A little bit of magic

Welcome to Bumbly Burrow, an enchanted allotment where fairies live, their neighbours are frogs and bees and they spend long days playing around the vegetables and in the orchard. The allotment owner loves fairies and made them these houses to live in, she has plenty of crafting skills and will be making more for them, so don't worry about buying them for your own fairies to live in.

 I really enjoyed making this fairy village and playing with the toadstools in the allotment to take the photo's, I wish I had a little girl to share all the magic in the owrld, my boys are now 20, 17 and 16 and well past the magic!!

Photoshoot of my woodland dresses

 My lovely friend Sonara and I went to our beautiful local park today with a small collection of the dresses I have been making for my woodland  collection, it was so cold and windy, it was pretty hard to get the dresses to hang right. 

We took some pom poms from our shop and hung them in the tree.

Doris (the mannequin didn't behave at all!)

 

 I have loved making such girly and pretty clothes, I enjoy every stitch whether by hand or machine

 I have collected vintage wedding dresses and other pieces of silks, satins, beads and pearls like a textile magpie!

 Oh how I love the different textures, each one tells its own story to me

I will be listing these on my Etsy page over the next couple of days if you know a mori lover please feel free to share my sneak peek at the shoot. I will be adding the finished thing soon xxx

Dottys dresses, fashion for fairies

 Happy Christmas eve everyone, as my regular friends on my blog know I have started a woodland collection and promised I would share snippets on here, this week and last I have been working with some gorgeous shot silk, netting and pearls from old wedding dresses and have enjoyed myself so much, I love that I can sit by the fire whilst its all blowing a gale outside and hand sew to my hearts content whilst watching films on Netflix, its especially good this time of year to be home sewing with the twinkly christmas lights, tasty puddings and blankets on my kneew, the dog likes lying on my feet too and even though he gets pretty heavy he is very warm too - free hot water bottle!

So the top picture is a floral corsage necklace I did, I stayed up till 2.30 am making it because I wanted to finish it, I loved making it and am in love with it now, its such a soft pretty and girly piece. I am going to be teaching a workshop in January at our shop in Blackpool on how to make them.
The next pic is a close up of a dress I have just started to make, there are rows of tiny beads and I am going to sew the panel around the front of the bodice

Here is the basic shape of the dress so far, the shoulders are going to have these custom made epulets that have layer upon layer of tulle, satin and silk petals, I have made one and it took me about 8 hours, I have to make the other yet!, will share a picture soon.

I am loving the freedom and creativity I can have, I do enjoy making gorgeous things I choose to make rather than churning out the same thing over and over, although because my rabbits and owls are good sellers I do make a lot of these, each one is different though so I dont get board  

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas day whatever your doing, even though this can be a difficult time for some of us it can also be a wonderful time. If you have love, a home and food your very rich and blessed. It's only a day like all the other days, don't put any expectations on it, just go with the flow and enjoy having a day at home. I am very grateful I have love, a home and food, friends that care anything else is a bonus xxx

What a great start

Today I started to design a woodland collection of clothes I really want to make, I got myself a brand spanking new sketch book and collected images from magazines, had a lovely time in the library looking for inspiring books too, I have started on one page and not finished it yet, so photos will come tomorrow, its given me so much positivity actually choosing my own destiny and doing something I have wanted to do for the past year but never made it important enough to do, on reflection of my mums anniversary of her death I thought long and hard what is important to me right now, and I found I need to submerse myself into this, I need to stop doing all the little jobs and orders ( which I am grateful for) but take up so much of my time and really go for it. I did some seed heads on the sewing machine and am so pleased with how they have turned out, can't wait to get them onto clothes.

 

So I get accused of living in a dream world and having too many ideas, I like living in a dream world and everything ever made started off with an idea so I'm not worried! But sensibly this project is going to make me focus and have ideas just about the collection, I think as a creative your mind is all over the place every day and its hard to reign it in sometimes. I hope you will look forward to sharing my journey as much as I am looking forward to posting pictures and updating my poor neglected blog.

       A fairy inspired dress I made recently.

Jan 1st

My first blog post of 2012, can you believe it's a new year already, I'm so excited about all of the exciting things that are going to happen this year, I feel it inside it's going to be a good one. My newest makes ( made yesterday ) are these 2 canvases, the one with the red hair is called "Bella, the butterfly princess", the one with the blond hair is called "Pippa the natural beauty". Both are on box canvas, mixed media with glitter and faux gem embellishments. £26.00 each including postage to U.K., I really enjoyed drawing and creating these, I can't wait to make some more, hope you all have a wonderful new years day x