2023 Wall Calendar and Gift Ideas

My 2023 Wall Calendar is available here.

It features a different image for each month with a whole calendar page to write on.

 

Calendar £12.95

Some other new makes include these blue felt Keepsake Boxes.

Blue Felt and Velvet Keepsake Box £59.95.

The lids for these boxes are made with a variety of wool and silk fibres, wet felted to create lots of lovely rich colour and texture. 

Keepsake Box £39.955

Other Keepsake Boxes featuring my Cottage and Sheep designs are also available. See the Keepsake Boxes section of my Etsy shop here 

Keepsake Boxes £59.95

Small Keepsake Box £36.95

I have also been busy making these Harris Tweed Notebooks and Passport Covers. 

The A5 size Notebook Covers are £36.95 and the A6 Passport Covers are £22.95. Both come with a plain paper page notebook included.

New Brooches include these cute little Tartan Thistle Birds and this luscious Felt Ivy Leaf. Both £16

See all Brooches here .

And as always, I have a variety of needle felted Sheep Brooches and Earrings available.

Sheep Brooches £24.95

See my Etsy shop also for other gift ideas including tins, lens cloths, mouse mats, bookmarks, cushions and prints. If there's anything you would like but don't see in stock, feel free to email me and ask about it.

aileenclarkecrafts@yahoo.com

A Hint of Autumn in the Air

Living in rural north Fife, surrounded by barley, wheat and oat fields, it is impossible not to notice the transition from summer to autumn as the fields turn gold, the harvest is cut and bales start to dot the landscape.

Our roadsides and hedgerows are abundant with rosebay willow herb and every year the contrast of cerise pink against the colour of the ripened crops captures my imagination. 

This year I just had to have a go at including some hay bales in one of my needle felted pictures.

This is loosely based on a scene I see every day on my walk around our area. There is a riot of willowheb and grasses growing up around a dry stone wall with a wee cottage away in the distance. 

After needle felting the hay bales, I built up the flowers and grasses using machine stitch and embroidery.

The finished piece. 

Barley Field Cottage 22 x 22 cm in a 39 x 39 cm frame 

£155

Some autumnal colours made their way into some of my felt sheep jewellery this month as well. 

Sheep Pendants £24

Brooches £18

New to the Aileen Clarke Crafts range of gift items are these high gloss, super cute Fridge Magnets. 

They measure 5 x 5 cm and make a great little gift or treat for yourself.

I also had these Lens/Screen Cloths produced using my designs and they are just the best thing for cleaning your phone or tablet screen as well as making your glasses sparkle!

Lens / Screen Cloths £2.95

They come packaged on card in cellophane making them a perfect little present and light weight to post.

Also new this month are these fabulous bags! They measure 40 x 50 cm and fold away easily into a hand bag. They are really strong and washable. These are not in my Etsy shop yet but will be coming with me to Perth Festival of Yarn on Sunday 10th September.

It is advisable to buy tickets online for the festival as only a limited number will be available at the door and it's first come, first served. 

https://perthfestivalofyarn.uk/

I'm really looking forward to the day, not only selling my wares but meeting up with friends only and new and seeing what all the other vendors have to offer.

I have been playing around with a bit of crochet over the summer. I'm just making it up as I go along and it's just for fun, not for selling.

Not sure if this idea is really working or not. I taught myself how to make the crochet flowers and thought I'd add them as a row onto this shawl. They are only tied on at the moment but I'd like to figure out how to make them more secure and carry on crocheting, making them a part of the shawl or maybe I should leave them as a trim. Or maybe I should have made them less three dimensional. 

It's fun to experiment and learn as I go.

♥

Dates for your Diary 2017

2017 is shaping up to be another busy year kicking off with Edinburgh Yarn Festival on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th March. 

The festival is held at Edinburgh Corn Exchange and I will have a stand in the main exhibition hall this year which is very exciting. I have started making stock already!

Lots of Sheepy Shawl Pins, Brooches, Pendants and Earrings will be coming with me as well as new mugs, coasters, cushions, notebooks, bags, pouches and more!

Tickets go on sale soon. For more info see the EYF Website here 

New Harris Tweed and Felt Trinket Boxes are on the work table as well. 

This size measures 7 x 7 x 7 cm at £35

Other sizes include 10 x 10 x 6 cm at £40 and 12 x 12 x 7 cm at £45

I'm concentrating on my big events this Spring rather than trying to do lots of little shows in between so my next event after EYF will be Open Studios North Fife at the end of April. It's a week early this year so that it falls on the May bank holiday weekend. Brochures will be available mid to late March.

I will be at my usual venue in Ladybank and hope to have lots of new framed pieces made as well as my usual selection of jewellery and gits.

For daily updates you can find me on Facebook and Instagram

❤

Upcoming Falkland Craft Market Saturday 11th July

The next Falkland Craft Market is on Saturday 11th July 2015.

The market is held in the Community Hall off Back Wynd, KY15 7BX and is always packed with great stalls featuring lots of local makers and their wonderful wares.

I've been working hard to build up a good choice of items across my range including these Harris Tweed and Textile Trinket Boxes in all four sizes.

Prices range from £28 to £45

Some are available online here

I'm hoping to have a few more pictures ready as well.

This one is new.

'Meall Fraoch' meaning Rounded Heather Hills measures 15 x 15 cm in a 30 x 30 cm frame.

'Meall Fraoch' £95

I will have lots of textile jewellery with me including this new shape of pendant.

The square earrings go nicely with these pendants.

My 2016 Calendar will also be available.

Here is how one of the images from the calendar looks framed.

With 12 images in the calendar to choose from and the calendar only £10 that works out at less than £1 a print!

Falkland is such a charming village to visit for a day out. 

Lots of little cottages line the streets with a few of them turned into beautiful shops and cafe's.

There is the palace and gardens as well and lots of lovely walks out on the palace estate.

Sharps Close above.

The Rowan Tree Gift Shop below.

So that's where you will find me on Saturday 11th July. My online shop will be closed for a couple of weeks afterwards. Feel free to contact me though as I will still be answering emails.

aileenclarkecrafts@yahoo.com

Edinburgh Yarn Festival 14th and 15th March 2015

You can find me at Edinburgh Yarn Festival on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th March

Edinburgh Corn Exchange

10 Newmarket Road

Edinburgh

EH14 1RJ

10 - 5.30 pm Saturday

10 - 5 pm Sunday

I will have my full range of felt goodies with me including some new Trinket Boxes and Landscapes.

Maybe see you there!

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. 

❤