rosiepink

Finished Picture & Problems Leaving Comments - can you help?

Hello, we'll be offline next week so I thought I'd just post a pic of our latest piece of artwork.  This has gone to Coastal Creatives gallery where it will hopefully find a loving new home.  Very sad to see it go, I really do love this picture - it is so colourful and happy!  Hope you like it too.

Can you help (please)?  We would really love to get more involved in the blogging community and we read with interest many other blogs.  However, we keep having trouble when trying to leave comments on other blogs, especially if the blog is not a Typepad one e.g. Blogger.  We just keep getting redirected to our own account page on Typepad - weird!  This also left us wondering if it is the same for people trying to leave comments for us.  We know lots of people do read our blog, going by the anonymous hit counter thingy at Typepad, (which makes us very happy!) but wonder if comments are difficult to leave here too?  If you have tried to comment, but can't, please please send us an email (rosiepinkATbtinternetDOTcom) to let us know.   That would be very much appreciated. 

Felt and Stitch Artwork

We're very happy today.  Another piece of our felt artwork has found a new home.   Its hard to let some pieces go after spending so many hours creating them, but it is a wonderful feeling to know that somebody loves your artwork enough to buy it and treasure it.

I've been working on another picture over the last couple of days.  Its at the stage of being ready for free machine embroidery.  Its of more flowers by the seaside but until I pick out the flower details in stitch it could almost represent balloons and streamers of a carnival - I love the colours!

This is quite a big piece (the pic is only of a smallish section) so I envisage spending quite a few days at the sewing machine on and off. 

Nothing better though than setting up the sewing machine, grabbing a cuppa, surrounding myself with reels of beautiful threads and listening to something relaxing on the radio while I work.  Bliss!

Wet Felt Making Demo - DAW at Coastal Creatives

I spent a lovely day at Coastal Creatives as part of Dorset Art Weeks last Tuesday.  It was incredibly busy, lots of people came in to the gallery to see & buy our work, and to have a go at making a sample of felt.  If you came in to see me, thank you!  It was wonderful to hear so many positive comments about our work and meet so many lovely people.  Unfortunately mum wasn't there, but her wonderful felt pieces were!

Here is a photo of one of the gallery windows just set up for the day, showing some of our works for sale and some sample pieces.  The lampshade is a recent addition to our work and took nearly 40 hours to complete.  I absolutely love it and will definitely be experimenting further with different types of lighting.  Watch this space!

Dyed Scrim - what beautiful colours!

Where are the weeks going?  Time certainly is flying by!

Recently, having run out of dyed scrim again, (for use in our feltmaking), we decided to dye some in bulk this time to make the supplies last longer!  Here are some pretty pics for you to enjoy of the result of our day spent as wild washer women!

   

By the end of the day we had dyed so much (about 60 metres - its very addictive!) and enjoyed it so much that we decided we would like to try and make this part of our small business venture and make up bundles of colours to sell to other crafty bods who want to use scrim in their textile arts but either can't or don't want to dye their own (we are lucky that I have an old, old kitchen and the odd splash of turquoise or droplets of purple really don't matter too much!  Now I just hope that hubby doesn't read this and start to look too closely at the evidence!).

If you would like to try our dyed scrim it is now available in our eBay shop. The bundles are made up of a range of 20 colours so plenty to experiment with - some shades are very pale and others are vibrant to give a good mix.  As always, we appreciate any feedback you might like to give - its always lovely to hear from people to share adventures and tips!  Hope you enjoy the pictures (we think the first pic makes the pile look like it is on a cake stand - quite apt considering it looks good enough to eat!).  The second pic is of the finished product - our scrim "butterflies"!

As well as using the scrim in wet felt making projects we have started experiments with wool top and scrim and other yummy things on the embellisher machine.  When we first got the embellisher we were quite disappointed with it and it didn't seem nearly as exciting as the sales blurb had made it.  However, having played a bit more with it, the felt/scrim combo is looking quite exciting as a base for hand and machine embroidery and we can see lots of possibilities forming...

Felty Pebble Pods on Display!

