Guerilla Knitting

On a rather grey day here, things were definitely brightened up by the addition of some bright red knitting. I saw this while driving past and had to come back to photograph it. I've read articles about "Guerilla Knitting" before and I was so pleased to see some in our town. It's probably no coincidence that it has appeared outside our local wool and fabric shop. I'd love to have time to do something like this, so thank you to whoever spent their time making our town a bit brighter and a bit woollier!

If you'd like to see more Guerilla knitting, check out Flickr here.

Tissue flowers and some good news

I had a crafty afternoon with the girls and we made these. They look rather striking and I'd quite like to make a few more for a bolder effect. They come from a book my sister gave me for my birthday last year called "Green Crafts for Children"

My good news is that I have been asked to be a Guest Designer for the Scrap Revolution blog and I had a lovely parcel of goodies arrive this morning to play with. I'm buzzing with ideas! My projects will appear on the blog in about a month's time.

A birthday weekend

We had a couple of birthdays this weekend and an excuse to eat cake - yum yum! They are both Victoria sandwich cakes with strawberry jam in the middle. The top one was covered in chocolate ganache and topped with strawberries.The bottom one was covered in ready to roll green icing with sugar decorations (bought not made) because my 4 year old has been planning her ladybird and butterfly cake since last October. The addition of the chocolate finger biscuits around the outside of both cakes was inspired by a family tradition from my friend Pip.

A trip to the circus

I've been working on a little mini book about our trip to the circus last summer, using Echo Park papers and stickers. You can see more about how I made it over on Bubbly Scrumptious HERE.

A quilt motif

A couple of weeks ago our photography prompt on Picture Inspiration was to take a photo with the title "Motif". It took me ages to think of anything and I was about to give up when I saw the light shining through my patchwork blind. I thought my motif could be squares and so I took this photo.

I haven't taken a good picture of this quilt before and it looks particularly good when the light shines through as it resembles stained glass. This patchwork took my mum and I a year and a half of Sunday afternoons about 12 years ago. The pattern comes from Kaffe Fassett's book "Patchwork" (It's the pattern on the front cover). I went to a talk by the man himself a few years ago and asked him to sign the book for my mum. I told him how long we'd taken to make the blind and he said he wasn't surprised as it was a complicated pattern and that's why they had made it into a small blind rather than a larger piece! Our blind is twice the size of his one!

A thank you card

I made a thank you card for a friend today and I had another play with my Sizzix Texture Boutique. This time I tried embossing patterned cardstock and sanding it back. I think it worked quite well.

Stacking up

This week's homework on Picture Inspiration was to take a picture with the theme of stacking. I've been dreaming of all the beautiful china cups I could stack if I had some, but then I had a wander in the garden on this beautiful spring day and looked at the drawing the girls have been doing with the chalks on the patio. This is a regular sunshiney activity in our house and I've never really been able to capture it well in a photo, so I tried collecting up the chalks and stacking them up. I'm really pleased with how this photo turned out (after a little play on Picnik).

Ballerina Frills

I've been feeling inspired after trying out the water distressing technique to make flowers (see here) and I was wondering what else I could make, so I've had go at making some water-distressed frills and I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

I started out by cutting a 2cm strip from double sided patterned paper and folding it down the middle.

I sprayed it with the water bottle on both sides and then crumpled it up and left it to dry.

I put a line of strong double-sided tape on my page and crumpled the frill onto it as I stuck it down.

I'm wondering what else I can water-distress now?

To see more about the products I used, click HERE to see my post for Bubbly Scrumptious this week.

Fun in the Sun

This is my layout for this week's post on Bubbly Scrumptious using Echo Park's Sweet Summertime collection. You can see more details HERE.

Fun with Fabric album

I've finally finished my 6 x canvas album from Donna Downey's "Fun with Fabric" class from the end of last year. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out and I got to play with some of my new stamps from Crafty Individuals. In this project I learnt to use bold stamps when stamping on canvas as some of the stamps with beautiful details just didn't show up that well.

Here are my pages...

Rhythm of the sea

This week's challenge from Picture Inspiration is all about rhythm. I took this picture last night to capture the repeating arches of the pier, but when I got there the sound of the sea added to the rhythm. It was a very peaceful break in a busy day.

Two little welcomes

I'm continuing my New Years resolution about making cards and writing letters with two cards I've made to welcome a new baby and welcome to a new home. You can see more about them HERE over on Bubbly Scrumptious.

Delovely

I liked my paper flowers so much and I couldn't wait to add them to a layout. I made the "Butterfly Girl" layout above and tried to add the flower but it didn't look right. I made the layout below and the flower works well on this page. My friend Amy pointed me in the direction of Page Maps, which helped me put these pages together. They have some great sketches on there and I like all the little details they include. The papers are all from the Delovely collection by Cosmo Cricket.

Lovely paper flowers

I've been thinking about adding texture to my pages and I found a tutorial for water distressed cardstock flowers on the "Such a Pretty Mess" blog. I was particularly impressed with this tutorial as I have seen similar tutorials like the beginning of this one using punches, but I don't have those punches. If you scroll down she shows how to make these flowers just using scissors to cut out shapes. I LOVE these flowers! It probably helps that I used the beautiful zingy Delovely papers by Cosmo Cricket.