Newest Handmade Felt Brooches

I made a bunch of new brooches recently. I spent a whole day cutting out felt last week and boxed them up to bring to the market so I could do some sewing while it was quiet. I used some of the lovely fabric I got in the Limerick Quilt Centre; cutting out heart shapes with my Cuttlebug made it a lot easier.

I really love this cup that I got as a Christmas present from my friend Orla, and I thought it would make a cute prop for the photos.

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Gift Boxes

I bought lots of plain boxes like the one above here with the intention of doing something lovely with them. Paper collage and distressed colours came to mind. I started working on them with no real end goal in sight, I wasn't sure if I was going to sell them, keep them, or sell them with something else inside. I used my Cuttlebug to cut out the heart and circle shapes from lovely paper that I got in Cork Art Supplies. I firstly painted the boxes using a bright and varied palette of red,pink,blue,yellow, and white, painting all the surfaces different colours.

I then matched up the papers to the lids and boxes, gluing and varnishing as I went. I started looking around for nice papers with little interesting details that I could put on the inside, after all everyone loves to see what's inside a box! The next stage involved a leap of faith; distressing my lovely painted boxes with ink, then followed more varnish. It took me a few hours to figure out what was missing, then it occurred to me that some buttons would tie all the colours together and bring back some brightness after the dark inks.Surprise, surprise, that it was buttons came to the rescue!

Then came the really difficult bit, figuring out what to sell them as??? A friend suggested that they could be proposal boxes, something I had never heard of before. Basically it's a posh little box that an engagement ring is put into. Also they could be party or wedding favours, I know I would be thoroughly impressed if I got one of these at an alternative wedding!(I'd do a discount for orders of 10 boxes or more). In the end I had to make a decision about the price, when I looked at how long they had taken to make I decided to charge €10. Which at first seemed expensive for a small box, but it's not feasible to sell them for less considering the effort. I've made the decision not to sell them at the market as I can see people being shocked (and sometimes rude) about the price. I understand that it's a recession but sometimes I feel that all of this talk in the media telling people to challenge prices has less them to being rude. Sometimes I just can't listen to it. So to save my sanity these boxes are on sale exclusively in my etsy shop. I will be also adding oval and square boxes in a little while.

Feeling Irish

I was feeling rather patriotic last night after I went to the polling station to vote so I came home and made this Irish themed treasury. I'm not feeling very optimistic about the outcome, or that their will be any great change in the near future...but I voted anyway. It's feeling all very doom and gloom in Ireland at the moment, I'm surprised a lynch mob hasn't started with all the things that have been happening here.

I've also been meaning to make some specialised items for St.Paddy's day, mostly because Irish sellers get featured so often in treasuries over the next two weeks. But also so I can sell them at the market. After looking for a while on google I could only come up with 4 images for Paddy's Day earrings. I think my favourite is the pint of Guinness, and I will definitely make myself a pair to wear to the pub. Click here to see them in my shop.

I need to come up with some more designs but my brain is making a charming tumbleweed sound instead of coming up with fab ideas...grumble.

Love Day

In this post last week you saw that I bought some lovely large card in town. I've been making them into very large Valentine's Day cards; they are A3 in size. This new project was harder to do than I expected as all my of my card making equipment is designed for a much smaller scale, so all of my stamps and embellishments looked lost on the cards. I also stupidly didn't think about how much paper they would use up!!

To be honest the jury is still out on these, I might just make 1 or 2 more to sell for fun at the stall, but they take such a long time to make I don't think it's really worth my while. ....Now I just have to figure out how to make some supersized envelopes to go with them...groan!

Wooden Heart

I just added my wooden buttons to my supplies shop

Christmas Decorations

Today I've been making more Christmas decorations in the run up to the hopeful Seasonal rush. They are the little hampers that I mentioned in a previous post. But I just realised I actually have some pics I can show you for once. These are Christmas Wedding favours that I made. They are the same as the decorations I'm making except these are all in purple and white, and what I'm working on are red, greem, yellow, and blue etc.

Thanks to the groom Richard for taking these pics.

Heartfelt Favours and Invites

I've had a busy few days. As you can see here I cut out all 400 hearts needed to make the 200 wedding favours. They'll be sewn together, stuffed, with a nice purple ribbon, with a pretty tag and some felt heart embellishments....and voila Christmas decoration wedding favours. There was a whole lot of prep work in them, but I think they'll be worth it. This week I think I'll put a listing for them in my etsy shop and hopefully I'll get some custom orders for them.

With those all sorted I turned my attention back to the invitations, 90 invites, 30 evening invites, 120 rsvp cards, 180 place names...eek!! I'm nearly there I have about 85 invites finished, and I'm waiting on a delivery to finish the rsvp cards, but they are pretty simple. I'll also be listing these in my etsy shop, so I'll post some pics when I have some snazzy pictures of them.

In case you know anyone getting married the price is 450 euro for

100 individual unique handmade cards (with personalised insert)

100 rsvp cards (with personalised insert)

200 place name cards

a map insert designed to suit the esthetic of the cards (if need be)