New Year Projects

Happy New Year everyone.

I've been having a very mellow time catching up on crafty things that I wasn't able to get to in December. The necklace at the top is a custom order for a lovely woman called Caroline who kindly put me up in her cute Merivale cottage when I was in Christchurch recently. She was admiring my old button necklace and pulled out three cake tins full of her grandma's buttons, so we spent the afternoon going through them all and putting together an arrangement that I said I'd make up into a necklace for her. The mother-of-pearl button is a darling and catches the light beautifully.

The colourful batch of collars are making their way to Staple Design in Gisborne, which is now run by Katy Wallace and a small collective of fellow makers, and I'm sure will be a huge success.

In my last post I promised a give away, and I'm working on that now. Every Christmas I choose a piece of writing by Jack and turn it into a special book for him. This year I selected an amusing poem called 'Silhouette' which is about our shared obsession with the reality series Project Runway. The design is a mix of paper and fabric collage and machine sewn elements on thick watercolour paper. The images are cut from 1950s Ladies Home Journals, which I bought recently from Mrs Jones, a fantastic retro and kiwiana shop in Warkworth.

I'm about to make a small limited edition of 'Silhouette' for Pania Press. Each one will be slightly different and one copy will be offered as a give away in my next post, so watch this space...