Sunday 29 April 2018

Paper Beads

Hi all,
I have recently decovered the art of paper bead making. I have coupled it with some decoupage and started making my own jewlery. Here is a set I made last week.

It is my intention to make several sets to go with various outfits. I am really pleased with the way they turned out. I have to also give a little bit of credit to my husband who did the woodturning for me.

Wednesday 13 September 2017

Christmas is coming

Hello,
I don't usually like to get involved with Christmas too early because I think it spoils the joy of the occasion. However, this year I have no choice because I decided to a have a complete change regarding my Christmas tree.

Over the years I have decorated some stunning trees with beautiful lights a a baubles that sparkled and glittered like the night of a million stars. Well this year I'm having a change and  I'm going back to simpler days with more detail and less sparkle.  When I was younger we had one string of light on our tree that consisted of about 15 bulbs and it showed up the decorations a treat. The coming of the LED light has put an end to that because last year I put three strings of light with about 360 LED bulbs and it didn't light up the decorations at all. When I looked at it all I could see was 360 tiny lights and nothing else, the baubles were lost

Anyway, this tear my tree will be decorated with many items that will be made from made  clay and wood and I'm going to paint them all with different designs, which will hopefully produce something interesting to look at. With a bit of luck it will be better that the thing that has glowed in the corner of my lounge over recent years.

Here's my first batch of decorations made from wood.

They have been turned by my husband and I did the rest. I'd love to know what you thing of them so please leave a comment.

Monday 10 October 2016

Polymer Clock

Hi all,
It's been a while since I updated this blog but better late than never.  During my absence I've been messing about with polymer clay, which is completely different from air drying clay. Air drying clay is fantastic for making flowers but it does have it's restrictions. My biggest problem was that, while making flowers was very therapeutic, I ran out of places to put the flowers after I'd made them.

So, I decided to broaden my horizons and have a go with polymer clay. This product is absolutely amazing, it does need cooking in an oven to cure it, but the things you can do with it are endless.

Anyway, I thought I'd use polymer clay to make some tiles to cover a rather ugly clock that I'd been given for a present. It is one of the few things I've made with polymer clay and here is the result of my labours. I'm sorry that it looks a bit rough around the edges in the photo, but that is caused by the barreling effect of the camera lens.
I am very pleased with it and can't wait to make another project. I'd love to hear your comments, what do you think of it? I'm working on a box lid at the moment and can't wait to see how it looks when it is finished.

Friday 12 December 2014

primroses

Had loads of trouble with my new computer, so I have had to return it. Have decided to use my Kindle Fire to do my blogging instead.
Busy doing all the Christmas decorating and just thought I'd put a quick post on telling you that I shall be back later to tell you all about my Primroses that I made last year.
I'm back at last, the tree looks gorgeous and I've wrapped all the presents. My reward for all this....A really nasty cold, loads of sneezing and coughing, I am pooped!  But I digress, let me tell you more about the primrose.  If my youngest daughter hand't had a pagan wedding I never would have started making clay flowers. You see, she wanted a special cake with a country theme, toadstool, hedgehogs, wild flowers and birds etc. I had come across a lovely tiny bird ornament, the only trouble being its tail was snapped off. I knew of Fimo air drying clay and thought I'd have a go at making a new tail. Actually I ended up using Das clay (same outcome as Fimo) and when I'd moulded it on and painted it with acrylic paint you couldn't tell there had been a break at all, I was really pleased.
I found it quite rewarding and very different from my usual pastimes of watercolour and acrylic painting and pyrography. I went on you tube to see what other folk were doing with air drying clay. To not ramble I'll tell you that through the searching I came across sugarcraft flowers being made, gosh, how amazing, I also learnt that what you can do with sugarpaste you can do with a host of clays, just what I wanted. I shall tell you about my choice of clays at a later date.
After many attempts at flowers, which I will say were all quite pleasing, I decided to do some "proper" flowers in some sort of arrangement, and so my primroses were made. Primroses are my favourite flower the perfect yellow I think.
I bought a selection of books on sugar flowers (the sort they use to decorate elaborate cakes, like wedding cakes) the method and tools used are exactly the same as you would use for air drying clay. I decided to give the lovely Primrose a go and I'm proud to say the final basket looked quite good. Patience is the order of the day because you have to wait a long time between some of the stages, overnight sometimes.
After the primrose there was a huge gap in time before I did anything else because we moved house. My 81 year old Mother lives with us and she is quite ill so my husband and myself take care of her which does take up a lot of our time, as you can imagine. The moving of us and her was very stressful. The bungalow we've moved into has had to have loads of work doing to it, the majority being up dating and decorating, so between this and caring for Mother there has not been a lot of time for crafting.
As soon as I found some time I practiced making one or two of different flowers to get the feel of it again, then I made the Iceland poppies I talked about earlier. These are my husband's favourite.
Over the past few days I felt like a change from flower making and did a quick pyrography drawing of a Peacock on a piece of Baltic Birch plywood, which I highlighted with the delicate colours of some wonderful water paints called Sparkling H2o' s made by a company called Luminarte. These paints have mica in them which gives the paint a slight glitter when the light hits it. Not a Christmassy type of glitter, more of a sheen.
 Anyway I love them, although they are quite difficult to get hold of. Hobbycraft certainly don't have them, and if they did they would cost the earth!
I'm off now to get Mother's lunch, I shall show you the Peacock in my next post. Coming Mother dearest. No! Got that one wrong, she says she wants coffee first and lunch a bit later. Golly,I love taking care of my dear Mama. See you later.x






Sunday 23 November 2014

Iceland Poppies

Hello there, trying to get the hang of this blogging, and the more I do it the quicker I'll learn. Want to show you a picture of my latest lot of flowers....Iceland Poppies in a yellow jug. I bought the jug from a charity shop for £1, my favourite kind of purchase, something lovely for not much money.

 Anyway, please take a look at my poppies, I am so pleased with them.

I just wanted to get up to date with you before my next blog. As I go along I shall try and put all I have to say in some sort of order, so that you will be able to understand my progress.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

New Vase

Hello,
My husband does a bit of woodwork and he made me a small wooden vase as a surprise so I did a   quick fantasy flower for it just to get the feel of the clay.

Sunday 5 October 2014

Flowers

Hello, after setting up this blog we moved house and I have been too busy to do any posts. In fact, I have had hardly any time to do any craft work at all. Hopefully, things are about to improve and I will be able to share my flower making experiences with you.

I haven't been making them long so it is a case of learning as I go. Here are a few flowers that I made last week just for practice, not brilliant, but seeing as they are some of my first I don't think they are too bad.

My husband made the wooden vase and I did the pyrography; plus the flowers of course. I hope you like them