progress

Morning ladies.  No finishes today, just a little bit of progress on an old project and a new one. First up is the dancers cross stitch.  I went into my photo albums to find the last update I did, I couldn't find a picture anywhere!  This means you, nor I, can really see if there IS any progress, but at least I'll have a record for next time!

I had stitched quite a bit of area around the hands and the ladies head.  When I came back to this project a few weeks ago, I discovered that a lot of the background was wrong!  So frustrating.  Out it came.  There is some more that is possibly wrong, but I've left it for the minute.  I thought that stitching the uninteresting bit first - the background - would help me move this along quicker.  Yeah, that didn't work!

Since the last update, I've done all the bright blue you can see and the lady's upheld arm.  This is WIP #9.

I've also started something new.  WIP #24 is a punch needle kit I bought at a craft fair sometime last year.  This craft was new to me, something I'd never seen before and I thought it looked easy, in principle it is, in reality it so isn't!

The blue thing has a slotted needle in it, the thread goes down the shaft and out of the needle and then is threaded through a hole in the needle.  You can set the tool to produce different sizes of loops, most of this is done in 1 and 2, the smallest loops you can get. 

You work from the back, in and out of the fabric, close together and this is what it produces on the front!  I love the effect.  This is by no means perfect, or even well done, but it's clearly a craft that needs practice and who says everything I produce has to be perfect?  Hopefully noone or I've let them down repeatedly!  I've got a long way to go, so there's a lot of time to perfect my loops!

Not number 125

As I was finishing up this mosaic, which is from a kit, Mr CA came over and told me in a worried voice that I'd done it all wrong.  My heart plummeted.  He pointed to the box of the kit and said "you've put number 4"

Ha ha ha Mr CA. 

WIP #26 is officially finished. It was not without it's issues.  I loved laying the tiles, the 4 took ages to get right, but the rest of it went pretty quickly.  I just did small sections at a time to give the glue time to set so I didn't then move everything I'd done.

Then came the time to apply the grout.  I could NOT get it to mix to a paste.  It was watery and thin so in the end I donned some rubber gloves, poured it on and spread it around with my hands.  This (above) is the result.

 

I should have nipped to Hobbycraft (10 mins drive from my house, if that) to buy some more.  I didn't.  I stole some from my tray mosaic kit.  It's not white.  This is how it turned out (above), so I had to spend some time rubbing quite hard with a damp cloth to get the lumps off!

 

 

And here's the finished number plate.  Not too bad.  It would look better with white grout, but considering this will be on the wall outside the house, I don't think it will even be obvious in a couple of weeks time. 

The conclusion?  I LOVED this.  I'm going to do the tray kit next, then I think I'll be ready to move on to my own design and working with some other materials.

giveaway win

Yes that's right, I won another giveaway.  I say "another" as I went through a very lucky period of winning loads, but this is the first in a while!  Very much appreciated too.  I hopped along with the In Your Words blog hop, I love a good blog hop, great way of finding inspiration and finding new-to-me blogs to read.

I won the prize from Amy's Crafty Shenanigans and look what the generous lady sent me!

How fab is that London fabric?  It goes so nicely with the red fabric too and I just love red.  Now I have to decide what it's going to be.

I did a little tiny bit of online shopping too.  Alyce from Blossom Heart Quilts is running a monthly stash club where you can buy 6 fat 1/8th or 6 FQs of Japanese fabric on a certain theme.  January's theme was text fabric and I really wanted some text fabric so I signed up.  It's all done on a month by month basis, if you're interested, you're too late for February, but you can buy March's pack- go to her Etsy shop.

This is what I received.  The two on the top right are written in French which is perfect for me, and I love the newsprint one.  Unfortunately, I got stung with a customs charge of £12 which brought the total price for EACH fat quarter to £5.50, definitely not a bargain!  I'm afraid I won't be joining in again which I'm a bit sad about as I'd planned this to be a monthly treat. 

glass update

Good morning!  It's time for another glass update, I really feel like I'm making progress this term so I plan to show you my progress each week.  First of all, let's see where I got to last week:

Again, I have to apologise for the photos.  I'm working on the paper which is on top of the ply wood, so I can't change the background.  I also can't really move it around to get better light as it's pretty heavy and very big!  I was asked last week how big it is so I've measured it for you, it's about 800 x 450mm (31" x 19").

I managed to get the rose in this week, along with the stem, a leaf and another nugget.  I don't know if you remember, but I made the rose, stem and leaves right at the beginning of the project back in June last year.  They're fused, so only the edges need leading.  It was a bit of a struggle getting the rose in place!

It's all starting to come together!

I have high hopes of getting the rest of this section done tomorrow, then I can fit in the fused glass square and add the straight bits.  After that it's back to putting the nuggets in the border (much quicker now I can use the bandsaw!) and I'm pretty much there for the leading.

Accordian bag - pattern testing

Morning ladies, I hope you're all well and, if you're in the UK, enjoying the wind! 

