Spring....

The last couple of days you really could feel spring in the air, so wonderful after this long and cold winter. I didn´t get much done last week, mostly due to my old cat Frasse having been so poorly. But I managed to finish this commissioned doily scarf:


I´m really pleased with the result, it looks gorgeous worn as a shawl as shown in the picture before, or as a scarf:


I really want to thank all of you who left a comment or sent an e-mail wishing my dear old cat Frasse to get better soon, and although we didn´t have much hope it seems to have helped, at least for the time being. He is much better, the blood test showed that there is something wrong with his liverfunction, but he is reacting well to the medication and has started to eat again and actually gained some weight, so we´re rather hopeful. Apparently the next week will be crucial, as his dose of steroids and antibiotics has to be reduced soon and time will show if he can cope with the lower dose, but they´re is quite a chance that he might be around for a while longer, so keep crossing fingers ;-) Here he is, enjoying the spring sun in the conservatory, I took the picture this morning:


I had some great swaps with blog friends lately, yesterday this bunch of gorgeousness arrived from the lovely Cat from La Dolce Vita - lots of fantastic lace, fabric and trims and one of her beautiful artworks, based on a landscape photography:


Already a couple of weeks ago I got a parcel from another blog friend, Alicia from Altered Bits:



I had won the beautiful Frida ATC at her blog give-away and swapped the rhinesone buckle, and she was so nice to add some more nice bits´n bobs! Make sure to check both Cats and Alicias blogs to see more of their fantastic stuff.

Before I go just a couple of spring impressions, the first flowers in the garden, winter aconite and snowdrops, we have them all over the garden:


And a spring wreath for the front door I made from hop and pink organza ribbon:


Enjoy springtime and pop around the other creative spaces, you find them at Kootoyos blog!

My Creative Space

I´ve had a quite productive and busy time since last week´s post and have many things on the go! I have a couple of commissions I have to finish, and one of them is a scarf made of doilies. It is amazing how the doilies change character when you dye them and use them in another context! Take a look at two scarves I made earlier before I show you the commisioned piece in progress:


This scarf is made of rather big cotton doilies, hand dyed in purple and pastelgreen and embellished with a crocheted edge in pink. I love the colours, the make me think of the spring we´re all longing for!

This is a more delicate piece:

Filigree doilies in a lacy quality have been dyed in a pale peach shade and embellished with a crocheted mohair trim in cream with a thin gold lurex thread.

The customer who commissioned a doily scarf wanted it in hues of off-white and cream and with two rows of doilies. I´ve started to crochet the trim around each single doily using organic cotton yarn:


I have actually dyed the doilies in a in a pebble beige shade but they still vary slightly in colour which I like. I´m going to use 22 doilies for this piece as she wants double width, and I think the finished piece will look quite elegant yet with the right twist of shabby chic!

I even have another doily scarf on the go, cotton doilies in a flower shape, hand dyed to a berry shade and embellished with a pale pink trim in organic cotton yarn:



This is another commission, for my Irish friend Rainey from the Josie Baggley Company:


A generous but delicate wrap in the most delicious laceweight kidmohair yarn with a dainty handcrocheted trim, here a little close-up:


The crocheted trim makes the wrap really special, but it´s driving me crazy - the wrap is 220 cm long and crocheting the trim takes longer than knitting the whole wrap, lol. Luckily I´m half finished now and I hope Rainey will love it ;-)

And, as I promised last time, a peek of my throw - I´m getting there! (And the colours look fresher and happier as in the pic which doesn´t quite do it justice ;-(. )


The pink-peach-red cushion is not finished yet, but you´ll get to see the finished piece next week! And - if you would like to see what other bloggers are working on in their creative spaces visit Kootoyos blog .

Before I let you go two pictures of my domestic universe ;-) You´ve met our funny and highly strung border collie mix Gustav before - here he is again, in one of his rare completely relaxed moments, together with our cat Frasse, while I´m working on Raineys wrap:


Yes, our pets are allowed to lie on the sofas and sleep in our bed and we actually like it! Nothing more cosy than a dog or cat to warm your feet in a cold winter night!

