Reetsweet Christmas Craft Fair - Sunday 27 November 2011

Hello there!

Just wanted to quickly mention that I will have a stall at the very first Sheffield Reetsweet craft fair in less than two weeks!  It's at the fabulous Millennium Gallery on Sunday 27 November, opening times are from 12 noon to 4 p.m., and entry is FREE! 

Reetsweet is run by Becki Drury from Leeds, who has run many very successful fairs in Leeds.  I'm so glad that someone has stepped in where the excellent Craft Candy fairs left off - I do really enjoy the Christmas craft fair (this will be my third).  I'm expecting to see lots of old Craft Candy friends there... I can't wait! :D

Reetsweet fairs are full of bright, quirky and fun products - and of course, everything is genuinely handmade... click here to take a look at some of the goodies at the recent Leeds Uni Reetsweet fair! Leeds Uni goodies

So if you're in Sheffield on that day, please drop by and say hi!

• Millennium Gallery is just five minutes walk from the train station and the bus station
• For a map of Millennium Gallery and streetview from the Surrey Street entrance via the Winter Gardens, click here: how to get there
• There is another entrance to the Millennium Gallery on Arundel Gate.

Best wishes

Joey x

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas!

Angel, originally uploaded by Joey's Dream Garden (formerly Joey 7).

Hello!

I've had a lot of fun today! Sheffield has had a massive load of snow, so I was very happy to arrive at work to be told that I could go straight home again! Hurrah! Me and Mathew had a walk through Sheffield city centre to see the snowy spectacle and take loads of pictures (which you can see on my Flickr page here if you want!  The Very Very Snowy Day Set)

Anyway, I had to go into work today because I had to take in this little angel decoration I'd made yesterday!  One of my work friends has made a Christmas tree-shaped advent calendar for the building. On each day a door is opened to reveal a photo with a Christmassy/wintry theme, submitted by different members of staff (four of the photos are mine).

Of course, every Christmas tree needs something to go at the top, so my colleague asked me to make a little angel.  I roughly sketched the design, then re-drew it a bit neater and more symmetrical.  I used carbon paper to transfer the design onto foamboard.  I made the halo and each of the wings separately, then painted the angel with acrylic and gouache (poster) paints. Foamboard is quite difficult to cut around the intricate shapes; I used a Fiskars craft knife with a new blade, and made short cuts to round off the angel's curly hair. The halo is made from an oval of gold crepe paper stuck onto foamboard and the wings are glittery wrapping paper with a curly design painted on. I then glued the halo and the wings to the back of the angel to give a three-dimensional effect.

I'm quite pleased with my little angel, but I don't know if it's a boy or a girl. What do you think?

If it's snowy where you are too, stay warm tomorrow!

best wishes

Joey x

Candyfloss Summer Craft Fair

Cute Little Raku Bottles from Zandra Ceramics

Goodness! What a week! What with a busy time at work, having a whale of a time with friends making sock monsters on Thursday and planning some new embroidery designs, this is the first chance I've had to tell you about the lovely craft fair I went to a week ago, run by old friends Craft Candy.

There were so many gorgeous stalls, but I only took pictures of a few (you can see the pictures on my Flickr pages here) and here's my favourites of my favourites!

Zandra of Zandra Ceramics specialises in raku and wood-fired sculptural pieces and vessels. In one of the wood-fired vases Zandra had pressed a safety-pin and because the temperature in the wood kiln gets so high, the pin had completely melted and left an interesting metal residue.  I liked the tiny raku-glazed bottles (pictured above) so much that I bought three!

Sian of Siansburys' stall looked as bright and fun as always, with her cute and so beautifully-made sock monkeys. Sian has been making her sock monkeys for a few years now, and each one is a unique work of art.

One of Siansburys' Cute and Colourful Sock Monkeys

Kirsten of Quernus Crafts makes wonderfully colourful and patterned millefiore polymer clay critters, the like of which I don't think I've ever seen before! Kirsten makes her own intricately-patterned millefiore canes and then creates cute little creatures like snails, moles, cats... and even a tiger!  They will really brighten up your day!

