Thinking Teal

 Thinking Teal

Looking for teal accessories for a baby this Christmas? We’ve put some ideas together in our Gift Guide this week, take a look below;  

  

Clockwise from top left 

• Baby Bib Organic Modern Deer ,  
• Baby Boys Bandana Dribble Bib Teal, 
• Organic Baby Bib Deer, 
• Fabric Storage Basket Nursery Storage Deer in Teal,  
• Fabric Storage Basket Nursery Storage

Clockwise from top left;

• Baby Gift Set 
• BabyDribble Bib in Mustard 
• Gold Stars Storage Basket 
• Nappy Caddy Storage Baskets    

Looking for more gift inspiration? 

Head over to our colour-grouped Gift Guide for more of ideas.

Ordering deadlines for delivery before 25 December:

US and Europe shoppers – 10th December

UK shoppers – 16th December

 

Introducing The New Wider Basket

Recently I have been having a little play around with the size of my standard baskets and have come up with a new slightly wider basket. WHY? you may be wondering, well partly down to trying to use up the whole width of a piece of fabric. I've been working with wider lengths of material and when I cut out the fabric for my standard size basket I end up with a strip of fabric left, so it makes sense to incorporate this fabric into the design. Second I feel that being just a tad wider makes the basket easier to use, it feels more open at the top making access to its contents easier and the overall shape and size of the basket I find aesthetically pleasing.

So what is the difference between the 'Standard' size and this new 'Wider' size, well approximately 2 inches! The photo above has a wider bird basket on the bottom and a triangle standard size basket on top and as you can see when folded flat there is a difference in the width between the two.

Above is the two versions of the new Black and White Triangle basket along with my quilting ruler in inches to show the 2-inch difference. When folded flat the width of the standard basket measures approximately 11.25inches (28.5cm) and the wider baskets measure approximately 13.25inches (33.5cm).

The baskets are still similar in height with the new wider size being roughly a 1/4 inch taller. The photo below shows the two baskets taken from the side and gives you a good idea of how the wider size really does give you a roomier basket and therefore, gives you more space to store things.

 The smaller size fits nicely inside the new wider basket!

  

Also new is the style of gallery photo like the one above, which is now included in all the listings of new baskets in my shop. These pictures show the basket with a ruler (in inches) to help give you a good visualisation of the shape and size of the container and will hopefully help when deciding what size to choose. 

Also new is the fabric! A great modern monochrome geometric print and a lovely stylish fabric featuring birds and the occasional golden crown! Both fabrics are available in the standard size basket and the new wider size and can be found here. And direct links to each basket are below;

Monochrome geometric standard size can be found here 

Monochrome geometric wider size can be found here 

Birds in standard size can be found here 

Birds in wider size can be found here  

New Weekly Offers

Starting tomorrow, and for the next few weeks, I will be offering a weekly 'Special Offer' in my etsy shop. 

Whether a discount on a certain item, or a buy one get one free, each week there will be a new offer. 

To find out what is it you need to check out either my Facebook page, my Instagram or come here every Monday to see what that week brings!

Remember starts TOMORROW!!

So how much can you fit in a Standard Size Basket?

In my last post I discussed the size and dimensions of my 'Standard' small baskets, so in this post I thought I would follow up with a look at what you can fit inside and give you an idea of what can be stored in my standard small baskets. If you follow me on Facebook or on Instagram you may have already seen this!

In these photos I have used my 'Arrow' basket (shown above) and if like me you live in a house with children I am sure you have lego all around the place! My children use the baskets, that over the years I have made for them to store their 'special' lego pieces in. You know the ones that are not the standard bricks, for example they have one basket specially for lego figures including all the odd arms and heads that some how we have accumulated over the years! So with the help of my daughter, who unfortunately is very camera shy so doesn't appear in any the photos, we decided to see how many normal lego bricks we could fit in one basket. Oh yes, we counted every single piece of lego that we fitted into the basket twice  just to make sure we had counted correctly!!

