rubykittyruby

This is my allotment, where everything's lush & green & growing like it's been put on fast-forward.  Sweet marjoram and mint are taking over the beds they've been planted in, and there are so many foxgloves in flower.  I did think about cutting some and bringing them home to put in a vase, but I always feel guilty if I do that, depriving the bees of their food. An hour and a half of mainly cutting overgrown grassy paths left me tired and a bit headache-y, so I've been spending time this afternoon messing about with paint and fabric again.   I applied paint to various pieces of cotton, calico and synthetic material, and while they don't look like much as yet they'll be prettier when this layer of paint's dried and I stencil over top of it.  I've got something in mind for these pieces, and it's a light bulb moment I had this morning while I was slurping tea and trying to fully wake up.  It's to do with two mini stylized dolls I made a while...

I'm supposed to be cutting down on the crafty clutter, using up my existing supplies and not buying new.  But ...   Sometimes you have to snap up a bargain when it's put under your nose.  A fiver bought me a bagful of ribbons - always useful to have a selection - and three printing stamps from a local charity shop.  Someone who'd previously been into papercrafting must've had a massive clean out 'cause there were dozens of stamps, a Sissix machine, and all kinds of odds & ends in the shop.   When this kind of thing happens, It's like you get little glances into strangers lives.  Suddenly the charity shop's home to dozens of books about stamp collecting or DVDs about steam trains.  There are a shelf full of Mills & Boon paperbacks or stacks of maps and field guides. It's always poignant when you see several packs of Tena as it's very likely an elderly person's died and the family's had to clear out their house.  A grim task that m...

I've been wanting to play around with printing on fabric, and decided to have a go after watching this video.   Making these stylised dolls looked fun, and as they were unlikely to be washed then using acrylic paint instead of specific fabric paint would be good enough.  They're also not intended to be put in the hands of young children because of the beads (dangers of choking).  So, like the birds I sewed the other day, they're meant to be decorative rather than functional.   I started out by finding pieces of plain white cotton in my stash.  I gell printed on them in mainly yellow, orange and red, then used stencils to add more detail and colour.   After letting the fabric dry overnight, I cut out two squares using a quilt ruler as a guide.  I added a loop of ribbon, pinning that in place at what'll be the top centre of the front of the doll.  Then folded the square in half lengthways.  So now you've got a long thin rectangle,...