Favourite Shops - Willow and Quail

I've tried my hand at doing things with felt a few times and failed miserably but Willow and Quail have the cutest little felted animals with a real Scandinavian vibe. I was surprised to read how much Jessi and I have in common, well both being special needs teachers and drawing horses from such a young age!

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Jessi, and I’m a middle school special education teacher/aspiring artist. I grew up in a family of “makers” and have always needed to have my hands busy creating something! I have two dogs, two cats, a lovely husband, and our first baby due in three months!

Describe your craft 

Yikes! Which one? I like to keep busy, so I’m always dabbling in different type of art. Currently I have two Etsy shops (Willow & Quail and Dream of a Dream) where I sell sewn magnets, needle-felted critters, metal clay jewelry, and original paintings.

How did you get started with your craft? 

I think my love for sewing started with counted cross-stitch when I was a teenager. I then started working with felt, which I could create more 3-dimensional pieces with. I sold my sewn crafts at craft shows for the past 15 years, before diving into the metal-clay world. This spring my husband and I found out we were pregnant with our first baby (yay!), and I wanted a safer medium to work with than the metal clays. I dug out my sewing supplies, and have been having a blast creating magnets and pins since then! Since my main shop is all bronze or silver, it’s been sooo refreshing to work with color!

What is your earliest crafting memory? 

I specifically remember having an “autograph” book when I was 5 that I drew horses in, over and over again. That was the first time I realized that I could recreate an image from the world around me. Other than that, I remember making a lot of those pot-holders on the old plastic looms in the 80’s. Those were awesome!

What are your favorite materials to work with/favorite mediums?  

I love working with pure wool, as I think it’s a higher quality and more natural than synthetic material. At the moment anything with a lot of color is appealing to me. 

How did you come up with your store name? 

I go for a nightly walk with my dogs on a country road near our house, and there is this gorgeous old farm with a big willow tree in front of it. I love the way willows sway in the wind, and perhaps you could call that place my dream-farm. We have lots of California quail who come through our yard with their families, and they always seem like they are talking to each other in their own language. Since our mountain winters are cold and snowy, most birds migrate, but the quail are our companions year-round. So the combination between these two beauties created the inspiration for my store name 

Apart from creating things, what do you do?  

I work full time as a middle school special education teacher. I think middle school is the toughest time to try and get through school, and for the students I work with, it’s especially difficult. I love watching my students grow into independent young adults by the time they move on to high school. I use my creativity in the classroom, which I believe is vital for keeping my kids motivated and making connections.

Where does your inspiration come from?

My inspiration can come from the most random places, from the way shadows dance on the floor, to fallen leaves that have gathered on the ground. I try and keep a journal to scribble down ideas when they come to me, but in traditional artist fashion, I usually can’t find the journal when I need it!

What does handmade mean to you? 

I think handmade differs for each person, and my definition changes as I get older. Personally, if I could raise the baby sheep that I would someday sheer, and spin the wool to create my own handmade felt, that would be the closest to handmade that I could get! But until then, I think handmade is anything where you see an image or idea in your mind, and find a way to create it with tangible items. I shy away from mass-produced machine-made “stuff” made overseas, and I try my best to support individual artists who are keeping their craft alive.

What handmade possession do you most cherish? 

Hmmm… that would definitely be a “quillow” (half quilt, half pillow) my Grandma made me when I was little. The first time I moved away from home and was living in Alaska by myself, I felt really alone and homesick. Once my mom sent me that quilt, things felt like “home” again, and I could feel my Grandma’s love all around me 

How do you get out of your creative ruts? 

That’s a good question! Sometimes I don’t, and nothing gets created for a while! I think that having many different mediums to work with really helps. For instance, yesterday I soldered pendants for 2 hours straight. Today I don’t even want to look at them, so I’m going to work with sewing felt. Sometimes it takes me months to finish some of my projects, but I would rather they get finished with creativity, than just pumping them out like a sweatshop!

