Sarah Appleton - Textile Artist Blog

This month (like many people) I have been gearing up for Christmas in a big way. Along with adding my new  Christmas Cards  to my Etsy shop , I also made some gift tags for sale using the same lino block and some leftover shrink plastic that I had. This is the first time I had experimented with such a project and I had a lot of really nice feedback about them: In fact, the whole lot sold out straight away - so they must have been good! I made mostly Christmassy ones but I also tried out a couple of other designs too, like my peacock: I'm trying to use up some of the 'less sustainable' materials and packaging that I have, so it's unlikely that I'll be making any more exactly like this - but I did design them with the intention that they be reused and/or hung on the Christmas tree as decorations! I am not a re-gifter but I am definitely a re-claimer of tags, ribbons and even gift wrap sometimes... would that be a re-wrapper?! 🙈 Any other re-wrappers out there make yo...

This week I was helping out with the beginnings of putting together the special Christmas exhibition in the gallery. The first job of the day was to wrap up some of those pretend fake presents that always look so much nicer than any actual real presents. This was quite fun, as I actually enjoy wrapping gifts, plus it's amazing what you can do with just a little bit of brown paper and ribbon: Prizes After that I spent quite a while carefully unwrapping deliveries, checking them over and pricing them before wrapping them all carefully back up to be stored until the changeover to Christmas. Most of the goodies I unwrapped were ceramics and here's a couple of my favourites: Jessica Thorn Super cute cups, jugs and spice shakers by  Jessica Thorn , white outside with coloured seams and insides. Very yummy indeed! Alex Allday And very pretty, delicate ceramics by  Alex Allday  with overlapping surface patterns and textures, giving them a sort of 'lacy' effect. S...