Applique Cat Bags - inspired by Chewy!

When I pulled out my friend Ellie's name in the Secret Santa at work, I knew I wanted to get her something special... so I decided to make her a little useful bag that immortalised her cat Chewy, who arrived in her family's life this year. Chewy is a black cat with striking orange eyes. A few months ago, I had one of my good luck black cat cards on my desk, pinned up for a daily dose of good vibes and she had commented that it looked like Chewy. So I decided to make one a bit more Chewy-like - with the orange eyes and whip it up into a make-up/storage bag. The black cat has been applique on to the bright green cotton and the features have been hand embroidered. The bag is lined with padding and a dotty black fabric. I made one for myself too, as a practice (and a new make-up bag for me too!) I love how they have turned out! I posted them on twitter on the @handmadehour hashtag and I got an amazing response! I think I might make a short run this week and I'll pop them into my shop by Tuesday (maybe? hopefully?) so they will make the last Christmas post deadline in case anyone is interested in a last minute gift! 

Monkeys at Modern Painters, New Decorators.

Remember my Lion Tamarin monkey plushes/pillows/toys/objects? Well, I recently shipped off some to Modern Painters, New Decorators a fab shop in Loughborough. They are currently running a Winter Shop Pop-up with lots of amazing handmade items from local makers. It is open until the 23rd Dec and all the information is on the facebook page, where you can browse their stock! I can't wait to visit (watch out purse!) and I'll share photos once I do. 

I have also found out that these lovely lion-looking monkeys are endangered, so for every sale I will be sending 10% of the sale to the WWF to help all endangered animals like these guys.

Each monkey is made by hand and individual. There are some available in my etsy.

CAT BALL

It's OCTOBER! My favourite month. I love it and every year I know I bang on about the leaves, the big scarfs, the dark nights, that it's acceptable to mull all drinks, hot chocolate evrrrryday, baking, knitting, crisp air and of course, HALLOWEEN. I get more excited about Halloween than Christmas. I just love the visuals. This year, Cat Ball's are back and in my shop right now! 

There's a big one and a small one. My real cat uses a small one as a toy and the big ones a decoration for Halloween/all year, a toy, a pillow... whatever. They are all unique, no two are exactly the same. Go and trick or treat yo' self! Or if you fancy getting crafty, last year I made a downloadable pattern so you can make your own! You can find that here!

Happy Halloween: Make your own pumpkin or cat! FREE TEMPLATE!

 

It's Halloween weekend - if you fancy getting crafty and making one of the pumpkin or cat cushions which I've recently been making (see this post here) I've made a printable PDF with template for you!   You can download the pattern and template here. You can reduce or enlarge the size of the template to make any size cushion you'd like! The size of this template will make a cushion about 25 cm high and 60 cm circumference. If you do make one I'd love to see! Please show me. Tag me on instagram or twitter!

Re-opened shop.

yay! I've re-opened my etsy shop after a big break over the summer. Yesterday I spent the day photographing all my new and old makes and editing them to go into my shop! I wanted to announce it over here too and I hope you go and take a little look! 

Here are some of the photographs of the makes:

Staffordshire Pottery Plushes / Pillows

I'm still in love with Staffordshire Pottery thanks to the MATS course that I'm currently taking! I have submitted my outcome to that part of the course already, which you can read about here. In my spare time, I have been developing and drawing and making new creations based on the doodles and sketches I had in my sketchbook. Above, I made some pillows, or plushes ! I thought I'd share a few today, and the process behind printing them. 

 The first thing I did was enlarge some of my favorite characters from my sketchbook. I painted them on to tracing paper with drawing ink because I wanted them to have a painterly feel to them.

Then I exposed these on to a silk screen. 

I mixed a bright blue ink with binder ff so that I could cure it on to the fabric, and screenprinted them on to durable cotton. Here they are freshly printed on the printing bed and on the drying rack: 

Next, I decided to make a few plushes (they are sitting proudly in my sitting room and I can't bear to part with them!) I cut around the characters, backed it with a soft material on the back, like baby cord or a fleecy material so that they are soft to hold and cuddle. 

 I'd love to know what you think!

Fishes!

I've recently screen-printed a batch of these fishy/whaley guys and made them into long pillows. They are in my etsy shop right now! 

