Farmers Market Basket Giveaway!

Fresh from the garden! A fabulous basket of goodies!

This basket includes carrots, peas in a pod, mushrooms, strawberries and plums! All have been needle felted by the wonderful member of our Natural Kids team, The Polka Dot Dragon!

Also included is the basket! Wouldn't your child love to play with this pretend food? He or she can feed it to their friends (stuffed or otherwise), play market, play gardening - so many open-ended imaginative play-times can develop!

All food is made from wool of sheep friendly farms. Core of food is 100% organic wool batting.

This wool food has been needlefelted - I have the UTMOST respect for needle felters, having stabbed myself numerous times during my attempts.

Wool food is best for children who are age 3 and upand who no longer put toys in their mouths.

CONTEST RULES:

1. Please VISIT The Polka Dot Dragon's shop.

2. Pick your favorite item.

3. Come back to my Woolies blog and leave a comment with your favorite item.

4. NEW RULE: you must leave your email address, or blog address. If you do not want to post it here, you can contact me privately at either of my shops - here are the links to them:

Buster and boo, or Woolies.

Just because you have registered with blogger does not make your email address visible. If I cannot reach you, you cannot win.

5. Contest will end one week from today, August 18th, at 12 midnight.

6. Any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me!

Good luck!!

UPDATE: this contest is over, and the winner is #28, deedee, chosen by random number generator. Thanks to all who entered!!

Fairy Winner!

Good Morning! We have a FAIRY winner - it is Kristen, who left comment #59. Winner was chosen by a random number generator.

Thanks so much to all who entered - keep an eye on my blog, cause I do a lot of giveaways! Fun!

Little Elf's Toyshop - Giveaway!!

When I first joined Etsy over a year ago, Little Elf's Toyshop was one of the first shops I 'discovered'. And one of the first shops that I purchased something from - an adorable polymer clay pony. Little Elf continues to astound me with her work.

Elfie has graciously offered one of her needle felted sculptures as a giveaway. If you are not familiar with needle felting, it is the art of stabbing wool roving (wool before it has been spun into yarn) with a barbed needle, thereby 'felting' the wool fibers. You have to be VERY careful to NOT stab yourself, it hurts (I know from experience). But it's very fun, and if you're very talented, you can create work like this:

So, if you would like to win this beautiful little bunny -

1. visit Little Elf's Toyshop

2. pick your favorite item for her shop

3. come back here and leave a comment with your favorite item

4. Contest will end Monday, June 9th, 2008 at midnight.

Thank you!!!

NOTE: some of you that have been wonderful enough to enter this contest have not left me a way to reach you. I will post the winner Tuesday morning, and here's hoping it's somebody that I can contact! Next time I promise to leave a reminder. Or feel free to come back and leave another comment with your contact information!!!
thanks!!

The Art of Needle Felting

I have such admiration for the artists that utilize the technique of needle felting! It is MUCH harder than it looks - I've taken two classes. In the first class, we needle felted a teddy bear. Such a dismal failure, that I didn't even care that our kitten got a hold of the teddy and shredded it.

My second class was much better, I did a bunny that is for sale in my etsy shop.

HOWEVER, check out Cozy Cottage Creations! Now, here is somebody who has truly perfected the fine art of needle felting. Her work is fabulous! The details are astounding. somebody already bit into that apple!

I'm going to go have strawberries for breakfast!!

Craft Fairs and a Wonderful Shop on Etsy

Wow it's incredible how I have little luck at craft fairs. Did one yesterday (after showering in the morning with pool water - see previous post) and hardly anybody came. It was at a small private school, their "spring fair". Really, I think it was simply a fundraiser for the school - at $25 per booth, 40 booths, the school made $1000, and I'm quite sure not a single booth sold more than a couple of items.

I sold NOTHING.

However, the head of the school, gave me work - she has an afghan that she needs to have finished. So I will finish it - so it wasn't a total loss.

So I came home to a sale on Etsy, and had one the previous evening. Here are the two items I sold this weekend:

I sold Caroline the little lamb to an incredible Etsy shop that I "discovered" the other day, because she was on the front page.

You have to check out her shop - Fantiny. And LOOK at this:

Is that amazing? I would like to point out that other people must have discovered her as well, cause she's made a lot of sales in the past few days! Yay!

FaerieRebecca

Exquisite. In my previous post, I was talking
about things "speaking to me". These dolls
are SHOUTING to me!

FaerieRebecca has such amazing talent.
First - we have a needle felted Native American
doll. LOOK at her! amazing.

Then, we have "California Girl", a true
Waldorf style doll. Did dolls like this exist
when I was a girl? I don't think so....

I just had to share....
Enjoy!!

Knitting and Felting and Promoting

The Transformation!

1. Knit something. In this case, a sheep. It looks flat and limp

and stringy. It's knit on slighly larger needles, so the stitches

have spaces between them - loose looking. See picture 1.

2. Throw it into the washing machine. Low water level. HOT.

Put a pair of jeans in there with it. Let it agitate. The woolen

fibers mesh together. It shrinks! The stitches are no longer

visible as individual stitches. It is now a solid - material.

It is now a - SHEEP!

This particular sheep was donated to the Tucson Waldorf

School for their silent auction. It's (hopefully) a good way to

get my name out there (locally). And it is also reaching an

audience that I want to reach - that is likely to purchase my

product. The auction is this Saturday. I can't wait to see how

much my sheepie goes for (people bid on the items in the

auction).

I'll let you know!

More Natural Kids

The work done by the members of the Etsy team,

Natural Kids, continually amazes me.

You have to check out this shop: haddy2dogs.

She is an artist - just LOOK at her work.

Her sculptures are incredible. The detail ... they are

needle felted - which is a process where you take little

needles with barbs, and poke it over and over again into

wool roving (wool before it is spun into yarn). I have one in my

shop - but wouldn't even dream of attempting anything like

haddy does. This is true soft sculpture, all natural, amazing.

Check out her shop!