A Day of Rainbows, Some New Makes and New Arrivals.

Saturday was indeed a day of rainbows in more ways than one!

I decided to take a run over to Strathearn Fleece and Fibre near Muthill in Perthshire to stock up on some lovely hand dyed fibre.

Linda rears blue faced Leicester and texel sheep on her farm and the fibre she has available as rovings and as spun yarn is just a treat for any fibre lover.

I got well stocked up with all my favourite colours and can't wait to get started with it this week.

I also popped in to see Tracy at Lagom Felt Studio in Crieff as she has very kindly asked me to be her featured artist later this year.

Tracy offers a wide range of felting fibres and materials as well as some spun yarns, drum carded batts, feting kits and various notions. She also offers tuition. You can check out her website here for more info.

I'm looking forward to exhibiting here late May and throughout June.

Last week I enjoyed working with my stash of hand dyed North Ronaldsay fibres from Orkney. These fibres give a lovely rustic look to landscape pieces and are very enjoyable to work with.

 

Having needle felted my first collie dog back in January, I had another go and set this one to guarding a little flock of sheep on the hill.

'Gaurding the Flock' 

£95

This matching piece I have just called 'Three Sheep' and priced it slightly lower at £75 as there was less work involved.

It has been a busy time preparing for Edinburgh Yarn Festival 2017 which is less than three weeks away on March 10th and 11th.

I have been hoarding my makes and not putting them on Etsy as I am running out of time to make things.

Here are some finished trinket boxes that will be coming with me to the event.

I have also had a delivery of new printed products including mugs, mouse mats, zipped pouches, notebooks and cards. These are all available on Etsy here

Some new Sheep Brooches and Pendants have also made their way onto Etsy. I probably won't be adding any more until mid March.

If you are planning on coming to Edinburgh Yarn Festival, you can see the venue layout here

You can find me on stand J6.

Looking forward to seeing some of you there.

As usual, if you have any enquiries about my work, please feel free to email me aileenclarkecrafts@yahoo.com

❤ 

Autumn Fairs in Fife and Perthshire

I had a brilliant start to my Autumn events season on the first weekend in October. It was lovely to be back in Falkland on the Saturday and Perth Festival of Yarn on the Sunday was a great success! It was heartening to know that many visitors came because they had seen the events advertised online so here is an update about more to come.

I will be at the Pitcairngreen Green Village Hall Annual Fair on Saturday 22nd October, 10 - 3.30pm.

 This is a lovely event with tea, coffee and home baking as well as a good variety of stalls. I have been exhibiting at this fair for over 10 years and it's always nice to go back and see familiar faces.

I've been busy restocking my Etsy shop as well with new makes.

Brooches £12

Next up after Pitcairngreen is Falkland Craft Market again on Saturday 5th November.

I will have my full range of items with me and hopefully some new framed pictures as well.

Sheep Earrings £18

Sheep Brooches £18

Sheep Pendants £24

My 7 x 7 x 7 cm Boxes are very popular so I have been making more of them. Made with my own felt and lovely Harris Tweed, this size is £35.

Later in November on Sunday 20th, I will be at The Handmade Show in Perth Concert Hall.

This year's show is shaping up to be excellent with new makers exhibiting along side some firm favourites.

My new coasters have been a big hit both online and offline. I got little boxes for them making them an ideal gift, especially easy to post!

Coasters £14.95

Later in November I'll be In The Loft at Ardross Farm Shop near Elie on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th 9 - 5 each day. This is a lovely two day event, up above the farm shop and well worth a visit if you are in the East Neuk that weekend.

So it's a busy time keeping up with everything. 

Please feel free to get in touch with any questions you may have about my work or any of the upcoming events.

aileenclarkecrafts@yahoo.com

Needle Felting Birds, Dolphins, Seascapes and Sheep

It has been a reasonably productive first week back in the work space and I have been enjoying playing around with a few new ideas.

In my last post I showed some step by step photos of how it's possible to use Transfer Paints and Pens to put an image onto fabric which can then be needle felted into.

The Transfer Pen is great for this as it leaves a clean black line that can be 'coloured in' with fibres. I used this method to transfer this bird motif onto some handmade felt. I got the motif from a book and enlarged it slightly then worked merino fibres into the design using a single needle felting needle.

It has been difficult to get decent photos this week with the dull winter light but hopefully you can get the idea.

I will probably frame the original piece and have bookmarks made using prints of it.

I used the same technique to make this dolphin.

The background is all dry felted using hand needle felting and the embellisher machine. A little bit of machine stitch adds detail. The dolphin is all needle felted by hand with a bead for his eye.

Dolphin £65

Sold

I love this piece below (am I allowed to say that I love my own work?) Well I do love this piece as it includes all my favourite colours and I really enjoy getting lots of texture into pieces like this using the embellisher machine.

The beauty of the machine is that you are not restricted to using fibres only. I have included all sorts in this piece including an old devore velvet blouse and a cheese cloth shirt. Some vintage lace makes nice frothy waves too. I'm planning a series of pieces in this style including various framed pieces, boxes, prints and cards.

