Rabbit Cut and Sew Doll Design

Creating a cut and sew fat quarter design was the challenge for this week's Spoonflower contest. I have been wanting to design more cut and sew projects for a while, so the contest was a perfect prompt for me to work on this!

Happy Leap Day!

I couldn't let the day pass without posting something on my blog, so here's a quick drawing from my sketchbook - Happy Leap Day!

New Spoonflower Fabric designs!

Last week I received swatches for my new designs, which means there are now 15 new fabric designs available to buy from my Spoonflower shop!!  That almost doubles the number of designs I had on offer before.

A whole new collection I have added has a Steampunk theme and includes patterns made from my Hexley illustrations.  There is a Clockwork Bird pattern (with a robin, kingfisher, nuthatch and barn owl), an Aeronautical design, Nautical pattern, cogs, and a coordinating spots pattern.  My favourite design in this range probably has to be the keys, clock hands and cogs.

I created this collection after being approached by a customer who had liked the illustrations in my Etsy shop.  It’s really nice to be able to create designs based on customers suggestions and it often leads me to me creating designs I wouldn't have made otherwise.  So if there’s something you would like me to design for you please let me know!

As I needed to order swatches of the Steampunk designs before I could add them to my shop I thought I would create some other new designs and order all the swatches together.  So I have also added 2 new designs to coordinate with the Budgie range. I really like how the chevron pattern turned out as it’s quite different to any other patterns I have made…

This fish pattern started as the fish line drawing I made for the Steampunk Nautical set and I played around with colour to make something a bit bolder than a lot of my other designs…There are also 4 new floral patterns, inspired by vintage fabrics and sketches of flowers from my garden.  I tried out a few different colour schemes for these and will probably add some different versions to my shop in the future.

Finally, I created two patterns from my illustrations of rabbits.  These are so cute – I think they would be perfect for stitching things for nurseries!  Often I finish a project and spot all the things I would change, having spent too long looking at a piece of work.  So it's nice to be satisfied with these designs!

For those of you not familiar with Spoonflower, it’s really simple to order fabric – choose from an 8” square swatch, fat quarter or by the yard.  If you visit my shop you will find that you can buy these designs printed on 12 different fabrics, from basic combed cotton to heavy cotton twill.  You can also buy these designs as rolls of wallpaper.  Spoonflower is based in the USA, so if you order from any other country don't forget you might have to pay customs fees.  (In the UK you have to pay import VAT on goods over £15, if you're ordering small quantities you probably won't have to pay anything.)  So far I've been lucky and haven't had to pay any customs fees!

FIMO pets and buttons

Last weekend I made these cute little animals from Fimo.  They started as basic Fimo shapes which I painted with acrylics after baking then varnished.

I’ve had my Fimo for a very long time (I think there's still a tiny bit left from some I had when I was 8!) – some is Fimo Classic and some is Fimo Soft.  I much prefer using the soft as you can use it almost immediately but the Classic always takes me ages to soften and I end up making a mess with crumbs of Fimo falling everywhere.

The little animals I made are really small – this rabbit is just over an inch long…

I painted the rabbit with dutch markings – I used to have a white and grey dutch rabbit when I was small :)  Rabbits are one of my favourite animals.  I’ve been watching the BBC series The Burrowers – where they’re following the lives of rabbits, badgers and water voles in burrows specially made for the series.  Of course the rabbits are my favourite – especially the babies which are soo cute!!

This budgie (only about 1.75 inches long) was partly inspired by my green and yellow budgie, Bobby.  Although she was a girl and this is a boy budgie, as above his beak is blue.

While the Fimo was out I thought I may as well make a few more buttons to top up my jar…

I love the colour of the rose – it’s more minty coloured in real life than this photo shows.  If you want to see some of the other polymer clay buttons I made and find out a bit about how I made them, take a look at this post which I wrote a couple of years ago: http://hazelfishercreations.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/polymer-clay-buttons.html

Clockwork Rabbit

I recently received a commission to design a Clockwork Rabbit to be used as a tattoo.  Although I have drawn several different clockwork birds now and the odd fish I have not done anything like the rabbit before.  I enjoyed the challenge of working out how to illustrate the bunny so that it looked like a clockwork animal that could work but still looked like a rabbit.  Here are some pictures from my sketchbook…

This is the final illustration drawn in dip pen and ink… 

Although I can’t see myself ever having a tattoo (not a fan of needles!), the idea that someone else would want my designs permanently drawn onto their body is such an honour!  Here’s the finished tattoo of the rabbit…

Rabbits, Goats and more!

Last Saturday I went to the Tendring Hundred Show with my sister.  It's the second time we've visited the show and it was another great day out!  Last year I think the show was on one of the hottest days of the year, this time wasn't so hot - much better for the animals (and me too!).
We enjoyed looking round all the stands (food, craft, shopping etc) and especially loved seeing all the animals - goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, pidgeons, sheep, chickens and more in all shapes and sizes.  I wish the baby rabbits had found their way into my pocket to come home!! :)

Rabbit ACEOs No.32-37

A new set of rabbit ACEOs! All drawn in pen and pencil and painted in watercolours these were great fun to make :)

These are all part of my series started this year and are numbers 32 to 37.

I've started adding these original ACEOs to my Etsy shop, so if you don't see them there yet they should be soon.