My four new card designs are now complete and available through the 
The Design Titles consist of; Peek A Boo (Top), Show Us Your Knickers (Above)....
....Feeling a Little Giddy (above) and My Box of Tricks (below)
I still have a few more new designs on the way, but this is as much as I could get organised with the kids at home. I've also been busy creating a vintage tag set which I will showcase sometime over the weekend, so please come back and visit later this week!
Well I'm nearly two weeks into the kids Summer Holiday and I'm still surviving... not tearing my hair out, or resorting to the glass of wine at the end of the day... YET!!!! No, seriously, me and the kids have been having some great days out, but it's good to have a day in every so often, and today was one of those days.
The kids were angels today, they played and amused themselves pretty much all day so I could craft all morning and get on with chores in the afternoon. I spent this valuable craft time putting together my new greetings card designs..... here is a sneek peek for you, although I'm really not giving much away at all in these photos, sorry!
Most of my new designs will involve cheeky vintage ladies with humourous strap lines, as well as my fluttering acetate wings and a bit of fairy dust here and there. The new designs should be ready by the end of this week and will be on my website for sale thereafter. Once they are available I'll post details here.
In addition to working on my cards, I also spent some time staining luggage tags with coffee to give them that aged, vintage look. It's a job I don't particularly enjoy as after a while the strong smell of coffee makes my head a little dizzy, but the end result is so good it's worth it. I generally use two to three desert spoons of coffee with warm water, just enough to fill the bottom of a low dish. I then place each tag into the mixture and swish around gently for a few seconds. Next I remove the tags and place them onto an embossed patterned kitchen towel to dry them lightly, I find the embossed print adds to the pattern of the stain as the tags dry. I then dip the ties into the mixture to darken them also. (See examples below). I've got a design already mapped out for these tags, so as soon as they are finished I'll post the details here.
Thank you so much Tracy for this lovely Award, it was such a nice surprise to receive this from you. My dear readers, please check out Tracy's beautiful blog Magical Kardz Now... Hhmmmm, who shall I pass this award on too, Mmmmmm.......
The gorgeous Bella DreamsThe dreamy Life After Dark
The delicately beautiful Paper Bird
The exciting Punk Rose Journal
The very vintage Rebecca for Vintage Living
Welcome to the home of Maygreen Fairies, in this post you can peep inside my creative space and see where my creations begin their life! Actually as soon as I decided to join this Blog Event, which is being hosted by the wonderful Karen Valentine of My Desert Cottage, I realised the task I had ahead of trying to tidy and organise my workspaces to look half presentable for this post. LOL!
As I have a busy household of husband and two 4yr old twin boys, there is not alot of spare space for a craft studio, so I kind of spread out around the house. I generally create at my dining room table in our conservatory (garden room), I love this room as it is all glass so has lots of light and views of my garden, which is a great area for inspiring my fairy creations.
Whilst creating I like to listen to "chill out" music the likes of Bhudda Beats and a wonderful Aboriginal Album that is my favourite, it makes me feel very calm and content whilst I craft away. It's also great to have a cup of tea on the go, my absolute favourite is Twinnings Lady Grey, it has such a lovely fruity summery flavour.
I like to store all my crafting "tools" and adhesives in an old wooden carry box so if I do have to create elsewhere in the house it's easy to "pick up and go".
Creating a storage space for my vast collection of Euphrema, vintage papers & books, cardstock, stamps, feathers etc.... was a challenge, but I have a beautiful window seat in my kitchen that is adjacent to the Garden Room and it holds all of this kind of stuff (below are photos of it closed as a seat and then open to reveal the hidden storage).
Now we move on to where I store my finished art pieces ready for Craft Fayres and for listing onto my website, this place is also where any clients visit to view my work for purchase. In the upstairs of my home I have a study which is split into two with a mezzanine upstairs area and it is here that I house all my finished pieces, along with my collection of craft magazines and books. (Pictures below).
Below, my handmade ragdoll sits on top of my collection of magazines to include Somerset Studio, Artful Blogging, Somerset Holidays, Cloth Paper Scissors and Lisa Kettells Piddlestix.
I also love to collect old jars to decorate, above are a few that are waiting to be "dressed"! Next to them is my collection of handmade fabric hearts and stars that I sell at Craft Fayres.
