Great Stuff!

The June Craftaganza introduced me to the work of two great companies/makers, The Big Forest and Retro Pigeon.  I really love their colourful animals.

Fantastic keyrings by The Big Forest.  I must confess I had to purchase the fox and the raccoon.

Vintage fabrics reworked into gorgeous cushions and toys by Retro Pigeon.

 

Jubilee Craftaganza

Come and check out over 30 stalls of wonderful designers plus food and workshops on Monday 4th & Tuesday 5th June 10.30am - 5pm.

Entrance is FREE.

Check poster below for details.

Rain Stops Pay

PHEW!  Just back from a charity craft fair which I thought would yield fabulous sales but was totally ruined by this rubbish weather - ie. very poor turn out.

But on the plus side, it was a lovely event held over two days in a HUUUUUGE and gorgeous house in Walton-On-Thames, Surrey, near where I grew up, and just up the road from where my Dad used to work!

It's totally Palladian, dude

Our table fee and 10% of takings went to Peterson's Fund For Children - a charity set up by the owners of said house.  Charlene Peterson, who organised the event, is a very lovely and glamorous American lady who worked really hard to make the experience a good one for everyone, but sadly the weather was a big deterrant and the footfall did not equal the 1000-odd who apparently attended the same event last year.

I snapped a lot of photos of this extraordinary venue, so feast your mince pies on this little lot . . .

Marquee in the garden - setting up.
Note chandeliers.

It's a souk! 

LOVE this room

For the record I don't usually photograph toilets, but this is officially the poshest craft market toilet EVER and I like it

Exotically scented too!
 

And I will drink every single one

The fabulous Lisa Ham and her reversible belts (was it wrong to have pumped her for her stories about working for US Vogue with Anna Wintour?).  I have purchased one for my BF to give me for a birthday present (7th July if you were wondering) though I'm really not sure I can wait that long for it.

Mixed Media & Recycled section

Resin section

Hand Stitched section

The Full Monty

Shopping in full swing.  Ish.

Oooh - just found one of my hare brooches has appeared on the Interflora blog as one of a top ten Paper Wedding Anniversary gifts inspired by William & Kate's first wedding anniversary.

Urgh! It's been so embarrassingly long since I've posted that Blogger have changed their format, which in the manner of changes have made things a whole lot more confusing to my simple artist brain.

Suffice to say, I've been a tiny bit busy of late but thought I'd squeeze in a quick post in case you thought I'd died or something.

So what's been happening?  Well, I've finished the initial resin jewellery ideas and all the necklaces have been put together with sterling silver (a foolish idea, as silver is SO EXPENSIVE at the moment) and I have already sold two of the heart ones, which is most encouraging.

The website has been fully updated with lots of luvverly new products and has a whole new page devoted to the resin.  Unfortunately I can't think of a more glamorous title for it, so 'resin' it must remain, unless anyone has any suggestions?!

Right now I'm preparing like mad for a charity craft fair held over two days in Walton-On-Thames next week, then as soon as I set my delicate foot back into Brighton on Thursday afternoon, it's straight up to 60, Florence Road to display whatever's left for the Brighton Festival Open Houses.  The house is open for four weekends commencing 5th-6th May from 11am to 5pm and is LOVELY (and has cake) so do pop by if you're in the area.

Another bit of news is that after contacting the IOSF to check that they were OK about me using their name and info in conjunction with my intention to donate to their Furget-Me-Not project, they were so impressed with my otters they asked if I would be interested in selling them through their online shop.  The arrangements are still ongoing, but hopefully they will appear there soon.  It's lovely to know that the commission they take will go directly to helping them in their work in caring for orphaned and needy otters.

Oh, and en route to a friend's wedding last weekend we dropped into the Cotswold Wildlife Park for a visit.  Sadly the weather was pretty grim and they only had four otters (who were actually awake and out, which was lucky) but we got to see a tiny fluffy baby meerkat and a baby ring-tailed lemur too.  Very cute.  No plans to immortalise them in felt yet, though!

It was so cold all the lemurs were huddled together

Donation, Donation, Donation

As of May 2011, 10% of sales from all Shark Alley otters are donated to an otter charity or sanctuary.  Last year, this was the wonderful Otters & Butterflies centre in Devon.

In 2012, it will be the Furget-Me-Not campaign run by the IOSF, which educates and encourages would-be otter hunters in Asia to help research and conserve otters instead of hunting them illegally for their skins.

The IOSF informed me today that their Furget-Me-Not website is currently being rebuilt, but you can click here for a bit more info if you like.

So, if you want to help out a little Asian Short-Clawed cutie like Nutmeg here, why not go and treat yourself (or a loved-one) to a gorgeous hand-made otter from either the Shark Alley hand-stitched page or Shark Alley's shop on the fab retail website Giftwrapped and Gorgeous.

Resin Things. 'Resings'

I'm slowly getting to grips with the potential of resin.

S l o o o o w l y.

This initial part of the process is exciting and frustrating in equal measures, as everything seems to take forever as I bumble around trying to work out what to do and how to do it.

I'm also not enjoying the finishing process of filing and endless rounds of wet-sanding for the cast pieces, but the finished results do look lovely and shiny. 

Fimo shapes used as the basis for a silicone mould

I'm experimenting with inserting vintage diamante and lace into the hearts, mixing transparent and pearlescent resins together, half mixing colour into clear resin and trying to create amber effects.  The idea of making hearts was inspired by a necklace I made from papier mâché, which didn't work as well as I wanted.

Super-pretty shells using transparent and pearlescent resins with inset resin 'blobs'

Free-form 'Zebra' bangle from a cast of a very thin bone bangle.
I can't see what I'm doing until it's finished and turned out of the mould, so every one is different

No chance of making it as a hand model

I'm also experimenting with embedding things in different layers of resin to make pictures, which I'm loving as I'm a massive fan of collage.  The animal ones below feature foil sweet wrappers, handmade papers, beads, sequins and, bizarrely, Barry M glitter dust. I've also tried 'painting' with the resin to make the fronds of weed, the patterns on the moon and the fox's chest fur.

British Wildlife pendants - otter with fish, hare and fox

The rather rubbish resin pendant from the course transformed into a fab foxy one

MEANWHILE I'm still beavering away and with the arrival of my exciting Dremel power tool, I hope to be able to actually make some of these things into finished pieces of jewellery.

Oh well, back to the sanding . . .

Come on, you know there had to be one.
But hang on . . . .

. . .  spot the difference