It's not even midday, and I've already demolished a bowl of porridge with blackberries & sultanas for breakfast, a brunch of poached eggs & feta cheese on rye crispbread and a white chocolate Bueno bar. Seriously thinking I might be overdoing it a morsel or two ... oh well, diet begins Monday. Isn't that how the saying goes? (Luckily, there are lots of Mondays throughout the year.)
Anyway, I've a couple of things to tell you about. One of 'em is this book, '365 Days of Creativity' by Lorna Scobie. I received it as a present last Christmas, and finally got around to starting it. The book has 365 prompts in the form of pages to paint or draw on, collage or write on, all aimed at kickstarting your arty crafty creativity. Like this starting page.
You're encouraged to fill each bowl with something. Fruit or pencil or random objects maybe.
I really enjoyed this, cutting up an old Sarah Raven catalogue for pictures to stick on. Two garden urns, a cardboard box, seed packets, a book, a handful of candles & two glass bottles. I also use a stamp to print the outline of green leaves, and I drew apples, bananas, a carrot, Nessie the Loch Ness monster and a sleeping cat. Plus random stamped letters in black ink. Oh, and I stuck on a couple of used postage stamps too. I was pleased with how these bowls turned out, and happily started on the next prompt. However - hmmm, not so much fun.
This page was blank, except for the text suggesting I use a variety of different materials to explore making marks, and I should embrace smudges or accidental marks. Well, there I was faced with a blank page and my mind went equally blank. I had various false starts, & never properly felt I got to grips with what was being asked of me. I ended up tearing up paper, gluing it down, painting over it, stamping & using stencils & adding a scrap of fabric, splatters of paint, lines made by Sharpies. It's all a bit of a dog's dinner, and I can't say I like it. The next page for me to start on is also blank. But there's more of a definate prompt about how to fill it. Draw the view through a doorway. It suggests the view could be into a garden or a room, or a view from a cafe door. That's much less vague than 'explore mark making', and I might tackle that this afternoon.
Okay, moving on, this blog post's entitled every day's a school day because I was today years old when I learnt how to upload a YouTube video! I'm not great with technology, so don't usually find things like this simple, but to be fair to YouTube they make it pretty easy. It's not the most accomplished filming in the world, but I wanted to try recording a flick-through of my fabric covered journal. The link's here, and I'd be ridiculously happy if you'd take a look at it. The more views a video gets on the site, the more it's recommended to others and gains a wider audience. Not that I expect there's a huge crowd desperately waiting to see my shaky camera work ... Actually, it's fascinating to look 'behind the scenes', as it were, about how YouTube works. If you upload a film, you can not only see how many people watch it, but whether they stick around to watch the entire film or only manage a few seconds before they're clicking on something else. I belatedly worked out how to add music to the video, but that might take a while to process. So maybe you'll see the film without a soundtrack and maybe you won't. But please, do me a favour and take a peek. Make an old gal happy! It'll be your good deed for the day.
I suggested yesterday that I'd run through how to make a fabric bird wall or window hanging (can't think of a snappier title for it than that!) so here goes. I'll start with the first decorative hanging I made. It's something you could make in any colour combination you want, and would look good hanging at a window with translucent beads that'd catch the light I used five birds for this, but you could make it longer if you prefer. (Incidentally, if you're wondering about what's hanging off the bottom on this, it's a metal Christmas decoration, shaped like a lantern. For some reason I thought it looked appropriate to leave it there, looped over the end.) WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO GATHER TOGETHER: Assorted scraps of fabric for the front of the birds - aim for a mix of colours and textures. Silk looks good, as does anything with embroidery or intricate patterns. You might aim for a hippy-ish boho look, or maybe you're more the minimal Scandi
I'm typing this as snow's falling, and has been steadily all day. It's not settling to any great extent, though I bet by tomorrow morning the paths will be slippery with ice. Which always makes me paranoid about falling over and at the very least looking undignified, but at worst breaking a bone or twisting an ankle. Oh well, it's ideal weather to stay inside and craft, isn't it? I finally got around to listing packs of sari scraps on Etsy this morning. I only made up six bundles as I've no clue whether they'll sell or if I've set a reasonable enough price point. Time will tell. This is a link to the listing, if you're interested. This vaguely pink fabric isn't from one of my Etsy packs. It's from a bit of experimenting I was doing yesterday. I'd seen a post on Instagram showing how a DIY version of batik could be done without using hot wax. The Instagrammer used PVA instead, and I wanted to try this out. The glue's su
I had a few requests after posting this photo on Facebook, people asking if I could explain how I made these paper flowers. Your wish is my command, and here's the info. It's all very simple and you don't need any advanced drawing skills. So grab a stack of gell prints, a pair of scissors and off we go! The type of print that seems to work best is one where there's a fair amount of detail, rather than a block of solid plain colour. Prints where you've maybe channelled your inner Elizabeth St. Hilaire and 'layered layered layered' as she's always urging us to do. POPPIES If we start with simple poppy seed heads and stalks, they're cut freehand from paper that's mainly shades of orange and brown. I glued those on to a sheet of white copier paper, then cut them out, leaving a narrow border around each. Backing the gell print with the white paper adds that contrasting border, but also strengthens the piece, especially the thin stalks. I
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