The Merry Month of May

"Twas in the merry month of May when balmy winds first blow.............."

And what a merry month it has been so far.
As I said in my last post, the Open Studio weekend was a great success.
Among my many visitors was Kirsten aka Quernus Crafts. Kirsten has family here in Fife and came up from down south to enjoy the North Fife Open Studios event and write about it for the UK Handmade magazine. Her piece will be in the summer issue due out in June. It's a great online magazine and you can find a link to it on my side bar.
Kirsten took some photos while she was here and has kindly sent me some to use here on the blog as I forgot my camera each of the three days!


Here I am at my little work space whizzing some felt through my embellisher machine.
Everyone was fascinated by the machine, especially as it looks just like a sewing machine but when you look closer you realise that it doesn't use thread.

I enjoyed demonstrating it's various uses to those who were interested. Above are Joan and Watty who came all the way from Midlothian to visit my studio. Joan discovered my website last month and is now inspired to take up needle felting. I was so taken aback that my little space on the internet could have such an affect on people. It really meant a lot to me that Joan and many others traveled many miles just to see me.


Here is a wee selection of my work on display.
The great thing about my studio is that it has more than one room. I can keep the main room nice and tidy with plenty of pieces on display while the work room is a shambles and has the door shut on it. There is also space in the main room to work on small projects without it becoming too untidy.
I plan to work from the studio on a more regular basis when my daughter starts school in the Autumn. At the moment I'm only there sporadically, opening to the public on occasional weekends. I think if Ladybank were a busy little tourist town I could open every day and be really busy but it's not and I don't really want it to turn into a shop as I'd never get any work done.

So, the rest of last week was taken up with house work and preparations for my friends wedding.
It was a privilege and a pleasure to make Shirley's wedding flowers. We thoroughly enjoyed the day too, swanning around a country mansion sipping champagne and seeing lots of friends we haven't seen for ages.

It has been five years since I gave up working in a flower shop but like riding a bike you never forget how to put flowers together.
My career as a florist began when I worked as a Saturday girl for my Mum when I was fourteen. My Mum ran a shop in Perth and she taught me all the basics.
When I went off to art college I got another Saturday job in a really good florist called David's. David gave me a really good training and from there I worked full time in various shops here in Scotland and in Ireland.

I had planned to become a freelance wedding florist a few years back but then I got into textiles and here I am building up my little craft business.
I still do weddings for family and friends and would consider doing flowers locally if asked. I do miss working with fresh flowers every day, but contrary to popular belief, it is hard work! Working in a flower shop is not what people imagine it to be. You are standing most of the day, lugging heavy buckets around and getting chilblains on your fingers in winter. It's murder on your back and quite often so busy that you spend much of the day answering the phone. I much prefer working for myself.

Shirley chose a bouquet of Vandella roses with eucalyptus, bear grass and china grass foliage. Each rose had a little pearl headed pin in the centre to tie in with the pearls around the neckline of her dress.
For the bridesmaid she chose a hand tied bouquet of Sarina gerbera, purple lisianthus and Vandella roses.
They both looked absolutely stunning and were delighted with their flowers. A great day was had by all.

Inspired by The Isle of Skye

Along side the madness of trying to get stock ready for the Open Studios weekend as well as new work to send out to my stockists, I have been making a couple of things with my new yarn that I bought on Skye.

'The Peat Bog Cottage'
9x14cm

These little 'Peat Bog' pieces incorporate the rich golds, greens and burgundy shades.

'The Peat Bog Croft'
12x12cm`

This cuff also includes some of the green and gold sections of the yarn.

While this daisy necklace, cuff and earrings set include the purple and blue sections.

The earrings are a new idea. I just used beads that I had in the box but I think they would really suit being teamed up with silver foiled glass beads. Might have to nip into Bead Crazy in Perth this weekend!

Meet Emma Siedle-Collins

One of the things I love about going on holiday is meeting new people. Imagine my delight when mentioning the Isle of Skye on my Blog back in March, I had a nice comment from a fellow blogger and mixed media artist living on the Island! I said we would seek out her studio when we revisited the Island earlier this month and we did!

Meet Emma Siedle-Collins in her beautiful Heaven's Ocean Studio.

Emma and her husband David run this beautiful studio by the sea at Camuscross looking out to Isle Ornsay and the mainland beyond.
It is a stunning location and a perfect backdrop for David's fabulous watercolours and Emma's driftwood mirrors and mixed media work.

