Around Here…March 2015

Hello there lovely Buttoneers! I can’t believe it is April already! Where has the time gone!? This is the first end of the month that I haven’t got a Photo-a-Day Round-Up to share with you (you can read all about why here) so I thought I would replace that slot with a general round-up and look back over the past month of what happened ‘Around Here’. 

Around Here…right back at the start of the month I shared No.4 in my Create 28 blog challenge – Embroidered Felt Petal Hair Grips…I really love this collection, especially since they match the Hair Comb Slides and the Earrings too! 

Around Here…I gazed at the beauty of spring emerging around me and taking in the beautiful blue skies that I had missed all Winter. 

“…Then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils” – William Wordsworth

Around Here…I found my first balloon animal that I made on Boxing Day. I found him whilst having a studio sort out! Still going strong(ish) bless him!

Create 28 – No.4 – Embroidered Felt Petal Hair Grips

Hello there Buttoneers! Its Create 28 time again and I have a similar yet different item for you today with Number 4 in my Create 28 blog challenge. You know how I have become a little obsessed with those cute little doses of embroidered felty goodness lately? You know, those little petals…some beaded, some new colours, some embroidered in pretty little designs? Well…I kind of got a bit obsessed again and had the brain wave of using a similar idea as the embroidered felt petal earrings but less petals than the embroidered felt petal hair comb slides. I started to think about how I would wear the hair comb slides and then this snow balled (as many of my creative ideas do!) in to hair grips! Yeay!

I am so thrilled to have a whole set of items now under the embroidered felt petal umbrella, I like to make an extra set for myself and I think these may be my most used yet! 

I initially started off by thinking about my embroidery, which led onto thoughts about the embroidery I had used in my ’27 Before 27′ brooches. I looked back and realised I had almost forgotten all about the Wheat Ear stitch as I hadn’t re-made a version of ‘Raspberry and Chocolate’ brooch for a while. I re-kindled my love for that brooch and decided to mimic the colours and embroidery to create a matching embroidered felt hair grip set. I love the idea of items in my Etsy shop having little tiny links to each other to create collections and matching sets that people can purchase together or individually one at a time. I love the versatility of this idea.

I have always loved it when I can buy a pair of earrings and discover that there is a matching bracelet or hair accessory that I can team together.

I love that I can wear my earrings in the day and then add a matching hair accessory for the evening or vice versa and wanted to create a similar idea… Don’t fear though! I promise that this will be the last of the embroidered felty goodness for a while! 

I adore the richness that the chocolate brown oozes with against the deep raspberry pink felt. The pale pastel, ballerina pink embroidery thread adds a touch of cool to their warm coupling, whilst the wheat ear stitch looks delicate and unusual. 

I of course, just had to create the other ‘Raspberry and Chocolate’ colour way too as I am still so undecided about which I love best. The Wheat Ear stitch creates a lovely looped together chevron shape that compliments the chevron-edges, drawing the eye right to the petal tips, as well as collaborating beautifully in colour to form the overall petal design. 

I chose a beautiful teal embroidery thread to allow the intricate and unusual linked stitch to pop out against the rich tones of the felt and create a deep pop of fun and glamorous colour. 

Create 28 – No.3 – Embroidered Felt Petal Hair Comb Slides

Hello there Buttoneers! Happy Thursday! I am a little later with my post this week as I am trying to push myself back into work mode after a lovely valentines weekend away with my gorgeous fiancé. It. Is. So. Hard. I am struggling to disconnect from beach mode and connect with emails and blog posts and technology in general!

Aaahh, to be on permanent holiday mode, to breathe in sea air and release positive vibes all day long…

Surely we would end up taking it for granted (although I am positive that I never would) Anyway, back to reality it is and at least it is a pleasant start with the next instalment of my Create 28 blog challenge – Number 3 – Embroidered Felt Petal Hair Comb Slides. I thoroughly enjoyed making Create 28 – No.2 – Embroidered Felt Petal Earrings and wanted to create a similar theme but on a different medium. I love dressing up and making my hair pretty so a hair comb slide that can be slipped into a beautiful style (when my hair is playing nice, otherwise I just have to make do!) and finish off my outfit and matching earrings! 

