Lots of new stuff for Autumn...

Good morning world! I've been busy with lots of new stuff, so this is sort of a catch-up photo post :)

Curious Bear in progress  - I'm thinking he will have a wool plaid scarf and come with a little felted pumpkin like the ones in the next photo. He will be part of my Ebay endeavors :)

These felted pumpkins are new in the shop:

This slightly spooky wool pumpkin pincushion  and the sculpted black mushroom pins are also new--

I'm definitely enjoying gearing up for Autumn, and I'm SO ready for sweaters and boots :)

Wishing everyone a great weekend!!

♥

Pines on the River - A New Design

Morning all!
I finished a new miniature nature design yesterday; the idea has been tossed around in my head for quite a while now so I figured it was time to just DO it. This is all needle felted wool except for the pine tree trunks which are made of florist wire. The whole thing is 3 inches wide and about 3 inches tall:

Back to CreativeLand for me...have a great day!
♥

Shop Update Photo Dump :)

I've been busy creating new items for the shop, including a new design with bird's nests on linen with moss and fabric-wrapped branches. THOSE are fun to make! Sweet and tiny in 3-inch painted wooden hoops.

I also made another tree stump that's a bit smaller than usual, with sculpted mushrooms instead of wool. When I was done with the new tree, it kinda reminded me of the movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind...when Richard Dreyfuss is sculpting that shape out of mashed potatoes.. :)

So I'm doing a photo dump here and then I have to get back to making more stuff to prepare for cold-calling on local gift and art shops. Hope you're having a wonderful week.

Mother's Day Shrooms

So the clay goodies I hinted at in my last post aren't ready yet (waiting for more supplies and then a photo shoot, can't wait!) but I did get some more mushroomy things made! :) I love having the opportunity to give my felted mushrooms little personalities, and these 'new mom' scenes were just the ticket.
So far I have a a boy and a girl, and I'm working on some twin scenes right now. It's amazing how just a little bend of the stems can evoke some kind of protective feeling.

 

Hello Out There! =)

It's the end of January already...looks like my resolution of blogging more frequently has already hit the skids! Where does the time go? Well for me, part of the time since my last post was spent discovering Pinterest. It was a little confusing at first but then it quickly became a glorious time-suck =) I'm over there as janine200 and while I don't have a whole lot of things 'pinned' yet, I have really enjoyed looking at all the goodies that other people pin to their boards.

I've also been working on some new designs for the shop, there are so many ideas in my head and not enough time to finish (or even start) them all! I did make a new bird's nest ornament, and I got a little creative with the photography--I used natural twigs and pods I found on the ground outside of my dayjob as little props, and then I brought the pic into Photoshop where I played around with lighting and curves to give it a bit of a washed-out look. To me, it looks more like an art print than a product shot and I love how it turned out! Happiness!

 Other things I've spent time on lately: I needle-felted some new mushrooms for pincushions, and spent some time dyeing ostrich feathers. I love the look on people faces at the office where I work when they ask, "What did you do this weekend?" and, grinning like an idiot, I answer, "I dyed ostrich feathers!" =) More on that to come in another post, I'll take some photos next time I dye a batch and show how (and why) I like to color my own.

That's it for now, it's time for me to head to bed (I've got Stephen King's book Bag of Bones on my nightstand calling my name). I hope you all have a wonderful, happy week! ♥

What I made this week

After what seemed like months of running into a brick wall with every crafty idea that I had, this week finally felt like I was doing something right! Everything I did just seemed to fall into place and look the way I imagined it. From the mixing of wool colors and getting the layering right, to actually having the perfect color ribbon on hand, I am one happy girl. I wish I could bottle that up, whatever it is!! Here's what I finished this week:

Birds Nest Dimensional Mini Wall Art - 3 inch hoop 

Tree Stump Mushrooms Wool Scene   

Faux Terrarium

Do you ever have those times when nothing goes right, and then suddenly, BAM it works?

♥

Re-opening my Etsy shop

Today I re-opened my Etsy shop after a year-long hiatus. I figured it's time to expand my little presence on the web and thought I would give it another shot there. I only have a few items up right now, it's taking me a little time to get used to the changes that have been made in the last year...but all in all, the listing process itself is easier than I remembered it. Boy was I surprised to have one of my items put in a treasury within an hour after the shop's re-opening! What a great welcome back! Here are a couple items that I hope do well...

Needle felted and embroidered bird's nest wall decor:

Needle felted mushrooms pin cushion/miniature scene:

Wish me luck! :)

♥

Needle Felting & Mushroom explosion :)

There are so many different ways to create things, and so many themes...and I seem to go in spurts for a couple months at a time, switching back & forth between all the things I love to do. I've been mostly focused on needle felting and embroidery for the past few months, while crocheting has taken a back seat somewhat! Mushrooms have been a favorite theme of mine lately; here's some of what I've been up to:

 Pincushion in a 3.5 inch terra cotta base, about 5 inches tall

 Close-up

Another in soft pastels with linen thread details (grass sprouts and pale yellow roses), about 3 inches tall

 

 Close-up

And a miniature version in a 2-inch pot with tiny embroidered cap spots & flowers

I'm looking forward to starting some Valentine's Day themes!

♥

Happy Saturday and New Crafties

Hello friends! It's been a pretty fast and busy summer; it's hard to believe that it's time to start thinking about autumn already! How come the older you get, the faster time flies past? There must be a scientific explanation.

I've been having fun challenging myself to new crafty things...I'm still practicing embroidery and I thought I'd try an animal. Of course I chose to try a fawn because, well, fawns just rock my cute-o-meter! The back of the piece is a bit of a mess, but it's only going on my own wall anyways, so it doesn't matter.:) This is a 4-inch hoop, and I topped it with a bow of vintage seam binding.

