Ugly dolls

In the Swedish comprehensive school ( age 7 to 16) you have handicraft lessons once a week. One semester you study textile handicraft and the next semester you study woodwork and this continue throughout your school years. Once a week you also study art and drawing and have music lessons. This is enormously important for the creativity and the teacher has a very important role in giving the pupils an opportunity to explore their creative side and in giving them self confidence by telling them that they are good and gifted. Not all teachers have this gift however. My old textile teacher in school definitely didn’t. We knitted mittens and crocheted kettle-holders. My kettle-holders were never square and my teacher made me feel that I was a lost case! Thankfully my mother was a great inspiration instead and thought me how to embroider and use a sewing machine.





This is Eva. She is my daughter’s textile teacher in school. And she’s a good role model indeed. Not only has she got textile lessons bur she also started a work shop after school so that the pupils could improve their skills even more. Each semester the pupils have an exhibition were they show all the things they have made during the semester. Dresses, skirts, pillows, soft toys, bags and much more is displayed in the school library and all the pupils and the teachers come and admire the work.

This year they also had an ugly dolls competition. While making the ugly doll they trained to go from a drawing to a finished doll by way of making their own pattern. The youngest pupils were nine and the eldest twelve.

My daughter loves her handicraft lessons and is very creative at home as well. And last Christmas she got her best present ever – her very own sewing machine !

Kite

Two weeks ago my husband and I bought an old farm house. It’s beautifully situated among open fields and with a large oak and beech forest nearby. Deer and elk are known to graze in the garden! We are not moving there permanently but want to use it as a vacation and weekend house. The house has a big barn which I hope to be able to renovate and use as a workroom. Finally I will have enough space to create really big things (?!?!) and to leave my stuff lying about just as I want….. When I visited the house last I saw a big hawk circling the fields. I think it`s a Kite. It was so graceful and beautiful. I took a photo and when I got home I decided to try and needle felt it.

First I wet felted the background and the silhouette of the bird.

Then I needle felted the color and the feathers.

It’s the first time I’ve done something like this and it was great fun. It was very difficult to felt the movement and grace and it became rather “flat”. It looks more like a goose than a hawk but I´m pleased with it anyway. Not for it´s "hawk like perfection" but for another reason altogether. Molly Jean and her fabulous blog Creative life and times is a great inspiration for me and I’ve been wanting to try out some of her techniques for a while now. But not really dared. Stupid I know but her things are so beautiful !!!! But what I did today is a step in the right direction for me. You have to start somewhere and now I dare..... and I can’t wait to continue trying. To bad it’s a workday tomorrow !

Wonderfully wooooolly

I don’t just love wool I love the "supplier" as well and yesterday I had a day in paradise. Me and my daughters visited B and E and their 24 wonderfully woolly sheep. B and E is very fond of their sheep and treats them with great respect and the sheep show them a lot of affection back. As a visitor you can get very close (and I mean VERY close) to the animals and you get a lot of wet kisses and nudges with their hoofs if you stop cuddling them. It’s a great experience for us "city folks" to have such a sweet encounter with nature. It beats snakes and spiders any time!

Gracie the garden Pixie

Meet Gracie the garden Pixie that finally got her hair! The uncarded wool was perfect with it’s different colors of green and it looked so much better than the brown wool I tried before. She didn’t have any ears to begin with but when she got her hair on she still didn’t look as pixie-ish as I wanted so I decided to add a pair of “Spock" ears as well.

If you ask Gracie she thinks she’s having a real bad hair day and is seriously considering buying a hairdryer ( or stop flying into the electric fence all the time...)

But I think she’s a real cutie!

My bag of goodies

I ordered some new wool a week ago and have been longing ever since. I’m especially curious to see what the colored but uncarded wool will look like. I ordered yellow, green and orange. Yellow and orange because I want to use it for a lion’s mane and green is for a garden pixie. She’s been waiting for her hair a long time and I tried natural brown at first but she wasn’t a brown kind of girl at all. Maybe she`s more of the green type? Today the wool finally arrived and do you know what? I have absolutely no time what so ever to do any felting. Only a lot of boring tasks that I can’t postpone. Life`s unfair! But I had time to take a photo though. The colors looked so beautiful. Tomorrow is my day off so I just might get the pixie hair thing started tonight.…..

Mouse pad for an arctic climate

I had a piece of white wet felted wool with a disturbingly irregular shape. I just didn’t know what to do with it. My daughter passed my work table and said it looked like a polar bear……so that’s what I made. I added a needle felted head and ….hey presto! A mouse pad for an artic climate!

Hearts

These hearts are made by using wet felting technique. A friend of mine taught me and now it’s one of my best ways to relax after a hectic day at work. I stand at my kitchen sink looking out over my garden and my hands sort of do the felting by themselves. And I let my thoughts wander.... I usually make my hearts with an irregular shape because that’s how I feel life and love is. Love comes in mysterious ways and very seldom in the shape of the smooth and regular..... I always have a lot of felted hearts lying about the house. It’s perfect for cheering someone up, birthday greetings and making gift cards or brooches. And they weigh so light you can mail them without ruining yourself. You can make them in any color you like and I very often use two layers of wool in two different colors. It’s always exciting to see what the finished result looks like.

Rasta Angel Devil ( by Christel Khan)

I am a very proud owner of one of Christel`s bronze statues. It makes me happy everyday. I bought that statue because my daughters said she looked like me when I get an idea in to my head! I wanted to show her to you so you can see what inspired me to do my devils. Since I haven’t got a foundry I’ve been thinking about trying to do a statue in needle felting instead. If you also want to be inspired by Christel Khans work you can visit her website : www.khan.se

Scarecrow for bugs

I made this devil out of my daughters modeling material. It’s inspired by a Swedish artist named Christel Khan. She’s a painter and sculptress and her sculptures made in bronze are amazing. I’ve had an urge to try bronze founding ever since I visited Christel Khans art exhibition held in her beautiful garden called Sköndal. But I have no foundry and know absolutely nothing about the technique so what’s a poor woman to do? I tiptoed in to my daughter’s room and “borrowed” some of her modeling material for oven hardening. Once I was started I couldn’t stop. I think I made 30 different devils and angels. Help! What was I going to do with 30 devils? A friend of mine came with a solution. She was having a stall at a gardening fair and I sold my devils there as bug protection. My sales pitch was “put these in your flower bed and scare the bugs away”.

Who needs pesticides ( and garden gnomes) when you can have your very own garden devil!

Einstein

I took a course in needle felting last autum and since then I`m hooked. This is the first piece I made and I named him Einstein and gave him to my husband. He`s a Master of Engineering so I thought it was very appropriate. He doesn`t look like Einstein though ( my husband I mean). I give most of my feltings away to friends and relatives and I more often than not forget to take a picture of them before I give them away. So I hope my blog will help me remembering because now I want to share what I have done with you all! My technique has improved alot since "Einstein" but I`m rather fond of him anyway. Especially his "dreads".

Welcome to my blog

My name is Jeanette and I live in the south of Sweden. I have a passion for photography and writing and started my first blog Jeanettes fotoblogg in february 2007 to try to combine my two interests and do something more with my photos than just saving them in my computer. I also have a passion for handmade stuff - especially if I`ve made them myself. Surfing around in the world of blogs I soon found alot of blogfriends with mutual interests and I decided to start blog number two - Handmade. Yep, just the one you are visiting right now.

In this blog I will show you some of my handmade things and hope to inspire you to try some of them out for yourself. My firm belief is that everyone can be creative and everyone has a talent. It`s just that for some this talent is hidden and yet to explore.

I try to live my life creatively! Welcome to tag along!