Teneriffe at Christmas

Gina-B Silkworks has some new kits out for making Teneriffe lace including one with Christmas designs. They are really cute. You can make Teneriffe medallions with Christmas trees, bows, candles or reindeer. Due to work issues, I didn't get to make as many samples as I had hoped for this month's show but I did get this little box finished with the Christmas tree motifs on the medallion. You do need to buy some of the looms that Gina has as well as the Christmas kit but one loom and some festive designs can make a whole host of imaginative gifts and cards.

Another way of using Teneriffe lace is to add it to a canvas. This piece was made by layering lots of textures like tissue paper and cheese cloth onto a small art canvas, adding some Teneriffe medallions (including some of my early attempts that did not look all that great) and painting over it all with cream acrylic paint. I then added some pink and blue highlights among the textures and some gilding wax lightly over the very top. A few jewels, pearls and jewellery findings along with a short quote finished it off. Something a bit more modern using a traditional craft.

Drifting towards Christmas

A quick pic today - little decorative elements that I have attached to Christmas gifts for my family. They are made from driftwood pieces and painted in acrylic paints. The recipients can even hang them on their trees next year if they like.

A Christmas wreath

As Christmas approaches my Mum had been talking of getting a wreath for my Gran's grave. She has done it every year since Gran died in 2013 and usually goes to the local florist to get one. The first year we received a beautifully made wreath. So much care and attention had gone into it and it looked lovely at the graveside. Sadly, last year, Mum was not too happy with what she got for her money. So this year we decided to do the job ourselves. We picked up an artificial wreath from the local garden centre (rabbits run rampant in the graveyard and eat everything that is remotely green) and a few things to decorate it with. Gran always liked out Christmas tree. She loved the colours and the glitter and the lights. With that in mind we went to work. The finished item is certainly glorious. I hope she would approve.

Gran loved to see the robin in the garden so we added this little guy to keep and eye on things.

This is the Christmas tree that inspired the wreath. Yup! We certainly go to town with ours. It is a 'history tree' covered in things that stretch back through our family life - from vintage glass decorations to handmade glittery fish.

Season's Greetings

I would just like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has supported me over the last year - be it reading this blog, looking at my Facebook or Etsy pages or buying from me. Every set of eyes, enquiry or sale is greatly appreciated.

This coming year will hopefully see some changes to my work. I am not quite sure what they will be but personal changes brought about by everything from health issues to governmental rule changes mean I have to restructure my working practices. It's scary but I am hoping for better things in 2016.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, my best wishes to those who don't and a happy New Year to everyone.

Sewing circles

I came across a couple of interesting tutorials online this week. Both involved sewn circles used in festive ways. So when I managed to get a few hours to myself I gave them a shot. Neither took long - a couple of hours each at most - and they fulfilled my desperate need to sew after a heavy week of bead making.

The first was a folded fabric ornament by Crouton Crakerjacks on YouTube. Really simple but a lovely finished product. Mine is decorated with some ganutell holly leaves from a new kit by Gina-B Silkworks.

I also made a couple of smaller ones and added a snowflake button to one and some beads and a tassel to the other.

The next one was a little fabric angel by Selimut-ku. It is so very cute and would make nice little gifts for anyone who loves angels. As you can see, my guy has his head tilted to the side giving him a curious look.

One other little Christmassy sewing project is the new start for the top of the family Christmas tree. The current star was made by my sister when she was at primary school and it's looking a bit dog eared. In fact it was made of straw and only has thee points left out of the original twelve. So I made a paper pieced, quilted star in yellow with a yellow hand made button in the centre.

Catch up

I hadn't realised that it had been so long since I posted anything to my blog. With 20 inches of snow to deal with over the last two weeks I guess things got away from me - again.

So what's been happening? Well, lots of Christmas card making so I have added some photos of them here. Then I signed up for an online class with Carla Sonheim. It has been brilliant fun. We are making journals and purses from fabric scraps and I have re-discovered my love of my sewing machine. If you want to find out more you can read about it here. There will be a second presentation of the class in the New Year and I can heartily recommend it. So far I have made two scrap journals and am in the process of making my scrap purse. The final lesson arrived yesterday so pictures of the purse will follow soon but here are a couple of pics of my journals. I have adjusted Carla's instructions just a little when it came to binding them. I used a binding technique using cotton perle thread and beads instead of stitching the page in. That way I can add new pages later if I want to.











I also mastered basic crochet. Now, this has been an issue for me for a long time. I learned to knit when I was little but never really took to it. Crochet, however, was a mysterious hobby. One hook and magnificent forms could be created. Could I figure out how to crochet? Nope! The illustrations in books were always useless but by chance I came across a tip from someone who crochets - the internet. This will sound very obvious to most of us. I use the internet to research nearly everything but it never occurred to me that it would be of any more help than the books I had used. Wrong! I had forgotten we are in the age of video classes. NexStitch is a crochet site that had a number of videos for beginner and it revolutionised the way people learn crochet. Me included. So far I have just played around but I have embarked on what I hope will be a scarf. The plan is to have grey ends that will be embellished and a coloured central panel. So far it is slow going. I might be 60 before I get this finished but I am having fun learning new techniques.


