Kleas

mosaic monday - peg dolls

1. Peg Doll - Beamish Museum Collections, 2. peg dolls, 3. Clothespin doll Champi Éloise, 4. Clothespin Dolls, Peg Dolls, 5. Folk art peg dolls 2, 6. Sol, 7. peg doll family, 8. oak fairy, 9. Ella, 10. Lavender Princess, https://www.etsy.com/listing/130554865/peg-doll-princess-small-wooden-peg-doll?ref=shop_home_active, 11. Christmas Carolers. Clothespin Dolls. Peg Dolls. Christmas Decorations., 12. Peg Doll Kits

Margaret from We Bloom Here is hosting a peg doll swap (sort of).  Read details here.  I have fallen behind on my blog reading so am just learning about this now.  Thing is...sign ups end in three hours so if you're interested in joining, act fast.

I found some lovely peg dolls on flickr to use for inspiration.  Click on above links to learn more about the photographs.

Happy Monday!!  The sun is shining again so everyones spirits are elevated.  It's nice to be outside without a coat on.

tiny house swap - received and sent

You know it's going to be a fun package when the gift wrap is hand painted...

...and the card is hand made.  Inside the package were seeds for planting and lovely house fabric,

...and best of all were these three hand stitched and machine quilted coasters.

I love them!  My favorite is the one with all the tiny little french knots.  I love french knots.

Thank you Samantha for all these lovely gifts!!  I will cherish them in my home!  (if you have a website will you share?)

Here is what I made for Vanessa.

Three mini houses needle-felted into a porcelain cup.  

Thank you to Jackie for hosting this sweet swap.  

mosaic monday - tiny houses

1. https://www.etsy.com/listing/97752962/miniature-clay-houses-five-ceramic?listing_id=97752962&listing_slug=miniature-clay-houses-five-ceramic, 2. 034, 3. wooden village, 4. very festive. much tissue. wow., 5. Textile Printing, 6. tiny house, 7. Scotch Broom Cottage, 8. White Pasta Box Houses, 9. Moving, 10. 105, 11. Cork Village, 12. Tiny House Ornament aq

Another Tiny Houses mosaic (first and second) to start off the week.  I made this in celebration of Jackie's (Smoothpebble) Tiny House Swap that I participated in.  Swaps have been sent and received and I can't wait to share them tomorrow.

A lovely drawing of 1000 Houses by Asja Boros

A Happy Monday to all and a very happy start to Spring Break for us!  

Tiny House Swap

(photo and artwork by Intres)

(photo and artwork by elukka)

 

(photo and artwork by KasiaUrbanRybska)

(photo and artwork by saysthetree)

(photo and artwork by Clay Town Ceramics)

(photo and artwork by Valeriane LeBlond)

Today is the last day to sign up for Jackie's (Smoothpebble) Tiny House Swap.  All details can be found here.  So what are you waiting for?  Join in on the fun.  

I'm mostly excited about Jackie's enthusiam for this swap, she's even running to the hardware store and cutting little chunks of wood into houses.  She's pumped!  And her fever is catching.  I'm seeing adorable tiny houses everywhere now and had to share a few of my favorites above.  (I also put together a little mosaic of tiny houses here and here).  And if these links weren't inspiration enough, Jackie has an enviable collection of tiny houses on her Pinterest board, Shelter.

I was thrilled to learn that after I first posted about this swap, Chelle from Necessary Chocolate decided to join.  I have known Chelle since the very beginning of starting my blog.  We even met swapping...on Club Little House.  You just have (HAVE) to click here and see the sweetest and most delicate treasures she sent me way-back-when.  It's hard to believe that was even before Julen, but I remember the true surprise when this treasure showed up in my mailbox.

Wouldn't you love to swap?

exchange

I did a little ornament swap with Aunt Peaches.  If you don't know Peaches, she is one glitzy gal...and she is crazy about flamingos.  The top flamingo is the one I made for her.  Nothing too sparkly about needle felted wool so I added as much angelina fiber to it as I could to give it a little shine.  Not too visible in this photograph.  The one I got from her is the bottom photograph.  I love her brass legs, long and skinny, sticking out amid the fluff.  I also loved that we both used feathers. 

It never quite feels like Christmas until I make a few ornaments.

handprinted fabric swap

I was going to put off posting the fabric I printed for my third round of Leslie's swap until I had received all of mine, but with two still to arrive, I decided I couldn't wait.  (round one+round two)

I used Martha Stewart satin ink on 100% linen in the color choices requested by my swappers.  I used a repeat pattern of circles which my boys call "bubbles"...I kind of like that.

