The Big Tent Festival 2012

The Big Tent Festival 2012

Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd July

Falkland Palace Estate

Falkland

Fife

I will have a stall at The Big Tent Festival this weekend in the Craft Unplugged Tent.

I'll have a wide range of Aileen Clarke Crafts on display including lots of new wrist cuffs, new felt pendants, textile pendants and earrings, brooches and more!

Lots of purple in these photos but I have been working in some other colours as well.

I will also be taking along some felt pictures and wee boxes with sheep as well as my range of printed cards and some new handmade cards made with 100% recycled materials including old plastic carrier bags.

I'm looking forward to meeting up with some old friends as well as meeting a few fellow artists that I have known on line but never met.

The music line up is great and there are so many things to do and learn about. If I wasn't having a stall I would definitely be going on a Wild Food Walk.

Read more about The Big Tent here and if you are going along I'll see you there!

Hope you have a great weekend whatever you are doing.

Some Colour To Brighten Up These Dull Days

It's the height of summer and yet could it be any darker in my kitchen?

It's north facing and doesn't get much sun at the best of times but there are south facing windows on the other side of the room and yet it is still so dark.

Grey skies, continuous rain, cool temperatures, it all adds up to too much time spent indoors so I put up some bunting to cheer us all up.

I have been working on lots of colourful wrist cuffs for my stall at The Big Tent Festival and they are cheering me up enormously.

These are great fun to make. For some I have used denim from old jeans as the base fabric and recycled sari silk ribbon for the coloured strip. The leaf motif is made from my own handmade felt. I have lots of different colour combinations going on so it never gets boring making these. It's also good fun getting all the buttons out and choosing just the right one for each cuff.

 

I fancied a frayed edge on a few of the denim cuffs and found it very satisfying tearing the jeans into strips. Rrrrrrrrip! I hope that doesn't reveal anything peculiar about me through psycho analysis!

Another blog that I enjoy reading is Heather's Woollove- Functional Fiberart blog.

Heather recently attended a felt makers workshop in Portugal which looked absolutely fantastic. You can see lots of photos from her trip on her blog. Not just of the felt projects but of the place, the food and the people she met.

I liked Heather's photo of a bowl of hard boiled eggs garnished with pink geranium flowers and it inspired me to make stuffed eggs for some visitors we had at the weekend.

It's such a simple recipe.

Hard boil some free range eggs and let them cool in cold water.

To get the yolks in the centre of the egg rather than at the side, gently turn the eggs regularly during boiling.

Cut them in half length ways and scoop the yolks into a bowl taking care not to damage the whites.

Mash up the yolks with a little mayonnaise or salad cream, a wee bit of grated cheese, salt, pepper and paprika.

Spoon the mixture back into the egg whites and arrange on a bed of shredded lettuce.

Garnish with parsley, basil, geraniums or whatever you want really.

Nasturtiums would be pretty too.

Excuse my old chipped bowl but it was gift from a friend when we were at college. It came from a shop called Ware On Earth and I love it.

The tutor on Heather's Portugal Workshop was Nicola Brown from Ireland. I have been a fan of Nicola's work since I first 'met' her through Flicker back in 2009. As she was taking part in a Masterclass Workshop here in Scotland last week at Big Cat Textiles in Newburgh, she invited my friend Kirsty and I along to say hello one evening. It's always so nice to meet people you have known through the Internet in person plus we had the added bonus of meeting in such an incredibly inspirational place!

Take a look round Big Cat Textiles here

And visit Nicola's blog here

July Update

I have had to get up at the crack of dawn today in order to update my blog here as time seems to be running away from me these days.

The school holidays have started here in Scotland and it has rained every day so far. Boooooo!

So keeping children entertained while trying to build up stock for my next event is a bit of a juggle.

My next event is The Big Tent Festival in Falkland, Fife.

The emphasis at this festival is on environmental awareness while offering great live music and lots of activities for all ages.

I will have a stall in the Craft Unplugged tent and plan to have the full range of

Aileen Clarke Crafts goodies with me.

First thing to do when making any new stock is to make the felt.

Below is some nuno felt I made a couple of weeks ago and I am just now getting around to making it into wearable items.

Nuno Felt Wrist Cuff

The beauty of these cuffs, like all felt really is that you never get the same effect or colour combination twice.

The texture in this cuff adds a unique feel to it too and I have used a big felt bead instead of a button.

Cuff £12

Also hot off the work table are these new leaf pendants.

I have teamed this one up with a length of hand dyed felt cord which can be tied at the back of the neck as a nice alternative to a chain.



£20

Chains are still available though.

Wrist Cuff to match.

£12

I have lots of new sheep pendants and earrings on the work table just now as well.

Here are some that are finished.

Sheep Pendant

£20

Earrings

£18

I love making these textile pendants as well and have lots on the go just now.

I also make earrings in this style so watch this space or my Etsy shop for them.

£20

Moontide Pendant

£20

Also in stock are these printed cards.

There are lots of designs to choose from all featuring Bothy's and Sheep, Harbour Houses and Boats or a simple Seascape.

Great for all sorts of occasions or just to say Hello and Thinking of You.

