Quick card

On this evening’s to do list was making a card for a little girl who I sponsor in Haiti through compassion UK. It’s her 5th birthday in August so I needed to get it sent off in order to arrive there in time. 

I grabbed a blank card, some sticky backed fabric I bought from a Tiger store, some pens and some scissors. 

I had an idea of what I wanted to do and am quite pleased with the little birds. I’m a bit annoyed at myself for not taking more care with how the words looked, but that’s partly because I was copying them and partly because the pen was bleeding into the card if I didn’t write quickly. Oh well… Hopefully she will like it anyway. 

Crazy glaze

Having done no creative stuff at all since rosie’s visit a week and a half ago I was excited about today when my friend hannah had invited me to her 21st birthday party. She had a pottery painting party run by crazy glaze, who were the same people who ran my ‘chicken party’  (my hen party that got renamed by one of the little girls who came to it!). Darren and Juliette from crazy glaze are lovely, and Darren is also a photographer and he took our wedding photos for us too. Today he brought his daughter Lucy with him.

Today i planned to do a detailed design on a pizza plate, and a quick design on a bowl. I took ideas from various different places and got to work. It was good to draw out the basics of my design on my plate in pencil, knowing that the marks would burn off when the plate was fired.


I enjoyed using the different colours and there is something exciting about not knowing exactly how it will look after firing because the colours are so muted when they go on. Crazy glaze provide small tabs of each colour as they will look after firing, but obviously you can’t really see how they look together on your work until after the process.

I spent quite  a large chunk of the party time on the plate, and eventually decided not to outline the bird or tree in black, and just see how it turns out.

Then I worked fast on the bowl. I love the combination of lime green and orange, so filled the middle of the bowl with lime green, and edged the rim in orange.

Round the outside i just used up the paints that were left in my palette from doing  the plate, with no pattern, just making sure I didn’t put the same colour next to itself anywhere. I think it will be a very cheerful bowl for eating my cereal in the mornings!
During the party it was fun as Darren kept looking up photos of our wedding. I love looking back at that day as it was so much fun!

It was nice to be creative with other people.

Allsorts (not the licorice ones!) 

Today rosie and I carried on with creative things. We headed off to Slimbridge and spent a while sketching flamingoes. Rosie understandably struggled with the fact that they kept moving, and she wasn’t happy with the way she drew their heads, but i love the way she uses the pencil so she doesn’t get solid lines round the edges, and i love the variety of birds she’s captured with their heads under their wings and their necks twisted up in different ways, and the fact that her sketches have movement in them. It’s really interesting how we view our own work as i really like one of rosie’s pictures that she thought was no good and actually crossed out! 

I had fun trying out my metallic pencils and then getting more adventurous with pens. It was interesting to use slightly different colours because those were the ones I had. I’m a bit annoyed with both my pictures… The first because of the solid line round the edge and the second because I think i ruined it with the baby one flapping and jumping up and down… Mark thought it was a scarecrow!! That said, I’m really pleased with the shape of the flamingo with his head back, and i really like the colours together. 

When we got back we got the henna out. Rosie had never used it on anyone before so she tried a simple design on my foot and then did a more tricky bird design on my other ankle, combining bits of two different pictures in one. 


Rosie then found a floral design she wanted on her arm (so it will be covered by her blazer sleeve when she goes back to school), and i did that for her,adding birds flying across her wrist. 


After that we watched ‘you’ve got mail’ which she’d never seen before (I feel that it’s an important part of my role to educate her in great films)! And i finished off my octopus while we were doing that. His  eyes look weird but as rosie and mark both say ‘a premature baby isn’t going to mind about that’! That said… Next time I make one I think i will leave it without a face at all! 


Rosie worked hard and finished her paper cut too. I’m so proud of her as she’s put tons of time and effort into it and she’s done  a fab job, especially seeing as it’s the first time she’s ever done it. 


it’s been so much fun doing all this with rosie and I’ve loved being able to give her the opportunity to try new things while she’s been here. 

Craft session with rosie

My 15 year old god daughter is staying with us for a few days. She’s studying art as one of her gcse’s and wants to become an art therapist in the future, so we spent a while yesterday afternoon looking through my craft stuff and figuring out projects to do while she’s here. 

She fancied paper cutting, which unnerved me initially as it involved letting her loose with  a surgical blade! But I watched her do some practice cuts and realised she had loads of control. So she happily worked on a complicated tree pattern while I cut fabric for my next sprocket cushion. Here are photos of our time :

Proud of how I joined the elephants for the edging band
Not sure about the lighter patches
Going for darker sections from another collection of fabrics instead
Rosie getting started
Concentration

Awesome paper cutting, with proof that somehow it is possible to cut a finger on the hand you’re holding the knife in!
Today we’re playing around with henna, finishing the paper cutting, and we’ve been to Slimbridge and sketched flamingos, but I’ll put that in another blog later. 

It’s fun doing crafts with another person! 

Sprocket cushion

I’m not sure it’s a good idea to keep starting new projects when I still have old ones on the go, but I’m putting off the quilting until I decide what patterns I want to see on. The octopus can wait a while, but my new project is for a birthday present that won’t wait! 

I’ve been planning to make a sprocket cushion for a while and have materials to make one for myself but then realised it would make a cool present. I guess it’s risky making your first one as a present as I find I learn all sorts as i go along that will hopefully make future ones better. 

I decided to try the english method of patchwork which my talented crafty sister had told me about, so got busy ironing, measuring, drawing, planning, cutting and tacking. I have to say I found this part of the process a bit tedious and it felt like it went on forever. At least it meant that after that I could just focus on putting it all together. I started yesterday afternoon and decided to leave the last two sections till today as I’m not convinced they’re going to match up very well and I was too tired to deal with that last night! 

Today i thought I’d better blog before sewing as otherwise I might not have time before some friends arrive for lunch… We’re hoping to do a bbq and the weather is being co-operative so far! 

I’m  super surprised at how much I’m enjoying sewing! There’s even a possibility I’m finding it more relaxing than crochet as I make my stitches as small as possible! I think my stitches might be smaller and neater with this method too, but we’ll see when I take the paper out! 

Craft swap

This evening I went to our local library where they have knit and natter on a Wednesday evening. Tonight they also had a craft swap. I came away with lots of bits of material that will hopefully feed my new found patchwork interest for a while! 

I also spent time there and then back in my garden with a lovely Korev lager, crocheting an octopus to send to a hospital for a premature baby. After about an hour and a half i have an octopus with one and a half legs! I love how their legs curl up as you do 2 or 3 double crochets (UK terms) in each of the chain. 

It took me a while to get used to crocheting with cotton, but it’s  ok now and I’m getting quicker with it. It was fun hanging out with lots of crafty people, and bizarre because when one lady asked what I was making and I told her she said “what, one of these?” and pulled a finished octopus out of her bag! She’d already made two, so it was handy to chat to her about it.