All posts filed under: DIY and crafts

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 …

Weekly Photos 13/52

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This week saw a fifth grade field trip, new perfumes, cleaning up the local woods and park and a sunny hike on Sunday.  Not bad! 1. I helped out with the fifth grade field trip to ‘Junior Achievement BizTown’ on Monday.  The kids all had jobs and ran a ‘business’ for the day.  My team at Ameren/Peabody were great, they had a good day and worked hard. 2 & 3. I am working on some new scents for solid perfumes which is always super fun.  I really like the orange blossom and basil one. These solid scents are great to chuck in your gym bag for a quick uplift and they are perfect for travel because they are not liquid, and they are home made so I can mix up my own scent combination. 4. It was a lovely sunny morning on Saturday for the REI and Brentwood Parks annual clean up. We all got started with a coffee and a doughnut, grabbed a massive trash bag and off we went.  The woods and creek …

‘I like’ Friday. Art Journaling Supplies.

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I have been reading a lot lately about the supplies people like to use in their art journaling. These posts are inspiring and helpful all at once, so I thought I would add my two pennies worth and write a post about what I like to use. As I have only been art journaling deliberately for a couple of months, I suspect the supplies I rely on will change and develop over the next months.  I look forward to how my supplies evolve. Of course the first thing we need to journal is a sketchbook.  I have filled a Strathmore 500 series book which has very nice heavy paper and I have just started a Ranger Dylusions sketchbook which has heavy paper too, but is a little thicker.  I can’t wait to fill it up! These are both larger books, 8″x 11″ give or take a quarter of an inch. I like to have lots of space to play with, so I like this size. Pens pens pens.  I use Micron pens in almost everything …

Mini Watercolour set in a tin.

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This is one of those projects that made me immediately think ‘why on earth didn’t I think of this before?’.  There are lots of travel watercolor sets to buy and I nearly did buy one, until I saw this DIY version on Julie Balzar’s fab blog. I popped out and bought a tin of Altoids (I bought the blue one because I liked the colour and I don’t intend covering the outside of the tin) and a pack of gum which was sold in the tray style packet. The only problem I had was deciding which sixteen colours I was going to squeeze into my trays to tote about with me and my watercolour sketchbook.  I managed to choose a selection and then I arranged them into a pleasing palette. I did make a note in my sketchbook of which colours went where. I also want to get another pack of the gum so that I have an empty tray to use for mixing colours. This is such a great way to make you own …

‘I Like’ Friday. The planting, reading, sketching and eating edition

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Lots of things to like this week. Flowers starting to bloom on the trees being a big thing to like.  Here are some more things to like this fine Friday. This soup from Meet Me At Mikes looks like an essential.  I just need to find fresh tumeric which I have never used before, I have only had dealings with the bright yellow powder. I bought this book called Urban Watercolor Sketching by Felix Scheinberger and it is gorgeous as well as full of information.  More guidance than instruction and tons of inspiration. At last I have managed to read a book this year and now I am on my second.  This one is a great read, it is All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders.  It  is a little bit magic and a little bit science. These DIY affirmation cards look so lovely, I want to have a go at making a deck for myself. After taking this  Sketching class at Skillshare, I am feeling a little more confident in my outdoor …

Get Messy Friday. Art Journal Pages.

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This week has been a funny old week, I seem to have been busy busy but when I look back, I haven’t achieved very much.  I am already behind on March projects which is a great start!  Next week I will catch up.  Hopefully. Maybe. The trouble is I keep finding new things to learn and do!  There are so many classes via Creative Bug or Skillshare, not to mention the endless classes provided by various blogs and websites.  I am skipping from one thing to another like a Spring bunny. There is an urban sketching class, a watercolor class, another watercolor class, a sketch-a-day class, a drawing on a photo in photoshop class, not to mention all the books I borrow from the library.  This bunny needs to focus! In the midst of all of the skipping, I did finish some journal pages and started some too.  I tend to work on more than one page at a time because I will start one page and always come up with another idea and start another …

A month of Tinkersketch drawing challenge

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Through the month of February I joined in with Rachelle from Tinkerlab for the Tinkersketch drawing challenge.  Prompts were provided along with ideas for each day, sketchbooks were grabbed and art was created. I decided to use an old book discarded from the library as my sketchbook and I had filled it by the end of the month.  I didn’t use every page because I used all kinds of media which invariably ruined the next page or two. Here are some of my favorite pages from my little vintage book as sketchbook.  I quite like that I ended up with lots of bugs scuttling across my pages! Day 2. Mirror. Day 7. Repetition. Day 5. Tiny Doodle. Day 11. Stamp. I used a squashed cardboard roll to stamp hearts. Day 14. Hearts. Day 15. Sky.  Watercolor with masking fluid and pen and a collaged moon. Day 19. Junk Mail. Day 27. Mismatched. Day 29. Torn Paper. The final prompt which was ‘torn paper’ was completed on the very last page of the book. Thanks to Rachelle …