Little Snaily with a Beautiful Shell from Quernus Crafts

And lastly, we come to possibly the star of the show! Gemma Nemer (who runs The Button Tin craft workshop in Rotherham) won the prize for the best-dressed stall, and just look at these pictures for a bit of eye candy! I think you'll agree that Gemma's stall was super-sweet!  This is it:

Gemma Nemer's beautifully-dressed stall

Look! She even made the signs all vintage-y and cute with retro fabrics and lots of lace, with hand-stamped text.

Gemma specialises in textile accessories made from vintage fabrics and upcycled embroidered linens. She also teaches classes in her studio at Rotherham, the Button Tin and there's all sorts lovely things you can learn to make!

I can't remember whether these were brooches or hairgrips... they're lovely anyway!

Gemma made a necklace just for her Blue Bunny!

Now I'm looking forward to Craft Candy's next fair, the Christmas one on Saturday 27 November 2010. Applications are being accepted right now until the end of August, so go to their site if you'd like to be considered for a stall.

Best wishes

Joey xx

Sublime Stitching Contest

"Ahhhh..."

That's the sound of me sighing a big sigh of relief, because (thank goodness) it's Friday! :D So what are you going to be doing this weekend? Me, I'll be going to the Craft Candy fair at the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield tomorrow morning, a spot of lunch in town and then seeing Alice at the Crucible Theatre in the afternoon. Then a swim at Ponds Forge in the evening!

But if you don't have anything planned, and if it's rainy again like it was today, why not enter the Sublime Stitching Combo Contest?  It's free to enter, and it's a great challenge: combine three themes of motifs together in an embroidery in a imaginative and exciting way, and you could win some great prizes... including my Little Tiger's Orangey Celebration embroidery pattern! 

The top prize is $100 gift voucher for Fred Flare.com... they have lots of lovely goodies, including these little beauties:

Fred Flare Goodies by joeysdreamgarden on Polyvore.com

So I hope you all think about entering the contest!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Joey xx

Skippity-Skip!

Hiya! It's hard to believe that the video above, with the beautiful sunshine, was only taken yesterday, as it's gone all gloomy and rainy again... typical British weather!

I had a fantastic day yesterday!  Me and my friend Louise went into town to catch a bit of the Sheffield Chance to Dance event... we saw all sorts of dancing, but my favourite was the Irish dancing, which we watched in Barker's Pool. Those kids are so energetic!! I can't believe how much they skipped and leapt around like happy little spring lambs! I think they have rubber legs, they were very springy indeed.  I took a few pictures as well...

One, two, three and - float!

Hop!

I love their turquoise skirts, they were just so... swishy!

We also went to the Craft Candy mini craft fair at the Bungalows and Bears bar on Division Street, which was very nice. There will be more Craft Candy mini fairs, so check their site for more info... you can have a drink AND shop... what could be better?? I bought a little badge from Fox Bunting, bearing a cute little illustration of a fox. I like foxes.

Then a quick trip to Hillsborough on the tram to Fine Fabrics, for a bit of fabric for the project I'm currently working on for Making Gifts magazine.  Which is all I can say about that for now... but watch this space!

I also have a slight sunburn as a free memento of the day! Whoops! Silly me...

Have a fabby week everyone! Whatever you're doing...

Joey xx

P.S. I'm hoping that the public voting for the Feeling Stitchy rainbow of stitches contest (of which my Little Tiger embroidery is one of the 10 in the final) will start tomorrow... I'll post a link to it here as soon as I find out!

J xx

I Didn't Save Energy on Energy-Saving Day!

Did you know that today was "E-Day" (energy-saving day) in the UK? No? Well, it's a campaign to raise people's awareness of the effect of wasting electricity and people are being asked to do simple actions such as turning off appliances instead of leaving them on standby. If you go to their website: http://www.e-day.org.uk/, you'll see that here in the UK, we've used more electricity today than on an average day.

