Spring blossom felted scarf

A while back I handdyed some merinowool in olive. I wanted to make a spring scarf. I haven't had any enery to do something with it, but last night I just needed to get some stress out of my body and started to felt. It took me a while to make the rosebuds but I love the result, especially when they are not felted thoroughly. I love the fact that both sides of the scarf has flowers. It sure looks like spring: soft and fresh! Another one that I wanted to keep to myself actually, but I'm not greedy so I did put it up for sale on Etsy.

Teal is so fickle

Reading a title to a treasury and not quite understand it, forced me to contact RunAliceRun so she could give me an explanation. This is what she answered me about the word 'FICKLE':
My dictionary says:
1. likely to change, especially due to caprice, irresolution, or instability; casually changeable: (fickle weather)
2. not constant or loyal in affections: (a fickle lover)
So, for my treasury, #2 would be how I intended to use it.Teal can't make up it's mind. Teal first likes red, then likes orange, or maybe black would be better. :-)
Thank you, Alice, I think I'm fickle too sometimes... especially when it comes down to buying shoes! :)

Swimmy

A few weeks ago there was this story in the Storque about Etsy's first five years and it's future direction. Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy, read this children's book by Leo Lionni about Swimmy.
It's a great way to demonstrate the vision of Etsy. Rob said:"So our vision is to be the eye — to be a kind of organizing principle. We do not want Etsy itself to be a big tuna fish. Those tuna are the big companies that all us small businesses are teaming up against."
If Etsy is the eye, all of the surrounding fish must be the artists/sellers.

An Etsy artist, thebirdsandbees, sent Rob a little black Swimmy fish that she created after reading the article. This inspired many Etsy artists to create their version of the surrounding orange fish in their medium of choice to create a larger art piece at the Etsy Labs.
Probably I'm the last one posting a swimmy for the Etsy Swimmy-project. Let's just say he took a long time to dry! ;) He is made of superlight clay, painted orange and I added a glitter varnish on him. He doesn't have the measurements which were posted in the Storque since he's kind of stubborn and wanted to be round and glamorous. He loves glitters. He'll be swimming his way to Etsy headquarters tommorrow...
Oh, looks like our cat is not impressed by Swimmy at all!

Self-portrait

This is a work I made for my final grade in academy of fine arts. It took me a year and a half to finish it. At first, I made a study of the form, started to cut the moulds from cardboard in different sizes, building the dolls by hand, mould the 'tummy's', scoop out the 'tummy's', cut the form, finish the inside of the doll, cut the glass (someone from the glass course helped me with this), fired the glass in the shape of the tummy, made glaze samples, fired the glaze samples,... the whole process was repeated nine times.
The essence of this work had to do with the tummy-feeling and how they all fit into one whole 'person'. In my daily being, emotions and feelings play an important role. They define my personality and my state of mind. They are the mirrors of the soul. In the tummy of the Baboeschka's, there's this little feeling - it consists of a little something which I found that represents those feelings. It is then covered with glass so you can actually see it. The glaze is one I made myself trying out different recipes. It's off-white and has small crackles which I love. It took me ages to get the right recipe for this work.
There are four basic feelings:
Fear - spider
Happiness - sun
Anger - needles
Sadness - tears (made form transparant polymer clay)
These basic feelings accompany a lot of emotions.
Beside those four basic feelings, I chose five emotions that are important for me and in my life.
Love - heart
Admiration/amazement - mirror
Luck - chinese goodluck-dolls
Freedom - cherubwings
Vulnerability - eggshells
You can find more photo's in Flickr.
My other ceramic work was inspired by this one.
I love Baboeschka's - can you tell? :)

Demure seahorse

I saw this seahorse in Flickr. It was described as demure and I wondered what it meant. As usual, too lazy to grab a dictionary and besides I recall words better when they are explained to me in person. I asked Snaulkter what it meant and this is how she describes it:
'Demure means to be shy, timid, or reserved. I kind of get that feeling about this seahorse when I look at her... she seems a little more reserved than the others. ;) ' I think ErinLee is right...
I love her seahorses and I love the new word I learned today. :)