If you missed out on the start of Create 28 and my older posts you can catch up here. 

I wanted to make them to match the earring sets that I created from Create 28 – No.2 so that they can be bought as a matching set or collection if needed, but also so that they could be worn individually too. I am so in love with these and can imagine them being worn either every day or dressed up in a fancy hair-do for the evening or to a big event!

Oooo the stories these pretty little hair combs will be able to tell!

Each of the four little felty petals on this hair comb slide are individually hand embroidered, right down to their pretty little chevron tips using a complimenting blue embroidery thread that adds a final touch and pulls together the flower petal design.

The deep royal blue felt contrasts beautifully and subtly edges the crisp white felt on the top and are together hand cut into zigzag points creating an elegant and fun look that is really versatile.

Create 28 – No.2 – Embroidered Felt Petal Earrings

Hello there Buttoneers! I have the second in my Create 28 Blog Challenge ready for you! This is all very excititg minus the full on panic I had the other night that I have taken on too much again (Will I ever learn!?) But you know what they say,

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough”

…Jeez mine must be dinosaur dreams! Did you miss No.1 in Create 28? 

Anyhoo, on with the show…This week I decided to create earrings! Earrings are something I have wanted to dabble in for a long time. I wear earrings every day and am always on the lookout for new and exciting designs that I can either wear in the day or when I go out in the evening. Way back when I was creating 27 embroidered felt flower brooches for last year’s blog challenge ’27 before 27′, I played around with different petal shapes, designs and colour combinations and really enjoyed the process and the creativity.

For this challenge I wanted to get away from the brooches a bit to play around with new ideas and test the waters before I commit myself to just being a brooch maker, I wanted to spread my wings and have a bit of fun with other ideas. When I was making a list of all the things for Create 28, I looked back on things I had played around making in the past and remembered that I had made a pair of felt petal earrings out of a few spare felt embroidered petals I had over made. This got the cogs turning and I loved the idea of stepping up the game from the flower brooches and trialled making the petals smaller and more intricate and even adding seed beads (the new bane of my life!)

I am sure I will be finding seed beads around the studio house for months! 

I seriously enjoyed making them and I love the new colour combinations like these rich chocolate and raspberry tones…The deep chocolate brown felt oozes with indulgence and contrasts beautifully with the rich raspberry embroidery thread creating an elegant and fun look that is really versatile and super gorgeous!

…and these deep emerald greens that make up leaves. I hand stitched each part of the embroidery design to look like the delicate veins of a leaf and much like leaves, each are individual. Each embroidered leaf vein is tipped with a tiny, yet eye-catching seed bead that adds a little bit of loveliness to each unique pair. The felted leaves are completed with a blanket stitch to create a gorgeous texture around each edge. I am not normally a fan of green but these earrings are one of my absolute favourites! 

Eliston Button Etsy Shop and Last Postage Dates

Hello there lovely Buttoneers! It’s almost Christmas!! It has come around sooooo fast so I wanted to drop in with a quick reminder about the Eliston Button Etsy Shop for your last minute handmade goodness to treat yourself or to give away as gifts to your loved ones.

All of my felt flower brooches are handmade and hand stitched with love and embroidery. They are all different and the designs are based on my 27 before 27 blog challenge that I completed this year. Multiples of some have been made but each one is unique – which is what is so lovely about buying handmade. 

Before I go headstrong into showing off my own handmade crafty bits and pieces I just wanted to sum up why I think everyone should shop handmade…

27 Before 27 – I Did It! (and two big announcements)

It is so crazy to me that this will be the last time I use this banner. So crazy to me that this is the last blog post about my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge. So, so crazy to me that I am now 27 (It’s my birthday today! Woohoo!!) So crazy to me that I created 27 different embroidered felt flower brooches in the relatively short time this challenge happened in and even crazier to me that I completed this challenge. 

