tea cosies i expect!

The second in the collection is the same design but on a much larger scale. This image represents what a 16.5x16.5 inch piece would look like - perfect for cushion covers.

Next is a variation on the theme - a small/medium scale print made up of lots of little 'bunches' of roses.

To give you an idea of scale, one little bunch like this will take up approximately one square inch of fabric.

The last two designs are very simple and intended to compliment the more complex rose patterns. I have used the pastel pink and pastel green from the colour palette and created two fabrics covered in tiny white dots.

Its a bit hard to see the dots on the green one in this image but they are there! To give you an idea of scale there are about 16 dots per square inch.

I have had so much fun with this new creative avenue i'm just itching to:

a) make some things with these fabrics

and

b) work on some more designs!!

First though, i'm going to tell you a bit about how i created these and also how you can buy them if you'd like to and create your own designs too!

Spoonflower

I suspect some of you reading this may have heard of Spoonflower but for the uninitiated it is a US based website that allows you to upload any digital image and have it printed onto fabric! There are a range of types of fabric to choose from and you can even have your design printed as wall paper or as a sticky backed vinyl decal!

The next exciting thing is that you can also allow your designs to be sold on the site in your own in site shop (think Etsy/Folksy) - here's my Spoonflower shop if you'd like to take a look. My designs aren't for sale quite yet as i need to order and check a test swatch of each before they can be made available but that shouldn't take too long.

The way it works on the money side is if someone orders your fabric design you get 10% of the sale price - you don't have to do anything, it just get deposited in your account. When you buy your own fabric design, you get a 10% discount on the usual purchase price.

There are also lots of other fun aspects to the site like the ability to 'follow' designers who's work you like and comment on people's designs too. There are designing competitions to enter and of course loads of gorgeous fabrics available to buy - its going to be hard not to go on a mad spending spree! :)

Fabric Design

I created my designs using an image editing app for Macs called pixelmator - i bought it recently after it was recommended to me and i'm sooooooooo glad i did! I'm not a computer wizz, nor am i made of money, so to able to do pretty much everything i would do on photoshop (if i owned it or had the slightest clue how to use it...) on a very user friendly platform for just over £10 was well worth it!

The next thing will be using it to improve my product photography... another thing on the 'to do' list!

* On this subject, has anyone else noticed how a lot of the features that used to be free on Pic Monkey (online photo editor) are now 'Royale' features, i.e. you have to pay to upgrade... very annoying although i'm glad it pushed me into doing a bit of research and discovering Pixelmator :)

Handmade Monday

That's it from me for this week folks! I'm off over to Handmade Harbour now to link up with Handmade Monday and enjoy a mooch around everyone else crafting world... maybe i'll see you there!

Thanks for dropping by x

Hearts And Flowers For Treasury Tuesday

Some recent romantic collections to share with you today, inspired, of course, by Valentine's Day just around the corner!

'Rose Garden'

sparklethots $35.50	thelooseleaf $12.00	norajane $3.50	Gallery32Photo... $29.95
VictoriaEnglis... $25.00	RubyRobinBouti... $8.00	TheGinghamOwl $19.00	BahariBlossom $3.00
FlowerDecorati... $12.00	Lori411 $15.00	EvasPhotogarde... $15.00	APeacefulLeaf $25.00
moonlightphoto... $30.00	ArtSimply $8.50	PaciorkyArtStu... $50.00	moonlightphoto... $30.00

Treasury tool supported by the dog house

'Warm Heart'

TheJoyofColor $21.00	BahariBlossom $5.00	Sweetkeetle $7.00	Andrekart $21.00
cherrytime $49.00	ThePaperCub $5.00	VeraPaperLab $7.70	TheNebulousKin... $3.30
SewSweetStitch... $15.00	LunaCabCo $13.75	MazzyBlueStudi... $12.00	waterwaif $34.00
rabbitandeye $28.00	TodoPapel $6.30	ODASANAT $12.00	MyHouseOfDream... $20.00

Treasury tool supported by the dog house

'Its the little things...'

SweetCarolineC... $18.00	yastikizi $32.00	UrbanClink $30.95	cottonbirddesi... $18.00
TheVintageHear... $22.00	RossLab $25.00	LunaCabCo $21.25	PrettySoul $19.99
EcoWood $33.00	TheLonelyHeart $5.50	botanicbotanic $15.00	PhotographyDre... $16.00
urbanplusfores... $24.00	Ceraminic $15.00	jessicaNdesign... $16.00	EdgeInspired $37.50

Treasury tool supported by the dog house

Thanks for stopping by! Everything is clickable so take a closer look at anything that catches your eye :)