Where would you like to be in ten years? 

In 10 years I hope to still be creating, and I hope that I’ve pushed my craft to challenge my own limits. Above all, I hope to have a happy and healthy family, and if I can share my passion for arts and crafts with them, I would be ecstatic!

Where can you be found online? (besides on Etsy) 

You can find me on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/DreamofaDream?ref=hl Pinterest here: pinterest.com/dreamofadream/ And Twitter here: twitter.com/DreamofaDream1

14. What would people be most surprised to learn about you? 

When I was 16, I wanted to sail around the world, and I saved my money and bought a sailboat when I was 19. I sailed for a couple of years on Puget Sound, but something always made me miss the snowy woods where the chickadees lived. I guess the mountains sang a louder song than the sea!

What did you like to do when you aren't crafting? 

When I’m not crafting, I’m thinking about crafting. No seriously, I think I have crafter’s glue flowing through my veins! (or at least in my brain!)

Admission

Hello, My name is Nicole Todd and I am an alcoholic chicken geek...

This is my silkie mum and her brood of 15 chicks (5 Partridge Wyandotte Bantams and 10 Barnyard mix!)

Favourite Shops - Little Alexander

  Isn't this shop just beautiful! I stumbled across Little Alexander on one of my 'find pretty thing on Etsy' times. They seem such lovely people too from their answers! I wish they lived closer (or I lived closer) for talks about chickens and crafting life! 

Tell us a bit about yourself.
We're a partnership of two girls, K + A, K being the artist and A (that's me) being the everything else. Everything else includes usually speaking for our partnership (voila) as well as making notebooks. We like nothing more than spending every minute of every day together, so it's been great to share a business as well as a home. We live at Headquarters, an old farmhouse on 3 acres (about 12000 square meters) out in the rural Midwest of the United States, surrounded by corn and soybean fields. K loves the four distinct seasons we get here, but I sorta miss the temperate maritime climate of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, our previous home. Probably New Zealand would be great for me.


Describe your craft
We make illustrated paper goods. K's art is really the centerpiece of our work, but we both really love paper in all its forms and love being able to translate artwork into useful things you can hold and use and carry around with you rather than just hang on your wall. As letter writers we make notecards and postcards, and as listers and doodlers we make handmade notebooks, all of which feature K's illustrations. We occasionally sell K's original artwork through our Etsy shop as well.

How did you get started with your craft?
K has been making art forever, but Little Alexander really got started when we had both grown tired of working our 'real' jobs. We were feeling like sell-outs at our respective places of employment and desperately wanted to be doing something different, something where we could be more independent, something we could do with integrity, something that used more of our bodies than just our brains, and something we could take with us anywhere. K quit her job first and started working on watercolor pieces to make into cards. I quit my job not long after to help out and we moved across the country to start a new life with Little Alexander at the center.



What is your earliest crafting memory?
I asked K about this and she got this distant and shining look on her face. She described a day in preschool when they put shaving cream out on the table, and you could flatten it out and draw in it with your finger, then smooth it out then draw in it again, and on and on. Her face then clouds over as she also remembers how much she loved drawing with pencil on the desktops at school ("they're smooth and slick but the pencil shows up so dark on them") and how her 2nd grade teacher caught her when the whole surface was covered with her drawings and made her clean them all off.

What are your favourite materials to work with/favourite mediums?
K really likes drawing with pencil on scratch paper. From there, her images sometime become stencils, sometimes get scanned onto the computer and digitally colored, or sometimes are transferred onto thicker paper and watercolored. She loves experimenting, though, so while there are some constants (pencil drawings, watercolor), there are always new things, too. Block printing, for example, is getting exciting. Expect to see some of that show up in our shop in not too long.

