Curious Cat Creative blog

I’m back in blog land for Handmade Monday!  Remember to check out the other participants at 1st Unique Gifts.

This has been a busy week for myself and a number of fellow artists as we all took part in a 4 day exhibition ‘Wonderfully Made’.   The event is co-ordinated by The Peninne Artists and is held in the beautiful All Saints Church in Silkstone near Barnsley.

It’s such a great event to take part in and I love having the opportunity to look at all the fantastic work on show and maybe pick up a few Christmas presents along the way.

Here are a few shots from the event.

My display

The exhibition makes good use of all areas of the church.

More displays

This year one of the Artists, better known for his paintings, was also exhibiting leather goods.  It was great to see his work and chat about leather!

Leather bags by Simon Brock

Simon is keen to use traditional tools and British leather and, like me, he uses no machinery and creates all his pieces by hand.  His aim is create beautiful items, which are built to last.

I’m sure you’ll agree when you look at his work, he seems to be ticking all the right boxes.

More beautiful leather work by Simon Brock

Simon explained to me that as a trained cabinet maker he found he had a lot of transferable skills when it came to leather working.  Not least the ability to keep his tools sharp!

I enjoyed sitting with Simon watching him stitch and I consider myself very fortunate to have secured a stitching lesson in the New Year.  Stitching is something I’ve had on my to do list for the last two years, but something always gets in the way!

Simon Brock

So back to Simon.  I can’t let you go without letting you see some of his paintings.

Silkstone Church © Simon J Brock 2010-2011

His ‘Paintings by Simon Brock’ sign keeps getting bigger as people make the assumption that his incredibly detailed work must be photographs.  Such are the downfalls of being a seriously talented artist.

Whitby Abbey © Simon J Brock 2010-2011

Simon has many other varied interests, accordion playing and clog making to name a few.  If you’d like find out more, why not visit his blog Simon Being Crafty.  Fancy a fabulous piece of Art or maybe a greeting card a little less ‘run of the mill’? Then check out Simons Website and you won’t be disappointed!

Thanks for stopping by!

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What with holidays and kids at home I’ve been AWOL for longer than I expected!  Fortunately I haven’t been idle on the leather front.

First things first, it’s Handmade Monday over at 1st Unique Gifts so remember to check out the other bloggers!

Since I last blogged I’ve taken part in my first ‘Art in the Gardens’, which is an annual event held in my home town of Sheffield.  Saturday was windy but warm and a good number of visitors came to see the Art and Craft on show.  Sadly Sunday was wet and dreary which, not surprisingly led to reduced footfall.  Still it was great to catch up with friends and make new ones.

Stand at Art in the Gardens

This event saw the introduction of a new flower design.  As you can probably see, I enjoyed playing with colours on these!!

As a creative person I like to try different things and I keep having the urge to do BIGGER things!! Jewellery is so small!

So still working with leather and dye I tried my hand at a little freestyle art work.  This is what came out, not the best photo as it’s taken through the glass of the frame, but it gives you the idea.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed doing this, so today I made a start on another.  This time I did a sketch first to plan out what I was going to do.

Here it is so far, at the moment it’s just the outline and a bit of lowlighting.  Plenty more to do yet!  It’s also only a quick snapshot, which maybe explains why the bottom looks lighter than the top!

I’ve had my sketch book out quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.  I have a commission for a set of notebooks with dragon designs. I’ve created my designs and I’m waiting for approval from my customer.  Fingers crossed I’ll be able to show them to you soon

So it’s seems I’ve gone all ‘arty farty’ this week!  But I have to say I’m loving it!

Thanks for stopping by

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As its Handmade Monday remember to check out 1st Unique Gifts.
I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks.  The title may give you a clue?  No?

Last week I ‘celebrated’ my *cough* 40th Birthday and subsequently enjoyed a child and craft free long weekend in Harrogate.

I had a tick list of things to do which goes a little like this:-

1   Go to the cinema to see Harry Potter

Little did I know that I would be watching it on the smallest screen I’ve ever seen!!