I also tried my hand at some really tiny-scale needle felting. I'm still obsessed with bird's nests for some reason, I seem to try to incorporate them into everything and it just never gets old to me :) This one measures just under 1 cm. The glass bottles have been in my stash for so long, and I just ran across them recently. Don't you love when you find stuff in your supply stash that you had forgotten about, and it gives you a ton of new ideas? THAT'S why we hate to throw things away, see?

I'm off to do some house-cleaning, then it's back to the crafty stuff. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

♥

Thrifty Find and New Hydrangea Bobbies!

Last weekend I went into an antique store for the first time. I had always thought of antique stores as places that had really expensive antique furniture and collector's pieces, etc., so I was never too interested in going into one.

Well last weekend a friend and I went into one...and I cannot believe that I've missed out all these years! It was like a well-organized garage sale, the kind of place where you want to see *everything* because if you don't, you'll always wonder if you missed something that you would have fallen in love with. Ya know those kind of places?

I left with this awesome, totally 70's style sugar and creamer set.

Here's the front:

and the back:

and the bottom:

They're about 4 inches high and I LOVE them.

I also got some more bobby pins made over the weekend...I recently discovered hydrangeas and they are such pretty flowers! I layered the fabric flowers the way I wanted them, sewed a faux pearl to each center, and attached them to the silver plated hair pins. I'm really happy with the way they came out.

Light Autumn Hydrangea Bobbies

That's it for now, hope you have a great day!

♥

Learning new crafties=stagnant blog :/

It seems I have neglected my blog once again. Aaannnd here comes the excuse, er, I mean reason---

I have been occupied with learning something new... hand embroidery. Not embroidering hands, but embroidering BY hand ;)  Sewing machines and I do not get along so I do everything thread-related, umm, on my own (I really didn't want to say "hand" again. And yet there it is).
A friend of mine picked up a little organizer box full of cotton floss for me at a yard sale for 50 cents (!), it was arranged all pretty by color, and it went to my head...I HAD to learn how to use this beautiful stuff! I had done some embroidery in the past, if you could call it that. I never knew any proper stitches, and it never looked quite right to me. Enter Youtube :) Along with a DVD I picked up for $11 that teaches 20+ stitches for silk ribbon embroidery (yep, got into that too).
So, armed with my very newbie skills, I decided to try and mesh some of my older crafty knowledge with the new stuff, and came up with a piece of 3D wall art: the needle felted nest stands out from the base and holds tiny little pearl beads--

I have to say that right now I am addicted to making French knots. Love it!

I have 3 more in various stages of doneness right now, which I'll post when they're finished.

Until then, I will leave you with Leo and his huge blue eyes O_O    Have a great week!

Best Monday Ever & New Felty Stuff

I'm usuallly not a "Happy Monday" type of person, but today is different. It definitely made up for the ridiculous Mr. Bean-type of weekend I had.

I got some new items finished for my shop over the weekend, and when I got to work this morning, I found out that one of those items had made it to Etsy's front page!

Holy cow I had pretty much given up hope on ever doing that. It was picked by Admin (wow) and this little needle felted nest pin was up there at 6 a.m. this morning....right about the time I was hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock :)

Here's a photo of some other items I finished this weekend for the shop...hand-painted mini terra cotta pots with needle felted pincushions and steel pearlized pins that I had fun dressing up with glass flowers. These are really fun to make, they combine lots of crafty things that I enjoy (painting, needle felting, beading) all in a little 2-inch tall project.

If you'd like to see the whole Front Page treasury mentioned above, you can click here to see it on Craftcult.

Yep, this is the best Monday I've had in a while :o)

October Handmade Challenge - Birds

If you haven't heard of the Handmade Challenge, you should check it out! It's so neat to know that people from all parts of the world are creating something with the same theme in mind, since it is required to make something new just for the month's challenge (submitting something you've previously made kinda takes away from the whole idea). This month's challenge theme was birds, and here's my submission...a crocheted, stuffed mini-pillow with a needle felted bird and branch silhouette. The pillow is about 5 inches long and 3 inches high.

Crochet Vines Part 1

So I have a lot of blank white space on my walls since my "ex-roommate" moved out (he had huge flags all over the place, I never was that crazy about that look so I quietly took them down on moving day so he wouldn't forget them).
Now I have the walls all to myself. Huge, white and empty. I've looked around for some framed art, but never really found anything that grabbed my attention unless I wanted to spend LOTS of money, which I don't, because of the aforementioned mover-outer. I'm keeping this place up by myself, I'm much happier, but poor! So thrifty is the way to go.

I love the look of vines, so I thought I'd try crocheting some. That way, I can make them any colors I want, as large as I want.
I was browsing around JoAnn's with a friend of mine the other day and came across some beautiful yarn that would work perfectly for this project. It's a wool-acrylic blend called Traditions by Debbie Mumm, and the color is called Pine Needle. It was $6 a skein, but with my trusty 50% off one item coupon (told ya, thrifty!) it was mine.
The photo represents probably a couple hours of work on and off, and I still have a lot to add. I just started with a long chain; branching off, adding leaves and slip-stitching back down to the original chain whenever the mood struck. I think it's definitely going to end up wild-looking, which I like...I don't think vines should be symmetrical and be perfectly proportioned.
It's really a fun project, no counting or pattern-reading, completely free-form work (which I happen to love). I figure when it's done, I'll put it up on the wall with some double-sided foam mounting squares that I have. I can cut the squares into the tiniest little pieces and tack the vines to the wall, using the foam pieces to guide their "growth". I'll post an update when I have more done.

♥