Painted Dog Wood Slices

In an attempt to broaden my range of products whilst still appealing to the dog market I've come up with these painted wood slice decorations.
I made a few of these for Christmas and they all sold on my Etsy shop, so I made more for the new year.

My Mum gave me a box of 50 wood slices for Christmas, so I don't think I'll be running out any time soon. I prime the wood first, just around the shape of the dog, and then use acrylics to paint the dog.

I love how this batch have turned out. I think my tiny dog painting skills are getting better with every one I do.

To make the paintings go further I decided to get a few of them printed on little pocket mirrors. I edited the images of Photoshop and added a pastel coloured background. I got them printed by Awesome Merch who did a great job. Delivery was quick and they even threw in an extra mirror! 

 Both my wood slices and mirrors are available in my Etsy shop!

Felt Dog Notebooks

Remember the handmade notebooks I made? Well I've made some more, but this time with felt dog faces on the front. At this stage, I think if you stood still for too long in my craft room I'd try to sew a dog face to you!

For this set of notebooks I used plain white paper for the pages, from unused sketchbooks, rather than different coloured paper like in my first set. I like the mix of papers but some of the feedback I got from having those notebooks out at craft fairs was that some people prefer plain paper. So I'm giving the people what they want!

Each notebook has 48 pages which are sewn together down the middle and attached to a card cover, which is covered in patterned fabric. I love a reason to dig into my fabric stash.

 I've listed the notebooks in my Etsy shop so if you're interested, check them out here.

Christmas Hair Accessories

For this year's Christmas craft fairs I decided to make some Christmas hair accessories. Hair accessories were the first things I starting making to sell so it's always nice to come back to them and create some new items.

I made this holly hair clip because I wanted something I could wear myself at the fairs. I liked how my one turned out so I made a few more to sell. Nothing says Christmas like a bit of sparkle from the sequins!

I then made some smaller holly hair clips that come in pairs after discovering I have quite a lot of these red buttons which are perfect for these clips.

I also made this gingerbread man hairband which I think is so cute! I think I could easily make a whole collections of these, each with a different Christmas motif.

Felt Stockings

A few years ago I made a lot of little felt stockings that sold very well at craft fairs.

I wanted to bring them back this year with some different decorations. I started by doing some fancier Christmas designs. Love the gingerbread man!

Then I made a range of dog stockings to go along with my felt dog decorations. I've already put these in my Etsy shop and they've been quite popular.

To reach a different market I've made some superhero stockings, since the super hero crochet balls I made last year did so well.

And then I made a few character stockings which I think are so cute! I've got Pikachu, Olaf and Peppa Pig.

These are the perfect size for a little chocolate bar, or they'd look great with a few candy canes sticking out the top. Or even a few pens and pencils if you fancy a stationary stocking!

A Felt Dog for Every Occasion

This year I've been expanding my felt dog business by producing dogs for different occasions.

I made a dog on a heart for Valentine's day.

A dog ghost for Halloween.

I even made a dog bride and groom to celebrate my wedding this year.

And of course my Christmas dogs in Santa hats are back for another year.

Check out all my felt dogs, and other animals, in my Etsy shop, and follow along on Instagram @lisasfeltfriends.

Wedding Guest Book

For our wedding guest book I went down an untraditional route, in that I ended up with a wedding guest bag.

The idea came from the tea-towels we used to make at school. It might have happened in your school too. Everyone draws a picture of themselves then they get sent away and printed on a tea towel of the whole school.

Photograph by Paul Summerfield

Being an artist I liked the idea of everyone doing a bit of drawing.
I cut out squares of paper and provided plenty of biros. At the venue, I'd provided a large notice board to be set up on my table easel, with lots of drawing pins for people to display their portrait.

Photograph by Paul Summerfield

It was a lot of fun going through the drawings a few days after the wedding. Not everyone did a drawing and I thought about whether to do their portrait myself, but in the end we decided to just draw Andrew's brother and Nan ourselves so that we at least had all of our family represented.

Once I had all the drawings I scanned them in and edited them as some needed to be a bit darker. Then I arranged them on Photoshop with our names and the date of our wedding in the middle.

I went with the tea towel idea for a bit but then decided to make the drawings into something  I would get more use out of; a canvas tote bag.

I found this Etsy shop to print the bag and sent them the final image of all the pictures put together.

I really love this idea as it's something we'll use every time we go shopping, rather than having a traditional guest book which just sits on a shelf.

Wedding Cards Book

We received some many lovely cards for our wedding that I wanted to do something special with them. I don't remember where I first saw the idea to make them into a book but this was one blog I looked at when I decided to do it.

I gathered together the cards and picked out the shortest one. The really big cards I put to one side and made a second, thinner book with.

I used the smallest one as a template for making the holes to bind the book. I made 5 holes, equally spaced along the fold.

I found it easier to put the fold of the card over a rubber and poke my 'pokey tool' (that's really what it was sold as) through the card and into the rubber. I did this for all of the cards, making sure the template card was in the middle of each card, which I was able to eyeball most of the time.

Next it was time to sew the cards together. A popular method is coptic stitch but I found this video, which is a slight variation on that stitch, which worked for me. Once I'd stitched two or three cards together I started to get the hang of it, which meant I could put Netflix on to help pass the time.

For the book cover I cut the front, back and spine out of mount board and glued them to a piece of fabric, which conveniently matches the colour scheme of our living room.
I also sewed a piece of ribbon to the fabric over the spine of the cover which wraps around and can be tied to keep the book shut.

I glued the back of the last card to the inside of the back cover, and I'd stitched in a blank piece of paper at the start of the cards to stick to the inside of the front cover.

I am so pleased with how this book turned out. I like how it's a streamline solution for keeping the cards and doesn't take up too much space, unlike keeping them in a box or sticking them in a scrapbook.
For the book larger book I made with the leftover cards, I added some blank pages at the front and back which I used to stick in mementos from the day, like one of our wedding invitations and our place cards. I've also thought about sticking photos of our guests to the blank sides of the cards, so there's a lot you could do with this book idea.