2   Eat what I like, when I like

We had some lovely meals and  tea and cake at Betty’s tearooms

3   Go clubbing – I love to dance!  Here I am trying not to look 40!!

4  Have a spa treatment

I wonder, am I the only person who can have a full body massage and come out with a stiff neck?  I blame the toilet seat contraption you have to stick your head through!

5   Get a tattoo

You may wonder about this one.  Well, let me explain.  I have suffered with depression, sometimes quite debilitating, since my teens.  When I am at my lowest I think about my children Elizabeth and Andrew and I keep on going.  This tattoo is my attempt to symbolise that.  It’s for me,  no one else

Speaking of Andrew!  He was a welcome addition to this weekends event at Cromford Mill.  Normally we are in our own gazebo, but it was a nice surprise to find some large marquees there for us to go in.

I met up with old friends and new and the weather was kind

Throughout August there is a model railway display and I took Andrew to have a look.

Later on in the afternoon he had a go at doing some of his own designs with some of my scrap leather.

He was very pleased with his efforts and I think he did very well

Thats it for this week, thanks again for calling in!

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Well hello there   When you’ve finished here go and check out 1st Unique Gifts to see who else is blogging this week.

It’s been a busy week at Curious Cat Central.

I finally had chance to deliver 18 necklaces to my new gallery.  The Created Gallery in Chesterfield is an absolute Aladdin’s Cave of fantastic original items.  If you get the chance to visit, take it.  There is so much to look at,  Art,  Ceramics,  Glass,  Textiles,  Photography,  Jewellery in a whole host of mediums and not forgetting a great range of greeting Cards. (I’m sure I’ll have missed something off the list!!) I promise you won’t be disappointed!!  If you want a gift or just to treat yourself, I can think of nowhere better.

The title of this weeks post lends itself to two things.  The first being the heart pendants I’ve just finished.

I love to play with colour and use a variety of ways to apply it. When I’m creating these types of effects I’m really enjoying myself

‘Hearts and minds’ also lends itself very well to my son leaving his junior school on Friday.  Here he is doing his ‘graduation’ speech.

I’ve been so thrilled with his teacher this past year.  She certainly captured Andrews heart and mind, he’s really worked hard for her and made good progress.  To show my appreciation I made her a necklace.

Teachers can have such an influence on a child,  good or bad,  and it’s been lovely to have one say such nice things about Andrew and be so determined to get the best out of him.

So thats me for this week, thanks for reading!

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Ok, you know how it works by now!  When you’ve finished here, hop over to 1st Unique Gifts to check out the other Handmade Monday blogs.

This week I have been mainly working on building up stock of my small flower vases. I only had a few remaining and they all seem to be similar colouring.

As you can see some are still waiting for their middles.

I’ve tried a few different colours this time, adding brown, green and blue.  I’m really liking this pale blue

It’s always hard to know whether I should stick to ‘proper’ flower colours or not,  so I try to do shades which may match decor too.

For anyone who hasn’t seem these before, this is what they will turn into!

I think presentation is really important,  I have a little stack of boxes ready for delivery to the gallery this week.  To date, I’ve been using my stickers to personalise my boxes.  In the future I may look at having a logo printed.

One thing I have changed is my little ‘care card’.  Until this week these were a little info sheet popped into every customers bag.  They explain a bit about their purchase and how to take care of it.

I wanted something better than a little bit of paper for the Gallery,  something that would fit neatly in the box and look good as well as be informative.  So this is the redesigned card.  It is just the right size to slot inside the box.

It features the header image from my website on the front and contains all the relevant info on the inside.  Printed on card and cut by hand, they are a little fiddly to do, but well worth the effort!

Thanks for calling in!

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Forgive me crafters, for I have sinned, it has been weeks since my last blog post.

Unfortunately a bout of illness impacted on my crafting and everything associated with it.  I can’t say I’m up to full strength yet, but I’m better than I have been.

So what better way to get back into it than to take part in Handmade Monday.  After you’ve finished reading here, pop over to 1st Unique Gifts to see who else is blogging this week.

