Get In The Loop...or Hoop??

I've been trying to think up some wonderful new items for the shop...as per the plan of conquering the handmade Internet storm (in between feeling sorry for myself about the closure of the shop and other things.) whilst thinking up a stitchy storm i came across these handmade wonders.....

Embroidered Paper Lanterns by crazybutcute...i love the green one the best.

Lobster Embroidered Wall Art by tributary.

Booyah Giraffe Embroidery by kngo...I'm almost 100% certain that there is a need for this in my life....FACT.

Suitcase Stack by Moxiedoll...boy, this lady knows how to stitch...take a gander at her etsy shop for more delightful treats.

Large Wing Embroidery Hoop Wall Art by OneLittleRedFox...i think this is such a good idea.

Soooo...as you can guess I'm looking to get some new embroidery ranges on the go...and some of you may have also guessed that as the above wonders are all from etsy; StuffedNonsense has opened up an etsy shop . Its a bit scary because etsy is soo big and we have also heard some scary tales about crazy competitiveness but we want StuffedNonsense to eventually pay our rent and its never going to do that unless we start being grown ups and doing scary things.

Anyway, i hope your Christmas was truly fabulous and I'll be back soon...

take care

xx

Posted by Bex.

We Have Some News...

We've been drafting this post in our heads over and over again for the past week or so.

We've had to come to an important decision at StuffedNonsense HQ and rest assured it is one which El and I have spent a lot of time going over. So with out further ado and a deep breath here we go...

As most of you probably know we have a bricks and mortar shop in Cheltenham. It is something we are immensely proud off...however by the end of January StuffedNonsense at 40 Albion Street will close its doors. Whilst it is incredible that we have a shop so early on in our creative adventure we have skipped soo many things in getting there. Things which are essential if we are to one day make a living off of StuffedNonsense. So with a heavy heart but with the knowledge that it is the right thing to be doing we are going to be closing up shop.

Rest assured...we will be back...with the bestest,awesomest, incrediblest shop; but for now the bricks and mortar is on hold.

The plan for the coming new year is to get some trade shows under our belt (and therefore...hopfully...some more stockists), take part in some more craft fairs further afield, sort out the blooming website (which has been on the list from the start!) and FINALLY give some sense of organisation to the Folksy shop.

We really hope that you will hang in there with us and that you understand why we've made this decision...trust me its one of the hardest we've had to come too.

Sooo, i guess we finish this with...Watch this space...because given a year or too you will find StuffedNonsense in its own handmade haven on the high street...see you there.

Love

Bex and El.

P.S. We went to Crafty Fox yesterday and had the time of our lives...Team StuffedNonsense pulled it off big time.

xx

Believe it or not...

we are still alive.

Some hectic times have descended upon StuffedNonsense and we are battling through and as is usual when stuff like this happens something has to give, in this case it was the little 'ol blog, but things are looking up so hopefully we can come and play here a bit more...hopefully!

i think anyone that makes stuff can testify that November and the start of December are crazy times...festive craft fairs are looming and folksy shops need stock in preparation for the purchase of Christmas presents (fingers crossed!)here at stuffednonsense we've been sewing up a storm making crabbittz and more crabbittz and dust bunny Christmas decorations and more dust bunny decorations and button jewellery and more button jewellery and....well you get the message right??

I've only got a few pictures for you which i some how managed to remember to take (and if I'm honest I'm not 100% sure if I've put these up on the blog yet...so my apologies if they are repeats!)

15 Crabbittz all sent off to MADE in Cirencester. As you can see we decided to carry on using both of the fabrics...and have now come across some beige woolly type fabric close to the original so i guess the Crabbittz are going to be coming to three shades!
This fine example of the Crabbittz breed is called Hannlore, she likes Astronomy and Poirot re-runs and some how by some miracle she's made it all the way into the folksy shop!Find her here if you want a tad more info on her.
This picture shows how much of a mess the desk gets into when we have to make jewllery...jars of buttons everywhere!
These guys are also up in the folksy shop. They are called Fat Bears and we think they are the cutest thing to come out of StuffedNonsense for a while.
The new dust bunny Christmas decorations, i was hoping to list these this afternoon but the pictures i have just aren't up to scratch so they will have to wait a little bit....but what do you think? good or bad?, yay or nay?
These are mini button wreath decorations...which are really hard to photo...we came up with these to help overcome the increasing population of white shirt buttons at the shop, they are just a metal ring packed full of white buttons with a few coloured ones thrown in for good measure, they have a pretty ribbon loop to hang from your tree...would you hang one in your tree??

