Saturday, May 12, 2012

I've been productive

When I met up with my friend and fellow Scouser Ann at the recent show in Liverpool she gave me a set of Dyan's house stamps that she'd hardly used but no longer wanted, so I said I'd make her something as a thank you.  I made this bird for her and she's delighted with it.














I'd been wanting to make a 'Wood Nymph' (pattern by Julie McCullough) for some time.  As I'd previously borrowed the pattern from someone I had scanned it onto the computer but the some of the pages were missing so I didn't have the pieces for the body, thighs or wings.  I used the top arm to do the thighs just enlarging it then estimated the body size (I had a picture of the shape of the body to go by) the consequence of this was she ended up with a fat neck lol.  Actually I don't know why I said that because of course Wood Nymph's always have fat necks - but you knew that right? haha  I did in fact discover that I had previously cut out all the pattern pieces (apart from the wings) so wanted to make one for myself with the correct pattern so gave this one to my granddaughter who loves it, fat neck and all ;-) The fabric for the lower legs is some I'd previously dyed.


Also while at the show in Liverpool I bought a kit which included fabric, design to transfer and instructions.  This isn't something I normally do as I have enough fabric to do things like this and think 'I could do that'.  The problem is then I don't get round to doing it.  Also I want to follow more of other people's projects through from beginning to end for the purpose of learning how to do them properly and use them as inspiration for my own projects.  This is the 'Doorway Stitch Project' by Wendy Dolan.  I just need to do another 'scroll' on the lower part of the door then it's complete.  The blue is actually more turquoise IRL and the other main colour is a little darker.  The overall piece is 9"x8".


I've had a little book on Crewelwork embroidery for years intending to have a go, well I've finally got roung to it.  I've only done a little bit so far but thought I'd share it.  I've not done a lot of embroidery apart from cross-stitch; my stitching isn't very neat so don't look too closely :-D For reference the hoop is 7".

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

366 Journal and other stuff

It's that time again; time to post our pages for Kate's challenge.  On the ball this month!  After adding the fairies I thought I'd just add a few toadstools but then decided to do them all along the bottom - I preferred it when there were only a few.  Same with the tiny flowers, initially was only going to add a few but then added more.  The pages looked better with less toadstools and flowers but I thought it would be too much faffing to try to fix it.  The colours for May look too wishy-washy here, the background is PaperArtsy Fresco Haystack and Crushed Olive Distress Ink.






I went to the Stitch & Creative Craft show at Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool last Friday with a couple of friends and met up with 2 other friends there.  I didn't buy a lot as we went to a big show at the NEC in March and I spent enough there.  I couldn't resist the fairy stamps even though I was adamant I wasn't going to buy any more of Tracey's (Lavinia Stamps) beautiful stamps.  Are you a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character when it comes to crafting?  I am.  I love grunge, steampunk and the like and lots of detail but I also like plain and simple and not so much cutesy but pretty; I love fairies.  At shows Tracey does lots of demos and she had some beautiful cards on display.  I don't make as many cards or do as much stamping as I used to as I'm doing a lot more needlework, but was inspired to use my Lavinia stamps to make a birthday card.





At the craft group I go to in Brighouse once a month we sometimes have a challenge.  Last month it was to do a challenge we found online (not to enter the challenge but to make something using the theme from the challenge).  I made this tag which I'd previously done the background on using monoprinting.  The theme of the challenge I liked was to use a mask.  I think you may just about be able to see a button mask I used towards the top lefthand corner.