All posts filed under: DIY and crafts

‘I like’ Friday.

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The weather has cooled at last and it looks like Fall is centre stage! This week I have been liking: The bag in the photo I found at an estate sale and I love it so much.  It is a souvenir beach bag from Mexico, I think from the 1970’s.  It is housing my new knitting project…. This fantastic scarf at Creative Bug.  I have started it in red wool and I love it, the pattern looks complicated but it is so well explained on the videos, it is very doable.  I can’t wait to wear it. ‘The Girls’ by Emma Cline is a great book so far, I am fully engrossed and intrigued by the story and the characters. I love to read and I always have to have a book on the go, I am an impatient reader though, so if the book doesn’t grab me, I will cast it aside and move on. This one has grabbed me and is hanging onto my attention. Another book I am reading (I know, I …

Gelli Plate printing with seed pods.

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Sometimes I find printing with my gelli plate very confusing. There I said it.  Like trying to direct something while looking in the mirror, it is just a skill I do not have.  I still love to play with it though, even when I am not sure whether I am going to get a print with negative or positive colour! I really think this is sometimes when I get my best prints, when I am not sure what is going to happen. I have seen some great prints lately using seed pods so I decided to use some dried honesty plant to make some pages of print and colour. Firstly I decide on my colour palette and  in my mind I wanted these prints to be all blues and blue/greens which as you can see I strayed from a little.  This often happens when I get my paints out and start to put them together, some get taken out and some get added. I will sometimes paint a few sample splotches to see what looks …

Using an old book as a sketchbook.

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There once was a time when I would not have entertained the idea of using a book, old or new to draw in or cut up for pictures or words or just rip a page out of it to make a print on. Well, now I do all of those things quite happily!  I did a class at the beginning of this year by Lisa Congdon on Creative Bug which required some collage which is something I really hadn’t done before, so I didn’t have any papers to chop up. I decided to pop to the library and see if they had any books in the sale section (25 cents each thank you very much) which were colorful and interesting enough to use.  There were some books which would work,  and with some trepidation I cut the pieces I wanted to use out and stuck them down in a collage-y fashion. Then I joined the Get Messy community and I saw some work being done in old books, not cutting them up, using the actual …

Weekly Photos 18/52

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  1. Monday walk in the woods.  We came across this patch of green undergrowth virtually glowing in the light of the day.  Isn’t it funny how you can pass the same thing regularly, but just the right moment of sunlight can make it pop out at you. 2. My neighbor has these glorious columbine flowers growing in her garden. 3. Another walk and another light filled path in the woods. 4 & 5 This week among the regular jobs, I had to make a purple jacket for a 12″ figure as part of a High School art project.  Here GI Joe is modeling the final look. I hope it fits the actual figure it is meant for. This week I have a teen birthday to plan – jelly and ice cream anyone?! and a blog conference to prepare for.   The conference is here in St Louis and hosted by Go Blog Social. I am pretty rubbish at conferences, so I need to channel my best attendance preparation. What to wear, what to take, …

‘I like’ Friday, a colouring sheet for you.

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I recently drew and printed out some colouring in postcards to send to friends and family across the globe as a little happy mail with bonus colouring if they fancied it. What I hadn’t done, is colour one in myself.  I drew them and traced them and made sure all the lines were where they should be, but I never added any colour.  Until now that is. I decided that I would explore a few different ways to colour the same sheet. What do you like to colour with?  I know pencil crayons are a top choice, but I don’t like to colour with them as much as I like to draw with them. For the top two cards I used brush pens for the colour and I did some extra drawing and patterns on the yellow card with a Micron pen. Watercolour paints is maybe not the first choice for a coloring page, but these are post cards and printed on card-stock, so they put up with a layer of water colour just fine. …

Weekly Photos 14/52

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So far I think we are having a chilly spring compared to recent years.  I am sure it is usually warmer than this here in the mid-west by the middle of April.  No complaints though, you never know, the summer might not be so brutal. I don’t know what any of these flowers are, but they are pretty and all over the park floor.  I got to stand among them for a while as the dog had a sniff about. I borrowed the paper cutter in the library to chop up my new coloring postcards this week. Some trees are still blooming, this pink one at the park is a stunner. I finished ‘A Man Called Ove’, and I love love loved it.  It is such a good read, Ove is a wonderful character.  It is funny, thoughtful and a great story. I got some clay to play with and I made some beads and pendants, fingers crossed that they all turn out, or at least most of them!  I will be sure to update …

The 100 Day Project 2016

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What could you make/create/invent for one hundred days straight?  What do you want one hundred of? Pages in a novel (it would be a great start to a book!). Learn a foreign word. Make a pattern every day. Use one colour in a photo or a sketch. Sketch a face. Photograph the same scene – see how and if it changes. Make an altered playing card collection. Design an alphabet. Run a mile (100 miles would be an impressive achievement). Invent a recipe (another book in the making). All kinds of things you could do and by one hundred of them you would be pretty good I think. I did the 100 day project last year and I drew/made or photographed a mandala a day and it was a very good project.  Over one hundred days, you really get into it and turn out some wonderful things and some rather terrible things, but the main thing is to keep doing these things until you have achieved that one hundred day point. My mandalas are all …