Merry Christmas!!!

Here's wishing all my customers, fans, friends, family and supporters a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year... Thanks for all your support in 2008.

I had a fantastic first year as The Felt Menagerie opened and look forward to next year... next year is the Year of the Felt and we are aiming for Global Domination... should we be able to get out of bed following a mad mad December...

xx
mel

News!!!

Well the festive season is upon us and is certainly not conducive to regular blogging. Poor little me is working hard as a bookslave while still trying to retain some semblance of sanity, have a social life and manage my newly acquired and very much surprising love life! ( I was surprised!)

Somewhere in this festive madness I managed to pass 100 sales in my etsy store... insert happy dance here! I'd like to say I'll be more prepared for the Christmas madness next year but we all know i won't be!

Also Feltmeup designs has been featured in the fabulous E-zine issue number 3 Design this/ Design That

Lovingly put together by the wonderful Ariadna who has done a great job of compiling a fabulous magazine packed with really amazing designers and toy makers. You'll find Feltmeup on page 212. Thanks Ariadna... we love you!

Oh and I even managed to do a few custom orders and start on my spring range of tweets... I'm exhausted!... excuse me I need to lie down now!

HELP!!!... It must be Christmas!

As usual yours truly is not prepared for Christmas! A manic week involving visits to the knitting and stitching show in Harrogate and a series of unexpected orders have left me in bits. Also working full time in the bookshop (Christmas newsletter anyone... who knew!) and attempting to have a social life are not conducive to regular blogging and being able to update my Etsy shop!

I have managed to make a new Christmassy banner and avatar for my Etsy store so all isn't lost. I keep telling myself I'll be more prepared next year but I said that last year! When will I ever learn?

And it's still November...eek!

Last posting dates for Christmas are:
Australia - 3rd December
United States & Canada - 8th December
Europe - 8th December
United Kingdom - 18th December

but remember if you are out of the UK customs can hold your items hostage for quite some time. Order early to avoid disappointment!

Lovely Felty Fans

I often wonder how my little creations are getting on once they leave the safety of my felty world. Today I had a lovely surprise when i logged on to my etsy to find that Stacy, who bought from me a couple of months ago had left some lovely fed back and pictures for me.

I have some very creative customers i can tell you! Stacy has used my Tweets in this beautiful mobile she has made for he new baby's nursery.

Here's hoping that the new baby likes it when she arrives... I am told that Stacy is expecting a lovely daughter. Congrats to Stacy and woot for creative mobile making!

Felt on Folksy

Hola!!!

Feltmeup Designs is Proud to announce the opening of our new Folksy shop!!! Today I listed my first item on folksy... a little Robin decoration... hopefully will be listing a fw more bits over the next few days. Folksy is like the British equivalent of Etsy I'm hoping it'll bring me to my homelands buyers and make me a little bit of Christmas profit... fingers crossed!

Watch this space!

Check Out These Hooters!!!

Firstly I would like to apologise for my terrible sense of humor and the title of this blog post. It's terribly immature and puerile... and well funny! Lets face it I do indeed have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy and am very proud of it!


Another thing I am very proud of are my new design "Hoots" the older, wiser cousins of tweets. This is the barn hoot design... I also have snowy hoots and tawny hoots but I like these guys best of all my new designs. They have a very wistful expression and the colour combination is really successful too. I also spent today building a lovely new shelving unit for my creations, flat pack furniture and me are not best friends but the resulting shelvage wasn't as bad as my wood working skills usually produce so I'm happy... even if it is a little wonky and the Tweets and Hoots have to cling on!

Felty Fame!!!

Well... Having just got over my surprise magazine fame what should happen but I have received some bloggage from House of Mouse AKA For the Love of Cute!
The House Of Mouse is a fab etsy store run by Anna living in The Netherlands, Europe since 2003. I love her little mouse friends all hand stitched by Anna. Each has it's very own personality ranging from super mice and star wars mice to chefs and angels, any mouse you can think of really! My current faves are her Dangerous mice... I love anything cute with a slightly sick sense of humour to it! Axel the executioner mouse even has his very own "victim"! And what cold hearted person could resist a Frankenmouse... look at that neck bolt... isn't he fab?

Whoops!!!

And look what was pointed out to me at the workshop!!! Yep... that is this self same blog in Interweave Magazine... which i have, have read and not noticed my famooseness!!! How silly am I?

Nuno Felting Workshop

Today I attended a nuno felting work shop run by Jenny Pepper at Hutton Buschel village hall, near Scarborough.
Despite feeling really rubbish (no sleep, bit of a cold) I had a good day, the hall and village were lovely. We experimented with nuno and made our own nuno scarf. As you'll see in my previous posts I have done nuno before but it was kinda new to me since we were using a method which involved beating the crap out of defenseless bits of fabric!