Look at that view! Emma and David also run a B&B in their lovely home next to the studio and keep a gorgeous garden as well.

We really enjoyed our visit here and were made to feel incredibly welcome. Emma and I could have chatted for a week and still found more to say. We have a similar love of colour and the same desire to try new things. We both love working with lots of texture and hoard bits and pieces, gaining inspiration from our stash as well as the sea and surrounding landscape.

I just loved this corner with it's colourful wall hanging next to the natural colours of the drift wood and wicker chair.

This combination of bright colour against the natural raffia and cork floats also caught my eye.

As I said, Emma likes to try her hand at new things and has been making these gorgeous cuffs and brooches recently. Again, I really like the backdrop of natural wood for the bright colours.
The cuffs are an intricate mixture of texture and stitch, each one different from the other.

Emma makes stunning pieces of drift wood wall art as well as mixed media collages.

It's great meeting creative people online to share ideas with but even better to meet them in real life. It's hard to gauge what a person is really like online but I found Emma to be friendly, warm, good fun and unpretentious.
We swapped a few bits and pieces too and I look forward to using her painted papers in a future project.
As we love Skye so much I'm sure we will be back before long and I hope next time we visit we can stay a while longer and really explore this lovely area.
Visit Emma's blog here.
And her website here.

The Wonderful Colours of Skye

I find the colours of the landscape and the sea around Skye so inspiring and find the same colours are encapsulated in these amazing seaweeds and shells.

I took the photos above at Claigan Coral Beach near Dunvegan. There are no sandy beaches on Skye due to the geology but this coral beach is just beautiful. It was a wild and wet day when we visited so no fabulous photos but these close ups capture the beautiful colours and textures to be found on the shore.

I bought these yarns from The Handspinner Having Fun in Broadford. That's the shop I blogged about last year and Theo very kindly gave me a little freebie for mentioning his shop online.

I chose these colours as they include all the shades of sky, sea, grass, heather, hills and seaweed.
Can't wait to get started with them.

I also picked up this great Italian scarf in the charity shop in Portree. Doesn't it just look like rippling waves. I wonder if I can bring myself to cut it up!

Such a Great Time

Well I feel like I've been away for a month not just eight days.
Five days on Skye and three at Glenfarg Folk Feast and I am just full to the brim with new ideas and stories to tell.
What a great time we had on Skye. Stunning weather the day we arrived with fabulous views over to the mainland with it's snow capped peaks.

We did get a couple of days of wind and rain but I didn't mind at all especially as we had not taken the tent and could listen to the howling gale from the comfort of the hostel.
It's always a good laugh staying in a hostel. I like the sociable aspect of it and enjoy meeting people from all over the world. Many a game of cards was played and the children felt totally at home and were exceptionally well behaved.

We took the opportunity to walk the Quiraing this year.
We parked at the top car park and walked all the way down through this spectacular scenery.

The path was easy going and mostly down hill. We met a few people coming at it the other way and they were pretty peched out. I'm glad we took the easier option. Our wee one got a shoulder high from Daddy most of the way (pretty impressive as he was also carrying the back pack!) and my son had to be goaded a bit here and there to carry on. They loved the little lochs on the downwards track though and spent ages throwing stones in while we spoke to a nice photographer chap.

The Quiraing itself is an amazing geological feature where the land has slipped and left a towering cliff faced ridge that runs for miles down this peninsula. Climbers and experienced hikers do all sorts of mad things up here to get on top of the ridge but we were happy to just wander through it taking in some of the best views that Skye has to offer.

The other great thing about Skye are all the fantastic galleries, studios and museums there are to visit. No matter what the weather there is something interesting to do.

The Museum at Staffin

This little museum is run by a local crofter who we had the pleasure of meeting the day we visited. The museum displays a marvelous selection of dinosaur fossils found locally here at Staffin. It's a fascinating area with a tremendous history.

One of the places I was very excited to visit was Shilasdair, The Skye Yarn company.
They dye all their own wool here with plants from Skye and around the world. There wasn't any dying going on while we were there but it was still worth the visit. The shop and workshops are situated on the Waternish peninsula which is to the north west of the Island. The area really reminded me of the Dingle peninsula in the west of Ireland with rugged headlands and open views out to sea.