I started this blog (publicly) on January 7th this year (2014) and this is the 76th blog post. Right at the start, on the 9th January, 2 days after I launched this blog into the unknown I thought “Hey, I know, I will set myself a blog challenge” what I really should have thought was “Hey, I know, let’s make all of this new blogging goodness a hell of a lot harder and totally take over the time in each working day” It also didn’t help that my Fiancé and I bought our first house after renting for ten years together a few months ago, so our evenings and weekends have been filled with packing and sorting and packing…and did I mention packing!? Which also meant that I was working around rooms full of boxes and trying to keep hold of my studio for as long as possible!

So, I gave myself just over 22 weeks to make 27 brooches and I have to say I thought it would be a breeze. It wasn’t. A few days after I set the challenge in a rush of excitement and positivity, I started to panic. I was scared I wasn’t going to make it and that I wasn’t going to make it in front of everyone that read my blog, everyone who knew me, everyone I had ever spoken to and now was a friend of mine on Facebook, everyone that may want to buy my art. Jeez… 

I kept going. I wanted to set up this challenge to get my crafty butt into gear, to hold myself accountable so I couldn’t just make excuses and only make a handful.

I had to push myself to think outside of the embroidery hoop, to imagine the possibilities past the fear of the unknown, take one big fat crafty leap into the giant mountain of buttons and own it.

I wanted to be able to work towards something. I work really well with a little pressure and a big old deadline. When I was studying Art and Design at college I used to leave my projects right up to the last minute and then cram through the nights before the deadline to get it all done. My quality didn’t suffer, but it was like my brain just couldn’t compute the enormity of the project until I really had to get running. With scissors.  For my life.

This challenge was no different really. I made one each week, sometimes two if needed,  sometimes taking time to learn new stitches from scratch, sometimes throwing it all in the bin and starting over.  Sometimes crying my eyes out in gasping sobs and wailing that I couldn’t do it anymore and I was going to pack it all in. But, Francis Ford Coppola once said…

“I don’t think there’s an artist of any value who doesn’t doubt what they’re doing”

And, I felt better that it wasn’t just me, that I might not fail this after all.  That someone else out there may just be having the same quarter-life crisis and be moments away from picking themselves up off the floor, picking off the stray threads and getting back out there. Sometimes I felt like I had to hit the bottom to be able to push myself off into the next day and come back full of creative fuel and drive.

Maybe I just needed to find the courage to touch the butt!

Each brooch I photographed about 90 times, narrowed it down to about 15 photos for a blog post, edited the photos, stamped my little copyright label on each one, watched them all upload to the blog, grabbed a cup of tea and poured my thoughts and feelings and creative processes out onto a blank page. I filled up the white space with words that spill out about how proud I am of each one and how each brooch holds a part of me that I won’t forget. That’s what you are buying into if you decide you want to buy one of my brooches when my Etsy shop opens (more on that in a while) You are buying into the hours of love and care that I can’t help but plant into each little petal of each felt flower brooch, and of course time. You are allowing me to pursue this as a career, allowing me to have time and freedom to make more, design more and create new things.  

27 Before 27 – Sunny Days

It’s here!! The day is finally here!! The day I share with you, in this glorious moment, the final embroidered felt flower brooch in my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge!! How amazing, yet totally crazy pants is that!?

If you are a newbie Buttoneer, grab a cup of tea and explore the beginnings of what turned out to be the craziest challenge I have ever set myself! Start at my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge and if you like, work your way forward using the ‘categories’ section on the right hand side of the page. (Eventually, I will make them their own page)

So, I will get straight to it as I am far too excited, here, I give to you, my lovely Buttoneers, Brooch No.27 – Sunny Days…

…because I don’t know about you but I think every day should have a little more sunshine and a little more happiness..

