more inspiration

uremberg Toy Fair was really interesting as always, but one company stole the show for me... Trousselier is a french nursey toys company and they have just come out with this great range of little characters, so refreshing when spotted in a sea of baby pink and white rabbits! I love the strange little faces on the printed fabric dollies.....

inspiration

ou might be forgiven for thinking that I have spent all day looking at beautiful work on lots of blogs! The amazing tea cups are by the pantry Violets' Guru Julie Arkell....want to do some papier mache now! and I love the work of Sarah Young sooo much. To think that she is only in Brighton, less than an hour away!

more presents

any thanks to Julie Hesse who has sent me a delightful handmade treasure all the way from USA! Julie has obviously been very productive and is churning out mini masterpieces that Julie A could only dream about!!!!

valentine

alentines day made me unable to resist another bit of needlefelting, poor Nick had to be nice when I gave this owl to him and look pleased.....

heart shaped biscuits

sually do something heart shaped for valentines day and this year I decided to go down the edible route! I am loving this wonderful baking cookery book, "The Hummingbird bakery cookbook" - everything is lovely from this book and the sugar biscuits were no exception! here is the recipe...
200g unsalted butter
280g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
400g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar
Icing sugar and lemon juice for the icing.
preheat the oven to 170 c
Put the butter, sugar and vanilla essence together in a mixer and cream until light and fluffy. Add the egg and mix well. Add the flour, salt and cream of tartar, and mix well, but do not over mix. The dough should be light, soft and easy to handle. Roll and cut out the shapes that you want and bake for about 10 minutes. When cool, cover biscuits with royal icing using a variety of colours and fancy sugars.

cool faces

eally happy with the beautiful letterpress print from Pistachio Press that I received this morning. I found it when I was looking at the fabulous mummysam blog whose work I have been admiring for ages, and lo and behold she had collaborated with a printer to produce these great faces......I wonder if I could give it as a valentine pressie?

dolls and mushrooms on jars

any hours later and I have just finished the felted doll that I had in mind to do but has taken me months to actually get down to doing. I am pleased with the way she has turned out and have a whole load of friends planned for her....thinking that it would be fun to make some boy and girl mice as well, or some pets....a daschund maybe?.....