This week has been a little overtaken by the impending arrival of my Mum’s 70th Birthday.  I wanted to do something really special and decided to do a bit of a ‘this is your life’ thing with photo’s.

So for a day and half I scanned and sorted photo’s from the 40′s onwards.  It involved undercover missions to my Mum’s house to ‘borrow’ some pics, thanks Dad!  I then spent a whole afternoon completing the online photobook!

Whilst the result isn’t handmade I can assure you a lot of prep work went into this, arranging pictures and thinking of funny bits of text!

What I did enjoy was seeing old faded photo’s coming back to life.  This one for example was completely orange! Look at it now!

My older sister and me

My favourite photo has to be this one.  Mum looks fab

I’ve also spent time this week getting stock ready for the Gallery I’m going to be supplying.  Here’s a new size pendant specially created thanks to the Gallery suggestion!  It’s about 2.5cm wide and it’s a lovely size.  I’m not sure why I didn’t think to make a small one before!

Finally, Billy the kitten had his first sniff of the outside world today.  I put a little lead on him for safety as he was a bit jumpy.

Billy and big brother George

Thanks for reading, I promise to get my blog back on track!

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As I’ve just returned home from 2 days at Castle Ashby, todays blog will be a quick one!

Remember to check out 1st Unique Gifts for a selection of other crafty blogs to read.

This weekend event saw the unveiling of yet another stall layout.  We’re never happy are we? I wasn’t happy with the way the stall was looking.  I have a tendancy to put too much out and I don’t think I had anything to catch the eye of passing customers. After a good talking to by my new style guru Sarah Clarke, an new layout evolved.  Please feel free to give me your opinions!

If you get chance check out Sarah’s fantastic and orginal designs which are made in silver and gold.  You can find her at Fluid by Design.

This week I mainly finished off a few bits and pieces. as it was rather taken over by a new arrival.  Meet Billy.

Billy

You may notice he’s a little special as he has an extra toe on each foot!  I’ve since learned this makes him a polydactyl cat.  He’s gorgeous if a little naughty! He joins our family as a brother for George.

Georgie

George is still a little unsure about the mad 9 week old addition, but I’m hoping he will settle down.  Billy’s extra toes are a great compensation for the fact that George doesn’t have enough!!

Finally, to the title of the post….so the story ends.

Which story?  Well regular readers will be aware of my watch strap commission.  This weekend allowed the strap and the watch face to finally be united.  I have to admit my heart was in my mouth as I waited to find out if it fitted! It did fit and I was so pleased that I’d been able to complete this.

It was great to meet back up with old friends and make new ones over the 2 days, my Pennine Fairs family!

So thats it from me for this week.  Maybe not such a quick post after all! Thanks for reading

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Name:- Claire Doherty

Business:-  Clasicat Designs and Clasibags

This week its great to be able to feature someone I’m happy to call a friend.  She lives in Bolton with her husband and family of cats.

Claire and Ernie

The first time I met fellow Craft Pimp member Claire, we were sat opposite each other at a craft fair near Manchester.  I was a crafting ‘newbie’ whilst Claire obviously knew the ropes.  It wasn’t the most sucessful of events for either of us, but that chance meeting led to an online friendship.

Claire has always loved making things and tells me she’s been crafting for many years.  After being taught to knit by her Mum, she knitted her own jumpers and also used sew clothes for herself.

She then explains how she took up crafting  seriously about 7 years ago when she began making cards. Being diagnoised with depression led to a drop in hours at work, Claire wanted something positive to concentrate on. She began jewellery making which was then followed by her creating her own lampwork beads.

This gorgeous bracelet is available to buy here and features Claires own lampwork focal bead.

Claire says that she used to love making beads but tells me ‘I didn’t have the time to practice so I wasn’t that good’ Sorry Claire, I’m going to have to disagree on that, just look at these beautiful earrings, again made with her lampwork beads

By her own admission, she likes to try new things and started to make her knitted bags.  Claire explains, ‘I love making my bags, I love mixing colours of wool together and seeing the result on my felted bags plus I love the tactileness (is that a word?) of the eyelash wool that I use to make my little knitted bags.’

