Me and my girl

I'm taking a year long online photography course at Big Picture with Tracey Clark leading the way. This week's assignment was a self portrait and I tried taking pictures of just me, but then the ginger one wanted to join in on the action and this was my favourite photo. There are some beautiful black and white shots in the class gallery and I tried black and white, but my hair colour is too much a part of who I am and the pictures didn't really represent me so well.

Chippie challenge

I've been playing with my chipboard again as I wanted to make something for the boy's room. I used all the pieces above, so can you guess what I made?

Here he is, and if you want to find out more then check out Bubbly Scrumptious, as this is my post for the week.

Tone on Tone

I've recently decided that I like my scrapbook pages to have texture and maybe in the past there were pages I didn't quite like and weren't sure why, but now I think it was because they were a bit flat. I wanted to have a go at this month's "Build-A-Page" sketch challenge on the Prima Blog and so I used that sketch and made a tone-on-tone page to highlight the textures, using my favourite photo I took of the ginger one over Christmas.

There's a felt gate and a canvas heart...

and lots Prima Craftable flowers with some pearl centres...
and some wide satin ribbon and chipboard letters, with lots of Antique Linen Distress Ink to add depth.

Sisters

I had a go at January's "Build-A-Page" sketch challenge on the Prima blog and here's my version of the sketch. I'm very pleased to say that they liked it at Prima too and so it appears on their blog here - yay!
If you'd like to see more about it, it's my Bubbly Scrumptious post for today HERE.

New house guests

Look who's come to live in my house! On my continuing mission to make my house a more creative and inspiring place to be I decided I wanted to have a mobile hanging up in our living room. I had a good look around (mostly on Etsy) and found this one. I coudn't get the right angle to photograph my one so this is the picture from Etsy. Here's the link to see more about it.

It's made by "a collective of women from semi-rural, economically disadvantaged areas in Mexico" using recycled materials, through a program called PEACE.

I really like how it looks and the birds bob gently around on their wires. I also love how this is a craft item that genuinely makes a difference to someone.

Simeon's quilt

We recieved an e-mail to tell us about the arrival of our friends' little boy and I knew I wanted to make him a quilt. I've made quite a few cot quilts over the past couple of years and they normally take me a few months but this time I wanted to set myself a more realistic goal. However I also try to learn something new with each quilt I make and so I was very pleased to have achieved both goals with this quilt. I bought some lovely Buttercup Farm fabric (inspired by my own little boy's current love of everything to do with farm animals) and set out a simple quilt pattern with some strip-pieced squares. I even found some chicken fabric hiding in my stash!

My new technique for this quilt was free motion quilting. My mum bought me a Big Foot sewing machine foot a while ago and I've been nervous of trying it. This month there was a great tutorial in Quilting Arts which gave me the courage to have a go. I love it!! There will be lots more free motion sewing from me this year, especially since Kirstie Allsopp referred to it as "the crack cocaine of the crafting world" after she had a go on "Kirstie's Homemade Home". Here's my first attempt, on the white border in the quilt.

I started this quilt on Saturday afternoon and finished it on Tuesday evening.

Creating cards

This Saturday I went to my local crop and got to play all day making cards. I took along my new toy - a Sizzix Texture Boutique embossing machine - to try out. I really like this tool (and I like it even more that I got for £6.50 on ebay!). I used Cosmo Cricket supplies to make some "Hi" cards as I have decided to put pen to paper and start writing letters to my friends.

Here are the Thank You cards I made (note the embossing in the backgrounds) which are the last few I need to write from Christmas.

I actually put time aside this year to make a Valentines card, instead of throwing one together last minute. I really like this one.

And finally a birthday card for my Father-in-law.

A walk on the pier

A layout from me today over at Bubbly Scrumptious. Click HERE to see more.

Photography winner!

Our church held a photography competition recently with the title "Unusual Christmas Photos". I was so pleased on Sunday when it was announced that I was the winner - see the photo above. The prize is having a photo printed onto a 20" x 24" canvas at our local print shop. We've had a canvas printed with them before and it was excellent so I'm thrilled with the prize. Now I've just got to choose the photo!

Nellie Quilt

I am so pleased to finally be writing about this quilt. I designed this quilt nearly four years ago, by combining a couple of different elephant blocks I'd seen and adding the star motif. It was originally going to be a single bed sized quilt, but that was when I only had 1 child. I completed the wall quilt just before the birth of my 3rd child - it was the day before and I was quite determined the baby wasn't going to be born until I'd got the elephants finished! Needless to say things move quite slowly in our house when it comes to DIY type jobs and so two years later the quilt has finally been put up on the wall.



I made the quilt by sewing the fabrics onto papers and the tails are little plaits of embroidery silks.

This is why I Scrapbook

Last year Shimelle set a challenge to create a piece of artwork to say why we scrapbook. Check out this post on her blog and her fantastic video. I didn't have a blog then and I have just managed to get this up on the wall so it seemed like a good time to post it on here.

I created an art quilt, which I haven't done before. I used a variety of fabrics and printed photos onto fabric, using special fabric from Crafty Computer Paper. I went through my embellishment boxes and picked out lots of old embellishments that have been hanging around for a while. I was so pleased with the result.

I also included the first peg doll I had made in years...

I got some strange looks from my children as they watched me saw the ends off these coloured pencils to make the right heights!

Little Boy Banner

I've finally made a banner, which has been on my "To Do" list for ages. I'm really pleased with it, although not totally pleased with the photos as the light in my son's room isn't great. If you'd like to see it in more detail check out my post for this week over on Bubbly Scrumptious.