Right...its time for me to off,such exciting things as food shopping and cleaning the bath room await me!

Bring On The Trumpets....

Soooo....(late as usual) we have the give away winner...

I carefully wrote out all the entries onto some paper, folded them up and placed them all in my lovely black bowler-ish hat....

(see isn't it lovely??)
And then i picked out one lucky winner.....

Congratulations Beth from The Linen Cat....I'm rather chuffed that it was this lovely lady that won because i have followed her blog from the beginning of my blogging adventure, and every time she makes something i fall a little bit in love with which ever item she's made. Please go and have a look at her blog because the things she makes are truly wondrous!.

Right, i shall return tomorrow with pictures of the result of all of the manic sewing i have been doing.

xxx

We Havn't Forgotten...

We will announce the giveaway winner tomorrow, once we have recovered from our ridiculously long Sunday shifts (one of these days the two of us wont work in the service industry and so our Sundays will be free for carbooting and reading Sunday papers....until then we will pipe down and carry on with our 10+ shifts.)

Speak to you tomorrow!

xx

Look What I Got..

For the princely sum of £2 (and quite a few peculiar looks from passers by, whilst 'wheeling' this wonder home)....

Isn't it wonderful?? To some it may seem like a horribly tacky old tea trolley, but to me it is a wonderful retro solution to the impending storage crisis about to arise with the on set of frantic Christmas sewing. You see my sewing desk was getting to be a mess with various projects awaiting completion, but with this wheeled wonder i can carefully stack the half finished projects into neat piles and kid myself that by shifting them around and neatly stacking them i am actually getting closer to completing them.Also my jars of buttons and knitting needles look cute on top....i wish i could crochet...if i could i would make some of these like the talented Tif...

Another 'essential' purchase on this recuperative trip to the charity shop (i was sick at the weekend) was this lovely tartan coat...

Well...i was supposed to start work on the dustbunnies at 12...and its rather past that now!
Speak Soon..
xxx

Aren't Mums and Charity Shops Great?....

Even better if your mum volunteers in a charity shop and brings woolly wonders such as these when she visits!... I almost cried when she handed them over! and as a bonus she washed them so they smell of 'home'! There is now a definite need for a blanket box in the house!

And when she brought these exceptional flannelet sheets out I'm not ashamed to say that i did actually cried! They are soo soft.

Other wondrous items rescued from dusty charity shop shelves include....

A lovely brown horse shaped glass aftershave bottle, its an Avon one, i find it quite amusing that you would of had to take off its head to get any smell out (i imagine the smell would have been akin to Old Spice...or something like)
A fantastic old Kodak Camera with the orignal case.
A grumpy looking owl money box which i find appealing despite it looking quite naff....but in a good way.

Rightio, that's all for tonight....don't forget the giveaway!

xxx

We Think Its About Time.....

We had a give away....don't you???

If you would like to bag yourself a little collection of StuffedNonsense loveliness all you've got to do is leave us a comment telling us whether you prefer the Crabbittz in their new dark brown winter skin or their stripey winter skin...we're torn between the two so need your help!!
We will leave the give away open until next Thursday and then we will pick a name out of the hat (if there's anyone who enters!) You can get another entry if you blog about it too, just head back here and let us know that you've done it...make sense??
Right....onto the Crabbittz....

So here's the lovely brown woolly fabric, its a lot darker than the normal fabric, we've had to have a switch around because we cant get hold of the old stuff!! Out of the two its the most similar in texture.

And here's the stripey version, which is similar in colour (well similar-ish) but not very alike in texture.....

And here they are all together...in a crinkle....which is definitely the scientific name for a group of Crabbittz....FACT.

Sooo, there you go, hopefully some peeps will enter and then we can send out a package of wonderfulness to one lucky StuffedNonsense fan (said package will include a Crabbittz...of course)
Ready...
Steady....
Go....
xx

Give Bex One and A Half Days & What Do You Get??

Lots & Lots & Lots of Jewellery...We found the plastic vintage animal tokens in a charity shop a few days back, but its taken us a while to get cracking on them. I'm a little bit taken with the bird ones. We also made some more scrabble necklaces and earrings and also some vintage button bracelets.They are all to go to MADE Cirencester so we couldn't put them out on the shop so we decorated one of our shelves with them.
Then i played around with some manila gift tags and came up with some new packaging ideas.

