Speed Craft part 1

I've written about the SpeedCraft events at Debbie Bryan's before, me and mum would go twice a year.  This year the first even was in April.  Me and mum had booked to go before we lost her.  I was all set to go on my own when the lovely Jane from Loopy's Place said she'd come with me!  I was so chuffed to have a crafting partner on what would otherwise have been a very sad day.

We started in style with Buck's Fizz.  As I'm allergic to oranges, I just got a glass of Prosecco!  It went down very well... especially as a coffee and cake were quick to follow!

The first activity was a mini mosaic brooch.  We didn't do any cutting, we had a selection of pre-cut tiles, broken china, beads and buttons to use.  We only had 45 minutes per activity so had to design pretty quickly before dying our grout.

The photo doesn't show it well, but my grout is a lovely minty green.  Here's the piece all grouted and ready to be dried before sanding.  Writing this, I realise I was suppose to sand it 48 hours later... ooops!  Hopefully I'll still be able to do it. 

Next was weaving which I first tried at the last SpeedCraft event.  This time it was circular weaving on an embroidery hoop.  We had a selection of yarns and fabrics to cut into strips to use.

I didn't get very far with mine, it still needs finishing off.  I abandoned my usual blue colour scheme for a palette of purple and grey.

Next was lunch, followed by cake, followed by paper origami.  This flower was not easy to make!!  We all struggled to get the shape right.  

The leaves are just glued on to the wire in this picture, the flower stem has been finger crocheted (a new skill for me!) and I just need to finish off finger crocheting the leave stems before sewing the leaves on more securely using a few big cross stitches.

I'll be back in another post to tell you about the rest of the day.

paper butterflies

Just a quick one today.  We went to a free Crafternoon at Debbie Bryan and made these origami butterflies.

The bottom one is made from a punch card from an old lace machine.  I live in Nottingham which was the centre of the lace industry back in the 1800s.  It's nice to have a little piece of history.

I'm not going to wish you merry Christmas today as I'll be back tomorrow!

Speed Craft #5 - Origami notebook

Before we begin, sad news.  I thought I'd already told you but can't find any evidence.

We lost our beautiful Tiff.  Her cancer had grown very large and she suddenly stopped being the happy, nosey, boisterous Tiff that she'd always been.  She started sitting in a corner all hunched up.  I knew it was time and I knew what I had to do, but it was so painful (for me) and I still feel bad about it.

I loved her so much and I miss her.

A couple of posts ago I was telling you about the Speed Craft event that we went to at Debbie Bryan.  I still don't have my concrete or ceramic pieces back and I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to pick them up, so I'll tell you about the origami table, and then we'll have to move on and come back to Speed Craft later.

On our final table of the day, we made little origami books.  They were folded from a single sheet of paper (a lovely double-sided scrap book paper).  We could then decorate them with stitches, other papers, pens, stamps etc.

I had my first go at papercutting, cutting a W into the cover of my book.

I then decorated some of the pages with music paper and pages from books torn out.  

I stuck the W I'd cut out on the back page.

I cut my pages apart to have more pages in my book, so I needed to secure them together.  I used some Perle cotton to stitch the pages together.  It's not very well done due to the time constraints, but the picture is so bad you can't really tell!  In actual fact, it's sewn expertly, perfectly, professionally.  Honest.

We also made a little envelope, folded from a single sheet of origami paper.  I added three little stitches to hold it together.

I had fun making this little book and it got me all fired up with ideas about how else I could decorate little books if I had more time.  

And here's a photo of Kate, hiding in her nest.  She's still with us even though we couldn't pair her with Colin (they fought and Colin was badly injured - he started it though).  I'm fostering her for a bit and then we'll try pairing her with Harry.

I met a lady the other day who had been to Speed Craft and she said she thought that the crafts like this were pointless, but I disagree.  OK, I may have no use for a little decorated book in an origami envelope, but I enjoyed making it, I felt creative and I had a chance to experiment.  For me, that's all the point that's needed.  I don't believe crafts, or works of art, have to be practical, though of course everyone is different. I'd be interested to know what you think?

Speed Craft #1

A few Sundays ago me and lovely mum went to a fantastic event at Debbie Bryan called SpeedCraft.  It was basically the crafting version of Speed Dating, just with slightly more than 3 minutes per craft.  The room was laid out with 5 tables.  We took our positions at our first table and crafted madly for 45 minutes.  The bell rang and we had to stop, we then had a 15 minute break to get ourselves to the next table, via the coffee pot and toilet.  We went round all 5 tables and tried each craft.

It was brilliant.

We've already signed up for the next one which, unfortunately, isn't until April.

I'm going to take you through our day but I'm going to do it over 5 posts otherwise this post will end up too long and then I'll have nothing to post about for another 2 weeks.

Our first table was origami where we learnt to make these paper stars.

Mine is made from just two colours of paper and book pages.  This was pretty frustrating at first.  It took us the first 25 minutes to get the hang of it, then we had the rest of the points to fold before the time was up!

Here's how it looks from the back.

After the initial confusion, I did enjoy doing this and I love the look of the book paper.  There were inks and stamps available for us to stamp designs on our finished stars, but I decided to leave mine au naturel.

Next up: ceramics.