Everything you see here is available in my Etsy Shop 

(unless it has already sold by the time you are reading this)

Remember that it is free to join Etsy and you can shop for all sorts of amazing handmade things from all over the world as well as vintage items and crafting supplies.

Last Saturday we took a wee jaunt up to Ceres for the Highland Games.

Watching the Highland dancers really brought back memories for me. I used to go to Highland dancing as a child and got as far as owning a turquoise kilt and velvet waistcoat and won my pre bronze medal for the Highland fling. I didn't stick at it but I do remember learning the sword dance.

Loving the concentration here.

All The Fun of The Fair

Our gazeebo being held down at each corner by Kirtsy and Fynn and along the back by my son at last week's Fair in Falkland.

Rain is the usual enemy of any event held outdoors in this country, especially during the summer months but on Saturday we were battling against the wind!

It was crazy! We had the gazeebo tied to the railings behind us and bricks at each corner but it still blew around and had to be held onto every five minutes.

The fair was still good fun to do though and was quite busy for the most part.

We were pitched right opposite the lovely gift shop Fayre Earth just opposite the fountain in Falkland. Not only does Elizabeth offer a lovely range of Fairtrade Gifts and Homeware, she does a roaring trade in delicious coffee and has pretty benches outside the shop for customers to relax on.

Fayre Earth Gift Shop

As well as having good fun on the day I also met the organisers of The Big Tent Festival and have been invited to have a stall at the festival!

I'll be in the Craft Unplugged tent from 10.30 am - 6pm on July 21st and 22nd 2012.

You can read all about The Big Tent here.

Tickets are still available.

Falkland Street Fair 2012

You can find me and my work at Falkland Festival Street Fair tomorrow,

Saturday 23rd June, 11-3pm.

We had a great time last year and hope to have an even better time this year!

I will be sharing a stand with Kirsty again who will be doing on the spot Soap Rock Workshops.

Some new makes from me include this felt Box and Notebook.

 The felt was a bit of an experiment. I tried Nuno felting onto some polyester chiffon.

I had bought the chiffon for a different project but it turned out to be the wrong kind for what I wanted it for. No matter how much I tried hand felting it, the fibres just didn't want to cling to the chiffon. Turns out it's the wrong kind of chiffon for Nuno felting as well! So I threw the whole thing in the washing machine and this was how it came out. A happy accident indeed : )

In order to retain the lovely double sided nature of the nuno felt

I decided to make a wee box with matching notebook but didn't line either so that the loopy texture of the chiffon side can still be seen. Quite a soft and squishy box but the notebook fits snug inside helping it keep it's shape.

 I will also have a few Sheep In Boxes with me.

 Knitted felted sheep by Lynne Seaton at My Baboo

Along with some new Sheep pendants.



And one or two new felt pictures.



 Lupins by The Stream

£45

Wee Hoose In The Heather

£30

Cosy Cottage Among The Heather

£35

I've also been a bit distracted this week watching these Woodpeckers in the Rown Tree just outside the window.

The baby one wasn't managing to cling to the feeder so the adult male was feeding it on the branch.

The photo is slightly out of focus but it's so hard to get a decent photo of them as they fly away at the slightest movement.

I had to perform stealth moves up to the window to get this one plus it was windy outside and everything was moving about.

 

Turns out there is a third bird aswell. A slightly older juvenile. It's a bit of a bully though and tends to chase the smaller birds away from the tree.

In the few days that I've been watching, this young one has learned to feed itself though and now clings happily to the feeder.

 

 

 

 

Harris Tweedy Creations!

Lots of Tweedy goings on here this week!

You may remember the originals of these that I made back in April. Well they all went off to the gift shop Room 15 at 15 Stafford Street in Oban last weekend but I have had some printed into cards!

Washing Day

£2.50

Harbour Houses and Boat

£2.50

Set Sail For Sunset

£2.50

Home For Supper

£2.50

Harbour Houses, Boat and Fish

£2.50

Set of Four

£8

Island and Gulls

£2.50

These 12x12cm cards look great framed. This Island and Gulls design is really making me want to go back the Hebrides, especially when the sun is out here and I start day dreaming about all the amazing colours of tweed I could get my hands on!

The cards are all now available in my Etsy shop here

I'm hoping to get time to work on some more originals and make them available online too.

I can also make to order.

And here is something new and exciting and just a little bit cute.....

What's in the box? What's in the box?

A super cute hand knitted sheep!

This is a 'Baby Baa', hand knitted here in Scotland by Lynne Seaton of My Baboo.

I've been a big fan of Lynne's work for a long time and when I was toying with the idea of felting little sheep to go inside my boxes, I remembered a photo I'd seen on Facebook of some of Lynne's Baby Baa's that were off to be sold through a shop in Edinburgh.

Since my attempts at felting sheep were a bit disasterous (they just looked like big eyeballs!), I contacted Lynne and we agreed on a little collaboration.

So this is the first of my boxes available with it's resident Baby Baa.

£35

Lynne uses beautiful Scottish wool for her knits which go so well with the tweed used in the construction of the boxes.

Just click the photo if you would like to go to the listing.

More coming soon.

I also have these other boxes available in my Etsy shop as well.

£30

£25

And of course the cow's wanted in on the action.

This one has sold but there may be more soon.

No wee coo's hiding in here but a great place to stash your Highland Toffees!