And marbling! I bought a couple of bottles of a marbling paint by Marabu called Easy marble and it actually works! In the past I have bought all the alum, size and inks and produced the ultimate in ugliness. So it was a lovely surprise when this stuff actually worked. It is a solvent based ink that floats on water (if you are using something smaller than A5 paper or wallpaper paste if it's bigger than that. So far I only have the blue and yellow so my colour will be limited but I feel a shopping spree coming on next week.


And, of course, there has been Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas and I have been taking part but I will post the photos of those later.

Other than that, there has been little drawing going on. I had an essay to write for my mythology course which took me longer than I expected. The snow meant much snow shovelling and Christmas shopping has been keeping me away from more productive work. But I hope you have enjoyed this catch up on my creativity. My Challenge Gillian images will be up soon too.

Merry Christmas!

It looks like we will be getting a white Christmas this year. The first in many years. Yippee!

So, now it is Christmas Eve, and all the cards have been delivered, I can show you some of the Christmas cards I have been making this year. I bought some nice stamps and card so there was very little that could go wrong with them. It made the job much easier. Every year I seem to have fewer and fewer cards to send. A family members pass on and friends leave the fold the need to make as many cards diminishes. It is a sad but natural part of life but this time of year allows me to think of all the fun times I had with those people.

The pictures above are of my final tip in pages for the monthly swap I took part in. The recipient was a fan of pink so I used my snow obsession and pinks and purples as the theme.

The swirly card here is by a company called Hunkydory and the images and stamps by Crafty Individuals. All very rich and Christmassy.

Wishing you all a crafty Christmas and a creative New Year.

Fun and festive

Yes, we are ALL getting involved with the festivities. Stanley is wearing his reindeer antlers in solidarity with all reindeer. The decorations are all up, the cards I have received are stuck to the doors (though they keep falling off again) and we even have snow. Now all I have to do is finish up my final, family Christmas cards. Hope you are all having a good festive period - no matter what your beliefs.

Making an exhibition of myself

I have not been posting much lately, have I? I'm not really sure why, other than the fact I have had nothing very creative to post. Where is the time going? I seem to get up in the morning and suddenly it is night time again. The end of the year is galloping towards us at high speed now. I seem to have so many plans but cannot find the time to get them all done. Argh!

Still, I have an exhibition taking place in a couple of weeks and have to prepare some work for it. The two paintings here are finished and ready to go. Now I have to come up with a third. I always find it hard deciding what to paint. As this is a Christmas exhibition I figured wintery subjects might sell well. I'm contemplating a robin but that might be taking things a bit too far. Robins may be the typical Christmas card front but I don't know that it would sell. One thing I learned from my summer exhibition is that small sells better during the credit crunch than anything big. People might be able to find a few pounds for a painting, maybe to give as a gift. Anything larger tends to have a larger price tag too. A little extra cash would be very nice just before Christmas.

Inching towards Christmas

I signed up for a swap of inchie Christmas ornaments. I thought it was such a great idea that I couldn't resist. So here are my attempts - decorated with jewels and silver plated wire. Hopefully the other participants will enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

This week's creativity

I have spent the last week and a half doing some home improvement. I had to lay some floorboards to stop the winter winds blowing through the cracks in the floor. On the worst winter nights I used to be able to watch the carpet lifting from the floor, oozing and puffing up like a monster from the black lagoon. But now I need new carpet so the boards have been laid to keep the electricity bills down and the wind out. Then came the carpet. This is a job I have done many times before but it is not the most fun. It is a very hot, sweaty and exhausting job trying to lay carpet in a room where you can only remove half of the furniture at a time. I had to empty one half of the room, lay the carpet, move the furniture back along with the stuff from the other half of the room then lay the other half. Phew. There just isn't the room in my house to put all the furniture at once. There has not been much creativity as a result - just a few cards, a decorated notebook and some inchies.

Festive Greetings

Festive greetings to you all. I can't believe the holiday is over. It seemed to be upon me before I realised. I don't do New Year. I hate it with a fiery passion. The whole idea that things might be different in a collection of days linked to another collection of days is beyond me. It has always been my experience that things do not change that way unless it is through tragedy. Oh well, there's no accounting for folk, as the saying goes.

Christmas Eve was spent icing the Christmas cake. By the time I was finished the kitchen looked like a snowstorm had hit. What's the deal with icing sugar? It doesn't matter how careful I am with it I still makes a mess. Christmas Day was spent with my family, eating lots and opening presents. It's at times like those that I can't help but think about those who do not have that opportunity and who spend it alone or in less festive circumstances.

I have taken a few photos of some 1x1 inch collage squares that I attempted using miniature prints of my own artwork. The best part of the project was painting the background papers. Lots of fun splashing acrylic paint around. I also added a top coat of walnut stain in places and it made some wonderful colours. Made the reds really rich and the yellows more mellow. It's only my first go so it might take a while to get to the standards of Chrysti (http://chrysti.wordpress.com) or Shari (http://www.creativechatter.blogspot.com). Still, it was fun.