Garage Sale!

Garage Sale!, originally uploaded by [mummalu].

My little brand Encircled is having a little FB sale. Some cute upcycled dresses for sale! Please help me fund my Etsy purchases ;)

www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150435360013970.39821...

Upcycled Ladybirds in the making.

Upcycled Ladybirds in the making., originally uploaded by [mummalu].

These are currently being made by me. They are little ladybird purses with a zip through the middle. The dots have been screenprinted onto the fabric of old shirts. The little eyes have been sewn on using a free machine embroidery method. I can't wait to see them finished.

What do you call them: ladybirds, ladybugs or ladybeetles?

A little update

Although things have been fairly quiet around my blog, my real life has been very busy. I am now back at work, hmm a real job, I am studying 2 days a week, helping a friend out with her ladies 2nd hand market and juggling a very active 2 year old.

School (TAFE) is moving along very slowly, but that's what you get for only going 2 days a week. This semester we had a good play with some screen printing which I have been loving. The last couple of weeks we have been doing up some screens with photo emulsion. I made a screen with my label 'encircled' on it so that I could use them for tags on the items that I am creating. The sushi fish was part of a project that had to be japanese inspired. We are in the middle of making a skirt that had to have one of our screen prints on it.


The pillow is made up of lots of upcycled fabrics including parts of my favourite pair of jeans and many men's shirts. I did some self cover buttons and attempted some piping for the first time. The circles pattern was made using some fabric paint and printing bubble wrap onto the fabric. I then free hand machine embroidered over the top.

Wearable photography.

This is a sneak peek of my latest project, and as you can see I like to get around a bit and jump from one craft to another!

These are brooches made from upcycled scrabble tiles and bottle caps. I have downsized and printed my photographs so that they fit into this space. Poured some resin over the top, wait a day and ta da, we have some wearable photography.

I had to experiment with the paper to see which would work with the resin the best and I found that the photographs printed on the photographic paper came out the best. They were still bright and the contrast was still good. The ones that were just printed onto colour paper tended to go a bit grey.

All of my Newcastle themed brooches were quite a hit at the Red Lantern Night Market on Friday night so I was quite happy with that. Now I have to get busy and make some more for this coming Friday night market!

Toodooloo :)