We also have particular papers we love. French Paper is a great company who makes amazing papers in great colors, many with 100% recycled content. We're also very into Neenah's soft thick Lettra paper at the moment, made from reclaimed cotton. But maybe our most unique paper source is the paperboard from cereal boxes and the like. Our whole community saves their boxes for us to repurpose into notebook covers and envelopes for mailing.

How did you come up with your store name?
Little Alexander is a translation of our Italian last name, Alesandrini.


Apart from creating things, what do you do?
We're working on fixing up our old farmhouse and the land around it. We're working to put in more gardens and fruit trees and restore a stretch of it to tall grass prairie, the ecosystem that was here before the Midwest became cropland. I'm also a beekeeper, and K is also a knitter and a spinner and a pianist. We keep our life pretty simple, and still there never seems to be quite enough time.

Where does your inspiration come from?
K draws things she likes. Luckily she likes very many things. Getting inspired about what to draw has never been as hard for her as getting inspired to sit down and make art in the first place. It is so easy to get bogged down in everyday things and so easy to lose faith that what you're doing as an artist is worthwhile. K then sees her inspirations as the things that distract her from everyday tasks and doubts and get her excited about the world. And that kind of inspiration can come from books or conversations or fashion or almost anywhere, most often where people show off their own passions. Passion is contagious.

What does handmade mean to you?
That's a big question. We can get kind of obsessive when it comes to handmade, homemade and from scratch. For example, we make our own bread from flour, salt, oil, sugar, and yeast. Is that homemade? Is that from scratch? Yes, compared to buying bread at the store. But what about someone who makes their bread from a package mix? Or what if we grew our own wheat and ground our own flour? Does it matter if we kneaded it all by hand? Clearly there is a spectrum. We think the same is true for handmade goods.

It is important to us that our all images are original artwork by K. It is important to us that our notebooks are cut and folded and bound ourselves. It even matters to us that we do all our own image reproduction, even if we're using a printer as often as a stencil. We don't make our own paper or even all our own envelopes. But we have lovingly handled and shaped everything we sell in our shop, and we feel personally connected to each piece. That's where we sit on the handmade spectrum.


What handmade possession do you most cherish?
K's mom was a quilter, and we have two of her quilts. They are so beautiful, and hopefully will last for generations.

How do you get out of your creative ruts?
This is actually where a lot of K's experimenting with new media comes in. Whenever things are getting stale, she'll put away the materials she most often works with and pick up something new. It seems to work well for her.


Where would you like to be in ten years?

Ha! Our past history suggests we have about a 3 year attention span when it comes to big life plans. Sometimes we hope that we've broken that habit and in ten years we'll still be right here making beautiful things. Sometimes we still dream of all the things one can do in a life that we haven't done yet… We're only a year and a half into our current life and for the moment, anyway, still pretty rooted in the present.

Where can you be found online? (besides on Etsy)
We keep a blog (blog.alesandrini.com) and are on Facebook (facebook.com/LittleAlexander). K occasionally tweets (@lilAlexander) and has an illustration portfolio site (www.alesandrini.com).


What would people be most surprised to learn about you?
We're math and science nerds. My degree was in physics and I taught high school science before we started Little Alexander. One of the exceptions to the 'K is the artist, I am the everything else' role division of our business is the accounting, which K loves doing too much to turn over to me. She'd tell you she considers all the necessary number juggling to be one of the perks of owning our own business.

What did you like to do when you aren't crafting?


We love food, so many of our pleasures are related to that. We garden and keep chickens, which means great fresh produce and eggs, and we love to cook almost as much as we love to eat. We also love to be outside in beautiful places. That could be backpacking in the mountains or wandering through big city streets or just laying around under our trees.

Fleur the Cat

 Fleur is one of our four cats, she has a brother who is jet black called Nero. I will try and get photos of him, but being so dark he is hard to get photos off. Fleur is very adventurous and will come out for walks to see the chooks and horse. She nearly got trodden on by Kristin the Clydesdale yesterday just by being friendly! I don't know why but she was having great fun biting this rose branch when I was out taking photos of the chickens and she posed rather nicely for me!

