Colour Inspiration #19 – Peony

We have two types of peonies in our garden; some deep red ones which are now over and these beautiful pink flowers which are in full bloom and inspired this pretty pastel colour palette.

Spoonflower samples – fabric printing

Yesterday I received this exciting package of samples from Spoonflower – a company that prints fabric, wallpaper, decals and gift wrap.  I recently joined the site with the plan to sell my pattern designs  – so soon you will be able to buy fabric printed with my designs!

The samples took just over 2 weeks to arrive, which I don’t think was bad considering they came all the way from America to the UK with standard shipping (they offer faster shipping options at a higher postage rate).  The samples look great – they print on 10 different fabrics, starting at $17.50 (£11.50) a yard for basic combed cotton.

Now I need to sort out which designs I will upload and send off for some samples to check they print ok, then you will be able to buy them!  If there are any of my pattern designs you would love to see as fabric please let me know!

Spoonflower also hold a weekly themed contest – this week the theme is Citrus Fruits and I have entered the pattern above which I painted in watercolours, then finished digitally.  There are lots of great entries this week – anyone can vote for their favourites here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters/new?contest_id=199  The top 10 designs with the most votes will be made into a fat quarter bundle.

Update 5th July 2013
The results of Spoonflower's Citrus Fruit contest were announced yesterday. There are some lovely designs in the top ten and although my pattern wasn't one of them I was really pleased to have received 107 votes - coming 145th out of 403 entries, especially as it was the first time I had entered one of their contests. Thank you to anyone who voted for my design! :)
See the top ten entries here: http://blog.spoonflower.com/2013/07/citrus-fruit-design-challenge-winner-and-top-10-finalists-.html#more

Mollie Makes

Every month this year I’ve been getting this magazine, Mollie Makes, through my letter box :)  I love the mix of craft projects and articles in the magazine.  There's always lots to inspire me in each issue!  Some of my favourite pages are the tours around creative people’s homes – it gives me ideas for things I might one day do in my own house.

Each issue also comes with a free gift and this month it was a crochet bow brooch kit.  I’ve been a bit slow at using some of the past free gifts but made this little brooch almost as soon as I got the magazine!  It was a fun and simple project to make in front of the tv one evening, the cotton yarn included was really nice to work with too.  I think I’ll have to look out some of my other kits to make!

What’s new in my shop? – Update on lots of new printable designs!

I have been designing so many new things recently that I thought it was time for an update, so here are some of the new things I have been adding to my shop…

There are several new sets of printable gift boxes.  Each of the box designs comes as high resolution 300dpi file on a ready to print sheet measuring 8.5 x 11 inches (A4). The completed boxes measure approximately 2.5 x 3.5 x 2 inches (6.5 x 9 x 5cm).  New designs include nautical patterns, London soldiers and buses, aqua chevrons and pink flowers…

I have also been drawing new digital stamps which can be printed and coloured in to use in craft projects like card making and scrapbooking.  The new digital stamps sets include different hand drawn frames, cupcakes, London motifs and woodland animals…

I have been adding to the Nautical themed party printables with some new birthday bunting and an invitation…

Recently, I worked on a design for a photo birth announcement with a London theme for a customer.  It was a pleasure to do, so I decided to create some more designs for photo birth announcements.  Similar to the invitations already in my shop, they come ready personalised with the customer’s choice of text and are sent as digital files for printing as many times as required.  They are also personalised with a photo which I can edit as needed, I can also alter the photo to be sepia or black and white.  The circles pattern design below is shown in ‘Olive’ colour scheme but can be made in other colour schemes too.  The woodland design with the owl is available with a choice 4 different coloured owls.

To see all the my printable designs, past and new, please visit my shop… www.hfcSupplies.etsy.com

Nautical makes - a handmade card and model boat

I had to wait until after Father’s Day before I could show you these because I made them for my Dad!  The card is made from 2 of the images in my new Nautical digital stamp set and one of the patterned scrapbooking papers.  I cut along the waves of the backing paper and layered them with sticky foam pads to make the sea.  The boat and banner digital stamps were printed on card, I then coloured them in watercolours and cut them out.  If you are going to colour with a wet medium like watercolours make sure you print with ink that won’t run!  I used an Epson printer with pigment ink – see this post I wrote a while ago if you want to know more about dye vs. pigment ink.

I also made this little boat - after picturing it in my head I was so pleased with how it turned out!  It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be either, although there were a few tricky bits that I had to practise first.  I cut the hull from 3/4 inch thick wood and shaped and sanded it.  I then drilled a small hole for the mast, which is made from a bamboo skewer.  The sails were hand sewn and attached to the mast with thread.  The sails were made from fairly stiff fabric but to make sure they kept straight I stitched a little eye pin to the corners of each sail and pushed them into the hull.  I also added a little flag made from satin ribbon.

By the way, my Dad really liked them too! :D

Cheesy Muffin recipe

I've got a bit behind with my blog again and have a list of things to write about!  Today I thought I would show you these muffins I baked a couple of weeks ago.  It was the first time I tried this recipe and they were delicious (cheese being one of my favourite foods, it wasn't a surprise that I liked them!).

I adapted a recipe from a book – this is what I made…

To make the muffins you will need:

6 tbsp sunflower oil

10oz / 280g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt and pepper

2 eggs

5 fl oz / 150 ml natural yogurt

5 1/2 oz / 150ml grated cheese (I used cheddar and red leicester but you could use anything you like)

fresh chives, chopped

Heat the oven to 200C / 400F / Gas Mark 6

Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and pepper into a large bowl.

In a second bowl, beat the eggs, then beat in the yogurt, oil, chives and cheese until smooth.  Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the liquid ingredients.  Stir until just combined, don’t over mix (it was quite a sticky, lumpy dough).  Spoon into a 12 hole muffin tin (I used silicon cases).

Bake for 20 minutes or until well risen, golden brown and firm.

Sail away...

Nautical things seem to be very popular at the moment so I’m hoping I’ve picked a good theme for my latest collection of designs!  So far I have made a set of printable scrapbooking papers, cupcake toppers and some digital stamps – I’m still working on other designs so there will be more to come!

The boats, anchors and other illustrations in the paper set were drawn in pencil and watercolours before I scanned them and finished the patterns digitally.

The cupcake topper set (which could also be used as tags or in scrapbooking / card making projects) contains 3 different boats and 3 other designs which can be personalised with your own choice of text.  This example is for a birthday party, but I can do other messages for different occasions too.

This set of digital stamps is something slightly new for me; I’ve made printable collage sheets before but this is my first set of digital stamps / clip art.  There are 6 designs in the set – each comes as a jpg file with a white background and as a png file with a transparent background so they can be printed and coloured by hand or coloured digitally and used in digital scrapbooks.

If you like these designs you might like to see some of the other Nautical things I’ve been pinning to one of my Pinterest boards… http://pinterest.com/hazelcreations/nautical/

Colour Inspiration #18 - Newt

This is one lucky newt – the other day as I was walking up the garden path I almost trod on him, but fortunately spotted him in time!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a newt this colour in our garden before; they’re usually much darker.  I managed to scoop him up and put him on a leaf by the pond.  By the time I had got my camera he had started to move off and was hiding in the leaves.