Cotswolds Miniatures Weekend

We have just got home from a great weekend away. We were invited to instruct at the first Cotswolds Miniature Weekend - and if you didn't come along I would recommend it for next year! There were many different workshops going on and everyone had a wonderful time and went home with lots of new creations and minds crammed full of ideas of what to make next ;)

Aidy made me take part in day one - sculpting - Not my area at all and at first I was very reluctant but I grew to really enjoy myself. My character changed throughout the day and ended up turning into an elf type! I will try to get him finished and dressed so you can all see my first person sculpt - Don't worry I will not be taking over Aidy's job any time soon!

One of the finished dolls

A doll well on the way to being finished


A grumpy butler in the making

Getting things right!

What should I wear?

We had a wonderful group of students who were more like old friends by the time the weekend came to an end! We were sad to leave lol. We would like to give thanks to karen and Gillie and all the others involved in making this event happen - they all worked so hard and it showed - Thanks guys!

Concentration!

Time for a natter!

This picture was when we all worried - Our precious heads were going into the oven! We had all grown very attached to our little people by this point!


Also I would like to say a huge thanks to Wendy, Pam, Jo, Kazumi, Sheree, Janet, Sue, Sabina and Pat who were all wonderful and such good fun! You all helped to make our weekend one to remember!

I would also like to say a huge thanks to Sally Watson and kathy Brindle who made our night on Saturday - we were lucky enough to sit next to them at the meal and we have not laughed so much in years - You could not ask to meet two nicer or more fun people - I don't think they exist! thanks again you two!


Get ready to watch out for next years event and book early - it is going to prove very popular!

http://www.cotswoldminiaturesweekend.co.uk/

Miniatura

We are back from Miniatura ;) The pictures above are of me (even though I tried to avoid it - and why is it always me having pictures taken?!?) and of my great friends Bev (Beverley Read) and Lesley (ooakdiddydolls) who were sharing their first stand at the show.

A lot of people thought the show was very quiet compared to other years and in some ways I would have to agree that numbers did seem to be down on both days. The weather was very bad on the Sunday not sure if this had an impact or not?

We had a good start to the show as we sold all four preview witches as soon as we put them on our blog (it was also really nice to meet fellow bloggers at the show ;) ) and then we had a very good response to the ones we made to replace them! We also sold our show piece in the first few hours and we were asked about it by lots of other people who fell in love with the silliness of the concept!

A lot of customers also remembered Battish Airways from last year so it looks like we are now getting recognised for making strange moving contraptions lol but we had a lot of fun with both and are already thinking about the next piece as we would like to have something on display at Arnhem, Madrid and kensington.

We had a very good show all in all and sold a lot of dolls this is good and bad lol as now we have so much to do for Arnhem at the end of the month!?! I know, I know never happy :p

I am also pleased to say that Lesley had a very good show selling lots of dolls and taking just as many commissions - it was so great to see her doing so well and getting the boost she needed - I have been bullying her into doing fairs for years!!

Bev also sold some of her wonderful cakes and dolls and while she was at the show her son got her website up and running please take a look http://beverleyread.co.uk/ It is always great catching up with these two and we don't get to see each other as often as we would like.

We stayed in the same hotel as Lesley and her sister Tracey and had a nice meal with them and my mum and dad who had also travelled down for the show. So at least we had lots of time to natter and put the world to rights =)

I love Miniatura and would say it is one of my favourite shows to do, the atmosphere is always great and you get to meet lots of lovely people and catch up with friends and customers so now I can't wait until we get to do it all again in spring! A huge thank you to all of you who did take the time to stop by and say hello it was so lovely to see you all =)

More witches!

These first two pictures are our first ever 1:24 scale witches - they really are adorable in real life and are around 2.5 inches.

Lucinda - The puppeteer witch - she has a little ghost and death puppet in each hand both sculpted from clay.

Hope you like the last of our Miniatura preview - the car just needs to be packed and then we are ready to go! Looking forward to meeting those of you coming to the show ;)

Miniatura show piece - Witches Flying Machine

In traditional Lilyelf fashion we decided to make a moving piece for this years Autumn Miniatura! It is not the easiest thing in the world to photograph though so if you are at the show please come along a take a look.

The bat wings move up and down and the oars rotate to look like they are helping to fly the balloon. As you can tell Gertie, Bernadine and Crandall have all the possessions they need for the long journey ahead - although Crandall was lucky to make the flight!

This will be available for sale at the show and is of course a one of a kind piece. We hope you like it - more preview pictures of other dolls to follow...

Witches!