We are proud to bring you these pictures of our felt pods, vessels & vases adorning the window of Coastal Creatives boutique gallery.  If you are in the area (Southbourne, Bournemouth) please do pop into Coastal Creatives where you will find a treasure trove of the most gorgeous handcrafted items from many South Coast based artists & designers, including us!

I (Annie) will also be taking part in Dorset Art Weeks on 27th May at Coastal Creatives where I will have a range of our work on display to admire or purchase!  I will also be demonstrating wet felt making so feel free to pop in to say hello!

More Felt Pods (with a twist!) and another Machine Embroidery Adventure!

Mum decided to make a change and do something different with wet felt pods just recently.  She thought a new shape would be interesting.  The result was this rather quirky set of 3 "chimnea" shaped vessels which we like very much!

We've also been trying to find time to create art for the walls and so last week I indulged in a day of creativity making a felt picture of a beach near Coverack, Cornwall.  We have a camping holiday pretty much every year in Cornwall and love every minute of it.  I always take loads of photos for inspiration as the scenery is beautiful!

Here is a photo of the beach:

and here is my felty, machine embroidered interpretation:

And some detail...

Hope you like it! 

Tea-break at rosiepink HQ!

A well earned break from writing our new website.  The bunnies and giraffes aren't helping very much as they have never written a website before!  The tea and mini-eggs keep us going though.

Inspired by our love of a good cuppa and the revival in popularity of the tea cosy, we made these...

 

Felt is naturally a great insulator so is perfect for tea cosies - and a little bit of whimsy helps too!

Felt and Machine Embroidery

We have been doing more work with machine embroidery on felt recently.  It's such a wonderful process - the stitching on the felt always looks beautiful and gives the felt a new dimension.  It adds texture but it also seems to make thinner and decorative felt more durable for wearable items and felt jewellery.  Here is an example of some flat felt we have been playing with:

                                    

After hours of experimentation (and many prototypes!) we stitched some of our felt into this cuff:

                                    

This is made from the piece of felt shown in this post.  It is lined with silk and finished with a bright pink button.  We plan to make several more of these but the great thing is that each one is 100% unique.  It would be impossible to make two exactly the same due to the nature of the felt making and free machine embroidery.

The felt shown below was one of our favourite pieces but, alas, it was lost to a failed prototype.  Boo hoo!

                                 

We really loved the sparkly copper thread in this piece - it caught the light beautifully. Still, it gives us an excuse make some more! 

Dyeing fabrics for feltmaking

We got messy with some dyes this week.   We hand dyed a batch of open weave fabrics for inclusion in our felt.  When making wet felt items such as felt pods or felt cuffs we love to liberally sprinkle in lots of extra bits to add texture and interest.

Here is the result of several hours of mixing potions in the kitchen!

The trouble is that dyeing is so addictive...we ran out of fabric long before we ran out of ideas for mixing colours.  We used procion dyes to give a nice strong colour but we'd also like to have a go at using some natural dyes.  Apparently you can use onion skins and marigolds and other things from the garden so we'll have to do some research.  Has anyone had a go?

Here is an example of how we use our fabrics when making wet felt.  The effect depends on the fabric you use and how much it distorts in the felt - but that is the joy of it - you never know exactly what you're going to get!

Of course its not just used in wet felting it can be used in hand needle felt too.  It also looks great when used on an embellishing machine as you can get lots of pretty loops poking through the fabric.   So much to play with, so little time!

Coastal Colours - Making Wet Felt Sea Pods and Pebbles

Its been a "pod" week this week!  We've made six new pods to add to our spring range of felty homewares.

Here's a couple of pics:

Sometimes they are pretty just as they are when they dry and other times we like to embellish further with beads and handstitching.  This one has been hand stitched with pretty cross stitches to give a lovely sandy coloured textured look...

   

We think these work well when they look like pebbles too.  A random selection on the window sill or a shelf in the lounge can look lovely and beachified!  (the great thing is that men like these too when they look like stones or pebbles and are created in more masculine colours.  So girls, you can have lovely fluffy felt accessories that the man in the house won't object to!) 

If you like what you see please let us know.  Our pods are currently available from Coastal Creatives boutique gallery, Southbourne, and also via this blog through email - please contact us if you would like to buy one and we'll send you pics and prices of our current stock.

Hope you have enjoyed our pods!