Willow & Wildflower Studio

Welcome to Willow & Wildflowers Studio

Artisan made forever cherished nature & flora inspired art.

My name is Valerie, I am the artist behind Willow & Wildflowers

My story isn’t a typical one. I left the traditional world behind to find my flow on the UK waterways, and today, my work is born within a floating studio onboard the Willow.

There's a particular quality of light that falls across the water in the early hours soft, unhurried, the kind that seems to slow the whole canal down with it. That's the light I've tried to catch and hold, in glass and in wool alike.

My studio isn't fixed to one spot. It moves with me, aboard Willow, a narrowboat that's been home, workshop, and quiet witness to years of cutting, foiling, felting, and soldering by the window. Mornings start on the towpath Walter and Pepper trotting ahead, noses down, in no rush at all and it's on those walks that most of my designs are born: a curl of cow parsley against the light, a heron caught mid-still, the particular gold of a meadow in late June.

Back at the bench, two crafts sit side by side. Under Everlight Blooms, I work in copper foil the old stained glass technique, patient and exacting. Every leaf, petal, and wing is cut by hand, wrapped in copper, and soldered into something that catches the light long after the walk that inspired it is over. And under Willow's Wool Garden, I work from sheets of wool felt, cutting each petal by hand and shaping it, layer upon layer, into blooms so realistic they might have been picked from the meadow that morning.

Different materials, same instinct: to take something fleeting from the towpath and give it a little permanence.

Together, they've become Willow & Wildflower a small, hand-built body of work rooted in the English countryside, in canal life, and in the belief that beauty is often found in the things we walk past without looking twice.

If something here catches your eye, I'd love for you to bring a piece of the water and the meadow into your own home browse the glass and wool collections, or come find me at a workshop and make one with your own hands.