Saturday, December 11, 2010

Felt Clippies

I am just wrapping up my latest order of clippies.  I guess I haven't explained my whole craziness lately.  I put these hairbows on my etsy site back in August.  One customer contacted me and wanted the charm I had painted and placed in the middle of the hairbow, but not the bow.  Strange it seemed, the charm was surprisingly cute all by itself on a clip!  About a month later the same lovely lady contacted me and asked if I had any more ideas....
***BAM***
End of restful life as we knew it...OK, never restful, but certainly less complicated.
Since taking her on as a full time customer I haven't even had the chance to list another item on my etsy. 
I have loved the clippie revolution.  It has treated us well.  Here are the latest clippies ordered.  Many were felt, the new medium we are trying.  Still a lot of wood, but more 3D was the main request.  My disclaimer is that the only subject of interest is SCHOOL.  Anything to do with school is OK.  Not so interested in girly or brightly colored bows or things like that.  In fact, the request was that there only be navy blue bows, if any, to match the school uniforms.
Thus I comply.  I was particularly thrilled with how these clippies turned out.  While the felt took a LOT longer than I had expected, CUTE!!!



I snapped this photo while I waited to hear which pencil design she wanted.  Below is a photo of the options.  As I was sewing these felted scribblers I realized I didn't represent the metal strip between the wood and the eraser.  As I hadn't included the ribbon on the original sample, I thought I better let my customer decide.  I am partial to the one on the right. What do you think?
 

All those spiral bound notebooks were a bit tricky.  Not the spiral part, that was easy, but the painting was what vexed me.  I hand painted the samples, but when I started painting the order, I was having fits about how different my writing was on each book.  Finally I hit the computer.  I used my Creative Memories photo editing program to design the book covers to look just like my painted version.  Once I had them where I wanted them I printed them out in color, grabbed the modge podge and went to town!!!

The easels house a drawing I printed onto iron-on transfer paper.  I used the same stuff for the glue bottles, glue sticks, and my Dr. Seuss books from a previous shipment.  I thought I would try the stuff on felt and see how it went.  I bought the kind for light fabric and the kind for dark fabric.  The light kind is see through while the dark fabric prints everything as if you were putting an image on dark fabric and didn't want the dark color to show through the image.  Thinking about doing some transferring yourself?  Save the money-don't buy the light.  The "for dark fabrics" kind is much more hardy and works on light fabric as well as dark.

It has been so much fun to experiment and try new materials.  I am starting on a HUGE wooden clip order next week.  Wish me luck.  Hours and hours of miniature painting lie ahead of me for the next couple weeks.  It could be tricky with all the holiday stuff going on, but we will do our best to make it through.
Bunco on Tues. night with my old lady friends :0)  I lovingly refer to it as my "Old Lady" bunco group.  I am hosting and have some fun ideas in mind...stay tuned...

2 comments:

  1. These are just adorable!! Congratulations on finding you "niche" and some amazing ideas. The same kind of thing happened with my Hairdo Hats and I haven't had a free moment since either!

    ReplyDelete

Novelty Print Quilt Pattern

I have had a hard time finding good quilt patterns for novelty prints the past couple times I purchased them.  I made up this pattern so tha...