I knew, when I was about two thirds of the way through this challenge, that I wanted to (hopefully) complete this challenge with a happy flower, one that would stay with me and allow me to recall the good parts of this challenge and forget about the hard times and burnouts. Sunflowers make me smile. If I see a sunflower, I like to imagine is holding all of the suns energy in each beautifully individual petal and that it radiates out to me,  smiling with its seedy face! The sun shining makes people happy. The sun I drew when I was little, with chubby fingers clutching my Crayola crayons was yellow. Yellow is a happy colour. It was a no-brainer! 

I cut each of the eighteen happy yellow petals freehand. I wanted them all to slightly differ in shape or length to look a lot more organic and I love the outcome. 

I wanted to create the seeded centre of a sunflower and found this perfect beaded button for the centrepiece at my local fabric shop. I paid a lot more than I normally would want to on a button but it was just perfect! I knew if I didn’t buy it there and then, I would change my mind and settle for a button that just wouldn’t have had the same effect. I love it! It absolutely reminds me of the sunflowers centre and I knew that with some embroidery, my idea may just come to life!

 I used a fabric marker and made a small black dot on each of the top layer of petals. This was a good marker of where the button came too on the petal and where I should start my embroidery.

27 Before 27 – Royal

 

Good morning Buttoneers! I am very pleased to share with you embroidered felt brooch No.26 in my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge! 26!! TWENTY SIX!!! Isn’t that just totally crazy pants that we are here, together, one little felt flower brooch away from the completion of this challenge!?

If you are a newbie Buttoneer, welcome! Grab a cup of tea and read up about my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge.

Now, this brooch, my lovelies, is an old design (wait up…wait up! I know what you’re all thinking…but hear me out!) The only reason I mention this is because I made a similar brooch for my one of my best friends 21st birthday and now I feel like I may owe her a more improved brooch, now that I have learnt so much more and ‘finish’ my brooches to a better standard! (The gorgeous girlie may even text me after she reads this and hold me to that!) Back then, I didn’t embroider [Insert minion “Whaaaaaaaat!!??” here] and only played around with felt for fun. It is still a lot of fun for me to play with felt but these days I aim for a higher standard of ‘finish’ to the lovely little flowers now that I am taking it all more seriously (*snigger* ooo that all sounded a bit ‘grown up’ *snigger*)

However, with that said, it is still one of my favourite deigns that has stuck with me in my crafty imagination…

…mainly because of its rather regal centrepiece that oozes the elegance and sophistication of high tea with queen, and its rich, almost velvety deep purple felt.

 

See what I mean!? It is an antique brass coloured metal filigree centrepiece and I love it. Especially when teamed with a vintage style white flower button what is so pretty I had a job parting with it for this brooch! 

I didn’t want the brooch to be too busy with that grand centrepiece so kept my embroidery simple. I created these little back-stitched arrows shooting off the tips of the petals to draw your eye outwards to the colour and richness of the flower brooch. 

27 Before 27 – Sage & Onion

Hello there lovely Buttoneers! Hope you had a lovely break over the bank holiday (or the weekend if you didn’t get an extra day!) To be honest, it didn’t really feel like a holiday to me as we are still boxing up the house and studio for the big move! However, I am still embroidering these felt brooches as I am determined to complete this ’27 before 27′ blog challenge, especially now that the end is so near that I can almost taste it!

If you are a newbie Buttoneer you should pop over and read all about my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge.

Today’s brooch I have for you ‘Sage & Onion’. I found these lovely shades of felty goodness while browsing trying not to buy the whole shop/figuring out how I could actually live there in Hobbycraft a few weeks ago.

I loved how they made me think of herby sage hues and layered onion tones. The pastel colours looked so dreamy when lay together that I just knew they would make a lovely soft pairing.

 

I wanted the petals to have a really organic feel to them to keep with the ‘Sage & Onion’ theme, much like I did with ‘Tangerine’ and ‘Monochrome’, so I cut them free-hand and made them all individual and unique. 

 

When choosing an embroidery thread, I didn’t want anything to stand out too much and searched for a colour that would be in-keeping with the brooches name and colours. In the end I chose an onion skin brown to really compliment the creamy beige felt and not over power the sage. I also hunted down these two buttons as ideas for a centrepiece that would really go with the embroidery thread and bring the brooch together. 

