It's the 1st of the month which means ....

IT'S FREEBIE DAY !!!

YAY !

This month, we are giving away one of our feltabulous new needle felting starter kits !

These kits are fantastic if you want to give needle felting a go - you get a sponge, a needle, a single needle holder and 75g of wool (3 different colours). You can choose from Caribbean (blues), Forest (greens), Citrus (orange, yellow & lime green), Berry (purples), Candyfloss (pinks) or Woodland (browny reds).

To enter the FREEBIE giveaway, all you need to do is leave a comment on this post before the end of next Tuesday and a winner will be picked by the random number generator on Wednesday 9th March. Please ensure I can contact you via your email address, blog or website. If I am unable to contact you, I will unfortunately have to redraw the number.

Good luck !!!

xx

Don't forget ...

It's the Vintage & Handmade Market at Chelmsford's Shire Hall tomorrow, 10am until 4pm.

Lots of felty goodness, buttons, ribbons, threads, needles & kits to be had - all from yours truly. Along with vintage clothing, vintage inspired gifts, fabrics and of course, tea & homemade cake all served on vintage crockery !

Can't wait !!!

xx

A little bit of everything !

Yes, this post does exactly as it says on the tin.

Bear with me because I'll be telling you a bit about everything today !

Right, first up ... it's half term. And as all you other working Mums out there know, that means kids under your feet when you need to work ! After having booked Sam on a cricket day, I was left wondering what to do with Grace. Enter a fantastic new venture in Chelmsford called "Make Do & Mend". Run by the lovely Hannah, she is running crafty workshops where you can learn "traditional" crafts. Her workshop programme for the Spring includes Knitting for Beginners, Crochet for Beginners, Sewing for Beginners, 2 Dressmaking courses, How to make a cushion workshop, Introduction to Felt Making, Beginners Decoupage, Embroidery and lots more ! Also thrown into the mix for the school holidays are classes such as Pottery Painting, and it was this particular course that I found myself on with Grace yesterday morning.

Run by Mell of "The Potter's Bar" we had great fun painting ceramic cupcake trinket pots and can't wait to see how they turn out - watch this space for photos of the finished items !

Of course, spending a whole morning painting ceramic cupcakes wasn't very helpful to the processing and dispatch of the large number of orders that came in over the weekend, but never mind, I'll just have to work in the evenings to catch up !

On Sunday, I spent the whole day at a massive trade fair catching up with suppliers and also sourcing lots of new goodies for the BF website. Fingers crossed all the new supplies will be here very soon - I'll keep you updated.

Next, the 1.5mm thick woven felt is now back in stock (along with a new colourway - Cornflower,which will be on the website tomorrow).

Also back in stock are the cover buttons and giant flat-pad paperclips / bookmarks

A very exciting delivery came on Friday - a fantastic new book which I have been trying to stock for almost a year now ! Wool Toys & Friends is the follow-on book to the Woolpets publication which we stock. Full of lots of FANTASTIC needle felted creations, be sure to get your copy. It's a hardback book (which are always my favourite) and is a must for all you needlefelters !

Thank you to Mad about Bags and Made by Lolly for both nominating me for a Stylish Blogger award !

I feel very flattered and have to say that looking at the photo of me at the top of the page, I'm really NOT a stylish blogger ! If I'd have known Hannah would have been taking photos, I would have worn something much more colourful, put on some slap and washed my hair - LOL ! But thank you both ladies and I really hope you won't be offended if I don't do anything about it in this post - people have far too much to read as it is ! But I will make every effort to pass on the award in my next post

And finally, Blooming Felt will have a table at the Vintage & Handmade Fair at the Shire Hall in Chelmsford on Saturday 26th February. Open from 10am until 4pm, this Fair is a must for all you lovers of vintage clothing & accessories, handmade goodies and of course, fantastic felt supplies along with buttons, ribbons and lots more ... all from yours truly !!

If you're local, I look forward to seeing you there !

Sarah

xx

And the winners are ....

So sorry for the late announcement of the winners of the FREEBIE GIVEAWAY ! I wanted to give everyone the best possible chance of entering and so closed the FREEBIE at 12 midnight.

So, without further ado - I popped all of the numbers, a massive 49 in total, into the random number generator website I found on Google (http://www.random.org/) and it produced the following numbers:

12 - which I believe was a comment from Claire Mackaness

and

18 - which was a comment from another Clare, of Weekend Crafter

Well done ladies - I will email you to get your address details and your Goody Bags will be on their way to you very soon !