Somewhere in this process I stumbled across, and became very inspired by the wonderful blog of Jeanne McGee.  This artist designs and prints her own fabric (I'm so in love with "lines"!) which she uses to make fun and colorful lampshades. And following her to her Etsy shop, I discovered we live in the same city.

I'll be sure and post the fabric made by my partners once it all arrives.  

We are bracing ourselves for a possible 6-12 inches of snow through the night!  Just look at what we were doing a year ago!!

mosaic monday-round

1. Untitled, 2. world pillow #029, 3. Preparing citrus for Blood Orange Marmalade., 4. the winter garden, 5. napperon, 6. …, 7. all three completed!, 8. Silence, 9. Round crochet cushion complete, 10. alpaca yarn, 11. white bowl collection 001, 12. Love Shack

Round and round we go.  Winter is starting to get on my nerves.  The melt/freeze/melt/freeze cycle we've been stuck in for a month has made for super slick sidewalks and lots of chopping of ice.  It's hard not to feel a wee bit optimistic for spring though, as the days are getting noticeably longer.  

One thing that has me jumping for joy is Leslie of Maz&Vale is hosting her third annual Handprinted Fabric Swap.  I participated in round one and round two and had so much fun that I'm going to do it again!  Leslie does such a great job of posting inspiration and tutorials and ideas for fabric printing on her blog, there is always something fresh and new to consider.  And of course there are always Pinterest boards to get tons of ideas from.

Sign ups for the swap continue until February 28th.  Go here for more details. (What are you waiting for?)

hand-printed fabric swap re-cap

Twice now I've joined Leslie's Fabric Swap, and I've showed you what I've made (here and here), but I've neglected to show what I've received in return.

These gorgeous fabrics from swap one:

Left to right from Clemetine's Shoes, SugarLemon, Flowerpress and Starashan.

And these beautiful ones from round two:

from Bimba, Lamina and Amy.

It's hard to think about cutting into these, but I definitely want to come up with some project that uses all of these beautiful fabrics together.  I hope that Leslie will do this swap again...it's so fun to try something new and quite inspiring to see what everyone comes up with.

Here are some resources I found helpful when looking for inspiration for my fabrics.

I'll bet most people already know about Lotta Jansdotter's book Lotta Prints.  A wonderful resource for a wide variety of printing techniques.

New to me was this great find at the library, Print & Stamp Lab by Traci Bunkers.  This book details great ways to use everyday objects in printing.  Some examples...

 After reading through this book and following some examples, my boys and I had such fun playing with printing from objects around this house.  This book shows wonderful ways of combining different elements to create some great patterns.  There are also lots of examples of overprinting which I have only recently become fascinated with (thanks to the lovely work of Flowerpress).  I will absolutely be trying some of these new printing techniques at the preschool this year-it is just so much fun, and I know the kids will love it too.

That last resource pictured above is Martha Stewart Living Magazine, July 2012.  That issue came out just as I was working on my own fabrics.  I love the look of the plastic berry basket, but I have not seen those kind of containers since I was a child.  Some more inspiring images from MSL.

Just for fun, I've been playing with adding a little embroidery to some of my printing practice fabrics.

Not sure yet where I'm going with this...if it turns into anything, I'll let you know.  xx

hand printed fabric swap-round two

After having such a great experience with Leslie's fabric swap the first time, I just knew I had to do it again.  I played with some new ideas but in the end used a stencil which was an idea I had experimented with the first time around.

I used Martha Stewart satin ink on 100% linen in the color choices requested by my swappers.  The fabric absorbed quite a bit of ink so was quite stiff until I heat set it.  I like the way they turned out.

The above photo shows the back side of one of the red pieces, I like the flip side just as much as the printed side with it's faded appearance.

They are now on thier way to Chicago, Seattle, Budapest and Australia.

For more handprinted fabrics, check out the swap group on Flickr here.

A Little Angel Swap

Margaret of We Bloom Here hosted a swap of little angels and has connected bloggers from all over the world.  You can see all the beautiful hand created angels right here.

Here is what I made for my partners (most of whom live in Australia).

It's funny how these little angels all started out to be the same, but as I individually hand-stitched each one, they seemed to take on their own personalities.  I guess this is just how it is when creating a doll.

Each one is stitched from white wool and vintage trim embellishments and beads.  Each is holding something unique in their hand or arms: a cluster of bells, a mother-of-pearl star, a vintage stamen bundle and an acorn bird nest with eggs.

I've already received two lovely angels and will be sure to post them once they all arrive.

(Thank you Margaret!)