I chose to stitch a threaded back stitch around the creamy beige felt and through to the sage felt to hold the two coloured petals together. I love the threaded part intertwining in and out between the back stitch, softening the lines and keeping that organic motion across the petals. 

27 Before 27 – Zig-a-Zig-ah!

 

“I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really really really wanna zig-a-zig-ah”

Now I have you singing along into your hairbrush wearing your tie dye tshirt, pedal pushers and jelly shoes to the Spice Girls, I feel you are now in the right frame of mind for embroidered felt brooch No.24 in my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge! If this is your first time to Eliston Button or you are a newbie Buttoneer, catch up and read about the ’27 before 27′ challenge here. 

I wanted a bright pop of hot pink colour to contrast a brilliant, bright white to combine together in a fresh, fun and fabulous colour combination.

I started out by cutting out tulip-like petal shapes in the two coloured felt sheets.

I wanted these colours to be the only colours in this brooch so that it really grabbed your attention, so I chose embroidery thread in the same tones.

I decided to keep the stitches simple yet eye-catching. I had in mind a zig-zag chevron that ran alongside the zig-zags of the petal shapes so used a back stitch to edge the felt in white. I followed this with a hot pink line and then closed around it in white back stitch again to form three lines. I love this effect! It is really effective and I like the way the two white lines almost frame the pink yet don’t allow their colour to wash into the felt, but add texture.

27 Before 27 – Oranges and Lemons

“Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St. Clement’s…”

This old English nursery rhyme has been playing on repeat in my head for about a week every time I think of this brooch. It started when I sat down with a hot cup of tea and pondered over what the next few brooches in my ’27 before 27′ challenge should look like, what colours they might be and what sort of centrepiece I would use.

If you are a newbie Buttoneer you can read about the ’27 before 27′ blog challenge here. 

I decided that the brooches that stood out the most were my yellow ones like ‘Hello Sunshine’ or ‘Spring’  or my orange ones like ‘Tangerine’. The last time I used one of these sunny and cheerful colours was at least ten brooches ago! (To be honest it seems totally crazy pants to me that ten brooches even exist!) So I scribbled down the words ‘Oranges and Lemons’ just as a reminder. However, When I looked at these colours and wondered how to combine them…

 

…It all just sort of fell into place!

I love the citrusy zest of colour so much! I can almost smell the sweet orange and the zingy lemon scents when I see them!

27 Before 27 – Peppermint

Hello there Buttoneers! Just dropping in to share with you brooch number 22 in my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge! I am amazed that I have got to number 22 already and it seems to have flown by since the original post back in January. If you are a newbie Buttoneer catch up on the ’27 before 27′ blog challenge here.

As seems to be the case these days I chose the colour of my brooch first. For a while now I have wanted to make a brooch with a different coloured underside to the petals than the colour on the top or inside of the petals.

The idea had floated around in my creative imagination for a while until I found this gorgeous fresh peppermint coloured felt and just knew it would look great against a brilliant bright white.

27 Before 27 – Pink Hearts

 

Good morning Buttoneers! It feels ever so strange to have not posted since last Friday because of the bank holiday! Blimey! But here I am, coffee in hand, to show you the latest brooch in my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge. Click the link to read about the 27 before 27 blog challenge if you are a newbie Buttoneer. 

We are fast approaching the end of the challenge with this one as it is number 21! Ahhh, to be 21 again! haha! Actually, maybe not, I was in a crumby job as a funeral arranger and I hated it, and had to work on my birthday – what’s all that about!? One of the directors at the company sang happy birthday to me down the phone and I saw the next twenty years at the company flash before me and I wanted to cry! Hooray for Eliston Button eh!? phew! 

Anyhoo, I digressed…here we are…Pink Hearts….

I had a rough idea for this brooch at the get go which was a comfort at this stage as I am normally having a little panic. I knew I wanted hot pink because, to be honest, it is a total travesty that I haven’t used hot pink by now, and I also knew I wanted it to really pop with colour and loved the way navy blue really complimented hot pink. I always love the way the brand Joules uses these colours together like here, here and here.

