Cute or what?

I am really enjoying my Art & Fashion class. First was my book and next is this gorgeous fellow.



Everyone in the class has an opportunity to make a softy. The teacher has a copy of the book, Softies that most people use patterns from to make theirs. Because I've made a few softies before, had a little experience so to speak, I took the chance to design my own. That's right I made this fat little penguin up out of my head! I drew a picture of what I wanted him to look like and tried to make pattern pieces that resembled that picture, and on the whole it worked! He is made from felt, with buttons for eyes, and the main body shape is made with a square base and four leaf-shaped pieces with squared ends to give him lots of roundness. He's only about 20cms tall and has toy-pellets in the bottom to stop him falling over.

I'm so pleased with him and got lots of comments from my classmates who all wanting to take him home with them.

In other news, Spring Girl is finished! All four seasons are now done! Hopefully I'll have some decent photos to show you soon. Today is all grey and no good for photos.

Mother's Day Crafting

Now that Mother's Day is done and at last my own Mother's Day present has been given to my wonderful MUM!!!! I can share some of what I have been busy with. This year I have been lucky to be working with a couple of classes of children and so the same Mother's Day gift was created by both classes ( all up I think about 55 were made). I got the initial idea from an art idea at this site. One of the posts on this site created a little wooden frame from wooden tongue depressors.

I modified the frame and added two pegs to the bottom to change the frame into a note hanger.

This one became the prototype for trialling art materials to add the wording. As per usual I forgot to get a photo of one of the finished products from all those that were made.

There are two different sizes of sticks used -two larger waxing stick are at the back and this meant that there was plenty of space to drill two holes for the hanger. My Fiskars drill came in quite handy for this. Over the two larger sticks eight smaller waxing sticks or tongue depressors (the name depends a bit on where you buy them from) are glued on and then some black gesso was put on by masking an area off. Lastly came the pegs and decorating.



Pony beads and cotton were used for the hangers. Little punched flowers and buttons were added for decoration. One of the classes punched and dyed all of the flowers. In the end we used opaque white paint pens and soft coloured pencils to add the wording. In the prototype photo I trialled coloured pencils, crayons and white drawing pencils.

On to the knitting status. I have finished one more neck warmer and have two almost finished. The finished one was made with some lovely purple wool and given to my Mum as part of her present - the other part was a "Mum's Notes" board.

Shop Update

Ok, the first set of luggage tags are now for sale in our Madeit shop!



This pair is pocketless, since we're still figuring out how to make the card stay in the pocket.


So easy to use, you just thread the hairband through the zipper pull and loop it over the tag! Simple, but effective!

Now I'm off to the couch to cross-stitch with Marley & Me, and nurse the rotten head cold I've picked up.

Aaaand, a short one!

Everythings going well in the world of craft over here. The Spring Girl cross-stitch is progressing nicely. The luggage tags have been worked on (one set is very close to being in the shop!). Smiles all round. Hopefully there should be some photos for you soon.

I'd just like to give a little shout-out to another wonderful crafty, stitchy blogger. Daffycat is holding a fantastic double giveaway over on her blog! That's right, she's offering not one, but two sets of gorgeous hand dyed fabic just waiting for some pretty stitching on them. Entries close on May 4th, so get over there and enter, people!

A very L-O-N-G post!

Hello, I'm still here! Amazing how general life gets in the way of blogging sometimes hey? Anyway, it's the weekend so I finally have time to post.

So I haven't been posting much but I have been crafting!
The third of my Seasons girls cross-stitches, Winter, is done. Wheeee! Only one more to go and they will all be finished!


I really like the colours in this one, the photo's not that great but the blues are really pretty. This one also included white glow-in-the-dark thread as well as normal and variations threads. It's used in the snow in the corners, and you know what - it actually does glow-in-the-dark! It looks quite weird actually, with random glowing spots over the design.

I was all ready to go with Spring, the last girl but as I was ironing the Aida (you wouldn't believe the creases in it!) I found a dirty patch. So that needed a bit of cleaning. I couldn't get rid of it completely but in only really shows on one side so I think we'll all just pretend it isn't there.

Most of my crafting time in this past week has been spent on making this book. It's for my Art & Fashion class at school, a fantastic subject - I get to spend it doing crafty things!


It was taking ages to make it just at school and I want to move onto the next project there (softies!) so I brought it home to finish off. It's quite a simple design really and I'm thinking of making more to sell in our MadeIt shop. Some of the pages are made from decorated paper. I painted some of mine and ripped up and stuck sheet music on some others. The style of binding the book ends up with the tails of thread so I decorated mine by knotting some beads on.
Part of the project guidelines was that we had to put some stuff in the book. I have no idea what I want to use it for so I just decorated some of the pages, sticking to my turquoise colour scheme.



I went through my stash and pulled out everything that was turquoise and used it. The drawn pages were done using my new Inktense Derwent pencils. I love these pencils and have a big tin of 72 now to go with my set of 72 Studio Derwent pencils. Inktense pencils are similar to watercolours but they are brighter and look more like ink than watercolour pencils.

Lastly, Crafty Things and I have been working together to come up with these:


They are patchwork luggage tags! Crafty Things made a set when we went on holidays last September. I'm sure you all know how hard it can be to distinguish your bags from all the other ones on the carousel. These tags make it much easier to spot. They are about 11cm by 6cm with an elastic hairband used to attach them. The set we use is just patchwork front with a plain calico back. The ones we are working on now (pictured) have a little pocket on the back so that you can add a name and address on a card if you want, in case they get lost.


We were thinking of using clear plastic at first but decided fabric was better. With plastic anyone could see your details, and these days you don't particularly want this. This way, the card is hidden but still there just in case. (Are we slightly security-mad and paranoid perhaps?)
We just have to figure out the best card to use so that it won't fall our, because that would just be useless! Once that's sorted they will be up for sale in our shop. I think we'll make a few pocket-less sets (maybe with some crocheted flowers on the back) and they will probably be there sooner. I'll let you know, watch this space!

Supporting other Bloggers

Just a little post about a giveaway at Clare's Craftroom. She is offering a lovely stitching design as a prize for leaving a comment. This is one of the very positive things that I love about the world of craft bloggers - the generosity of all.

Take a wander over to Meet Me At Mikes and read about her lovely book launch and then wander through the archives to see more of this generosity at work.

I seem to have come down with my first cold for the year - stuffy nose and woolly head! Just in time for Easter.