Favourite Shops - Shupg

Hello Everyone, today I am featuring Shupg which is one of my favourite shops on Etsy, check out those cute chicken necklaces! I want one!!!

 

 

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I teach violin in the day, and enjoy playing in chamber groups, orchestras and also in church. I cannot resist a fluffy animal, usually dogs. Can't wait for the day I get to live in a farm, maybe I should join The Farmer Finds a Wife.


Describe your craft
I'm not sure I am skilled enough to be called a crafter, but I certainly enjoy letting my thoughts interact with one another and somehow things get made! Bus rides are the best, alone time but with enough stimulation around and outside.


How did you get started with your craft?
I left a 24-7 job in the media industry because it didn't allow me to be creative (falling asleep standing up and having my Dad say "Are you just going out or coming home?" at 430am doesn't help either). Not all jobs in the industry are like that, but I just drew a short straw on that one. No regrets, the time I had there only prepped me better for the life now. I then went back to my passion, music-making, and making handmade just made sense to me (after I accompanied a great friend on her treasure-picking trips in the many craft shops) because it allowed me to be as creative as I could be. Still learning loads!


What is your earliest crafting memory?
I think it was when I was a kid, I made myself and my brothers Christmas stockings from brown shopping bags.


What are your favourite materials to work with/favourite mediums?
Love wood, and then thread and fabric. Found bits are great too. I like to see a piece of something and think about all its possibilities. It's kinda like teaching, isn't it?


How did you come up with your store name?
It's a childhood nickname. :) It sounds like part of my mandarin name.


Apart from creating things, what do you do?
I teach the violin, do freelance writing and video post production. Actually I wouldn't mind doing anything at least once. Zookeeper might be on the books :)

Where does your inspiration come from?
Everywhere really! But I really do like nature and could stare at greens for ages. Not enough of it at all in urban Singapore.

What does handmade mean to you?
An expression of what a person is made of. Of character.


What handmade possession do you most cherish?
I love all the drawings and little things my students make for me. Children are so creative.


How do you get out of your creative ruts?
I usually give it a bit of time. Take some time out and just be alone for awhile. It energises me.


Where would you like to be in ten years?
Owning a shop cum music studio. Or on a mission trip. But let me pray about it.

Where can you be found online? (besides on Etsy)

I have sold some items to a distributor in Barcelona, so I suppose I can be found in parts of Spain. Also am in a fabulous shop, Dulcetfig, in Singapore's Haji Lane. Am looking forward to being in more places all over the world!


What would people be most surprised to learn about you?
Hmm, I'm not sure I'm such an exciting person. I suppose that... I love watching Masterchef but can't cook for nuts!

What did you like to do when you aren't crafting?
I'm sort of a routine-animal, I like doing some things the same all the time, a little OCD you could say :) Am currently pinteresting like nuts. Reading every chance I get. Spend time with my family (so precious, never underestimate it) and dog.

New Style of Earrings

Hello, I have started making a more romantic style of earring, this is just a taster of a few photos that I have taken (that have been converted from RAW files, this take me a little while when sorting out my jewellery photos!)

Sets of four stud earrings come complete in a gift box and the long dangle earrings feature vintage glass drop beads. I have some of these dangle earrings in lovely bright Frida Kahlo style colours! I'll keep you posted to when these appear on Etsy!

 

Having a Chicken Sale!

There comes the time you decide you have too many chickens! Yesterday I took these photos and put these little lovelies on TradeMe...

 

Birchin Pekin Pullet

 

Silver Campine Pullet

 

Mottle Pekin Rooster

 White Silkie Rooster

 

Faverolles Cross Pullet

 

Black Pekin Pullet

 

Dark Blue Splash Pekin

 

Blue Splash Pekin Pullet

 

Mottle Pekin Pullet

 

White Pekin Pullet