Sorry to all those of you who didn't win this time but the next monthly FREEBIE will be up for grabs on 1st March. Same thing, you'll need to leave a comment on that particular post once it is published and the winner will be picked a week later.

Now - what to offer ?! You'll just have to wait and see

Thank you to EVERYONE who took the time and trouble to leave a comment on the Freebie Giveaway post - I was overwhelmed by the response.

Have a lovely weekend everyone

Sarah xx

An exciting new range

A couple of posts ago I said that we would be introducing a number of new felting ranges to the Blooming Felt shop.

The first one that is now ready to be snapped up is now available on the site. It's a needle felting starter kit.

We trialled these at the Knitting & Stitching Show last year and they were very popular. Since then, we have been thinking about adding them to the website, but were unsure as to the best way to do it. But it has finally now all been sorted out and we have decided to offer 6 different colourways

Berry

Candyfloss

Tropical

Citrus

Forest

Woodland

Each kit contains a sponge, a felting needle, a single needle holder, 75g of felting wool (25g each of 3 different colours) and some basic instructions. Each kit is available in a different colourway (as shown above) and will arrive in one of our fantastic branded cotton drawstring bags.

Priced at £9.50, these kits offer fantastic value for money - you actually save £2.00 when buying a kit, compared to buying the items individually. So that basically means that you're getting the sponge (or one colour of wool) for free ! YAY !!

For anyone who would like to give needle felting a go, we have a number of tips available over on our website. Click here and you will be magically transported. And don't forget we also stock lots of books relating to needle felting (with a couple of new ones on their way !!), so once you've got the hang of it (or in most cases, caught the needle felting bug), you can grab yourself a book and needle felt to your heart's content !

There are a number of other new felting items on their way so if this is your thing .... keep checking back !

The MONTHLY FREEBIE is still open (until Friday 18th Feb) - click here to go to the relevant post and leave your comment. Thanks to everyone who has commented so far .... looks like rather a lot of you are after one of our Goody Bags !

Sarah x

Hurrah - the monthly freebie has launched !

Well, it took a while, but today we finally hit 200 followers and as promised, are now launching our monthly freebie !!

As a special thank you to all of our blog readers, we will be offering a fantastic freebie every 1st of the month from now on.

So, for our first monthly freebie we are offering 2 (yes .... 2 !) lucky followers the chance to win one of our new "Goody Bags". Each bag contains some felt string, felt shapes, buttons and felt balls. In other words, a wonderful selection of Blooming Felt goodies for you to do whatever you please with !

"How do I enter ?" you ask.

Well, all you need to do is leave a comment on the Freebie Post (no anonymous comments please) and once the freebie closes (one week later) all comments will be entered into a random number generator and a winner will be chosen. I must be able to contact you via an email address, or your own blog / website etc. If your name / number is selected and I have no way of contacting you then I'm afraid you will lose your prize and another winner will be selected. All winners will be announced on this blog and an email will also be sent requesting your address so that we can get your goodies out to you.

Our monthly freebies are available to absolutely everyone, wherever you are in the world !

This freebie will close on Friday 18th February 2011.

So go on, what are you waiting for ? Go get those freebies !!!

Sarah x

No rest for the wicked !

Goodness me - how busy have I been this last week ?

Since I last posted, you seem to have gone crazy for our new products and orders have been coming in thick and fast.

The new colours of wool roving are going down a storm. Actually, felting as a whole seems to have become extremely popular over the last few months. So much so, that we will be introducing a number of exciting new products very soon !

As well as the usual website stuff, we have been busy looking into a number of other exciting projects. Our stand at the Knitting & Stitching Show has been booked - even BIGGER than before and we have also been looking at another project in particular which may or may not come off. It's still in the "mulling it over" stage at the moment but if anything comes of it, I'll of course share it with you all.

Now, for those of you in lurrrrrve, you will know that it is Valentine's Day next week. To celebrate this wonderful occasion, our February Tutorial is a fantastic Heart Wreath (or it could also be used as a candle holder !) Click here to get your free PDF download !

We've almost managed to reach 200 followers on the blog - don't forget, as soon as we do, the new monthly giveaway will be launched !!! Get Following !!!!

Sarah xx