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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Joy in the storm

Today I went back to paper cutting. I’ve had a design set aside (from the paper panda book) for ages as the next one I wanted to do but haven’t got round to it. Today I had a day with no plans and I’m still feeling dizzy when moving around so I say in my lounge, keeping my head fairly still, and got cutting!

I find it relaxing, apart from the tension in my shoulders that I seem to need to cut with control. That said, I probably don’t have the best set  up, sitting on floor cushions by a low table!

I chose this design because I liked the evenness of the raindrops with the lines between them, and because I thought it did be a good design to try filling  some of the spaces with different coloured paper. It didn’t take long to realise that the raindrops and lines would not be half so even once I’d cut them, but then I discovered I quite liked that about it too! I also discovered it was much easier to cut the drops fluidly if I turned the design upside down and worked from bottom to top.

While cutting i reflected on finding joy even in the middle of storms, and how much difference it makes when you have other people around you when you’re facing troubles. I rediscovered the joy of listening to music today. It’s been so long since i put on a cd or listened to a playlist, and i end up forgetting how uplifting music can be. Today I listened to mumford and sons with baaba maal, the very best and beaten berg, which is a fab though short cd with different cultural influences on it. Then an album by Alabama shakes. We saw them all live last summer at an outdoor gig in Hyde Park and I found myself remembering the fun we had there and at other outdoor gigs and festivals, and then looking forward to the ones we’re going to this summer. I found myself feeling happy and like life has promise and possibilities. It’s the first time in a while… Recently I’ve just been mainly getting through each day.

I’m enjoying exploring the idea of craft as therapy, and have seen a couple of blog posts about crochet as therapy. It wasn’t my intention to use craft as a therapy but I think it (and blogging about it) is helping  me in lots of different  ways, which is exciting.

By lunch I’d done a fair bit. I numbered the back of the umbrella sections to use them as templates later.

After lunch I finished cutting away the other parts, and then I filled the umbrella sections with rainbow colours as they’re bright and cheerful.

Then I debated on the colour for the background. Pale blue felt like spring showers, black was too oppressive and I settled on the dark blue as a way of representing slightly more of a threatening storm. The characters stand out nicely on the background, and I’m pleased with the overall effect. The only thing is that their eyes don’t stand out in the photos.

And here’s the final picture in its frame.