Advent Calendar

Hi, I have made another advent calendar. This design is of an Angel. Great way for children to count down for Christmas and good fun to make.

Advent calendar

Hi, I have just finished making two more advent calendars. This is a really pretty design with a village scene and Santa flying over head. I really enjoy making advent calendars, great fun. Christmas decorations, stocking and advent calendars are for sale at www.etsy.com/shop/BrushesAndBodkins. I now have a lovely Angel design advent calendar to sew.

Christmas Card

Hi,
The year is racing by and all the lovely Christmas decorations are appearing in the shops and online. I love the glitter, shine and sparkle around. I was asked to draw a second Christmas card for the local church. I had drawn a card last year showing the church surrounded by Christmas flowers and foliage. The design worked well and became the basis for the embroidery shown in the previous post. The card has the Christmas services printed inside and looked lovely. This year I took inspiration from the Christmas bauble. I wanted to incorporate the image of the church in the drawing so I drew the church onto

the bauble. The church had to be slightly curved to look as if it was on a round surface. I was very pleased with the final card.

 I have also made an advent calendar. This is a lovely design with Santa and his elves. The calendar is for sale in my Etsy BrushesAndBodkins shop.

Embroidery Winter completed.

Hi,  I have completed the winter embroidery. I based the embroidery on a card I had drawn for my local church, All Saints. It was great fun to do and I incorporated a few different techniques. I stitched the foreground hellebore flowers (Christmas Rose) and the mistletoe in ribbon embroidery using beads as the berries. I machine embroidered some of the holly leaves on soluble fabric and stitched others in ribbon. The background holly, mistletoe, hellebore and ivy were embroidered in embroidery cottons using a variety of stitches. The church in snow completes the embroidery. I stitched the church in embroidery cottons using a variety of stitches. The wood effect flexi hoop works well as a frame and the work is backed with felt. I had great fun designing and stitching the embroidery. On to the next project.

Tea cup pin cushions.

Hi,
Just a short post today to show what I have been making recently. These tea cup and saucer pin cushions were great fun to make. I had a lovely time with my stash of beads, ribbon roses, trimmings and fabric matching them with the cups and saucers. I think my favourite is the larger fruit cup and tray like saucer. I loved combining the dark blue fabric with purple flowers to the pattern on the china.

Parrot tulips in watercolour.

Hi, It has been a very busy time. I am teaching four days a week at the moment so finding time for my own painting and embroidery has been difficult but I have finished a painting of Parrot tulips. I love these flowers, they are so bold and bright and a pleasure to paint. I used Sennelier paints and Fabriano Artistico paper. I have read a lot of blogs recently saying how the quality of this paper is not as good as it once was. Luckily the paper is an older sheet I purchased some time ago. I have just purchased some more so I hope the paper will react the way I am accustomed too. I painted the flower heads first and to keep the buds and flowers from changing too quickly I tied thin quilting thread around them. The flowers open very quickly when you bring them indoors so I also took some photographs. I then painted the stems and finished with the leaves.

Embroidery Winter.

Hi, I have now completed the ivy on the embroidery. The next stage is to add the church in the snow to the space remaining. The idea is that I will offer this design in my Etsy shop to be made to order giving customers the option of adding a building of their choice to the space surrounded by the flowers. I want to design four seasonal embroideries based around my paintings and drawings. I am also investigating and learning about miniature painting and sewing miniature embroideries. I would love to sew miniature portraits. Back to the stitching.

Hand embroidery

Hi, it has been a long time since I posted. I have had several courses running teaching watercolour painting and time has flown by. So far I have nearly completed the flowers for my hand embroidery design and will soon be adding the church covered with snow. I chose blue linen fabric for this design so that when I stitch the snow in white and silver it will show up nicely. I have used a variety of techniques to embroider the design. I stitched holly leaves using soluble fabric, with my sewing machine, ribbon embroidery and surface embroidery. The Hellebore flowers were stitched using ribbon embroidery and I used beads for the berries of the holly and mistletoe. I now just have the variegated ivy to finish.

New embroidery design and painting wedding bouquets

Happy New Year. It is a while since I posted but I have been very busy with Christmas and new year celebrations. All great fun. I haven't gone back to work yet, my courses start next week. I hope to change the direction of my Etsy shop BrushesAndBodkins and concentrate on hand embroidery including ribbon embroidery. I want to create my own embroidery designs that can then be customised with a message or embroidery of a favourite place or home. The card I created for my friend for her church gave me the idea for a set of embroideries based around the seasons. A customer can then have their own message or church, view or home embroidered in place of the church. I plan to create three further designs for spring, summer

and autumn.
             I have also added to my Art by CarolAnnHopper Etsy shop the facility to have your wedding bouquet  painted or your favourite flower(s) painted in watercolour. I hope to extend this to include painting wedding cakes and venues in watercolour. I have so far painted two wedding bouquets. These are really enjoyable to do.