I decided to forgo my tradional blacks and greys and go for some thing bright and bubbly. I fell in love with this hot pink. It's hard to tell from the photo's but it was almost neon... totally lush! I was thinking about jelly fish when i picked the colours and I'm really happy with the final result!

The best part was throwing the scarf really hard at the table! I have a lot of anger issues and it really helped me work thru them! I also learned how to make these lovely long tassels/tentacles/fringing for the edge of the scarf.... It was good fun whipping them about to get them to felt properly! Will take some pictures with my lovely dummy so you can see the full effects a some point... but for now... here is the finished product. Swanky Huh? Don't think i will be able to let this one go either!!!Also just behind the hall was this lovely little shed... gorgeous isn't it... i plan on moving in there soon! Heck it can't be colder then my flat!

Nuno Fun

Being the inquisitive soul that I am I thought I would have a play with Nuno! No Nuno is not an Italian man, Nuno is a felting technique by which you felt onto a fabric base. I got a nuno book for christmas and two chiffon scarf blanks and only just got around to playing with them in august.Thus far I have only made 1 scarf but it was fun and I love the results, my first nuno scarf is a double sided affair in stormy colours. One side is different grey tones offset by a long black stripe down the middle. I used merino wool and ran little strpes of pure white silk fiber horizontally over the top.On side 2 I used a big swathe of black right down the middle with white stripes for a ladder effect in merino again with random silk fibers scatered over the top and curly wensleydale wool down the chiffon sides to make the scarf crinkle a little.

I really love my new merino scarf, it's toasty warm but still quite light and floaty, I'm hoping to get lots of wear out of it this winter. As it's my first I won't be parted from it but I think I have the merino bug now and will be making many more, hopefully! I have even bought a manniquin, called Miranda, to model them and will be adding them to my etsy repetoire soon!

Tweets Take Off

I am loving my new design Tweets, I love them so much that it's hard to part with them! Here are a pair of Tweets getting ready for a long voyage all the way across the pond to their new American home! I hope the like it there! I am particularly sad to part with my blue and pink tweet chick... which was my very first tweet!

I packaged them up well with some pink tissue which apparently they love to make nests out of, I also dropped in a package of Tweet food which is invisible to humans so they won't go hungry! Bye bye tweets!

Tweets!!!!

Poverty is great inspiration!!! Having just had my work hours cut down I find my self a: broke and b: with a lot of time on my hands! Literally!!!!
So, Yes, I did sit around and mope for a bit felling kinda sorry for myself then I got off my big butt and decided to do make some new designs to cheer myself up! What came out when I started felting were all these guys. I call them Tweets, in fact they all have names and their names are Tweet! I asked them: "What's your name?" and each and every one said "Tweet"!!!


Now, Tweets come in and infinite variety of styles (species if you like) from Exotic Tweets, Garden Tweets, Love Bird Tweets and of course simply Tweets!!!! I'm sure I will discover lots of new species as I delve deeper in the the realm of the Tweets... I'm very excited!

So I have donned safari hat and shorts and am setting out to search for more Tweets... The ones I have found already can be purchased at my shop.


TWEET!!!

Pigs Might Fly...

After having a horrendous week I felt I needed some cheering up. My suggestion that I could win the lottery was met with the standard parental phrase of "and pigs might fly". So in effort to hasten my lottery fortune I made some pigs that do indeed fly... Oh yes!

Now all I need to do is to sit back and wait for the money to come rolling in!
Flying pigs come in large, medium and teeny sizes and each is attached to a sparkley shiny lurex string for easy flight! Flying pigs are magical and there fore need lots of love and attention... flying pigs help the impossible become possible!!!

You can find them here: Feltmeup's shop

Mis-adventures in Craft Fair Land Part 2

Ah ha!!! At last I am Famoose!!! Behold my press clippings... erm clipping.

Note to self... next local event make an effort to lok less hungover!

Mis-adventures in craft fair land!

Sunday 13th July saw the first ever feltmeup craft fair adventure at Cayton village hall, near Scarborough. To be honest I wasn't expecting great things but it was a chance to give the felt an airing and see it all together in one place for once.

Sheep and aliens got a lot of attention as did badges and postcards. Bunnies were popular with the local press and Feltmeup was featured in the local paper, The Scarborough evening news. (pictures to follow since I forgot to buy said paper on tuesday!)

Cayton was also an opportunity to make new friends and contacts, as well as the glory of being in the local press, Feltmeup made connections with a couple of local businesses and are now discussing the possibility of having some felty creatures and badges in Kate's lovely shop in the market vaults in Scarborough.
I also loved seeing all my bags together, it reminded me how much I enjoyed making them. Every bag has a different memory behind it and so often I forget the reasons I started making in the first place. Lots of happy memories are in this little box! (Even if nobody wants to buy them I still love each and every one!)