Rainbow Yarns at Shilasdair

These beautiful cashmeres really caught my attention especially that gorgeous sea green one.

Sheepskin Rugs and Throws at Skye Skyns

Just down the road from Shilasdair was Skye Skyns. I'll have to write a separate blog post about here as we really enjoyed our visit. Look at that stunning view from the showroom though!

Ian Williams Ceramics

Next door to Skye Skyns is the lovely Brae Fasach Studio. We met artist and ceramist Ian Williams here and enjoyed chatting with him about his work and the area.

Heaven's Ocean Studio

One of the highlights of our visit to Skye was visiting fellow Mixed Media artist and blogger Emma Siedle-Collins at her fantastic Heaven's Ocean Studio. Again we had such a lovely time that I'll write a separate post about our visit there.

So as the sun is shining and Spring seems to finally be here I must go and tackle the gigantic laundry pile and get some of it hung out to dry. Then I might get a chance to start on some of the new ideas that are brewing after all this great inspiration.

Snowed In

I have to say that we are thoroughly enjoying the deep snow that has fallen over our part of the world over the last week or so.
Last Wednesday we got officially snowed in with both roads in and out of our pocket of Fife blocked and iced over. There was nothing to be done except stoke up the wood burner, rustle up a pot of soup and go for a lovely walk in what felt like a different world.

Our Cottage.

The View East.

Hazy Sun on the Horizon.

Spanish Oak on the Lane.

And just when we thought we couldn't get any more snow......we got another four inches last night and woke up to this today.

Rowan Tree

The Rowan tree above is where I hang the bird feeders and it is a hive of activity at the moment. There are robins, sparrows, great tits, blue tits, dunnocks, black birds, bullfinch, wrens and a woodpecker having a real feeding frenzy out there. I was shocked to see a Sparrow Hawk swoop in the other day and pin down a wee birdie but it escaped unharmed. We also had a family of long tailed tits for a while last year and there are a pair of Jays that make an appearance every so often.
It's a wonderful place to live and a real inspiration for my felted landscapes.

I haven't been able to get to the studio over the past week but I'm hoping to be there on Thursday the 31st Dec. So if you are passing please pop in between 10 and 4. I'll be working on some new felt landscapes and I also have a new toy to play with. It's an inflatable ball for making felt vessels. I'm very excited to try it out. It looks for all the world like a bouncy foot ball made out of bubble gum! Photos to follow.

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the winter holidays as much as we are.

Inspired By Bee's Teas

Our summer holiday to the Dingle peninsula was long awaited and much enjoyed this year.

As usual we camped away out on the western tip of the peninsula, surrounded by beautiful hills, endless beaches and rolling surf. This area is a great source of inspiration to me but when it rains, it really rains and on those days we found ourselves in Dingle town looking for somewhere comfortable to dry off, have a nice cup of tea and while away a half hour or so reading.
This year we were delighted to find ourselves in Bee's Teas, a beautiful little upstairs tea room situated behind Dick Mack's pub.

The minute we walked in the door we knew we had come to the right place.

Not only did we enjoy a lovely pot of tea and fabulous scone but the whole experience was enhanced by Bee's attention to detail and exceptionally friendly service.
David loved his builders tea in an enormous enamel mug and I liked how a handmade tea cosy was promptly popped onto my sturdy tea pot.
It's great to see a theme taken and done so well.

The scones were delicious with lashings of cream served in the cutest little tea cup.
I must add that there are a multitude of different and exotic teas on the menu with the herbal infusions arriving in beautiful glass tea pots on glass stands with a tea light beneath to keep them warm.

I've been pondering the recent popularity of all things tea related and the thought of making textile tea pot and tea cup pictures has been on my mind for some time.
Bee's Teas has really inspired me.

I like Bee's colour scheme of blues and pinks with plenty of florals and ginghams set off by fresh white and rustic wood.

She has even provided a cosy corner to drink your tea in during the colder months.

So here are my first Bee's Teas inspired pieces.

The pot and cup and saucer are cut from fabrics which I have layered with ribbon and net. I have used a polka dot net for the background and cut a few flowers from more layered fabric. The flowers are attached with large gold brads which coordinate with the gold shimmering dots in the background.

As soon as I get some more polka dot background fabric I'll be making some more in different colour ways with different motifs.