Lots of the Jewellery is now up on the folksy shop...i think that's a good few days work...don't you?
xxx

Posted by Bex.

We Rather Like Rob Ryan And His Work...

We're sure that many of you savvy people out there all ready know about this man and the wonderful things he does with paper and scissors (and probably a craft knife and other sharp cutting things); but we thought we would just mention him here....because we rather like what he does....

So, onto some pictures for y'all!

(photo taken from stellab1's flickr stream)

Wonderful plates with his designs on....

(taken from UtilityDesigns flickr stream)

(picture taken from stellab1's flickr stream)

(photo taken from Suzy Que's Flickr Stream)

He also has a lovely blog!!

Well, its been a terribly long week with far to many boring day job hours and no where near enough fun StuffedNonsense hours. Tomorrow's plans include not making a cup of coffee for a single customer, making some button jewellery and also making some Scrabble necklaces.

Hopefully the camera will be remembered and I'll take some pictures for you!

Sleep Tight.

xx

What We Did on Friday...

Before i get going i feel that first i may have to apologise if there is a melancholy air to this post, its a rather hectic time here at the moment with lots to get my head around and tonight i am feeling the effects of everything. but do not fear! i have some pictures of some 'warmish' sewing that i did in the shop on Friday...

On Friday I:

Cut up, stuffed and sewed up some lovely soft grey socks...

Then i got distracted by my blue tights and £2.50 new skirt (I'm now 8 months into my not buying new clothes challenge! i cant believe that since February i have only brought clothes if they are from charity shops or 'vintage clothes shops'Following my detour i cut out some face panels and sewed on some eyes.

Then i got distracted by the washing line of Crabbittz and felt that they had to be photographed...After the 'urgent' distraction of a washing line of Crabbittz was dealt with i cut out some lovely belly shaped pieces of fabric...Then i sewed these pretty pieces of fabric onto the grey balls of loveliness in order to make some lovely Warm Thoughts...

Soo cute and soo squishable, they are now (well hopefully will be in the next few days) winging their way to MADE in Cirencester.
It was rather lovely to lose myself in some hand stitching for a few hours.
Next week (Thursday-Sunday) El and I will be at the End Of The Road Festival running more monster making workshops. We're both really excited about it but I'm worried i will be teaching 8 year olds to make monsters when i could be watching this rather wonderful lady sing her rather wonderful songs....fingers crossed hey??
Because of our trip to Dorset the StuffedNonsense will be shut, but do not fear! we will return post haste with lots of new and exciting ideas for you all!

Stay Safe!
xx

P.S. Pictures of the most recent Craft Night In are now up on the blog, take a gander!

Rain Rain Go Away...

As the title suggests its raining here in Cheltenham...in fact its been raining for the last 8 hours...and i got soaked riding Caprice home from my new job (that's right, for some reason they thought it was safe to give me a job working with coffee!); But I'm all dried off now and if I'm honest have kind of enjoyed sitting in my sewing room listening to the rain fall onto the conservatory...

(just a little snap of the sewing desk; i apologise about the poor light. You can see my 75p charity shop Scandinavian style horse in the back ground, i like him.)

I went on a walk with Arthur the other day and took some pictures of lots of nice Typography whilst out and about, it would appear there are some rather nice examples around Cheltenham!

(Whats that??? Surely it can't be??? Is that really.....BLUE SKY?)
(We also popped into a Charity Book Shop and i was thoroughly tempted by the lovely burgundy book, if only for its title!!)

Well, i really should stop procrastinating and cut some lopsy lapins.
Just so you know the shops going to be shut this Friday (new job getting their heads around my availability, Also on Saturday the shops shut but we will be running a stall at the Brewery in Cheltenham which is about 10 minutes from the shop so you could come and see us there if you want??

Anyway, stay dry!

xx

We Did Something New!!!

Hello lovelies? Are you enjoying your weekend?

We've been busy working on something quite exciting. A few days ago the lovely Jo from The Love Of It got in touch with us and asked if we could come up with some Monster Making Kits as prizes for a treasure hunt she was organising.

We were more than happy to give this a shot as it was something we had been thinking about doing anyway!!

Here's the finished product!!

(We made fifteen in total!)(These three are up for sale on folksy.)Inside each pack is enough monster making supplies to make a rather sweet palm sized monster.There is also a sheet of instructions included with some of El's rather lovely illustrations, we liked the little pictures of monsters soo much we have decided to come up with some stationary sets with them on. What do you think??

Anyway...time to get on with the rest of our Saturday.
Take Care
xx