I wave you goodbye with my rather cheaky new ostrich plume duster, given to me by my mum - dusting is suddenly more funny and you almost feel like a Moulin Rouge girl, haha!


See you next week and thanks for stopping by!

Busy times and new opportunities!

I´ve really been busy these last weeks! My parents visited us last week, which was really nice. I had such a great time with my mother, she is a creative mind too and we made jewellery together, went shopping and chatted a lot. And she ironed all the clothes and linen that had piled up for weeks in my laundry basket.... Here´s a picture of us, doesn´t she look gorgeous? She is 66 years old, who would believe that! Hope I have inherited her good genes!!


I´ve been stressing around a bit, I have to deliver my work for the first exhibition on friday, I open my own summershop in the train carriage the 1. of july (and the carriage still has to be cleaned, some of the furniture I use for displaying my work has to be painted and there are some reparations to be done on the boards of the carriage) and then there is also the exhibition at my friend Tracys gallery....

Anyway, I managed to finish two re-vamped vintage slips and made a couple of headbands using some of my vintage millinery flowers.


I even found the time for a little brocante tour last saturday. Here are some pictures from the first place we visited, an old farmhouse that used to be a pub in a tiny cosy village - so typical Danish!



They had mostly old china, glassware and silverware, but I managed to find these beautiful old tins and the funny small forks.



We decided to have a cup of tea in Ebeltoft, a small town nearby, and popped around another antique store. As you maybe can see in the picture, it´s quite a shabby venue, but packed with all kinds of vintage stuff.


I rummaged through a basket full of all kinds of small items and found these nice old pearlnecklaces, beads and jewellery findings. Great stash to re-use in my work!


After that we went to the café, and on the way I discovered that in one of the old warehouses someone had opened a combined studio and vintage clothing shop. Of course I had to check it out, and I found a nice black dress from the 50ies, quite hard to find in bigger sizes so I am really enthusiastic about my find!! The owner, who is a painter, actually recognized me, she had been at my summershop. We started to chat and she asked if I was interested in doing a vintage fashion show with her at the local festival the last weekend in July and I said I was indeed! We agreed we would show both vintage dresses, my re-vamped vintage slips and tops and my handcrafted textile jewellery. Quite exciting, I´ve never tried that before.

And, there are more good news: she actually rents the studio for a very reasonable sum and told me the owner was interested to rent out more of the space, so I´m going to meet him on thursday to discuss the possibilities. My plan is to gather four or five artists/crafters and use some of the space in the warehouse as a combined studio and shop. By sharing the rent we can keep the costs low, which is important, because Ebeltoft is heaving with tourists from June to September - but the rest of the year it´s more or less dead, so you have to earn your money during the summermonths.

Well, as you can see - lots of things going on at the moment - I´ll keep you informed ;-)

Oh - about the peacocks - they actually belong to a farm outside our village, the people haven´t had them long and obviously the peacocks decided that it was time to take a closer look at the surroundings ;-).

Creatures of Comfort

We had such a lot of snow in the weekend, it was amazing! Went for a walk with the doggies on saturday and it was all so beautiful and calm with the forest covered in snow. And then... saturday night.... it suddenly became 3 or 4 degrees above zero and today everything has gone!

If I can´t have snow I want it to be spring! We have a lovely conservatory that we do not use in the winter because it is quite expensive to heat it up during the dark wintermonth, but from March onwards we can sit out there on sunny days and oh what I´m looking forward to it! It´s like being out in the garden, everything is flooded with light and I love sitting there with my embroidery or crochet work!


