Have You Head Of...

Lo Cole??

 I'm sure that there are many of you Illustration savvy types out there who have.

 I recently discovered his work whilst doing a 'shop local' search on etsy (I was trying to find other creative types in Cheltenham.) 

I'm a little bit in love with his work! Some of you may know that I do enjoy pictures of birds so a fair bit of Lo's work is right up my street. I look at his work and I'm reminded, a little bit of Charley Harpers style.

Very Early Birds can be found here.

Night Birds can be found here.

Natural Order can be found here.

I really like the simple style of his work and the colours he uses are wonderful. (I do apologise for my rather lacking descriptions of his work...I tend to clam up when I try to explain why I like something)

Anyway, you can find more of his work over here on his website.

xxx

Recently Listed...

 Bonjour!

I've just finished listing the Christmas Decorations I was going on about earlier this week...(it feels rather peculiar to be listing things with snow flakes on when its super hot outside but hey ho!) You can find them in our Etsy shop and also in our Folksy shop

What do you think??

I've also been tinkering away on the Giraffes In Scarves and I think I've got the pattern sorted, so hopefully they will be up for sale some time soon!

P.S. watch out for some money off offers coming up soon too!

xxx

Pictorial Review.

I like coffee a lot.

An interesting article on Jack Hudson's illustrations, in the recent Oh Comely (which is apparently now kept in the pregnancy section of my local W H Smith...Oh Comely is not about having babies...so I am confused by this).

Embroidery on a favourite grey dress (psssst...I did it myself.)

A stick forest drawn whilst battling the boredom of a day shift.

A nice label found in a pair of even nicer shoes... unfortunately they were not Arthur's size...but he liked them, and would have brought them if they were in his size.

A fabulous 100% silk blouse covered in brown elephants, which I couldn't leave the charity shop without...even though it wasn't my size and is in fact a good 5 sizes to big for me...(maybe I should take a leaf out of Arthurs book?)

The reflection of my spectacles taken whilst having another coffee (I told you I like coffee.)

New Christmas decorations...moustached shaped ones. What do you think?

More moustaches.

Christmas Decorations in September??

I know what your thinking lovely followers...'surely the StuffedNonsense girls can not be so organised as to actually be doing things for Christmas in ADVANCE? Surely not?!!' Well...it's true...or not reading things, it's like we've suddenly become organised or something. I think its because getting ready for the Thames Festival was a wee bit stressful and if we're honest we should have started making a lot earlier than we did; so we've learnt from our mistakes and, in preparation of the flurry of Christmas markets we have planned, we're making in advance!

 

I thought I'd start the Christmas making with some Embroidered Snow Flake Decorations. We made some last year, when we still had the shop, and they proved to be popular so thought we'd give them another go. I couldn't find the right type of calico/linen fabric (I wanted it the shade of beige shown in the pictures with the tiny brown flecks running through it) I had to compromise and buy a metre of canvas fabric (which is what is pictured) but its a bit too thick and hurts my fingers a little bit...at least its the right colour tho'.

There going to be sewn so they make a stuffed ornament (similar to the way you make lavender bags), I spent a while last night trying to find some nice Christmas fabric for the back, but ended up walking away from the computer frustrated. All the fabrics I came across were either too old fashioned and fussy or too 'designed' (i.e. fabric with lots of owls in hats on)...I think we're just going to go for some polka dot fabric. 

Where do you guys got for lovely fabric...i tried our usual haunts (seamstar and fabric rehab) but even they didn't have anything right...maybe we're just being to fussy?

Anyway, I'm off to cut out lots of felt moustaches.... I'll save them for another day.

A Giraffe In A Scarf.

  As promised last night here are some pictures of a new creation we hope to roll out for the Christmas markets we have lined up...

I'm a little bit worried that it might look a little bit too 'Bang On The Door'...if anyone remembers them?

I think the colour is spot on though.

The scarves will be thicker than this one.

What do you think? We're thinking that we could make them out of a few different shades of yellow, I can see them looking really cute on the stall in one of our old suitcases. On a side note...I'm trying out the new blogspot dashboard thingy which is why the pictures are all higgledy piggledy...I think it looks OK though.

I'll be back in a few days with some pictures of the newly organised work room, the pictures I took today aren't quite what I was after.

I'm off to go and feel all good about myself because I went to my friends allotment and helped dig and put up two flat beds for growing lovely veggies in AND I made the first batch of soup of the Autumn!

xxx

Still Standing.

We're hoping that if we don't mention we haven't been here since forever you won't tell us how terrible we are at blogging.

I hope to bring you some pictures of the newly organised work space tomorrow and also some new pictures of new things, including a Giraffe In A Scarf...actually I believe that the words 'new things' should be replaced with the singular 'new things.'

Basically it has taken us a little longer than we expected to recover from The Thames Festival (which was a huge success!) Hats of to The Crafty Fox crew, those guys did amazing and were a true credit to themselves! Here's some pictures from the weekend...

StuffedNonsense by day...StuffedNonsense by night (if you look closely you can see Helper Number One...he's called John. Helper Number Two is called Arthur...but he's not in this photo.)

The view from StuffedNonsense's stall.

Our jam packed Monster Making Workshop.

We're back and functioning now, so you can expect some more posts and cyber activities (hopfully)

We will try not to let you down.

xxx

Where We Disappeared To...

Oh my goodness my lovelies!

How has it been over a month since we were here last. It's been absolutely manic around these parts.

StuffedNonsense is very lucky to be taking part in The Thames Festival on the 10th and 11th of September (thanks to the oh so lovely Crafty Fox Craft Fairs). We've done a fair few fairs in London before now but this one is a weekend one and we've been told it will be rather busy....soo we've been sewing up a storm, and as is inevitable there just weren't/aren't enough hours in the day so we haven't been able to be here as much as we would like to. We've been compromising and putting fairly regular facebook updates so if you'd like you can catch up on us there...

Because the festival is a weekend one we really want to make sure we have enough stock for both days so we've been making insane numbers of creatures (55 Human Beans, 40 Crabbittz and 40 Fat Bears to name a few)...its kind of rewarding once you see them all done but drives you crazy when you've been working on the same batch of creatures for the last 4 days!...and it makes for a messy studio....

This is the cutting table in Bex's studio/conservatory...covered in the various pieces required to make 40 Crabbittz

And contained within that blue tub are 55 Human Beans waiting to be sewn up...any volunteers?

So, that's it really, we will probably be able to squeeze in a few more posts before we leave for the big smoke...but we'd still like to hear from you so please leave comments on facebook (it helps us realise that there is life outside of our sewing rooms!)

Thanks for your patience!

And our apologies for the terrible photos.

xxx