We had only just begun filling in the above photo!

And here it is a short while later filled. 
Now we stopped before it was completely full to the brim as we thought there was already enough bricks in there to count! We then emptied it out onto an empty surface and were quite amazed at the amount we had fitted in!

  

And here it is! Every brick and piece of lego in the picture above came out of this basket.

 610 pieces in total!! 

And I must stress that they were of varying sizes but we did try and put as many of the normal size lego bricks in as we could find. And again for scale below is my hand reaching into the basket!

Hopefully this continues to give you more of an idea of the size and scale of my Standard Small baskets which can be found by clicking here and my Arrow basket can be found by clicking here, and the link to my blog post discussing the dimensions of these baskets can be found my clicking here!

Next up I will be introducing my new 'wider' baskets, I am very excited about these, so please do pop back very soon!

 

New Baby Bandana Dribble Bibs

Say hello to my new collection of bandana style bibs. 

As soon as I saw this gorgeous flannel I knew that it would make for the softest of bibs. And this style of bib is not only perfect for a dribbling baby they are also very suited to a teething toddler!  Made with a layer of 100% cotton flannel, three of which also have the wonderful look of herringbone wool weave, and backed with a layer of organic cotton fleece these bibs are soft to the touch making them extremely comfortable to wear. And made with only cotton fabrics no polyester in sight you can be confident that you are putting only the kindest natural fabrics next to your babies delicate skin. In lovely Autumnal colours they can be found here in my shop.

Saying Goodbye is Never Easy!

I was working away the other day cutting fabric for orders when it suddenly dawned on me that the bib and burp cloth set in 'clouds in gold' that I was busy cutting out was to be the last. I had a moment of panic and quickly raided my fabric stash hoping desperately to find some more of the fabric unfortunately to no avail. I then had a quick scour of the internet trying to find some for sale, again no, which didn't surprise me, this collection is now out of print. So that is it, no more of this gorgeous organic fabric. I am annoyed at myself for my lack of planning and that I didn't buy a lot more of it. But it can be very difficult at times to judge the fabrics that will be popular and sell well. I am also annoyed as I was hoping to make myself a cushion out of it and had thought I had put some away in my private stash but some where along the lines I must have used that as well. So I feel quite sad to say that I have just one 'Storage Basket' left made from this fabric and I have managed to sneak in one lonely 'Baby Bib' out of it and that's it, no more passing clouds in gold! Thankfully a new collection is coming out this Spring which includes some more clouds in different colours so all is not lost and I still have gift sets and storage baskets available in Blue Passing Clouds in my shop. As for me I have learnt an important lesson here always buy more fabric! 

More Storage Baskets in New Designs

I just can not stop making these storage baskets. I enjoy the whole process from selecting the fabric to sewing them to seeing the finished baskets all lined up on a shelf! So its no wonder that I have made a few more! I have added another five baskets in new fabrics to my Etsy shop. The very popular Black Triangle basket is now also available in grey, also in grey is a lovely basket featuring small crosses. Then there is a mint with small white triangles and the odd glittery gold triangle, and 'Crystal Arrowhead' which is what the fabric is called and I rather like the name! There will be only a few of these two baskets available as the fabric comes from a limited addition collection and I have noticed that it has already sold out in many stores. And finally I have got round to listing a deer basket which coordinates with a bib and burp cloth set that is also in my shop. This organic fabric featuring deer in a mix of gorgeous muted colours is one of my all time favourite fabrics and I am hoping to have blankets available in this print very soon. And for those that ask me on a daily basis for larger baskets well, I am working on those at the moment so hope to get a few in my shop in the next couple of weeks! 
Right you can see all of the baskets pictured above and more here!

Happy weekend!

New Storage Baskets

New Storage Baskets are all now listed in my shop and you can find them here.

