Felt Animals for Boden & The RNLI

At the end of last year I was asked to make some felt animals for the new Boden & The RNLI collection.

They sent me some photos of some of the animals and asked if I could make them into flat soft toys. I love working in felt and I love a challenge, so this was very exciting to work on.

Here are some photos of the finished animals....

Oh, and I also made a floral fabric dog which is currently hanging out in their shop!

New Flat! Having fun with interior design...

Just before Christmas, myself and the boyfriend bought a flat!!! I know this is a fairly normal thing that people of our age do, but it is made all the more tricky for us by the fact that we live in pricey West London, and wanted to stay here as we love the area.

Well we managed to find a lovely little flat near Acton Park, and the most exciting this for me has been having fun with the interiors. This is the first time I've ever been able to choose my own furniture, rather than just put up with what the landlords/my parents have bought to go in the house, and so it is very very exciting to be able to choose my own!

I am also an avid follower of many peoples enviously sleek and beautiful Instagram feeds showing off sleek and cool interiors, so the main problem was how to limit myself. I dream of the day when I have an enormous house to fill and can just buy it all, but for our relatively small one bed flat it is a very tough decision on what to decide to buy.

We were quite lucky that it was in very good condition, so all we really needed to do was repaint it so that the flat wasn't entirely peach (ugh!)

We had the compulsary trip to Ikea, complete with meatballs for sustinance, but managed to find some good pieces which manage to hide away a lot of our (well mostly my) things.

I got excited and decided I wanted to paint every wall or room a different colour, as we've lived so long in completely white rental spaces, but then toned it down and went for just painting the hallway bright yellow, and one wall in the bedroom turquoise, with the chimney breast in the living room being pale grey. Great for photographing my name banners on!

Here is the beautiful dark turquoise - to go with a fancy new bed (from Dreams - and it lifts up so again we can hide lots of our things away underneath)

And pride of place on the beautiful windowsill behind my desk is the beautiful Singer sewing machine that a friends Mum found in a charity shop for me. It is so beautiful. And takes my tally of sewing machines owned to 4 which is maybe a slightly ridiculous number for a one bed flat, but they do all get used!

So this is the current state of the flat. Excitingly there are still many more things to do and buy, but it is slowly coming together!

Weather Card Cut Outs

I worked on a shoot before Christmas which involved making lots an lots of weather card cut out shapes. I love a bit of card cutting every so often, I love my craft knife, and get really into being really precise and measuring out everything.

Here are some photos of some of the final cut outs...

Some raindrops...

Sunshines....

I left the snowflakes till last, as there was a LOT to cut out! I had very sore fingers by the end of it!

This was the final selection - I was very pleased with how they turned out!

Toy Washing Machine

I love a custom order request, and especially when it is something really random!

So before Christmas, I was very excited to receive a custom order request for a toy washing machine. It was for a little girl who loved her parents real washing machine, and would be really sad when she had to go to bed and leave it, so I was asked to make her one she could take everywhere with her. So cute!!

I wanted to make it realistic, but soft and cuddly, so went for pink and purple fleece, with felt stitched on decorations. The powder drawer has velcro on it so she could actually store little things in there. 

I made it so the drum was inverted, so again, she could actually put things in it!

So it had a clear plastic door, with velcro, so she could open and close it!

Here is the finished washing machine, in front of our actual washing machine. So cute!

It did confuse the postman slightly when I went to post it and he asked 'What's in the parcel' and I said 'a washing machine'. It didn't weigh very much so I think he just thought I was a bit weird. Once I said 'no batteries' though, those were the magic words, so it was fine to post. I hope she liked it!