Infinity style

The company I work for, closes down everything once a year to go on a secret journey with all it's employees. So more or less 100 people get together to do something they will only know if they join this 'voyage mystère'. You know where you start and hopefully you will end up at the same place. The journey we made a few years ago was all about one of our bosses going on retirement. The team who organised it asked everybody to attend the journey in smart dress.
You must know at this point that I work for a craft supplier and I have many creative collegues. Everytime we have a meeting or we see each other, lots of them are wearing something handmade. I usually don't since I'm not a jewelry person and I can't sew or knit properly. But for this event I thought that it would be appropriate to at least make something myself. I started felting and at some point I had the colors right to fit my dress but I didn't like the shape of the knot. I was complaining to my partner about my incapability to make a clever knot. He used to be a scout so I shouldn't have been surprised that he showed me how to do the 'infinity'-knot. The infinity-style necklace was born then! I wore the necklace with a fancy dress and got ohh's and ahh's from my collegues! :)
Probably because they never see me that way!
I made some custom order infinity style necklaces the other day in colors I had never made before. I think they look great in lime, turquoise and lavender. I only made them in red and black before but now I will start making them in different colors too.

Storque feature

My hot inspired fire necklace made it to the Storque! YAY!
You can find the Storque on Etsy.
On the bottom of the frontpage you can browse through the articles that are in it. It has the latest & hottest trends & events listed.
My necklace got sold so I might have to make some more over the weekend since I've run out on 'hot fire'-inspired necklaces...
Thanks Vanessa!

Pile of hearts

Today I went to work by train.
I thought it would be clever to use my time well on the train so I made a pile of hearts. Hope people didn't think I was searching for love! :)
I use these hearts for my greeting cards.
They are so much fun to make!

Vives les rondes

I just found out I have been featured on Vives les rondes. Vives les rondes is a site for people with zero procent complexities about their body. Yay! Thank you Anne! :)
This is what it says:
Carte de voeux ArtMind - 5,50$ - Chez Artmind sur Etsy
Un peu de laine, de chaleur et d’idées ! Voilà ce que propose Artmind avec ces si jolies cartes. Un message pour votre dulcinée et un coeur à garder près de soi. En plus la créatrice belge partage de temps en temps des tuto sur son blog : Artmind
Translation:
A little bit of felt, warmth and ideas! Here is are what Artmind proposes with these pretty cards. A message for your sweetheart and a heart to be kept close to oneself. Even more, the creative Belgian girl from time to time writes a tutorial on her blog.

Sweet little red dress girl

Customers who bought something from my shop will recognize this sweet little red dress girl. When I first started out on Etsy, I made a bigger version of these. It turned out that it was easier to send the little ones because of postage. Besides, the little ones look even cuter! :) I have had so many lovely comments about them that I wanted to share them with whoever reads my blog. There are many of them on my working table and they make me smile every time I look at them! :)

How to make a felt brooch?

Thought it would be nice to share some 'secrets' of felting by making a tutorial of how to make a felted brooch. There are many ways of felting and I just want to show you mine...Materials you need: wool roving, glas and spoon, soap flakes, olive soap (not neccesary but I like to use it), bubblewrap foil.Hold the end of the woolroving loosely in one hand and gently pull off a section with your other hand. Hold your four fingers against the pad of your palm and trapping the wool there. Put it horizontally on the bubblewrap. Lay it out in a little square overlapping each other. Put another thin layer of felt on the little square vertically. That way the fibers will be in the opposite direction to the fibres on the first layer. Repeat this until you have four thin layers of wool put onto each other. You can use different colors to have more variation. Put some soapflakes in a glas and pour hot water over it. Sprinkle with the spoon some of the soapy water over the felt square you layed out.

Push the soapy water gently in the wool roving and rub gently in circles.

Make three squares in total. Lay out the roving in different sizes so that you have three different size squares. You could cut out three different squares out of paper and put them underneath the bubblewrap so you can see through and lay out your wool on that. I do that with children sometimes and it works really well.

Rinse the felted material underneath running water and lay out to dry.

Put the three felted squares onto each other. To make the brooch, you need sewing thread, a needle, a bead and a brooch pin.Fold the three squares together and sew them together at the back.

Sew the bead in the middle of the squares by going from the front to the back.

Sew the brooch pin at the back.

Ready! :)