Fabric Printing/New Creations

I have been playing with a new toy recently - a heat transfer press, which allows me to transfer marks, shapes and illustrations on to different fabrics with immediate results. Carrying on with the cacti theme of late (I am working on other things too!) I have been experimenting with layers, building up subtle textures. I think it's a really interesting tool that can be used alongside more blocky screen-prints. It's super fun to just play and build up marks without having a long prep process that screen-printing can have. When I screen-print, I want every print to be perfect because of the time invested in making the artwork, prepping the screen and work-space. I know that imperfections and 'mistakes' take you on an unpredictable creative journey where magic happens, but I still get a bit uptight when screen-printing. I want every piece of fabric to be utilised, and the print to come out as it in my head. With heat transfer, you can simply play and not be so precious. Well, that's how I feel!

 

I think that heat presses are a great investment anyway if you are planning on printing fabric, because you can do away with spending hours and hours ironing your freshly printed fabric to make sure that the print is cured. You can pop them under the heat press and your brand new pattern is fixed in one min or less! Which, brings me on to me latest creations, which should end my cacti creations (for now!) Using binder ff and disperse dye, I recently printed lots of meters of fabric using the separates of the mono-prints which I printed a couple of weeks' ago.

I was really happy with how they came out. I photocopied the coloured monoprints so that they were black and white and I could expose them onto the screen but still keep some of that delicious texture which I really liked from the originals. The final print was slightly textured which I think looks good, I just hope that people don't misinterpret it as a miss-print ! I'm a sucker for texture in printing techniques, and I like playing with exposing my screens to create textures. 

With the fabric, I decided to make a few different shaped cushions to go into my etsy shop.  I made long, rectangle, square and triangle cushions:

I also printed some fabric with a smaller print on, which I have made into detachable, reversible collars, available here. They have beaded embellishments on the tips:

 My etsy shop is filling out quite nicely now. I will stop banging on about life post-pgdipe, but it is good to go a making bender! I return to my lecturing job in one months' time so I have a glorious month now to build up my portfolio again. I'm currently working on a few illustration jobs right now, so will blog about these as soon as I can ! 

Prickly Pals

Oooh it's been a while since I've posted but I've been busy delivering workshops to the Leeds Young Creatives at the Leeds College of Art Summer Art School. It ends next week so I will blog about inspirations I've taken from it when the inks all put away! In the meantime, I have been working on my cacti and succulent collection - and I don't mean my real life ones but my crafty ones. A year ago, I collaborated with my Nana, Syliva, who is an incredibly talented maker - her expertise lie with knitting. Even in her 70's she is approached by companies to make creations for their brands and even adverts! It's amazing - she doesn't have a computer or promotes herself, she just makes great things and word gets around. Anyway, she invented a knitted cactus pattern and whipped up these fellows for my birthday last year: 

Since then I have been making lots of different types! They are so fun to make because you can play around with each cacti meaning that each cactus creation is completely unique. Some have hats, some have un-spikey (thread) spikes, some are tall, round, fat, thin, weird... like normal cacti are! 
 

Here are a few of the different types I've made recently:

 

If you like you can follow my Pintrest board, 'Knit n Stitch' where you can keep up-to-date with the other knitting and stitching creations, pretty sure they will be revolving around cacti for a little while longer.

 I only ever make the one cactus once, so everyone whose purchased one so far will have a one-off. 

I am going to write up a downloadable PDF with the pattern on soon, so you can have a go at making your own creations from my Nana's pattern - I just need to research the VAT/Tax changes which happened this year in the UK for makers to sell digital PDFs to make sure that when I upload it it's all above board. 

Over the last few weeks I have been transforming these designs into 2D! I went on an inspirational trip (and expensive as I had to buy LOADS of plants) to Cactus Land in Lincolnshire. Not too far from where I grew up, actually, even though I was unaware of it at that time. If you like cacti and succulents: GO! It's amazing. I spent some time photographing all the beauties and then drew them ready to be mono-printed. I originally did it to use as examples to show students during the Summer School at Leeds College of Art to mono-print using cut-out shapes. I've always been a sucker for delicious texture and mono-printing allows gorgeous textures to come through - which, of course being mono-prints are one-offs too. Here are some process pictures:

Here are some photographs of the final print! It's printed on 250 gsm heavyweight un-coated white paper so that the textures of the mono-prints really pop out! You can see it listed in my etsy and folksy shop alongside the remaining knitted cacti I have available:

I'm sure you've noticed the cacti printed pattern cloth to the left of the print - more on that coming soon!