New Hounds on the block

All New Hawkes Hounds 

Finally, my latest designs are finished, and I am very pleased with them.  

For those of you offended by craft  completed in a non pet-free environment, look away please... 

The chap on the left is finished in soft chenile and the other in boiled wool and tweed, and they are so snuggly that while my back was turned Maggie snuck up and nestled in amongst them. You can see where I get the inspiration from these days. 

I had great fun making these chaps, the ears and the eyes are the most fun part and I am glad that I switched to hand making the felt eyes, they are more expressive. By mixing different materials you can get all kinds of effects for the ears, and then they can be bent as you wish. No names for these guys yet, but I have a waiting list for them already. Thanks Mr C for the super cool photos. 

New Hawkes Hounds tags and doing battle with the Cameo Silhouette and winning...

To go with the new designs I have worked on new label tags and packaging this week. Learning new skills is time consuming and I often resent the time spent, but yes I do know it is good to persevere. 

This week I was especially bold and decided to take on Photoshop and the cameo silhouette cutting programme to produce more professional tags. 

I started with this image from you guessed it - the graphic fairy: 

    

They kindly remove any text so that you can do your own thing with it. Opening it in photoshop always make a duplicate background layer by clicking on layers and then follow these instructions  You play around with the size of font and font until you have something you like. I ended up with something like this... 

 I saved it as a jpeg and then took it into the Cameo Silhouette programme. I should say that I have a love hate relationship with this programme. It reminds me of early PC days, when you spend ages looking at the screen while the cursor decides what to do before a message pops up to say "programme not responding - shut down PC" . I have learnt my lesson and save the file after every click. 

Strong coffee in hand, and after watching too many you tube tutorials  I finally managed to trace and mark the image for cutting, and after a mini break down when the printer chose to rescale the image and so the cutter cut a perfect shape about 2cm away from the printed one. Pause for a day for recovery, more reading and a supportive chat with Jo at Briar Patch Designs who is a whizz with the cameo and success! So now I just have to do a back to compliment the front, and I will be done.  

   

  

Canine Brief Encounter a Woolly Cocker and Door Signs for Christmas

Have been travelling quite a bit of late, and so alas the blog has suffered. But no I have a few moments to catch up with bits and pieces...

Poor Frank is Broken Hearted...

A couple of weeks ago now, walking through a meadow near the house early one morning I spied a black dog in the distance. Dog owners don't often stop to chat in these parts and this time was no different. The owner was intent on walking away from us, and tugged hard on the lead, but the black dog kept on turning back to look at Frank the dog. No matter how hard they tugged, that dog was not going to move, and my pair were all wags and barks, so there was nothing for it. Breaking all rules of Swedish reserve and dog walking ettiquette we approached on another, like an old western movie. Frank and the black dog who looked like his dopple ganger, but all in black, whooped and played like old friends. Maggie looked on baffled. It turned out that the black dog was a rescue dog from Romania, just like Frank. We wondered if they recognised it in each other, they were really smitten. 

Time ticked by, and we had to move on, and so we each pulled our dogs away and went on our way, without an exchange of address or mail. And here's the thing, every morning since Frank drags me to the meadow, sniffs at every corner, and looks in forlornly at every nearby driveway, looking for her, the one... I am minded on the Madness track "I never knew your name" and wonder if Frank hums it to himself as he plays sentinel looking out of our kitchen window..

Woolly Friends for Christmas

Standing around a fire at Guy Fawkes Night in November I met someone who was really missing her old dog, a black Cocker Spaniel and I mentioned that have been known to make the odd dog, and I tried to make her a likeness. So, that is where it began.... 

I really enjoyed making this one, "mini-Maggie" I have called her and she is on her way to Malmo to her new home. She was modelled on my Maggie, and I think that you will be able to see the Cocker likeness.  

I don't know if you have tried it, but doing curly haired dogs is always a challenge, and yet the curls are the thing that makes the animal look just right. I tried needle felting wool onto the boiled wool body but no joy... 

So.... to get the ears and lovely Cocker chest right I used lamb's fur from an old hat, and the new hand made hand felted eyes. The weight of the ears and the hang is just what I wanted. 

Her sitting pose is a new one, and I designed the pattern using inspiration from Abby Glassenberg and her ideas on how to make sitting, (or in this case slouching) animals.   

Good luck Mini Maggie, and I look forward to doing this combination again. 

Stenciled Door Sign

Finally, here is the latest effort from me using the Cameo Silhouette. I ummed and arred for ages about how to do the hand, before opting simply to cut and stick it onto the matt black background and stencil the letters. As ever the vintage hand image came from the graphic fairy and I used standard Cameo fonts for the letters.     

Stencil Wood Sign

I've still got the Cameo Silhouette cutting bug, and I picked up this scrappy piece of wood on the beach a while ago that I thought would be great for a stencil cut using the Silhouette. I wanted to use an extract from the poem written by Bessie Anderson Stanley in 1904 called "Success". I worried that it wouldn't quite fit, but it did in the end thankfully! 

I used the tutorial on the Silhouette site to work out how to make stencil letters without the middles falling out of the "e" and "o" s etc. I know it isn't exactly perfect, but I think I like the look. I used Acrylic paint and finished it with lime wax for a soft shine. 

I have lots of ideas to make some more, and sitting in the garden, stencil brush in hand, is the perfect place to be at the moment.  

    

Subway Art and Birthday Banners

Just back after a wonderful month away in South West France, where the roses were perhaps the best ever ( do I say that every year?) and we enjoyed sunshine and rain in equal measure. One nearby village was completely flooded out, thankfully it passed us by.  

Shrub roses in their hundreds growing around the archway.

Beautiful shaded footpath, lined with roses. 

Back home now, here are the projects that I took with me...

Making a point... SUBWAY ART. 

Confession time... I treated my self to a Cameo Silhouette plotter last year, and I am ashamed to say that for the first 6 months it sat its box, reproaching me for not using it. This year, resolute to use it, I came across some great Subway Art tutorials by Debbie over at the Painted Therapy blog, and gave it a go. I followed her instructions, but I couldn't find printed contrast sheet here, so I used a highlighter pen to colour the clear plastic instead. The most difficult bit was getting the levels right, but I am quite happy with the result. 

 
It was made for a friend, a memory board of all her favourite places. 

The Cameo is so flexible it can cut paper and fabric as well, and I am thinking of many more ways to use it   (they didn't pay me to say that!). 

Birthday Banner

Next, my Friend Jo made this Birthday banner for me made from paper and cardboard using her machine.

  
Can't resist including a photo of Maggie the little Cocker and my stash of vintage French linen, oh yes, and more roses in the background.