Handmade Monday 55

Another productive week has come and gone and what a lovely sunny week it has been.

I'm trying to be a bit more organised this year!!!! so I've been busy adding items to my 'available stock' ready for the Craft Fairs that I am due to take part in. No more last minute scramble to stock my table????

Sock Monkeys are often a favourite and I like to have a few available.

o O 0 ˚ * • .. o O º '* º o . o O 0 ˚ * • .. o O º

These cheeky chappies are made lovely soft fluffy socks and are sure to be popular.

The colours are brilliant too.

 o O 0 ˚ * • .. o O º '* º o . o O 0 ˚ * • .. o O º

Ideas for new items are always buzzing around in my tiny little brain cell, the last couple of weeks I have been busy sketching, painting, cutting and sewing, pulling stitches out, starting again, re-cutting, re-stitching and starting again. I doff my hat to all you pattern makers out there, it's not easy, especially as I don't know what I'm doing!  I've managed to make a couple of prototypes and I am still tweaking with the patterns but I am excited about these new items and I know it will be worth it in the end, here is a sneak preview of a few of my initial sketches. More about these in a future post.

Meanwhile, over the next couple of days I have a few Name Plaques to personalise and some Art Hangers to finish off and of course some Mothers day plaques and hearts that I will be adding to my Folksy Shop and my Facebook Albums

A commissioned Heart

I've also been asked to paint a heart so it looks like fabric patchwork, another thing to peg onto My to do List. I love my work.

o O 0 ˚ * • .. o O º '* º o . o O 0 ˚ * • .. o O º

I'm linking this post to  Handmade Monday which is proving to being more and more popular, I didn't manage to get around to making comments on everyone's post last week but I did visit you all. Hopefully I'll get lots more done this week.

Wishing you all a good week

Jan x

Handmade Monday Link Up

Firstly I'd like to say hello to my new followers and say a big thank you to all who left comments on my previous post.

This week is Handmade Monday 51, Wendy's Linky Party has been very successful and I would like to say another BIG thank you to our weekly host Wendy, you will find the link to her blog at the bottom of this post.

Not much new to show you this week, I've been busy doing more Fairy Doors  and Personalised Hearts  for the run up to Valentines Day. But I did get a nice surprise in the post this week.........

A picture of Nanny and Grandad 

This is from our grandson, ok I know I'm biased but isn't it lovely? My daughter drew the outline ready to be coloured in.

He is 21/2 years old and chose the colours himself.

Grandad is wearing a hat and I am wearing a jumper and jeans and he said I am wearing a belt. I love the imagination of children.




I've also been busy doing sketches this week, not for anything in particular but more of an enjoyable exercise. I love doing quick sketches of anything that takes my fancy, I usually limit myself to an hour or less on each sketch, sometimes the limit is as low as 5 or 10 minutes. For the last few months the only sketches I've done are for my Plaques and although I enjoy doing these sketches they don't really stretch me. I believe that a good sketching technique is a good way of getting quick and varied ideas stored away for future use and something you can build on. I also believe that to get a good sketching technique, like any thing else, takes practice. Sometimes when doing a 'quick' sketch it is hard to know when to stop, hence the time restrictions. So over the next few weeks I am going to hone my sketching abilities, scan some of the results and hopefully show you some of my efforts in a future post.

I have linked this post to...

1St Unique Gifts

I hope you can pop over and have a nosey.

Jan xx