Talking about spring and happy days, I want to show you one of my favourite artpieces, this lovely creature made by the British artist Julie Arkell which truly makes me happy every time I look at it! I purchased it some three years ago when Julie was exhibiting at my friend Tracys gallery, and it is safely placed high up in the shelves between my merry vintage English china as Gustav, our Border Collie Mix, has a sometimes unfortunate love for everything made of paper.... I even had the pleasure to meet Julie and her lovely husband as she was staying here in Denmark to be present at the opening of the exhibition, and what a great and inspiring person she is! She works with paper maché, knitting, embroidery, vintage fabric, ephemera, buttons and beads and her intriguing work employs naivity, sentiment and nostalgia. She really creates a universe of her own with her part human, part animal creatures and I find her work both very eccentric and very English - in the best imaginable way.


A book about Julie Arkell and her work has been published in 2004 by The Gallery, Ruthin Craft Centre and it is not only a fantastic visual experience but very interesting reading, too. The book is called "Julie Arkell: Home" and it is packed with pictures of her amazing work and her cosy studio. I regularly flick through it because it is a never ending source of inspiration. Julie does not have her own website, but a lot of sites have featured her work so you should be able to google her if you want to see more!
The picture also shows a collection of my vintage buckles and the dusky purple belt I made a couple of weeks ago - the colour goes perfectly along with the book cover I think ;-)


I even want to show you some of my own work, I did these embroideries before christmas and it is the first time I have incorporated mixed media techniques in my work. I was inspired by Beryl Taylors book "Mixed Media Explorations" that I had found while surfing on amazon and considered interesting enough to order. And what a good decision! Beryl is an English artist who moved to the United States a couple of years ago and her work is very detailed and combines lots of different techniques that inspired me to do the pieces shown in the pictures.


The embroideries are based on paper that I have either painted or ironed metal foil on and consist of many layers of organza and tulle fabric combined with cut out details from vintage doilies, waxed paper, vintage buttons, beadwork, some gold glimmer, metallic rub-on and hand- and machine embroidery. In the piece shown in the picture above I even used puff up paint and medallions made of friendly plastic imprinted with a stamp. I enjoyed so much working with these different techniques and I plan to make a whole series of small embroideries based on those techniques using details from vintage doilies, buttons and maybe jewellery findings. The problem is as always - time!!! So many projects and ideas buzzing around in my head it´s hard to get everything structured not to talk about getting it realized!! Some of you might be familiar with the problem.....

Treasure

Today we went to Ebeltoft, a small town nearby, to do the weekend-shopping. I popped around my favourite vintage shop and how lucky I did so!! As you can see in the picture, I found treasure! A whole stack of beautiful doilies, four fantastic old tins (I specially love the small square one in the foreground), a rhinestone buckle and some nice buttons, beads and pearls from a vintage necklace.
It is such a nice shop, and the owner is so friendly and cosy to chat with. What a great start to the weekend!


I have been a busy bee this week and continued
working on my different button projects.
We have a big dining table and it is a
complete creative mess at the moment, as the picture illustrates ;-). The workspace in my studio is simply not big enough for this kind of work where you need so many materials at hand all the time.


I have almost finished my seafoam breeze cuff and only need to line it, I´m really happy with the result and of course I want to share the picture with you! The subtle shades of aqua and turquoise combined with splashes of pink, yellow and orange make me think of relaxed summerdays on the beach - I´m looking so much forward to it! But right now we have temperatures below zero so the prospect of jumping into the cool water seems very far away....


While I have been working on the cuffs suddenly visions of kitschy, candy button rings emerged in my head, and of course the idea had to be carried out immediately! I think the rings are very funny, they have a fabulous kitsch appeal to them and they make quirky and eyecatching accessories. Three of them are for sale in my etsy shop, the other ones are going to be sent to a craft shop in England that is interested in stocking my work. I even have to finish some brooches that are going to be sent to England, but I am waiting for the broochpins I have ordered. Good thing is, if the rings should prove to be popular they are not as time-consuming to create as many of my other work and I should be able to make some money on them ;-)

Apart from all this I am working on an art event together with my friend Tracy Nors (check her blog tracy-boboho.blogspot.com for her great artwork and her website www.boboho.com to see and read about the hottest interior trends). We want to launch a pompom project, inspired by Elvis Robertson, and after having contacted her we hope to be able to turn it into an international event. I am going to write more about it next time, maybe someone out there wants to join in? In the meantime, check Elvis` blog www.pompomproject.blogspot.com

More buttons... and doilies!

