Hello and Welcome to my website. I’m Claire and I’m an artist, illustrator, designer and all round crafty person based in Northern Ireland.

Lately I’m designing Cross Stitch charts and making collagraph prints – rediscovering my love of the Irish countryside. I very much enjoy Irish vernacular architecture and I’m looking forward to adding my take on Irish cottages to both mediums. To see what making a collagraph printing plate looks like – check out this post on my blog. The best place to view my cross stitch is on my Etsy store – Little Nest Emporium.

I’ve had Little Nest Emporium for about 8 or 9 years now, it’s not a big traffic store and I used it to offer some prints of my watercolour art and some graphic stationery now and again, I was averaging out at about 20 sales a year so its never been a proper venture, but I do enjoy chatting with customers and since all of the issues surrounding Brexit etc it’s become too much of a hurdle to sell physical goods so I am transitioning it to digital downloads only, which is actually grand for Cross stitch charts. I’m in the very, very early stages of Cross stitch design so it might take a while to fill up – sure bookmark it and come back to me later!

Formerly I ran a craft company, designing and supplying photopolymer stamps and stencils for papercrafters and scrapbookers. It was called Waltzingmouse Stamps, and this was my old blog, Waltzingmouse Makes – which I have since lost access to…grrrr google…..

Not really a person for niches, I’ll have a go at everything and on this site you will find blog posts relating to things like card making and stencilling, maybe even the odd yarny post. Whatever I am doing though you will see a few common threads – I love Christmas, rich colour and a good strong line.

The other thing I like to do is paint watercolour illustrations of buildings – it’s usually an Irish Pub, but there’s an odd shop front, Dublin doorway or other interesting Irish building. I particularly love painting bricks and old stone, if the old stone has a story, so much the better.

Anyhow, it’s lovely to see you here, thanks for popping in. If you also have a blog, leave me your addy, I like a good browse over a cuppa!