The promised pictures

Here they are, the pictures of my lovely mail and stitching.

First, the opening of the package:

This is how it appeared.


And this is what was inside.


The goodies! I can't wait to try them out. Unfortunately there was some strawberry body scrub that leaked on the way and so isn't in the picture.


And this is my progress on my stitching. Quite a bit more than in the last photo!

Pause in Page Creation

Just taking a little pause in the felt book page creation to think about what to do on the next pages. Meanwhile inspired by the hoop sewing from The Creative Family book which I have borrowed from the library I made this.



I found some lovely bright orange hessian in Spotlight the other day, along with some cream and natural colours, and also got some of the wooden hoops that I have seen on several blogs for creating wall displays of pretty fabrics. I had just been reading The Creative Family where Amanda had described using burlap and a thick needle to teach embroidery to children and had also seen the stitching she had shown on her blog shop update post and this idea just flowed on from there. Also check out this Flickr pool - Swatch Portraits.

I stitched on the flowers with a small circle just around the middle and then used stem stitch in two greens of floss for the stem of each flower, reversing the colour combination on one of the stems. Just to finish it off I did a running stitch around the hoop with some of the hand dyed wool. After I had finished the stitching I loosened the hoop and removed the inner circle from the back. I put a piece of calico over the back of the stitching and replaced the hoop. This hid all the knots and made the background a little more solid. Last of all I trimmed the fabric flush with the hoop and glued some trim over it to hide the edges of the fabric. A little piece of ribbon and it was ready to hang!

Back view.

Here it is - hanging in amongst all the other assorted bits and pieces I like to look at in my creating room. Incidentally it is also where I do the ironing (when I have to!!) and I have lots of lovely things to look at. The dreamcatcher was made with my kids when they were much younger that now and I still love to have it hanging where I can see it. The cat is from the book I referred to in my post about the bird Christmas ornament. All much nicer to look at than a painted brick wall.

A quick hello

Hello, long time no post. Again. Oops.

I haven't been crafting much except for a bit including a decent bit of the 'Underwater' cross-stitch. It stills seems like a small area, but really it's quite a big chunk of it that I've done. :-)

A little while back I got a lovely package in the mail, I can't believe I've forgotten to post about it! I won a giveaway over at The Felt Mouse and a little parcel of bath goodies made it's way to me. It smelt so good, and the little cupcake bath fizzer looks even more realistic and edible in real life. Such a talented lady!

Hopefully pics of both the parcel and stitching will be here soon.

Flowers for Friday

Just a quick post - Friday has come quickly this week!

Here are a few photos I took recently of a flower in the backyard. I have cropped the original shots to get these images.



I loved the rows of water droplets on one of the petals and so cropped the image very heavily to get this picture.

Just liked the fuzzy bud waiting to burst open with luscious golden yellow!

The sun was shining through the jonquils and so I thought a back shot would be interesting.

Hopefully at the weekend I will get another page designed for my little felt book and maybe make a few bibs for the onslaught of babies arriving later in the year!

More Felt Book Pages

A short little post while I am having a creative spurt and have finished two more pages for the felt book I am making.

This time I had a go a creating an owl and a penguin. The owl has fabric wings and the penguin has some nice glittery felt for the front of the body. The penguin was inspired by a small soft toy in an Usborne Art book and the owl was my own design but inspired by lots of different owls I have found online.





I am not sure what else I will add but I probably need two or three more ideas. Any suggestions welcomed.

Work In Progress

Oh, wow! I have much more energy now that the dreaded virus has been beaten - a bit of a lingering cough but nothing like what it was like at the start of last week. It also amazing what a few nights of sleep without interruption can do for you.

I have started work on a little felt book - another gift for the impending new arrivals in the extended family. Two pages have evolved so far. One has a flower stitched onto it and the other a butterfly. Both of the pictures have been designed from scratch and I was very happy with the butterfly. What do you think?



I also practised a new stitch - a variation of blanket stitch called closed blanket stitch where two stitches are worked from the one hole to form a triangular pattern. The idea came from a book borrowed from the library called "embroidery basics - all you need to know to start stitching" by Betty Barnden. My library cover actually says "start embroidery - all you need to know to start stitching" but the inside cover says "embroidery basics".


If you look closely at this one you can see where I had to unpick one of the feelers and have a second go at it. Lesson learnt - draw a faint pencil line for your stitching to follow.

One of the hardest things that I have found with our adventures into blogging is getting good colour reproduction in the photos that I take. Note the difference in the pink of the flower centre in the top and bottom photos.

I love my digital SLR that I was so lucky to get given at Christmas but find that I am still struggling with some of the settings. Lucky for me digital means you can take lots and lots of shots in varying positions in the garden. I have started investigating how to set up and indoor studio because with a day like today there was no hope of trying to take outdoor shots.

Whilst wandering the garden I took a few tree and flower shots as well. This one is my favourite.

Dreaded Winter Ills have hit!

Not a lot of crafting happening. I have been sick for a couple of weeks with a virus that just does not want to let go. It started of as a head cold but has now migrated to my chest - tight chest and dry, nasty cough that is keeping me awake most nights. Hopefully it will go away soon.

I did finish a little pram blanket which is put away for a new arrival expected in the extended family later in the year. I knitted the squares and then crocheted these together using a technique from the No Pattern Knits book I bought last year. Last of all I added a crocheted border - picot edge. It is a small blanket that I thought might useful for travelling or pram rides.



I have been very interested in Mel's sewing kit swap for kids that she has organised recently. Makes me wish my DD was just a little bit younger - wistfully thinking about how none of this wonderful blogland stuff was discovered until my kids were older.

I used the patterns and ideas from this book with my children when they were younger. They both ended up with a little collection of felt objects that they had very proudly stitched themselves. I struggled a little with the rhyming text but found the techniques to be very good.

Will stop now as the coughing is getting worse again.

Online Selling Adventures

Wow - we have had our first customer at our madeit shop!! Avid Crafter's ladybug pincushion has found a home along with one of Crafty Thing's cards.

Avid Crafter has made a second ladybug pincushion and we have just finished listing this in the shop. This ladybug only has two dots and a red bead at the end of her cord legs.



Crafty Things is busy trying to get some more Helping Hands created. Two more were sewn this week and given away before pictures could be taken to say thanks to some lovely ladies who helped out. Two more have been sewn and will be listed in the shop soon. These ones will be listed as a pair.



Some more crocheted flowers have been made and some new dyes were purchased at the recent Craft Fair. I experimented with some more colours and had lots of fun. The flowers are now just waiting to be added to some cards or maybe a bag.

We have had some frosty mornings lately and inspired by some photos on Gina's blog, Gingerbread, I took a photo of the frost on my car's windscreen. What do you think?