Yesterday I got another parcel filled with the most scrumptious vintage buttons, so I spent the last two days making this merry cuff. I first layered pale purple wool-fabric, tulle and hand-dyed lace and then embellished the cuff with lots of buttons and glassbeads. The lining is made of vintage liberty fabric. It was a lot of work but I enjoyed every moment! I called it "Purple Rainbow Cuff" and I have actually decided to keep it for myself - I just love the purple and pink shades and think we will have many happy hours together!

I am now working on another cuff in blue-green-turquoise shades that is going to be called "Seafoam Breeze Cuff". This one will be for sale in my etsy shop, so keep looking there if you are interested!



I even made another piece for myself a couple of weeks ago, the scarf you can see in the picture on the left. I dyed vintage doilies in shades of green and pink and crocheted a black edging around each of them. Afterwards the doilies were sewn together by hand. I used mohair yarn and the fluffy effect creates an interesting contrast to the cotton doilies , but I have to say that cotton yarn works better and gives a stronger scarf.

It is incredible how the doilies change character when dyed and used in another context. They make a truly bohemian accessory and the scarf is my favourite right now!



If you like vintage stuff and bohemian style, also in interiors, you have to take a look at one of my favourite websites: Lyn Gardeners Empire Vintage, www.empirevintage.com.au/

Lyn is an Australian stylist and her home and shop have been featured in several interior magazines like Elle Interior. To me she is a real style ikon with her characteristic big hair and unique style. Her vintage universe is very feminine and sophisticated and she uses nothing but authentic vintage furniture, fashion and curiosities in her work.

I love her big hair and still try to figure out how she styles it, having dark curly hair myself I would love to adapt her hairstyle!! I think she uses a hairpiece and her hair is only just below shoulder-length whilst mine is waist-long which makes it harder to create that fluffy "bird nest" of hers!!

Winter Days...

It has been really cold and stormy the last days, so I have been spending a lot of time in front of the computer listing nice things in my recently set up etsy shop. Nevertheless, being the lucky owner of two lovely dogs and three horses I couldn´t escape the elements completely - the horses need to be fed and Gustav the Border Collie mix needs his exercise (Snuff, our old dog wouldn´t mind to spend the whole day in front of the log burner!). Even the cats couldn`t be bothered to go out and had lazy days on the bed.... on the sofa.... or in my studio!

Today I received a parcel with bright colourful vintage buttons, and a couple of days ago I got my beautiful vintage rhinestone buckles found on ebay, and I have many ideas what to use them for. I have already crocheted a nice dusky purple belt embellished with mother of pearl buttons and glass beads, and it looks beautiful with the rhinestone buckle I think.


I even made a couple of bracelets from the last lot of doilies and lace that I have hand-dyed. I have started to use brighter colours in my work and I´m really happy with the results so far! Makes me think of the spring, birds singing, sunshine.... For the bracelet shown in the picture I have only used vintage materials. First I layered hand-dyed tulle and lace and burnt the edges of the tulle fabric for a rougher look. Then I put on turqoise flowers cut out of a vintage tablecloth. I handstitched the edge of the flowers with thick embroidery thread in different colours that I had been lucky to find in a charity shop and embellished it with vintage buttons and sparkly glassbeads. The bracelet is lined with vintage fabric in candy colours.

Finally got started....

So I finally got my blog started ;-) It took me a while to understand how things work, but from now on I am going to tell about my ongoing projects and artists/websites/events that inspire me.

The picture shows one of my current projects, I am working with vintage doilies and slips which I hand-dye, embellish with beads and vintage buttons and transform into something new! The turquoise slip is not finished yet, I have only pinned the doilies on so far and yet have to do the sewing and embellishing. I will keep you informed how things develop!