I did have to tear myself away from my 'play time' to restock my Etsy shop with some Sheep Jewellery.

These brooches are now available and I plan to add more earrings and pendants next week as well.

See the Sheep Jewellery Section of my Shop here to see what is available.

Brooches £18

Earrings £18

In other news I bought my first Smart Phone along with a Chip and Pin Card Reader last weekend so that I can take Card Payments at Craft Fairs and Events.

It has been fun getting to grips with a fancy phone (thank goodness for a teenage son!)

I took this photo with it the other morning walking back along our track. I find the interconnectedness of it all via the wifi at home a bit mind blowing. I'm so used to just using my laptop for all my online business and it's interesting to see how my blog, Facebook page and shop look on a phone. It's amazing really how much technology has come on in the past few years and how quickly we have all embraced it and take it for granted already.

I'm still at the stage of enjoying all the wee noises my phone makes when I get notifications from all the apps. I'm sure the novelty of that will wear off quite soon but did you know that the Etsy Apps goes 

Cha-Ching! when someone makes a purchase? How cool is that! It sounds like an old fashioned shop till/cash register. I love that. 

❤

Such a Busy Time!

April has been such a busy month what with the school holidays, craft fairs, Glenfarg Folk Festival and preparations for Open Studios which is in two weeks time!

We had some lovely sunshine during the first week of the holidays and headed over to the East Neuk of Fife for a nice day out and to distribute some Open Studios brochures to caravan sites and other businesses.

This is Ruby Cove, our favourite little beach for a picnic and a bit of beach combing.

Although it was sunny, it was still cold. You can see the snow on the hills to the south across the Forth estuary around Edinburgh.

We had great fun all piled into the camper van. It belongs to my Mum and her husband but we got to stay in it for a couple of nights for Glenfarg Folk Festival. 

I have always had a day dream about having a camper van but I have to say the reality of a family of four staying in a camper van doesn't appeal so much when your 15 year old son is suddenly 

6'1"! Here he is with an amazing piece of drift wood we found on the beach.

I think we'd need a bigger van or a Winnebago to accommodate us all comfortably! 

I do love finding interesting things on the beach to take home. 

When I discovered this lobster creel all tangled up in seaweed, at first I fancied it for the nice wood that was half worn away. But after wrestling it free, I realised it would actually make quite a nice shelf as it was! Here it is hung up in my wee shed with a few beach finds and little Louis Mulcahy pots displayed on it.

My daughter who is nearly 8 now is an avid little artist and I just had to share this picture she drew last week.

She uses one of my Highland Cow notebooks to draw in and took it upon herself to copy the front cover.

Here is the original.

And here is her imitation of it.

How cute is that! I love the fringe.

I have been making like a mad woman but haven't got around to photographing everything yet. I suppose I am hoarding my stock a little bit for Open Studios! I have a lot of wall space  and shelves to fill!

I have made some Sheep Jewellery available in my Etsy shop though.

Rings £18

Pendants £22

Brooches £18

I've had a great response to my new mugs. 

Here is one all wrapped up that I sent directly to the recipient as a gift from her daughter.

I'm enjoying using my own mug here at home. Being porcelain and not stone ware or china, it makes a great cup of tea as well as a good coffee.

You can find my Online Shop here

We are finally seeing some signs of Spring here which is such a relief after all that snow we had up to the beginning of April. 

The daffodils are still not in full bloom but are showing more signs of opening.

I really hope we get a good weekend for Open Studios.

I will be having a preview evening on Friday the 3rd May from 6pm.

Come along for some wine and nibbles and a sneak peek at all my new work.

I'm hoping to have lots of new pictures made and have a couple professionally framed already.

You can see the reflection of the hedge in the glass here but it gives you an idea of how they are looking. I have another couple of smaller pieces going off to Robertson's today.

Here are some snap shots from other artists participating in the 2013 Open Studios event. 

Remember you can download your free brochure and browse all the artists and areas from our website here.

From top left Audrey Reid Jewellery,Chloe Brown Illustrations, Moyra Stewart Ceramics, Helen Glassford Fine Artist, Ann Leitch Collection, Sharon Black Art, Beth Pollard Designs and Glass by Kathryn

 From left to right, top to bottom- Ian Ledward venue 36, Aileen Clarke Crafts Venue 32, Jean Ashcroft venue 31, Dianne King venue 50, Siv MacArthur venue 42, Michael Robson venue 4, Poppy Cyster venue 26, Sarah Honeyman Stained Glass venue 1, Jane Duckfield venue 45, Jan Wightman venue 36,Derek Robertson venue 69, Pvalentega - Graphic Artist venue 16, Morag Muir venue 63, Kate Murray venue 40, John Smith venue 8,Perfectly Formed venue 10, Kirsty Lorenz venue 34, Laura Appere venue 18, Mhairi Lafferty venue 13, George Young venue 53, Marianna Lines venue38, Lindy Knowles venue 20, Lynsey Ewan venue 33, John Bonington venue 24, Lindsay Mathers venue 75

So the next two weeks are going to be pretty mad for me. I have so many things I would still like to make!