A Little Shop Update

My Etsy shop is closed at the moment just for a couple of days while I 'regroup'. It's the last day of the kids school break and I always try very hard to juggle entertaining them whilst still working and fulfilling orders but for some reason however hard I tried it just didn't seem possible this week! So I eventually closed up shop. 

I am up to date with all orders but have decided to remain shut whilst I settle the children back into their school/nursery routines and also to try and get some of the new items I've been working on for what feels like weeks finally finished and listed in my shop. 

I'm very excited with my new work and fabrics and can't wait to show you. 

In the meantime here is a little taster of whats to come!

Lovely Flurry of Traffic!

A Crafty Hen has had an extra flurry of interest over the last couple of days and it was so lovely to find the traffic had come from here a lovely Spanish blog called Eternamente Flaneur. This lovely blogger has included three of my Storage baskets, my yellow 'Free as a Bird' baskets and also my Black and White basket in two lovely storage and nursery combination ideas. It's so nice to see people visualizing my work in this way. I just wish I could cut my images out as well as she has done!!

On my Sewing Table.... Spring Makes

There are definite signs of Spring popping up everywhere, and its amazing how these glimpses of life give you renewed energy. Its like coming out of hibernation and where as in the house its making me want to spring clean and have a clear out, in my studio area I've been busy working, hoarding away new items, like a squirrel hoards its nuts, waiting for some light to come into the house so I can photograph these items. And yesterday finally the sunshine arrived, though it wasn't easy. I chased the sunshine from room to room, desperately trying to photograph my new stuff. My shop is looking rather bare at the moment and I can't wait to renew it. To organise it, to freshen it up. Unfortunately the sunshine disappeared rather too quickly so I didn't manage to get everything done. And quite a few of the photos I've taken I have had to rather heavily edit so I am hoping that the weather man has the forecast right and that we are in for a sunny dry spell.

I wrote the above on the 6th of March, and in fact the weather man did predict the weather correctly and we did have a lovely couple of weeks with real Spring like weather. We had sunshine and even felt some warmth! But unfortunately minutes after writing the above my laptop shut itself down and died on me!! And so that was that. 

What it did mean was without the distractions that the online community has to offer (!) I did get quite a bit of sewing done, and the sunshine did mean that I got to take quite a few photos. Though without being able to upload the photos I couldn't check the quality and I am disappointed with quite a few of them as I've unfortunately taken them on too high an exposure setting. Anyway working with the ones I've got and now that I have a new laptop, I am hoping to get my new items listed by the start of next week and hopefully then my shop will be filled with some lovely rays of Spring sunshine!

On my Sewing Table

This week I've been busy working on custom orders. I've had a lot of interest from people asking me to make baby burp cloths to sell separately from the bibs, which I'm very happy to do and are hoping to place some for sale in my shop next week. Though I can't quite decide whether to sell them in pairs, in bundles of threes or as single burp cloths! Decisions decisions! I've also been busy sewing some patchwork bibs for an order. I love making this style of bib as I get to delve into my fabric stash and have great fun playing around with prints and colours. These three lucky bibs are heading of to Hong Kong but more will be popping up in my shop soon!

Plotting!

The New Year is good for plotting.

I think the start of a new year has that affect on you. I'm not talking making resolutions that you struggle to keep, but the making of plans, ideas and dreams. 

I'm feeling the need to organise and de-clutter. I'm feeling the urge to get on top of those little jobs that never get done and finish the ones that are half started. 

And I'm really feeling the need to get making and sewing all the ideas that have been occupying my thoughts for the last few months.

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On my Sewing Table - New Baby Bibs

I have added a few new baby bibs to my shop, they can be found here. I am not sure now why I thought adding new stock at Christmas would be a good idea, especially as the light levels are so low at the moment which makes taking decent photos of items that bit more difficult! I have had an amazing busy few weeks, which I am so grateful for but it does mean that my shop is looking a little bare! I am now unable to replace gift sets as they sell out, so if there is something you like now could be the time to buy it!