A new start - Project Life pages

Wow, it's been ages since I've written a blog post. Things have been busy and complicated as family life usually is. I agree to do things and then other things happen (poorly children etc) and everything can spiral out from there. So, time for a new start.

I've got lots of things to blog about but this page seems a good place to begin. I love scrapbooking but have been feeling a little uninspired so I decided to give the Project Life style pages a go. I have tried in the past and I did not like how they turned out. I signed up for a "Pocket Pages" class on the True Scrap website, which I found quite interesting to get me started. 

I was also very inspired by the pages from Magda Bolinska. Her pages are fabulous and vibrant and I love the use of paint.

So here's my first go. I mostly used supplies from a "Day in the Life" kit from Cocoa Daisy. The page came together really easily and I like how it looks. I will definitely try a few more PL style pages.

I am currently taking some time to ponder where I am going to be taking my artwork as I'm not sure magazine writing has long term potential. I've taken a few months off writing at the moment, but having said that, a little peek of one of my projects is on the front cover of the latest issue of Scrap365.

It's the star in the bottom right hand corner! I'm on the front cover - woohoo! It feels like my very own Mike Wazowski moment... 

Playing Poohsticks - a textured page

I've finally finished this scrapbook page which I started sometime last year.  I created the textured background using some die cut card and moulding paste and then coloured it with watercolours. I did a whole batch of backgrounds like this and then I have been slowly working back through them.

I used one of my Cocoa Daisy kits to finish the page, including these woodgrain alphabet Thickers (perfect for a page about playing in the woods).

The kit included the twine, sequins, woodgrain notecard and wooden veneer "page". The packet of embellishments in the kit was sealed with a tiny bit of woodgrain washi tape and I think it looks great on the top right edge of the photo.

A Sizzix rainbow chevron quilt

I have been using my Sizzix Big Shot again to help me make a quilt and I absolutely love this one. I made it for a raffle at church as we are having a day for "Dress A Girl Around the World" ( a great charity helping to clothe some of the poorest children in the world) and so we wanted to raise money to buy fabric, elastic and bias binding. The great news is that we raised £165 through the quilt raffle. The quilt was so eye-catching that lots of people wanted to win it and , to be honest, I was a little sad to see it go (but I could always make another one!)

I found this tutorial for a chevron quilt which looks great. It uses strip piecing which would make this quilt even quicker to put together. However, my cutting out is always terrible (I even managed to make a wobbly Log Cabin square once) and so I put my quilt together using a Sizzix rectangle die (2" x 4" finished size). I found that 1 fat quarter can be cut into 24 rectangles but some of my fabric pieces were a little smaller than a fat quarter so my quilt is 22 rectangles wide. 

I started with a stack of rectangles and sewed 11 lilac rectangles to 11 red rectangles. Then I sewed the remaining 11 red rectangles to 11 yellow rectangles in pairs and continued like this through the stack of fabrics. I laid out the fabric pairs on the floor to create the chevron pattern like this.

Each diagonal row is then sewn together and looks like this.

Then the rows are sewn together like this.

Eventually the quilt top looks like this - so pretty!

I finished the quilt by quilting in the ditch along the zig zag rows which was really effective and used a turquoise fabric to bind the edges.

One of the problems I had with the original tutorial was that it didn't give the finished dimensions for the quilt. Then ,after I gave the quilt away, I realised I hadn't measured mine either! This quilt has 22 rectangles across the quilt and there are 23 rows. I think the finished quilt measured approximately 40" x 50".

Scrapbooking an Imaginary friend

My little boy has an imaginary friend. Yesterday I asked him to count how many people were in our family. He answered "1...2...3...4...5.......and my friend astronaut,6". As "My friend Astronaut" seems to be part of our family it is only right that he makes an appearance in a scrapbook! 

The boy has a great imagination and tells lots of stories about adventures he has with his friend Astronaut (who is also 4 I have been told), but his drawing skills aren't quite up to recording what Astronaut looks like. Luckily we had a big sister handy who could document him for me.

I finished off the page with various space themed stickers and rub-ons I had handy in my craft stash.

I am very happy that the astronaut has made his scrapbook debut.

Studio Tekturek pages on Scrap365

I have two scrapbook pages on the Scrap365 blog today using some lovely patterned papers from Studio Tekturek. This is one of them, why not pop over to Scrap365 to see the other one...

A carry everything craft bag

Woohoo! My craft bag takes pride of place on the front cover of the month's Sewing World.

Ten little rubber ducks quilt

Another cot quilt from me and this one was very over due for a baby born last summer but I was pleased to get it done before Christmas. I made a Hungry Caterpillar quilt for the baby's big brother and so I was excited to find more fabric based on illustrations from other Eric Carle books. However the other ranges don't seem to be available in the UK and so I bought this fabric from the States via a seller on Etsy.

This quilt is made from 3 different fabrics. The animal panels were on one fabric, the mother duck and ducklings and the numbered duck outlines were on another and then there was the lovely ducks on the water fabric around the border.

It was a fairly simple quilt to put together with squares and rectangles. I did some free machine embroidery in wavy lines on the white panels and I really like how this turned out.

I also quilted around each of the animals and each duck. I wasn't looking forward to quilting the octopus with all his wavy legs, but he turned out to be my favourite panel at the end. The quilting really brought him to life!

A Sizzix tumbler block quilt

 A friend of mine recently had a baby girl and I wanted to make her a cot quilt. Before she was born I started to make one using Dr Seuss fabric but when I saw the photo online of such a beautiful baby girl (with a very pretty name) I felt like I wanted to make something much more girly.  I have a few quilt dies for my Sizzix Bigshot, in fact it's the reason I bought the Bigshot in the first place so I could use it for quilts as well as papercrafts. I got out my tumbler block die and the Bigshot machine with a selection of girly fabrics and away we went. My daughter even helped by winding the handle on the machine.

This is probably the quickest quilt I have ever made as I started cutting it out at 11.30 in the morning and I was quilting it at 10 in the evening. The shape of the tumbler die makes the quilt look far more complicated than it really was. I only bought this die originally because it was on special offer but now I love it.

I googled three butterfly outlines which I traced onto Bondaweb and used to add the applique shapes.

I did simple quilting in the ditch with a little free machine stitching around the butterflies. I went around the butterflies three times as I've found that if the stitching line is wobbly but repeated a few times it looks like you've done it on purpose!

I really enjoyed putting together this quilt and I will definitely be making more Sizzix quilts. Cutting out accurate pieces has never been my strong point but this machine solves that.