I also knew I wanted to go back to my favourite petal shape throughout this challenge…the heart shape. I used this in Hello Lover and in Lucky and loved the outcome and wanted to experiment with different sizes of the shape too. 

I chose the centrepiece almost immediately after I had decided now was the time to use the hot pink felt. I bought the last handful of these buttons from my local fabric shop years ago and love them so much.

I think they look so elegant with the navy blue and the thin gold line between the two beautiful textures. It reminds me of a 1950’s ladies summer hat at Ascot!

I just don’t seem to be able to create a heart shaped petal without using the Pekinese Stitch. I love this stitch, I love how it looks like lace around the edge of the petal and how it makes the petals look so whimsical and delicate. ..

27 Before 27 – Frozen

Good Morning Buttoneers!! Woweee! We are at embroidered brooch number 20!! Two Zero!! Crikey! In some respects it feels like I am only really getting started but some days I feel like I have been making these for the challenge since forever! I will round-up at the end of the challenge on 11th June (my birthday – hint hint wink wink) and let you in on all of the Eliston Button Top Secret behind the scenes stuff!

If you are new, grab a cup of tea and read about my ’27 before 27′ blog challenge here. 

This week’s brooch was a tricky one. I really felt like I was having a bit of a slow trudge through thick mud to get my creative ideas to flow. I sat down at my computer and looked at the end photo that I add to the end of each ’27 before 27′ post, it rounds up all of the brooches that I have made for the challenge and acts as a fun countdown to track my progress and kick my butt into trying to complete the challenge at the end and in enough time. I sat there for a good ten minutes just staring at it. Then I began to notice things, like colours and stitches over the overall brooch and that’s when I got my inspiration. Blue. The colour blue. I hadn’t used a felt with a shade of blue since the palest of blues in ‘Aquamarine’ or the striking blue of ‘Out of the Blue’. BINGO! 

I sprang into action and had an oak leaf style shape idea in my mind so started cutting away like a crazy lady! 

I love these little oak leaf shapes with their rounded edges and organic free style. That is until I laid them out in a flower shape to see how the brooch would form together and before me, I saw a snowflake! 

Maybe it was the cool blue shades or maybe it was the snowflake shapes that were formed as if by magic in front of me but all I could think of was, when it all came together it looked like a flower frozen in time…just like one of my brooches…

27 Before 27 – Merlot

Good afternoon Buttoneers! Just popping in with a quick ’27 before 27′ blog challenge post to share with you all brooch Number 19!! (If you have no idea what I am talking about you can read about the ’27 before 27′ blog challenge here)

It’s been a bit of a crazy pants week with the bank holiday making it a short week, so I have had to catch up a little quicker with things and I am looking forward to grabbing a cup of tea tonight and lying on the sofa, letting the telly wash over me in a relaxed bliss. Taking a short blogging break because of the bank holiday on a double whammy brooch week was just bad planning! 

Anyhoo, Without further ado….

I found this embroidery thread in my local fabric shop and loved the rich, warm burgundy colour. I love that…

…You can imagine yourself sat drinking a glass of vintage Merlot overlooking the vineyards of Bordeaux without a care in the world other than how well you would like ‘le steak’ cooked… 

…or maybe that’s just me.

One of my favourite stitches was one I learned for my Raspberry and Chocolate brooch waayyyyy back at brooch number 4. The wheat ear stitch was a little more complex than I had shown before and It had stuck with me. So, I played around and found that if I widened the stitch from its previous use and took it across the wider petal, the stitch was beautifully ‘shown off’ especially against the creamy felt. 

27 Before 27 – Leafy Greens

Good morning Buttoneers! Hope you had a lovely Easter break. I am back after having a blogging break for the bank holiday and it’s lovely to come back and see that the world didn’t explode and my blog is still in one piece and didn’t fall off the face of the internet! It’s the first break I have taken since starting the blog and even though it was only one day, I was a little nervous. So glad it worked out well and no one disappeared/got lost/went away etc – all good practise for when I move in June and will take a blogging break – Don’t panic! I will let you all know when and for how long nearer the time! 

