Crafts and dreams

How to prepare a dream? Take the colors and emotions of the day, mix them with sounds, voices musics, memories from the past, add something of the hopes for the future and this is your dream. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyway, for a creative mind dreams are not something different from reality, but live and intersect with it, influencing the direction until it becomes difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. Stéphane, the protagonist of The Science of Sleep, does not get out from reality seeking refuge in dreams; he just lives his life through them, dreams are his way of relating to things and understand them... art, dreams and life are so closely bound to be indistinguishable.

What I particularly loved about this film is that Stéphane's dreams far away from being soft and evanescent as it is usual to consider them, appear to be very concrete, physically constructed with cardboard, glue, and fabric. He is a practical dreamer, he has a concrete and realist attitude that creates a different reality, more reassuring, almost childish. Even the art of Stéphanie, the girl with which Stéphane fell in love, is not conceptual or abstract at all: she sews colored felt giving life to sweet and reassuring creatures with apparent large stitches. And it is their meeting to make their dreams more real because they can share them.

Me too, just as Stéphanie and Stéphane, I need to touch the concreteness of my dreams that comes to life thanks to a warm and friendly material like felt that fills with colored rolls my little attic under Paris rooftops.

Below are some of my concrete creations, hope you like them!

Rêves d'enfance

Few days ago is born Babiekins, a new online magazine focused on all things trendy in a little one’s world, and I’m very glad to present it here because I definitively love it very much and because I am proud to have contribute to it with some drawings! The magazine is created by Priscila, a very busy and cute mom, author of a popular baby blog, who invented the word Babiekins to call anyone and everyone dear to her. Her hope is that this magazine can encourage, inspire and motivate the trendy parent and child alike. And I guess she’s reached this goal, because this mag is absolutely inspiring with dreaming atmospheres and cutest items without forgetting a lot of handmade ones.

I post the link of magazine on the top so you can also browse to and take a look to Priscila’s lovely ideas that will make you and your children happy.

And as we are talking about children, I decided to sew a set of functional plastic bibs provided with a cute pocket with a felt puppet inside that transform the baby-feeding time in a really funny game. As you can see in the photos, in order to make even more special my bibs, I stamped on the fabric some hand-carved rubber stamps in theme with the felt character (hand made too) in the pocket. I hope you enjoy them!

You can find my bibs on sale on my etsy shop, check them out!

Adorable pochettes!

What I love in hand-carved rubber stamps is their versatility in being used as decoration in everything you want. So, during these days I sewed these practical pouches on which I stamped with special ink for fabric some of my hand-carved rubber stamps, as you can see in the pictures the result is truly unique and original. If for you the space is never enough, these pouches are just for you... they will make you be able to tidy up your things without neglecting a sweet and pretty style.

My drawstring pouches are on sale, explore my etsy shop!

And for lovers of details here is a fun way to use rubber stamps: to turn simple wooden cutlery in nice items to decorate your kitchen.

Spring bugs and other animals

With the arrival of spring pique-niques and promenades in the parks are a must. I love to lie down on the grass and let myself be pampered by the warm torpor of the sun, indeed I very often fall asleep. So far so good, except for being awakened by all the series of annoying bugs that seem to have no other purpose than to make my life a hell! As you can understand, I feel a out-and-out phobia for these disgusting fluttering creatures. The terror I feel in front of everything with more than four legged (and maybe hairy ones) borders on pathology so that even butterflies and ladybirds, universally recognized as lovely animals, have the power to scare me to death. Not to mention spiders, the level of my arachnophobia is as high as I’m not be able even to crush them beacuse of the disgust that I feel if I think to have such an animal under the sole of the shoe or, even worse, because of the fear that the mother of all spiders comes during the night to take revenge for the crime I’ve committed!

So, since I am convinced that the best way to face my fear for bugs is to exorcise it making harmless the "enemy subject", I decided to dedicate these new spring rubber stamps just to insects, or rather to their pretty and friendly version. And I'd say that I reach my goal: they look so reassuring that me too I find them really lovely... who knows, maybe after today when a little bee will wake me up with its "tuneful" buzz, I will be able to see it with different eyes and to hold myself back from having my usual hysterics!

ladybird felt brooch, available on my etsy

Little honey bee felt brooch, available on my etsy

Spring butterfly felt brooch, available on my etsy

Spring bugs fabric covered bottons, available on my etsy

and here's some other cute aminals with respective brooches and fabric covered buttons...

Funny Monkey, Cute Snail and Flying Bat, all three available on my etsy

Funny animals fabric covered buttons, check it out on my esty shop!