Photo Sharing

As there is not much crafting happening I will share a few of the photos I took while we were holidaying. The weather was great for most of the time - we had some hot days but took refuge inside with the air conditioner when it was tooo hot. On a couple of afternoons a sea mist rolled in over the water and it was very beautiful. The water would go very still and the surroundings became muted and grey. Very peaceful. On one of these afternoons the pelicans gathered at the boat ramp to feed off the remains of some fish that were being caught. I grabbed my camera and spent a good half hour taking shot after shot - 187 in total. Here is a collage of some of them.


I like taking pictures of pelicans and by now probably have far too many but they are such great birds to photograph. I love watching them come into land and the way that they ski along the surface of the water.

Another day, Avid Crafter and I went rockhopping and came across this little fellow.



He scuttled away as we stepped on a rock and we were lucky enough to have time to take this shot as he squeezed into a crack between two large rocks.

One to leave you with. Pelicans can also look pretty silly when they need to scratch their necks!

Hello - We are still here.

Sorry for the long break between posts. we have had a great break. Three weeks of rest, relaxation and reading for me. Avid Crafter indulged in rest, reading and water fun plus a little crafting. I indulged in my love of photography by taking many photos. I hope you will indulge me while I share a few of these in some later posts. Unfortunately the break went all to quickly and then it was back home and into the routines of school and finding out what work I might pick up this year. I am a teacher and I pick up relief (emergency work) and short term contracts and as such my work load varies greatly.

Late last year Whipup posted about a site called Red Bubble. Red Bubble is a site which provides a place for artists and photographers to display and sell their work as cards, prints and calendars. Whipup.net created a calendar using the Red Bubble site which showcased 13 craftpeople who had been featured on Whipup.

I became fascinated by the vast array of amazing art and photography that is displayed on the site and joined. I have put some of the photos that I feel are the best I have taken up on my Red Bubble page. They are there for sale as cards and some are also for sale as prints.

On to some crafting. Before Christmas I created this card. If you need a card in a hurry then this is a very versatile design.



I used a page from an old atlas to get my map and cut this to create a rectangle across the front of the card. The rectangle looks best when it is placed just below centre. Two lines of silver gel pen top and bottom give it a border and then the tag gets added. The tag was cut with my very handy tag punch from Fiskars and then I just hand lettered my greeting. The idea for the clip came from a cardmaking magazine I was reading at the time. Sorry I can't remember which one. The thread is some pearle cotton and the tag is stuck in place with some foam tape to lift it up from the map.

Instead of the map you could simply use a pretty piece of patterned paper or even part of a photograph. The tag could hold a number, Thanks, Thinking Of You or any other greeting you might need. I also added an insert of white paper for ease of writing my message inside.

There is a stitching project in progress but no photos yet. The crafting bug lay dormant for a while but is slowly warming up again.

How to use up a stack of sheet music

One of the side effects of leaning a musical instrument is the growing pile of photocopied sheet music. Now, I could recycle it but looking at it I thought 'That could make for some interesting cards' and then never got back to it. Until yesterday.




I have heaps of the oval shaped three-fold cards. So I found some musical motifs on the computer, printed them out in bright colours, added them to the sheet music and that's the result! A couple of the musical notes are from stencils I have that I cut from card and the rest are the ones printed off, just on normal paper. I stuck them on with 3D foam tape and I love the pop-out effect it gave them.

The top two cards I'm keeping to replenish my stock of cards but the bottom two will be available in out shop. But I'm afraid that won't be until after 12th February because we're going off on holidays tomorrow and will have little/no Internet access while we're away.

The stack of sheet music doesn't look any smaller. I've got a way to go yet. :-P

Fabric Basket and Bean Bags

There has been some crafting happening. Some presents have been posted - late but finished. Some sewing has been done and the stitchings have been turned into bean bags.





The idea for the bean bags and the little basket for them to be stored in came from Mel's blog - Day to Day. There are a few tutorials I have come across for making the fabric basket. The particular on I used was from the blog - Pink Penguin. I think I originally came across the link via A Spoonful of Sugar.

The basket was very quick to sew and if your were short on time it could easily be made without the patchwork squares at the top. It fits four of my bean bags in it.





Each bean bag is about 14 cms square and has a plain fabric backing of Osnaburg which has a slight texture to it. I backed both fabric pieces with whisperweft interfacing (this interfacing is good for when you still want a drapy feel to your fabric but need a bit of stability) and each one has polyfil pellets inside. The seams are topstitched and the one with the opening has been stitched over twice so hopefully the pellets will not escape. The advantage of the pellets over rice or beans is that the bags are washable. I tested one using the gentle cycle of my washing machine. I put the bean bag inside one of those little zipper washing bags before adding it to the washing machine. It has gone through the washing machine adventure with flying colours - looks no different to when it when in.

All in all I am feeling quite pleased with the end result. I will definitely be making some more of the baskets.

Yay - We got an award!

Clare from Clare's Craftroom was very kind and awarded us this:

Thanks, Clare.

We are supposed to pass this on to five more crafty bloggers but how can we possibly choose from our combined list of over 200 blogs we visit? We think you all deserve it so consider yourself tagged.

Avid Crafter and

Wow, I've made more than I thought...

I was very lucky to win a cross-stitch chart from Cathy at It Will Be Funny Tomorrow. Janlynn's Just-a-chart The Gift of Music arrived safely in the mail yesterday. Thanks Cathy, I love it!

In other news, one of my crafty Christmas presents is all finished!


This knitted washcloth came as a kit with the cotton and instructions - all I needed was the pair of knitting needles. The cotton felt lovely and soft and the colours are just gorgeous! It was fairly quick to knit and has a great textured finish. I learnt to do side edgings for the first time :-) It turned out not quite square, probably because of my tension which has always been very tight. I could just go to bigger needles but I don't always like the look and feel of it then, and so long as it isn't clothing I'm knitting, I don't generally bother.

The sewing machine got a workout the other day too. My grandfather's second wife recently passed away and while Crafty Things was at the funeral she was offered her sewing machine and overlocker. Crafty Things already has multiple sewing machines (4 or 5!) so suggested I would find a use for them. At the moment we don't have any to put them so my grandfather is looking after them, but Crafty Things did bring back two crates full of fabric and sewing supplies.
Inside one we found a stack of aprons, all pinned together that just needed sewing up. We decided that I would sew them up when I found time and then sent them to my grandfather who could then do what he wanted with them.
I got the stack out and found two had already been sewn up and I sewed the other four fairly quickly. Now they're all ready to be posted away. No photos unfortunately because they turned out extremely blurry (still learning to use my camera properly!)



While I had the sewing machine going I made myself a second pincushion - the pink one on the right. It's a really quick and easy pattern from a patchwork book Crafty Things has on her bookshelf. I like being able to just pink the outer edge and leave it rough.

I managed a little more stitching on my Underwater cross-stitch last night while watching the Twenty-20 cricket. It's starting to be close to being finished! I am really looking forward to finishing it, it's the biggest one I've ever attempted so it's quite and achievement.