Anyway, I am at embroidered felt brooch number 19!! Can you believe it!? (If you are a newbie Buttoneer you catch up here – ’27 before 27′ blog challenge)

I had a good look at my final photo for each post (the one that shows all of the brooches so far in this challenge) and realised that I only had one green brooch and immediately thought of leaves.

How fun, I thought, would it be to have a flower brooch made entirely out of leaves…and how pretty would the embroidered leaf veins look fanning outwards from a beautiful centrepiece….

I chose two different shades of green felt and cut out two different sizes of leaf to start the creative process and so that I could imagine the embroidery clearer with a shape in mind. 

I liked the idea, as with ‘Monochrome’, of having a darker ‘edge’ to the inner, lighter shaded leaf to set it off well and to imply more depth in the leaves rather than something a bit two dimensional. 

27 Before 27 – Monochrome

 

Good afternoon Buttoneers! Its ’27 before 27′ time! I honestly wasn’t sure I would get this brooch finished by today but, here we are at brooch number 17 of 27 and I am super excited to show you this one! (Read about his blog challenge here)

For a while now, I have had a monochrome brooch in mind, just black and white with a hint of grey.

Classic, elegant colours that go with every outfit and never go out of style.

I really loved the freedom and fun of cutting the petals for my last few brooches in freehand and not using the first one as a template, so transferred this non-perfectionist idea to this one too (I know…I know…I was shocked too!)

I really love that they look like little monster feet or footprints! I also wanted the larger black petal to be behind a smaller white petal so that the white petal had a subtle edging of the darker colour.

27 Before 27 – Poppy

 

As promised Buttoneers, it is a ’27 before 27′ blog challenge double whammy this week and I have, dare I say it, one of my favourite embroidered felt brooches I have made so far to show you! 

(If you would like to read about the start of this challenge and why I set about it you can do so here) 

I have had a poppy flower in mind for a while now and I like to mix it up a bit with real flower designs and imagined flower designs but was waiting for the perfect opportunity. I imagined it all out, right down to the stitches and the centre piece. Problem was, I didn’t know how to do the stitch or own the centrepiece. Yep…now you can see why I hadn’t made it yet!

So practise made perfect with the stitches and I, by pure miracle, found a perfect centrepiece. It was all systems go go go! 

It took a while to find exactly the right shade of red felt (have I mentioned before that I am a total perfectionist) but when I did I was excited to cut out some free hand floaty looking shapes for the Poppy petals. 

I finally (after a serious amount of practise – thank you YouTube tutorials) mastered the French knot stitch. I know…I know….it’s meant to be really simple! I think I must have been having a sleepy day as I normally pick things up quite quickly but on this day I seriously lacked coordination! 

27 Before 27 – Amethyst

Good afternoon Buttoneers! It’s a double whammy ’27 before 27′ blog challenge this week. You can read about this challenge here.  I still can’t believe that I am just over half way now! Its crazy pants! So without further ado here is embroidered felt brooch number 15…

I decided on purple as the colour theme for this brooch as I haven’t used it yet.

I found these three beautiful shades of purple that immediately made me think of the gorgeous shades of Amethyst.

27 Before 27 – Blush

Just over half way! JUST OVER HALF WAY! Woooohoooo! Can you believe it!? Where has the time gone? Well, I don’t want to make you ‘blush’ (see what I did there!) but I have a lovely brooch for you today for number 14 of my 27 before 27 blog challenge. You can read all about my super-duper challenge here. 

Without further ado my lovely Buttoneers, here is Blush.

To be honest, I am astonished that this lovely shade of pink hasn’t appeared sooner in my brooch designs (shame on me) but at last it is here and I unashamedly love it! 

Maybe it is because, when I cut out my petal shapes, they looked like little fluffy candy floss clouds!