Giveaway-woohoo! 🌈

Hey  there everyone… My lovely followers who have got me to this point! I said I would do a giveaway when I got to 50 WordPress followers, and here we are. I never started blogging in order to get loads of followers, but I’ll admit it’s exciting every time I see that someone else has signed up to follow my blog. I’d had an idea that I wanted to do a giveaway, and 50 followers seemed liked a good reason to celebrate!

So here it is… A giveaway of some of the little things I’ve made, with 3 prizes.

First prize is:

A flamingo card and envelope, a sloth keyring, a crochet may rose and a pinky-red flower button ring.

Second prize is:

A flowery card, a puff stitch flower, and a dark blue flower ring.

Third prize is :

My first ever paper cut on a card and a rainbow coloured flower button ring.

I had fun making some of these prizes this morning while listening to cds of some of the bands I got into at chagstock, the music festival we went to in Devon last weekend. In case you fancy checking any of them out they are :

Raghu dixit– Indian guys playing seriously cool, beaty Indian music

Mr tea and the minions – a band from Bristol with a very cool female singer, playing bouncy music with balkan gypsy influence.

Skinny lister – another British band playing rocky folk music and sea shanties… They were the only band I’ve ever seen to have a head-banging accordion player and a double bass player playing it while holding it up on his shoulder!

Echo  town – 2 brothers who play music that I’m not sure how to describe but which includes harmonica (lush!) , slide guitar (awesome!) didgeridoo (so cool!) and other instruments. They have very cool lyrics including “fighting fire with fire only makes things burn… You can’t solve problems with war and hate coz the more you destroy the less you create” (seems appropriate for a creative blog!)

So, plug of my new favourite bands over… Here are the rules for the giveaway. If you’d like a chance to win one of the prizes then just leave a comment on this blog post. If you’re not sure how to do that then feel free to email me /text me and I’ll add your name to the hat. And I genuinely will use a hat… put all the names in it and pull 3 out. First out will get first prize and so on. The giveaway is open to anyone from any country.

You have until saturday 12th August to register your interest and i shall do the draw at midday UK time that day.

Ooh I’m so excited! Hope  you are too! 🤣

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Loads of different things!

Hey there everyone. Hope you all had a good weekend. My husband and I had kept this weekend free, after having a few busy weeks, and it was lush to have time to catch up with each other, and have time to focus on crafts. 

On Saturday we  went to a gorgeous cafe next to the canal, called the stables café. I took my crochet and sat  in the sun with this beautiful view! 

The blanket is coming along though I still seem to be making lots of mistakes. I know they won’t really notice too much, but it’s bugging me that I keep ending up with too many stitches in the row and I don’t know why I’m getting them. Plus I obviously got a bit cocky with one set of leaves and managed to add an unnecessary loop in front of the stalk! But… At least it is growing! 

I also spent time making collage cards for a giveaway on kelleysdiy which I am really excited to be part of. Do go and check it out… She’s had loads of sponsors donating things for the giveaway so there will be loads of chances to win something lovely. 

I love the idea of giveaways, and can give you a heads up that I plan to do my own to celebrate when I have 50 WordPress followers… Don’t think it’ll be too long now! 🤣

I got really excited when I discovered a blog written in french and English, and found that Charlotte makes beautiful wooden items. She wanted to do a craft swap for a gorgeous unicorn necklace, so I’m going to make her a crochet shawl in exchange. It might take a while though as I really need to finish pattern testing this blanket too. 

My final area of creativity was making a photo book online for one of my nephews who I’d taken on a zookeeper day. It was so much fun going through the photos again and adding comments about what he’d been doing. They’re coming to stay soon, so i hope it arrives before then so I can give it to him and see his  reaction. 

Ooh, and finally… How could I forget?? I had the most gorgeous parcel from wool warehouse, with my book and the wools to make Sophie’s universe. I love the bag it came in too! 

The project will have to go on hold for a while as I have too many things on  the go at the moment, but maybe it will make a lovely winter project. 

Pottery and cards

I was very excited yesterday evening when Hannah brought me back my pottery painting from her birthday party. Here are the finished items. I’m especially happy with the plate and really look forward to using it soon. 

 Hannah also brought me a cool thank you card that she had coloured in. I love the vibrant colours she’s used, and the shiny bits that are part of the card. They really bring the picture to life. 

I’ve not done much craft recently as I’ve not been feeling well and did not have the brain power or motivation  to think about crochet, but i did make two cards. I got the idea from a calendar, then drew a squirrel, which I cut into different parts and then cut those parts out of different pieces of patterned card. I’m so pleased with how it turned out though it was fiddly to do! It s fun  trying to pick the colours and patterns that would work best. 

Then I decided to make a slightly simpler card with hummingbirds on as i had some shimmery cards  that I thought would work well. While laying the pieces out they overlapped the edge and i decided that it would look cool if they did that once  they were stuck down. Again, I’m really pleased with the final result. 

I can see me making more cards like these in the future. 

Card, and thoughts

Yesterday i had a fab day! I met with a friend who i hadn’t had contact with for just over 6 years. She got in touch before Christmas and yesterday we met up at a spa and spent the afternoon catching up. It was a real blessing to spend this time with her and to be able to talk about anything and everything. I love relationships where you feel you can be yourself, and not have to try to hide the bits you don’t like for fear the other person will desert you. Immediately we seemed to be able to open and honest with each other. 

During our time together she told me about her daughter who i used to spend a lot of time with, babysitting for her and just hanging out. Now she’s at uni but struggling with constant back pain that no one seems to be able to help her with. I decided to make her a card, and used ideas from henna designs. I love this type of drawing and love including symbolism in my designs. This card took thoughts  about waiting, and about not knowing what might happen… Themes I’ve been reflecting on in my own life recently as I’ve had another battle with bouts of depression.

Here I started with a sunrise… Linking to the idea of the cyclical nature of life… Things never stay the same for long and even in dark patches the sun will rise again (though that’s not always so easy to remember or to believe when you’re in the middle of them). But my sunrise also use elements of flowers within it, and i wanted to represent the idea that underground, plants are still growing even when we can’t see it. Here i added roots reaching out in different directions. For me i always want to be blossoming like a beautiful flower, but today as i was praying and looking out of the window into the garden i noticed one of the bulbs growing in a pot. It’s tall, with leaves, and i know a fantastic hyacinth flower will develop soon. For that flower to develop the bulb has spent months underground, lying dormant, germinating and growing without me seeing anything. I recognised that God could see that happening, and that God can see what is going on under the surface in each one of us, even when we think nothing is happening. Or Maybe nothing is happening, but maybe that is needed rest time before growth can occur. 

Of course, once the flower has blossomed it dies back again, and that can be hard to deal with, but then there is the hope that it will grow again, and that is worth waiting for. 

Finally i included dragonflies in the design. I like the idea that living things can help to give sustenance and life to other things, and i also like the idea of joy and freedom that i see represented in a dragonflies darting flight. 

So, design done, I’ll now send the card to my friend’s daughter, and hope that it blesses her as much as reflecting on these themes has blessed me.