Sorry I have yet again neglected to write! I have had flu for one thing and life keeps finding ways to keep me busy for another lol We both took quite ill at the Falkirk show and I ended up asleep behind the stand for most of the day - we missed the fair at Haydock the week after as we still felt rotten! Sorry to those of you who missed us at the show.

The above picture is of me at the Stafford fair on Sunday lol think the look says it all I had only had an hours sleep the night before! One day I will manage to get a full nights rest before a fair...


We thought we should show you what we have been busy working on the last few weeks - we are in a witch theme at the moment and having great fun thinking of ideas for new characters and props - these will all be on show at Miniatura - hope you like them ;o)

We are also working on a few special pieces and if I have time I will give you a sneak preview - they are very much working progress right now!!! We are also working on lots of other new characters so if you do manage to make it to Miniatura please come and say hello!

We are back...

Hello all, Sorry we have not been around for so long - a lot has been going on! My mum had to have 3 operations to remove kidney stones so that was a lot of trips to the hospital and a heap of worry as she has so many other health issues - happy to report that although in some pain she is recovering well =)

Secondly we had our 7th wedding anniversary and mum being the star she is treated us to a holiday in kos for 2 weeks! We had a holiday of a life time as we met so many new wonderful friends. I will post pictures and tell you all about it in my next post but...why the cat picture?

Well, Kos has hundreds of stray cats and dogs all over the island and we met a wonderful lady called sue who is trying her best with a small team of friends to really make a difference to the lives of these animals. We met because we saw a cat who had a lot of eye problems and we wanted to help him - our rep was useless and basically told us to turn a blind eye pardon the pun, and that she was a dog person anyway! Well having two cats at home we couldn't bear to see it suffer so we fed it when we could and set out to look for some help - we found sue! Who gave us some eye drops for the cat ;o)

Sue is originally from Ireland in fact she was born not far from where my family live over there so I knew a friend when I found one lol but she has lived in kos for 9 years. Sue sits out EVERY night on the small strip which has bars and restaurants in Tingaki Kos you can't miss her - she has a table with information in lots of languages telling people about the problems, pictures of dogs and cats that need help and she usually has one or more dogs or cats with her to try to find a loving Forever Home for them( I must point out that the people taking the animals are vetted and not just anyone can walk away with a cat or dog) - luckily lots of German and Dutch people can re-home these animals easily, once they have been vaccinated and given a passport the animals are good to go!

It was so wonderful to see people wanting to help and we even met a lady who had re-homed a dog the year before and she proudly pulled out his picture from her purse to show us how happy he was and how happy he had made her. We also a met a lovely German couple who were rescuing four dogs who had been running around in a pack near where they were staying, they felt they had to take them all to keep them together.

Sue currently has 14 cats and at the time we were there she had four dogs (2 were pups) although one has now been given a new home. Her life revolves around her job, meetings with officials, looking after her own brood and sitting out all night - she does not spend any time for sue!!!

Sue invited us to her house and asked if we could help with the IT side of things and we felt it was the least we could do...so I spent a day making her a website please take a look and help if you can http://animalrescuekos.com

she had a great idea to raise money for a very much needed sanctuary on the island so the animals waiting for a home have a safe place to go - a facebook appeal to get 1 million people give just 1 euro each. Please get your family and friends to take part =)

I have just spent the day putting all the information for the cats on the website and some images are upsetting - the person in question who has the 60 cats (if you do take a look) has a restaurant and him and his wife can't bear the thought of putting the cats down so they now have 60 - sue has a friend who is going to get them sterilised to help the situation - but they really need a loving home!

ARK (the name of the charity) has a programme of sterilisation which obviously is going to help stop so many new strays taking to the streets but heartbreakingly at the moment due to lack of a sanctuary the cats/dogs have to be put back on the streets after they have had the operation as there is just no where to keep them while they wait for a home.

The charity aims to build a rescue centre with a visitors centre and education facility but they need funding and land. They have been in talks with the local government but these things involve a lot of red tape and take time.

So on that note...we came home and rescued two more cats who needed some tlc so we now have 4 fur babies - (ours were rescued from here not kos as the uk has 6 month quarantine) they had been needing a home for 2 months so we felt we had to help if sue could do it so could we! We are going to constantly do all we can to help sue and the animals of kos...

We will be launching some cat, mice and maybe dog dolls very soon to help raise money for this very worthwhile cause ;o) so watch this space!

new lisitng on ebay

As we have no fairs until the end of July we decided we should make our long list of outstanding commissions and list some dolls on ebay!

Meet Hattie the candy witch who is available for sale on the following link

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190409646931

We will be adding more dolls tonight and tomorrow so watch this space. We never normally have time to list on ebay as we are always working towards a fair or making commissions, so we are going to make the most of our free time!