Felt Animal & Bird Brooch Craft Kits for Hawthorn Handmade

I've got some very exciting news to share today - I've designed some craft kits!

Hawthorn Handmade sell absolutely gorgeous beginner-friendly craft kits, and I am beyond thrilled to have been asked to work with them on some felt-y goodness. 

I loved working on these and am SO PLEASED with how they turned out. I hope you guys will be just as excited about them as I am. 

You can find the whole range of brooch kits here (they ship worldwide, hurrah!), but today I thought I'd show you half the collection: cute felt brooches featuring British wildlife. 

There's a hare...

 

 

... a deer...

 

 

... a wren...

 

... a hedgehog...

 

 

... a fox...

 

... and a tawny owl!

 

 

How nice are the photos they've taken of the finished brooches??? Oh my goodness. 

I'd love to know which one's your favourite (mine changes all the time!), and to see some photos if you buy and sew some of the kits xxx

 Click here to shop the whole range of felt craft kits. 

A Wonderful Vintage Cross Stitch Booklet

Talking of my recent Instagram sales, last weekend I sold an utterly wonderful vintage cross stitch pattern booklet.

 

It got snapped up super quickly but it was so lovely I feel like it needs to be immortalised here on my blog so you can a) "ooooh" over its gorgeousness and b) know to buy it for yourself IMMEDIATELY if you ever come across a copy!!!

 
"Points de Croix Scandinaves" was published by the thread company DMC and OH MY GOSH IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL. It's got some lovely Christmas and Easter designs, some nice borders and useful alphabets, and pages of fruit and toys plus some charming ships and buildings... but it's the wildlife pages that just slay me.

Those mushrooms alone!! Just magnificent.

I also adore these birds and butterflies...

... and these lovely wildflowers (can you spot the cricket?)

I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite design, but I have a lot of love in my heart for the floral wreath with the little bee. So delightful!

Which one's your fave?

Felt Badger Brooch Tutorial

UPDATE: this tutorial is now available in my shop and in my Patreon pattern library.

Subscribe for a small monthly fee and you'll get access to a growing library of PDF patterns and tutorials, with an email whenever I add a new project. You can cancel any time.     

Click here to check out my Patreon page and sign up! 

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This month's freebie for my newsletter subscribers will be a tutorial for sewing a cute felt badger brooch!

 

I stitched lots of these badgers for my online shops a decade ago (how time flies, huh?!) and am really looking forward to revisiting this pattern to share it with you guys.

I've always loved badgers but have had a particular fondness for them in recent years after getting to see lots in real life, visiting my parents' garden for some peanut snacks. 

Click here to visit my tutorial archive for lots of free patterns and project ideas.

The Reason I Didn't Get Much Work Done Last Friday

The deer came to visit again! Such a delightful surprise. 

Word is clearly spreading about how delicious our garden is.

I immediately moved "sit and watch the deer strolling round the garden" to the very top of my To Do list because admin and emails can wait, but surprise visits from lovely deer cannot :)

Review: Bug Bingo

Usually the only things I review here on my blog are craft books, but today I'm reviewing something a bit different: Bug Bingo!

I was offered a review copy because of the name of my blog - Bugs and Fishes. My blog's name doesn't actually come from a great love of bugs (or fishes), it's just something we used to sign our emails with instead of "hugs and kisses" when I was a teen... but as it happens I do really rather like bugs. As long as they're not crawling on me, that is!!

Bug Bingo is, as you might have guessed, a bingo game featuring lots of bugs. There's 64 different kinds of insect featured, all wonderfully illustrated by Christine Berrie whose work I've been a fan of since discovering it on Etsy many years ago.

The whole game is great quality and really rather gorgeous. Inside the sturdy box there's a bag of illustrated bug tiles, a large fold-out board for the caller to place the cards onto, 12 bingo cards (so lots of people can play at once!), green counters for marking the bugs that have been called and a leaflet with the game rules and some fun facts about all the insects featured.

Christine's illustrations have done great justice to the weird and wonderful, detailed and colourful, endlessly interesting forms of the insect kingdom - they are a delight to look at and there are lots of bugs included that I'd never heard of before. Oh, and the focus is firmly on insects: no spiders in sight (hurrah!)

I love that the back of the tiles, the board and the cards are all printed with the same bug silhouette design that's been used for the bag.

I always used to enjoy playing bingo when I was a kid and remember it being a great game for kids of different ages or for kids and adults to play together, as younger kids were never at a disadvantage in the way they can be with board games involving strategy or factual knowledge.

I think this would be an excellent gift for a nature-loving child or family, or for anyone who loves board games and wants a stylish bingo game with a twist. There's an educational element to it with the booklet of facts and lots of interesting insect names to learn but I think this will be a great game to get out and play long after you've learnt about all the insects.

And if you're not a huge bug fan Christine Berrie's beautiful illustrations also appear on a matching (and quite lovely looking) Bird Bingo game!

Bug Bingo is published by Laurence King. RRP £19.95. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA and many other shops.

Please note: I was sent a free review copy of this game. The Amazon & Book Depository links in this post are affiliate links.

Work & Wildlife

I am still busy working - with lots of breaks for tea and cake, of course :)

Most of my own mugs are packed up in boxes (along with the rest of the stuff from my old flat), so I've "adopted" a couple of mugs from my parents cupboards (it's not just me who likes to use the same mugs over and over, is it?). This is an old one that belonged to one of my sisters when they were at school or University, I think... it's from a time of many essays and exams, anyway. It reads "I hate work I hate work I hate work I hate work" and every time I look at it I feel happy because I actually LOVE my job. Even with the occasional crazy deadline!

While on my tea breaks I have been enjoying staring out of the window at all the birds on the bird feeders. As I mentioned last month, lots of birds visit my parents garden.... and I was lucky enough to be sitting right next to the window with my camera when this lovely woodpecker paid us a visit at the weekend:

Which has reminded me that a few weeks ago I managed to get some snaps of a couple of deer sitting around in our neighbours' garden - just chilling out, thinking deer thoughts, planning their schedule for the day, etc. Aren't they lovely?

Pigeon Post

We've not been getting much post lately thanks to all this winter weather. I'm waiting for a few supply orders (so I can get everything restocked after Christmas) and other assorted bits and pieces.

One bit of nice post that has arrived is a little something I treated myself to as a post-Christmas present, this gorgeous poster from Edinburgh-based artist Alice Melvin.

As always with my art purchases, I've got no idea where it's going to go but I just couldn't resist its loveliness.

With more cold weather forecast I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be able to get to the Post Office next week (and that it'll actually be open!) when I'm supposed to be resuming shipping orders after my Christmas break. I'm hoping to have everything shipped by the end of the week but if there are snow-related delays and you're expecting a parcel from me I'll be in touch :)