When I wish upon a star ...

This is a felted star I did some time ago - and I'm making some more now, for Christmas. It's wet felted with natural white roving over a metal wire, then embellished with some glass beads.

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Yesterday was 'kind of Xmas to me - I received a wonderful parcel from Paula, filled with the most gorgeous small scale printed cotton and silk fabrics, colourful embroidery threads and glass beads ... and even one of Paula's fantastic 'skitches'!



I was so happy and inspired - and today I rushed to the post office with my mail swap for her!

I must admit I just love getting mail - especially this kind of surprise parcels! And I think it's a lovely idea to swap goodies from your stash with someone who appreciates similar things ... making yourself and somebody else double happy, both enjoying the gathering and packing as well as the receiving and exploring of the gift - well, if this isn't Xmas!

And it's sensible recycling and resource consciousness par excellence, isn't it? (And it keeps the post men busy!) I love it! Anyone else out there wanting to swap with me?

Angels welcome ...

Two embellished angels - and a star - consisting of wool roving, fabric, lace and yarn scraps, some paper and silvery (metal) net - the faces are free motion machine embroidered.


A friend of mine used to have a shop with the sign "Angels welcome" above her shop entrance - I think I could use such a sign above my door, too, in order to attract some angels - or at least some good fairy who could give me a helping hand with those Xmas preparations ...

Somehow, Christmas always seems to arrive so quickly and sudden, as if these holidays were just popping up unexpectedly out of the winter dark ...

I'm torn between the wish to spend a calm and contemplative Advent season with my kids, having all the time in the world for crafting, baking cookies, reading, playing, leaving on long winter walks, snuggling up with a cup of tea at the fire place -

and on the other hand writing thoughtful cards and letters, finding or even better: making very personal gifts with beautiful wrappings for the family and the big bunch of dear friends.

I just want to do both - my problem is that time moves on so very fast and although I consider myself hard-working, I suppose I'm a bit disorganized ...

Maybe it's just vanity wanting to make it all - and make it good! Guess I should give that a thought, too ...

Concentrate. Keep it plain and simple. Stay cool. (That's what you wanted to say, wasn't it?)

A wonderful Christmas time ...

Look what I've got! This is an advent calendar for me from my 10-year old daughter Emily! It's filled not only with my favourite chocolate treats, but also with very personal letters and small messages ...

I'm a very lucky mum to receive such a loving gift!



Here are some more calendars, which I received from two friends of mine - they will lighten up my day every morning until Christmas day ...

I think it's a wonderful thing to receive such a calendar gift, even if I'm not really a kid anymore - I enjoy it just as much and appreciate it maybe even more now! I wonder what's in it ...?

An embellished angel and another advent calender

Christmas time is getting closer, and I decided to try out an embellished angel yesterday. The wings and the body are basically consisting of punched white wool roving, scraps of lace and fabric and finally embellished with some beads and a vintage fabric button.

The face is hand embroidered on a rosé-coloured muslin, which was stuffed with a bit of woolen batting and then stitched on to the background. The golden fringe and metal hair are Christmas tree decoration material.




I made another advent calender, too: 24 small packages of recycled Christmas cards, tags and other ephemera for a friend of mine, who always needs a lot of greeting cards at Christmas time.

Sara's new book has arrived!

Today I received Sara's new book - "Gesichter-Faces" which I had pre-ordered from Amazon!

It's a most wonderful, well-edited gallery book with very rich and luscious pictures of Sara's extensive and so very inspiring art work - it's an absolute must-have for all of us who adore Sara's work and to anyone the least interested in textile art! I can absolutely recommend it to you and I can only congratulate Sara to this exciting and beautiful first book!

So I'm off, snuggling up in my cosy reading chair with Sara's textile fantasies ...!

Recycling for Christmas

Recycling is important to me; I think a lot about it and try to live as close to my ideals as I can in my daily life.

For my art work, it's a frame in which I can challenge myself - whether I work with embellishing and fibers, or fabric scraps and quilts, vintage beads, mosaics, plastic, or paper - I'm using recycled materials and stuff from my collected stash.

Every year, I write about 40-50 Christmas cards - I want them to be pretty and personal, and it's also important to me to use recycled materials. This year, I'm gluing and sewing used gift wrapping, odd ribbons, old book-pages and exotic newspaper together for the card itself, decorating it with an embellished heart, a button, a bead, stamping the inside with stamps I once bought or made myself from pencil rubbers ...

Here are some tags I made out of paper scraps - the two at the right are laminated (I put the scraps very close to eachother and try to use as little of the foil as possible):

I'm also doing some advent calenders each year: This one is for a friend of mine, it's a drawing pad with 12 sturdy pages, and I made a collage out of magazine pictures on both sides of each page, so that she can turn it around for the 13th to 24th of December:

Two necklaces

When my Mum visited me this summer, she brought a carneol necklace with her and asked me to change it - she wanted it longer and mixed up with some other beads.

As her birthday is coming up soon, I spent today re-making the necklace by mixing the carneols with apple corals, which irregular surface I find to be of an interesting contrast to the the polished carneols.

I also added a magnetic closure for comfortable opening and closing. As there were still carneols left after the re-make, I used them for a bracelet and some ear-drops to make the set complete.


It's been quite a time since I made some necklaces, so I felt inspired to do one for myself as well. And it was all there, in my stash, just waiting for me to put it together!

(Consisting of clear and frosted vintage glass beads, some Indian strass beads, some exotic organic beads, a couple of silver metal plates and a Sterling silver closure.)