All profits from the day were spent, very wisely, at the wonderful cake stall who did a fantastic line in fairy cakes!
To read more about the gala visit our local paper's website here

Isn't etsy a wonderful place? This is my lovely swap item from Bigfish of etsy. Look at all the pretty things! The UK bunch played a swapping game where we all sent of pretty things to a secret swap partner... it was coordinated by the lovely and talented Coldcell and we have our own flickr group here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/ukswapmay/

Packaged!!!

Ok so I get excited about some pretty odd things and lately I got a bee in my bonnet that I needed a uniform type of packaging for my goodies... and not just any packaging...no! Mine had to be special, cute, quirky and most importantly of all... inexpensive!

I saw someone using takeout boxes to package their stuff and yep... I had to have em! Many hours of sourcing and a huge head ache later I eventually found The Forsythe Company on etsy who did a small order for me... everywhere else only handled shipments of £50 or over! EEP!!!

I love my new boxes... don't they look swell. Especially with an added moo card and lovely iridescent tissue paper. Like i said... I do get excited about odd things!

Things I love part 2 !!!

Amongst my recent purchases one of the things I love most are my Laurafallulah hand embellished pumps! They are so lovely and comfortable and really cute. These pumps make for very happy feet! They even came with a beautiful hand sewn matching rose brooch which now graces my navy military coat. I bought these to celebrate getting my first repeat customer, which was a really great land mark day for feltmeup!

Laura's shop is full of beautiful hand sewn bags and purses and gifts. I'd hurry though she's only got one pair of size 6 pumps left, in red with pink roses!!!

Things I love

I love etsy... recently to cheer my self up and banish my blues I have spent a lot of money there! I felt I should share some of my etsy joy.

I bought this beautiful necklace from Gugaw and haven't taken it off since. It's beautiful and i love it. It's available in green and blue too. I love my red apple tho it's my favorite colour and so easy to wear.

When Will I be Famoose!

In a bid for world domination and global prosperity I have started my own facebook site where felty friends can become felty fans! If you are a felty fan and on facebook then you can join me here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Felt-Me-Up-Designs/31648065832


myspacers can still visit my sorely neglected myspace and become felty friends at:

myspace.com/feltmeupdesigns

On the plus side i've had my first sale to Argentina so we are becoming international! Curly Sue the needle felted sheep sold in less than 5 mins... I'm very happy about that!

Infestation!!!

Oh My GOD!!! Norman brought some friends home last night and now they are everywhere!!! I can't get rid of the little blighters!

I didn't mind when he introduced me to Norbert his friend from university but then Norbert brought his kids, Norris and Norma along and they brought their little red friend from school, Chuck and the next thing I knew they were eating all my food and stealing my glasses!!!!
They are very cute but really... enough is enough!!! I managed to catch Chuck earlier and get my glasses mack but he won't tell me where he hid my phone and the others are no where to be found. I just have to hope that somebody will adopt the little buggers soon! Trouble is they have told their mates and there's a whole intergalactic coach load heading my way! Help!
(If you would like to help save my sanity you can adopt a little bugg... erm... fella here. Please... before they find my chocolate stash! No wait... it's too late!)

From another planet!!!

Look what I found bundling around my garden... he must have got lost looking for the astronomy club in the park. He's very cute and told me his name is Norman. He says he's looking for someone to adopt him and can be adopted by visiting my etsy store.

Norman is very friendly, he told me he likes Disney movies especially Lilo and Stitch and monsters inc. He enjoys stargazing and hiking although he only has small legs so can't go very fast! Norman has been entertaining me with his tales of intergalactic travel, he offered to show me his slides but I declined!

Thank You

I just want to say a quick thankyou to everyone who has supported me through my recent troubles.

There may not be many postings for a while as I have some serious sorting and moving to do. Lots of thinking and re-evaluation too. But soon I will be back better then ever... nobody puts felty in the corner!!!

To all my felty friends, I love you and treasure your friendship.

xx
mel

Tales from the Igloo

I have been a busy bunny lately so not much time to blog but here I am now and that's what counts.

I'd like to introduce you to these too little cutie pies, Eskimimi and Craigimo... they were a commission from Mimi of Etsy fame and I just adore them both. Originally it was just supposed to be an Eskimimi winging it's way to London but the Craigimo just jumped into the jiffy bag before i could stop him.

Mimi has is the author of one of my favorite blogs which you can visit here, she also makes thing, very cute things and I can't wait for her new shop to open so I can spend my money there!

You can buy your own Eskimimi from my etsy store. I also have Eskimo Joe and lots of penguin friends if you are a fan of ice based pass times! They are all very fond of fishing and eskimo kisses!