I find this result very sad, although i'm not surprised. I think it's a worthwhile campaign if its seen as an awareness-raising activity more than anything else. I think that we need to do a heck of a lot more to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels but I know that this is such a contentious issue that to talk about what really needs to be done, would just turn most people off any idea of changing habits.

So what did I do? Well, me and my partner used a lot of energy today and we're not one bit guilty about it! No, it's not what you're thinking, you saucy thing, you! We walked to Meadowhall Shopping Centre and back, rather than taking the tram, which is approximately a 6-mile round trip. Sorry, very boring... but good exercise!

A camera provides interest to the dullest of journeys, because you're looking out for any little thing that may make a good picture. My digital camera is one of my favourite things, and I use it just about every day. Here's a few snaps from the little trip:

The only thing that spoiled our walk was the constant roar of traffic, and nearly being run over by 4x4s about 20 times. I could say that we only had ourselves to blame for picking what must be the most pedestrian unfriendly part of Sheffield... but we don't live in the country! There are no completely quiet roads here. And I wanted to go shopping... well, there has to be some sort of bribe to get me to walk 6 miles along busy roads! I wondered why should this city be controlled by cars? I watched a great programme this week, "The Woman who Stops Cars", on Tues Channel 4 (UK). I thought it was so positive that I even wrote a letter to the Radio Times for the first time in about 20 years! I doubt that they'll ever publish it so here it is, in all its unabridged glory!

"Dear letters editor
Kris Mullin (The Woman Who Stops Traffic, Channel 4, Tuesday) was, literally, a real breath of fresh air. At last someone is being brave enough to ask motorists why they need to drive ridiculously short distances, at the inconvenience and discomfort of others. It was far from easy, and Kris was faced with ridicule and derision in her endeavours to rev-up drivers to recognise that each one of them is part of the problem. However, when the programme showed the result of her "Change Gear, no car day" in Marlow on 1st Feb, it was a wonderful and surreal experience to see empty roads, where the day before they were heaving with traffic. I am biased - I don't drive at all, and instead I walk to work every day which is around a mile each way - not far at all. I cannot see why more people do not choose to do this (and I believe that it is a choice for most people), and I would welcome and support a "no car day" in Sheffield. Please keep up the fantastic work Kris!

Cheers
Joey Ramone (Ms)"

Christmas Returns

Sheffield at Night, originally uploaded by Joey 7.

I got into "am-dram" (amateur dramatics) about a year ago, and for a few months I was in a small company and performed on stage. It was a fantastic experience and although i'm giving acting a rest at the moment (its damn hard work! and time-consuming...), it did pique my interest enough to see more plays. One of the many good groups in Sheffield, in my opinion, are the Tudor Players, and tonight I saw my third play of theirs, "Comfort and Joy" by Mike Harding. Although the play is set at Christmas it didn't seem strange to be watching it in February, and it was an enjoyable night out. There was plenty of gentle, slightly cheeky humour and silliness.
One of the highlights had to be when the character Crispin tried to act out "Coronation Street" in a game of charades by jumping up and down and maniacally flapping his arms like a demented hen! His explanation for this absurd behaviour was "I thought of coronation chicken..." hahaha!

Their next play will be "The Odd Couple" by Neil Simon, 13th to 17th May 2008, at 7.15 p.m. in the Library Theatre, Tudor Square, Sheffield city centre.

More of my photos from the play: http://flickr.com/photos/joey7/sets/72157603878066718/

Tudor Players' website: http://www.tudorplayers.net/welcome/

Daft-odils?

Is spring coming already? I saw my first daffodils today, maybe they don't know that it's still February. I went for a short walk in Clay Wood, which is really just a few paths running through a smallish clump 0f trees fairly near Sheffield city centre. I shouldn't really go there by myself, but I thought, "the sun's shining, it's Friday morning and I haven't a care in the world!" so risked it. Luckily, there were no flashers, murderers nor muggers, just a few birds... and daffodils! I always associate them with March, seems that they're blooming earlier every year.



Where we live in Sheffield, we have a choice of three parks, and I think this one, in which the Cholera Monument is set, is the nicest for quietness and solitude, only the occasional elderly dog walker interrupts your reverie.