Below are a few of my China Pin Cushion Dolls that I turn into "Boudoir Feather Dusters", I am lucky to have a contact at a local Antique Auction House and he regularly finds these beauties for me to alter.
Finding space to house all the items I take to sell at Craft Fayres can sometimes be tricky, especially as we get close to Christmas, some of the items I have take up quite a bit of space, like the gorgeous cushions below that are made by my super talented Mum... check them out.....
I also have a large collection of old wallpaper and fabric books given to me by friends who used to own an Interior Design company, I LOVE rummaging through these for inspiration.
I am really hoping within the next eighteen months to have a small studio built in an area of my lovely garden, that way I can keep all my supplies and designs in one place and keep the house free of my crafty clutter! Thank you for checking out my art space, it's been great having you here, be sure to hop on over to Karen Valentine's Blog to see her wonderful space and also a list of links to other Arty Avenues! xx 
Well the Summer Holidays are officially here, so what will you be doing? Will you be frolicking amongst the summer flowers with the Flower Fairies?
Or maybe you'll spend time helping your garden grow!
If you're lucky enough to take a vacation, will it be on the high seas? Or maybe you'll be braving the British Weather and visiting the beach and strolling along the Pier.
And of course, it wouldn't be a Summer Vacation without a good old knobbly knees competition!!
Whatever you do, be sure to have a great time!!
You may remember that I held a Blog Giveaway a couple of weeks ago and the winners were announced in a previous post. Well here are their winning goodies.... Bridgett from "Our Holistic Home", chose to have little Autumn bottled as a Fairy (above). I think you'll all agree, Autumn looks truly scrumptious as a little Fae!
The second winner; Stephanie from Hibiscus Moon, chose to have a vintage mermaid bottle, the finished result is pictured above. She is floating around in that bottle just waiting to meet her new owner Stephanie once she arrives from her travels from the UK to the USA.
Just a little announcement about a blog party I am joining in with, that is being held on Friday 24th July at My Desert Cottage Blogspot; Karen is hosting this party and is asking all her blog friends to share their creative workspace. So please stop by on the 24th to view photos of where I create. Unfortunately I can't guarantee a tidy workspace but I'll try my best, then once you've stopped by you can then hop on over to Karen's blog to check out the other creative rooms on show, it should be a fun event! See you there.
My Birthday Tag above is great for little girls, and big girls alike!! It really does "pretty up" a wrapped gift!
I've been busy working on my latest commission which was to design place name settings, table name plaques and a seating plan for a Summer Garden Wedding Reception. The Wedding finally took place last weekend so all my hard work was on display.
Here are a few examples of the place name settings I created, they are attached to the napkin with a brooch back which enabled guests to then wear the name tags during and after the wedding breakfast if they so wished.... and I am told by a guest that they did just that!!
The table name plaques (below) were designed using lilac pearlescent paper and decorated with silk paper orchids in a decoupage style with crystal accents. Each of the tables were named after National Parks in New Zealand.
The seating plan (below) was created on thick silver grey cardstock, each table list was printed onto the lilac pearlescent paper to match the table plaques above and a orchid garland in decoupage style was created across the top of the seating plan, again this was accented with little crystals which shone beautifully in the summer sunshine. A little vintage bride sat on top of the list for the top table.
The whole seating plan design was then framed in a silver wooden frame and mounted onto a handmade wooden display stand (picture below).
Da, da, daaaaaaaa...... And the Winners of my blog giveaway are!!!!!!
Yay!! I have reached 100 Followers to my blog... I am so excited, I've been watching the list creep up slowly over the past week or so and it seemed to be stuck on 99 forever, but finally yesterday it hit the 100 mark and I was over the moon.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my regular readers / followers, so I decided as a thank you and in celebration I would like to have a Blog Giveaway!!
As you can see from the photo's displayed with this post, I have altered clients into Bottled Mermaids, Fairies and Witches and I would love to do this for one of my readers, so here's how it will work.......
To enter all you need to do is leave a comment on this post and pass on word of this giveaway to any of your friends, family, blog friends... the more the merrier, I will then be drawing two, yes TWO winners from the comments left. The winners will receive a bespoke bottled collage of either themselves, a friend or family member (child or adult), bottled of course, as the fantasy creature of their choice.... either a mermaid, witch, fairy or wizard. So if you fancy being bottled sign up and leave a comment below!! Oh and before I forget, the Giveaway will be drawn next week... Thursday 9th July.
.jpg)
