Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

It was my birthday last week, so join in the celebrations, leave a comment  and  be automatically included in the draw to win this giveaway. The gift is a plaited wool scarf  and a pair of earrings. The scarf is handmade.  I bought the earrings to support a charity, so am very happy to include them in the gift  as a charity has also enjoyed some benefit.  ,   I will randomly choose a winner on Wednesday 7 August,  5pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. This is not a condition of entering this giveaway ,  but I would really appreciate it if you visited and  liked my Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/Empress.Wu.Designs  ; or followed me on Pinterest   http://pinterest.com/empresswu/ or  occasionally visited my photostream on  Flickr    http://www.flickr.com/photos/empresswu/ Good luck!

Today is my mother’s birthday  - Happy Birthday, Mum. Going strong and creative at 88!  This morning, I uncovered my embroidery which I have been “working on” for a few birthdays now. In the absence of the finished Willow Pattern tablecloth, I created a treasury of beautiful Willow Pattern inspired items I found on Etsy . Hope you and all those who love "blue and white" enjoy it.     Link : http://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTcyNDAwNHwyNzIxNTA0NDg5/willow

Giveaway Gifts T his week is blog giveaway time! Last week I celebrated my birthday.  I’ve had far too many to count the candles, but I had a wonderful party on the weekend with my family - with an indulgent birthday cake, favourite foods cooked by my husband and great company. ( In case you were wondering about the writing on the cake , Por Por = Chinese grandmother)     I also got great gifts from  my family and friends. There seemed to be a bit of a theme this year – with many of my gifts and cards depicting matryshoka ( babushka) dolls and tea drinking.   As it is also winter here in Australia ,   it was easy for me to  decide what I could offer as gifts  in this birthday giveaway. All the gifts are handmade by me. Gift 1 - two little fabric matryshoka dolls  Gift 2- a little bag made from colourful teapot and teacup fabric . The design is called a jester bag, but it is suitable for carrying s...

I consider myself very lucky to have such great opportunities to go to workshops fairly close to home (Sydney is only 167 km away) with well known artists . Yesterday, I attended a workshop with Christi Friesen, Polymer Clay Artist Extraordinaire - please click here   to see Christi's work.  The workshop was held in the fantastic new workshop of the Sydney Jewellery School  - so lovely to work in such a light and spacious area. And here are some of the pieces I made in the workshop - sort of " art nouveau". Some of the pieces need repairing as they weren't cured before the trip home to Newcastle and got a bit squashed in transit.  I was fairly happy, considering that I haven't made polymer clay jewellery for a couple of years. And today we celebrated a grandson's fourth birthday...  what a happy weekend it's been.

I woke up this morning with a shock - it is February! Not sure what happened to January.... It's been a busy week - top of  my "to do" list was to do some preparation for the Wise Women Exhibition, which I will be curating to celebrate International Women's Day. The opening is on 8 March and the advertising goes out this week. The photo above is of some "almost finished" art dolls which will be included in the exhibition. Participants in my "Wise Women" workshop will also be displaying their work. Here is one of them - a fantastic result from a beginner doll maker! To find out more about these workshops  before the exhibition -  please check  Timeless Textiles I have also just managed to keep up with the blog group challenge  Tag Tuesday . I struggled a bit with both the themes "White" and  "Vintage" but in the end was fairly happy with my tags.   I tried some different techniques with this vintage one - a ph...

We have had such a happy week in the wonderful part of the world we live in -  a day and night at Salamander Bay, about an hour's drive away from home.  One of the best spots to be in Winter! The day was clear, cold and windy, but beautiful - perhaps not the description the owner of this washed up yacht might have used? Our garden at home is looking beautiful too with the bottle brush, dancing like red fairies in the strong winds,and our Robyn Gordon Grevilleas attracting birds, even in such gale force winds. What about creative stuff this week? Inspired by the day at the Bay, I finally named a couple of my   embellished felt pouches " Bayside Blues' and " Nautilus"  ....  And our lovely garden prompted me to play with my new Inktense pencils. I only bought six pencils separately, rather than a set, just so I could experiment with them. I think I'll be buying a few more ... These samples were originally a grey on grey p...