Let's meet...BlackRose!

I met BlackRose through her Folksy shop but soon discovered she has cast her net far and wide. She also has an etsy shop, her own fascinating website and a blog

Let's get to know this woman of many talents!

Cats or dogs? I love cats and am considering getting one!

Fruit or chocolate? Shhh....chocolate

Favourite colour? Pink

Favourite meal? West Indian style rice n peas or a nice Thai dish



Bath or shower? Definitely a bath......I love to soak and reflect/day dream

What brought you to Folksy? Do you sell anywhere else?

I’ve been creating something or other since an early age. I used to do the odd craft fair when I was heavily into salt dough modelling. I discovered selling online - and thought that might be an easier option than standing out in the cold. I’ve opened a shop on Artfire but that is empty at the moment.



I now realise selling online isn’t an easier option and can be even more involving than doing craft fairs (i.e. taking suitable photos, networking to get known, packaging and posting, etc) but just one of many options. I’m now thinking that I will have a mixture – my online shops and craft fairs. I have a stall in March via the Telegraph Hill Festival in SE London and am investigating a stall at the new Roman Road Craft Market in East London.

In your profile you state: “I am attuned to reiki, and am also a professional psychic reader and certified life coach - you will therefore find that some of my items have a healing, spiritual or affirmative/self developmental aspect to them.” Can you give us an example of this please?

I like to make a few items that I think will help others in some way, whether to relax or as a tool for meditation and self growth – such as my spirit art dolls or herb sachets/pillows.




What’s the favourite item you’ve made so far?
Gosh....mmmm...my favourite things have long gone (I used to make my own clothes and made some culottes years ago which I wore to death). My current fave is a spirit art doll I’ve made and just listed on Etsy – I’m quite torn about whether to leave her there or remove her and keep her for myself!


Listed on Folksy at the moment – it has to be Creative Bella another of my little art dolls.


Thank you! I'm going to end with the inspiring title of Val's website:
Dream your life, live your dream.

All you need to know...

I was moaning "it's not fair" yesterday, and realised I sounded just like one of the kids I used to teach :-) so I looked out an extract from a book I used to pin on my classroom wall. You might know it: it's called

All I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten,
by Robert Fulgham

Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the tip of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.




Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.




Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup – they all die. So do we.



And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living.


Think of what a better world it would be if we – all the world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.