Mini crochet project

I have been working on a little toy blanket to go in a lovely wooden dolls pram that Bea got for christmas. I love crochet blankets and would love to make a full size one one day but thought this teeny one would be good practice for now!

I used Attic 24's granny stripe pattern and made up a border. I have used cheapy acrylic toy yarn and the colours are a lot more garish than they appear in the photos but I quite like that - it looks like its come straight out of the 70's! I have finished the crochet now so just need to block it before I post photos of the final article!

The birthday dress in action

I finally took a quick snap today of Bea wearing the red dress I made her for her birthday. She's not the most cooperative of models and wouldn't stand up but you get the idea! I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and the yarn has become lovely and soft after a few washes. I am planning to make this again as a top.

A personal Christmas gift

This Christmas we put a bit of extra thought and effort into a present for my Mum and her husband and came up with a design for some labels featuring a drawing I did of their house. They like to grow their own vegetables and enjoy making things with them, even entering the village produce show so we thought they might like their very own brand!

We made them a hamper including stickers and tags as well as jars such as the above, a book on making preserves and a few ingredients to get them started. Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph the finished hamper as it wasn't ready until about 10pm the night before we went to stay with them for Christmas!

I would love to have time to make more homemade gifts at Christmas but never get organised in time. Maybe that should be my new year's resolution!

Get out the violins

Happy new year!

Lets start this year with a couple of illustrations I did at the end of the last for US magazine Strings.

I certainly now know more about violins that I ever did before!

Happy Christmas!

Christmas card photo shoot

Models can be so temperamental sometimes. First they don't like the outfit...

And storm off the set...

They will only work if you ply them with raisins...

And even then they still wander off to watch Team Umizoomi...

They're always drinking on the job...

And would much rather be off playing with George Pig and a load of Stickle Bricks really.

Some of my favourite paper

A few years ago I got these christmas wrapping papers in a little pound shop. They were quite old, and faded at the edges so god knows where they came from but I just love them!

I was going to use them that year to wrap my presents in but I couldn't bring myself to do it so they went into my paper stash instead.

The green one isn't a dodgy scan, it really is badly printed, which just makes me like it more.

There were more designs than this and I wish I had bought them all. Just to look at.

Point de croix

On Kirsty's Homemade Home last week she did a feature on cross stitch with cross stitcher extraordinaire Emily Peacock. I am totally in love with her hug cushion:

I have a thing for circus fonts anyway and the pompoms make me want to trim everything I own with pompoms. I immediately declared that some kind of cross stitching book or supplies were exactly what I wanted for christmas so I was thrilled to discover Petit Details on Etsy. As well as a range of gorgeous ribbons and things they sell beautiful French cross stitch books like these:

Now I just have to pick one to put on my christmas list but to be honest I want them all!

Bird Girl

I have just added a new notebook to my etsy shop. The illustration is a greetings card design I did but I like it as a notebook too.

Gifted

I have just been virtually flicking through the fantastic Gifted from Creature Comforts. Its full of christmassy inspiration and lots of interesting interviews that I haven't had chance to read properly yet.

Some highlights for me are this article about Rifle Paper Co, their christmas stuff looks lovely.

And a feature about gift wrapping which lead me to discover this fantastic blog about packaging. I want to start wrapping christmas presents now! Do you think there is a gap in the market for a professional present wrapper? Thats a job I'd like to do!