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.

Gingerbread men and reindeer

Hi, It has been a very busy few days. I had a stall at a local craft fair last weekend and I have spent a lot of time making things for the fair. I have made some cute little reindeer. The pattern came from the Craftseller magazine which I really enjoy. Unfortunately the magazine is being stopped which is such a shame. I have also made some gingerbread men. I have made advent calendars as well. I love making things for Christmas. Now its time to start stitching cards for my mum and mum in law.

Christmas Card

Hi, I haven't posted for ages. I have been away on holiday to the Yorkshire Dales. The autumn colours are spectacular this year and the weather was very kind to us. We did lots of walking, drinking tea and eating cake what could be better. I have been teaching my courses and frantically making Christmas decorations for the fast approaching fairs. A friend asked me to design and draw a Christmas card for the local church. I had great fun drawing the card and was happy with the final result. Just a few photos of the finished drawing.