Summer weather - lovely

All this past week we have had some gorgeous weather. I've been able to top up my tan and snooze in the garden in the afternoon. Although I'm still at the market till the end of June, the waistcoats are not selling and it was the same last year; so I'm taking July and August off as a reward to myself and I'll get some stock up and running for September and Christmas.

My latest doll is Dot the Pocket Angel from Jill Maas. I just love Jill's patterns they are so quirky. Dot has no hands or feet so she can be made in a few hours, unlike Violet who takes two days to complete. I have a contact who sells sheepskins and I get the offcuts from him to make the hair on my dolls. It certainly makes a difference when you use the real thing, plus the offcuts come in all sorts of colours even pink and purple.

Dot also has a waistcoat which I thought very significant as I'm 'The Waistcoat Lady' at the market and these little fronts (no backs) are much quicker to make, I wish all my waistcoats could be so quick!

Well, I'm off now to make some more pocket angels.

More challenges

This is for the challenge from Inspire Me Thursday - "The lost art of letter writing" - I had some A4 stretched canvasses that were just asking for paint and an article by Julie Fei-fan Balzer gave me a new technique to try. I wrote the little letter to my grandchildren (all girls) whilst watching "The Mummy Returns" which appealed to my sense of humour, and transferred their photos onto the canvass over the writing. Then a little oil pastels, spray paints and a few dots and hearts finished it off. The transfer wasn't too clever and I need to experiment more to get it more definite. Still that's what it's all about.

Last Friday I went to my monthly scrapping club and the teacher there gave us this rather tricky layout to copy. Weaving circles and strips whilst sticking them down was rather a challenge and I also had to get the strips at right angles to each other whilst doing this. The picture is a bit off, but the lines are straight - honest.

We were given two lengths of silk to do the cross stitch round the thin circles and I just about made it last. When I got home I put a few more embellishments onto it, to make it mine, so to speak, as I felt the flowers were too small to give a proper impact.

This week's challenges

This small picture is printed on cork and has a lady holding a bunch of lavender in her hand. I found it whilst looking for something to answer the Mixed Media Monday challenge - Lace - and as I'm doing journals at the moment, I incorporated it into a collage for the cover. I layered it onto stone coloured cotton suede then brown linen, added the music and pieces of lace, then the flap was edged with gathered two-toned organza ribbon and the same lace. My daughter had sent me the crocheted flowers and they made a lovely addition to the flap when beaded into place.




By contrast, the next journal was made in black velvet. I had been on a course where we made the yellow fabric (see Februrary) and I cut it into an oblong and 3 squares and couched them down, then added the stuffed silk edging. I stuffed this knitted silk edging with string, but it is not quite right for the ties, it is too stiff, but OK for edging the journal. The silver you can see on the fabric is actually a crisp packet that has been heat blasted.

Both journals have hand dyed and stamped insides and one signature of 10 papers. Well, that's my weekend play and now I have to tidy up my workshop for the week ahead, when I hope to go through some interesting techniques.

Watch this space...

back at last

These past two weeks have been so busy making waistcoats, as I had so many orders that I had to work weekends to make them in time. However, this week I had no orders at all, so it has evened out somewhat. This will give me time to catch up with what has been going on challenge-wise and blog-wise. I did manage to finish a few projects and to download my magazine from http://www.workshopontheweb.com/ and found so many new techniques I want to try them all. Also my online http://quiltingarts.com/ magazine has inspired me to try out their workshops too. I hope to transfer all this learning into making journals as a reference library. Here are two I made earlier:

This one was made using aquarelle paint sticks on the background and then stencilled and stamped before adding papers to the inside and a few embellishments to the flap. I got the pocket in the wrong place and had to improvise but at least it is now unique.

This one was more stitch based as I had received a copy of Victoria MacLeod's DIY embroidery booklet. I raided the nearest DIY store and used some of the findings in an embroidery collage then cut and stitched it to the front of some hand-dyed fabric. This time I got the pocket in the right place!

I also finished Lily, my fifth doll and she is more ladylike in her dress and attitude. I'm waiting for a pattern I found, quite by accident, from the USA where the doll is made from scrunchies and a drinks can - all about recycling - and I'm quite excited about it.

Apart from all this that has been going on, Bert was here for a week and he is bouncing now. He seems to have got over his operations and the subsequent chemotherapy and taking more interest in life. He insisted on buying paving blocks and starting to lay them up the side of the workshop and will finish on his next visit by laying them on the path outside the kitchen. Once we have laid flags on the lower patio the garden will be finished and we can rest from our labours. I say 'we' because he lays the grounding and I lay the blocks on top; we have always worked well together except when I query what he is doing - he's not used to explaining why he does things, but he is getting there.