A while ago I signed up to be a pattern tester for Sara at Sew Sweetness  She's a very talented sewer and the dresses she makes make me want to make dresses!  Maybe one day.  She put a call out for bag pattern testers and was innundated with responses.  She regularly sends round an email with a bag picture and supplies list and if we want to test it we reply, she then selects some testers and I was lucky enough to be the tester of her Accordian Bag which has gone on sale today. This link will take you to the blog post about the bag and you can see what all the other testers made (and me of course, but you'll already have seen mine, unless you decide to go over there right now and abandon my post.  I wouldn't blame you, I know I tend to drivel on, and my photos are rubbish).

Here she is, just hanging out in my garden!  The flap is made of multiple pieces of fabric sewn together and pleated.  I went for a rainbow effect, not sticking to one line, but choosing fabrics from my scrap bin that I love.

Creating the pleats was fiddly, but well worth it.  One of the other testers used invisible thread for the two rows of topstitching that hold the pleats in place, I wish I'd thought of that.  As it was, I had a hard time choosing which colour thread to use, so just went with white.

As you can see, I took these photos back in January when we had snow.  The shell is just a polka dot print I bought from Fabric Land, no particular designer.  It has a long thin handle which makes it a good length, and the top is closed with a magnetic catch.

As the multiple colours on the flap gave me free reign over the lining colour, I went with this green stripe.  I have no idea where it's from, who made it or who designed it, I just found it in my stash!  The inside pocket is the same Kate Spain fabric used on the flap. 

The flap has what Sara called piping, I think I'd call it a flange.  It confused me no end as I couldn't find any instructions for the piping cord.  It took me a while to figure out there is no piping cord, it's flat piping. 

And that's pretty much all I've got to say on the matter!  I haven't decided whether I'll gift this bag or keep it, it's a bit small for me, I did try to get the kitchen sink in it but it didn't fit.  Not with my massive sack of medication anyway!

tear it up and stick it down

I've been LANTing up a storm recently!  Welcome to WIP #59 - decopatch.

I bought the equipment for this from a Hobbycrafts show a while ago.  I say "equipment", that actually consists of a pot of special glue, a paint brush and some thin patterned papers.  It's a really easy craft where you tear the paper into small pieces and glue it down.

I'd bought blue and red papers, so made this picture frame using both.  I didn't want to mix them up though.  I had to make sure my papers went right round the edges to the back so none of the wooden blank would be on show.

I bought the picture frame (which is about 8" tall) from a local craft shop for about £2. I've got another one and I enjoyed making this so much, I was tempted to do that one too, but thought I'd save it and try a different design.

This little basket (about 5" long) is made from papier maché (not made by me!) and came with the set I bought at Hobbycrafts.  I did the outside in blue and the inside in red.

I probably should have done somethign with the handle - mind you, it's not too late.  I tore my papers and overlapped the pieces to give it a more organic feel but you could also cut them into squares and stick them down carefully to get a patchwork effect.

(That's the bottom).  The papers aren't cheap, I don't know how much I paid at the show, but they're about £3.50 for 3 papers in Hobbycraft, having said that, I had 4 different sheets and used about a third of each making these two items, so they do go quite far. 

I have a large papier maché box that I want to make into a wedding memories box.  I'd bought far too much of the scrapbook paper I used to make the wedding stationery and would like to use that to decopatch the box... I'm not sure if it will work though as the Decopatch paper is very thin.  I'll give it a go and see what happens.

I really enjoyed doing this.  Again, like the Scraperfoil from the other day, it's not incredibly creative, but it is a fun, relaxing craft to do whilst watching TV, expecially if you're feeling under the weather.

Doing kid's crafts

No, you haven't missed something.  I don't suddenly have kids, apart from my step-daughter of course but she'd rather play around on the internet and go shopping that make stuff.  This was a kid's craft I indulged in for myself.
 
One day in Hobbycraft, I came across this little kit on sale.
 

It was only a couple of quid, it was a rabbit and it was a "new" craft, so I had to try it.  By new craft I don't mean new, I remember these from when I was young(er), but I do mean they are something I haven't tried.  Oh dear, I'm not very eloquent today, am I? 

Anyway, on with the story.  I got this out when I was ill last week.  I thought it was something I could do whilst reclining on the sofa watching Hoarders and Flog It! (Don't judge, you have to watch the likes of Homes Under the Hammer and Dickinson's Real Deal when you're off sick, it's the law.  And Hoarders is pure entertainment anyway).

I know this is billed as a kid's craft, but it's actually pretty tricky handling the scraper tool.  Oh, by the way, this is called scrapper foil.  It's a piece of black.... stuff that you scrape with a metal tool, this peels back the black surface to reveal silver underneath.  I don't know if it was because the tool is so cheap or because I'm just crap with the whole hand-eye coordination thing, but I did struggle to stay on the lines and get the right line thickness at times.

I started off and thought I'd just do a little bit each day.  I couldn't stop!  I kept putting it down to take a break, then picking it up again a few minutes later.  By the time Mr CA got home and A Place in the Sun was over, it was finished.

You know what?  It's not exactly the most creative or artistic craft out there, but I enjoyed it!  If the range of pictures wasn't so... animal based, I might take part in this more often!

As it is, this is WIP #34 done.

edited to add: I thought I had cholera last night, but I don't, so you can stop worrying about me, if you were.  Mr CA came home and declared that the water no longer smelt of poo so we'd probably be alright.