This is my absolute favourite and is still for sale!  Get it while you can at Clasibags!

Yeah I think I’ll let you have tactileness Claire.  As the proud owner of a fluffy Clasibag I can give you a couple more, strokeability and fluffyscrumptiousness.  Yes I admit it, I stroke mine, but come on!  Who wouldn’t??

Not content with just her range of fluffy bags Claire has more recently created a felted range too.  This is one of my favourite colourways.

Other crafts Claire would like to try her hand at include crochet, candlemaking and glass fusing.
She also says she may in the future have another go at lampworking as she feels she has something to prove to herself!

I really enjoy watching the natural evolution of the work of  fellow creatives like Claire. Seeing them try out new techniques it means I’m always looking forward to what they come up with next.

So now you’ve had a little look at Claire why not follow Clasicat Designs on Facebook, or check out her blog?

Thanks for calling in!

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Hello   No,  I’ve not been skiving, well I have, but not in the ‘I’m not doing any work’ sense.

First things first, it’s Handmade Monday so you need to pop over to 1st Unique Gifts to see who else is blogging this week.  Before you go, why not have a look at what I’ve been up to?

Monday night I went through my stock box trying to work out what things I should take to the gallery to represent my work.  It’s really hard to make a choice, so I tried to take something from each of my ‘ranges’.

By the time I arrived  on Tuesday morning I was really, really nervous! The owner was very friendly and suggested I had a look around before we chatted.  That made me feel even worse as the gallery was full of fabulous things making me feel inadequate!!

To cut a long story short I got some great advice and, if I want it, an opportunity to have some of my work on display.  So now the hard part, back home and working out real pricing!!  I’ll let you know all about the gallery as soon as I’ve made my decision

So skiving eh?  Well this is a leather term and it involves making the leather thinner.  I’ve needed to do this on the watch strap I’ve been making and I can definately say it’s not a good idea to hold the leather in your hand while you do it!!

oops

Ah well, it’s only a little cut.  He’s the naughty tool:-

Do you want to see the watch strap?  I took a few photo’s of the second side in progress.

Here we have a piece of leather, handcut roughly to the shape of the old one.

Now you can see I’ve cut it more to shape adding some markings and have cut the slit for the buckle.  Normally, you would use a shaped punch for the slit, but as I don’t have one, I improvised

Next step is adding dye and the piece needs to be assembled.

And this is how they looked this evening.  Excuse the photo of my knee!  There’s still some finishing to do but the main work is now complete.  The test however, will be if they fit the watch face!!!

And finally, I finished another little commission this week.  It’s a keyring for a lady who met me at a fair in Doncaster.  It will be in the post to her tomorrow

Not the best photo, but you get the idea!

Thanks for reading!

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Remember to pop over to 1st Unique Gifts to see who else is blogging this week

For me, a run of disappointing craft fairs over recent weeks led to the need for some thinking time.   So over the last couple of weeks I’ve been looking into the posibility of attending more ‘Art’ based events and also looking at contacting galleries.

I’m pleased to say that I’ve now been accepted to exhibit at ‘Art in the Gardens’ in September.  This will take place in the beautiful surroundings of Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens.

Botanical Gardens Sheffield -copyright Snapshot-Sheffield

Now in it’s eighth year I’m hoping it will be a popular destination for the public.

One of the Galleries I contacted has asked me to take in some examples of my work and I have an appointment on Tuesday.  I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I think it will be a good experience just for any feedback I get.

This weekend I’ve been at Elsecar again.  I really do like these events, well organised, good facilities and a chance to meet up with people I now consider friends.

As usual I’ve been working (in between chats! erm lots of chats!) and rather than do anything planned I went a bit freestyle. So here we have some freehand hearts, which I might turn into brooches

I’d not done crosses before so I had a bit of a play with that shape too, these will be for pendants.

Finally, I’ve been asked about a poppy, so this is one possible design for a brooch.  Again this was done freehand

The watch strap is coming on, I think I’m happy with one side so will now need to repeat the method for the second side.  I hope I will have something to show you next week.

Thanks for reading!

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