2013 - A few of my favourite things

As it's nearly the end of 2013 I thought I would have a little look back at my favourite things of this year....

My favourite scrapbook page

This was inspired by a tutorial video from Creative Jumpstart 2013. I am very excited that Creative Jumpstart 2014 will be starting tomorrow. I love the comic book look of this page

A Breakfast fit for a superhero

 My favourite new craft

I have had fun starting to discover felting this year (and I only managed to stab myself in the finger twice! ). Father Christmas even bought me a lovely new needle felting brush mat, so I won't have to felt into a sponge and peel it off afterwards anymore. I think Father Christmas may have had advice from my Mum.

A celebration postcard

My favourite photo

I took this photo while we were on holiday in Paris and I managed to get all three kids looking at the camera and smiling - hurray! How did we achieve this? My other half was standing behind me and licking my head to make them laugh!

Can you see a resemblance...

My favourite song

My favourite song this year is "Little talks" by "Of Monsters and Men". I love all the different instruments used in this and I think it is definitely a "jangly" song ( This word has been used to describe other music I like).

My favourite kids craft

This was the most fun. Paper plates + paint+ salad spinner = spin paintings!

Spin painting

My favourite book

A perfect blend of modern policing with a large dose of fantasy.

Rivers of London

 My favourite quilt

A pirate quilt for a pirate themed nursery, with my own pattern for the paper pieced boats.

A pirate quilt

 My favourite film

Star Trek:Into Darkness - A fantastic sci-fi film with the added bonus of Mr Benedict Cumberbatch!

And a New Year's Resolution to finish the year... I will try to finish all the online craft workshops I am halfway through!

Felt pebble brooches

Continuing on a sheep theme, I wanted to make some sheep brooches to sell at our Christmas Tree festival (if you are curious why there are so many sheep on here check out this post!). I made the brooches using a white felt pebble as a base (like this). I have some tiny cookie cutters that I use for Fimo and this time I used them as a felting shape. I placed the cookie cutter onto the pebble and used the felting needle to to felt the coloured  shape. I used a heart for the heart brooches and I used a shape a little like a club from a pack of cards upside down as the sheep face.

I embellished the sheep brooches with pompom legs and bead eyes before stitching on a badge back. I finished the heart brooches with seed beads around the edge. I particularly like how the hearts turned out. 

These all sold well at the craft table for £3 each and I think the background cards make them look even better.

A Christmas church Banner

I have started a new craft group at church and together we are working on banners to be hung in the church. This is our first banner from our new group and it has worked so well. We had lots of lovely comments from members of the church on Sunday.

We used lots of 2" squares of fabric with Bondaweb on the back of each one to create the background, which were all ironed in place. We used a LOT of Bondaweb!

The star is made from gold fabric which was also used to bind the edges of the banner and looks very festive. As we are beginners to making banners there are lessons learned from every one we make. This time I could have used much thicker gold cord as the star's rays.

And , of course, we had to have sheep on the banner this year. Why sheep? Our church have a knitted sheep trail around our town to encourage people to come to a Christmas church service. Some of the kids in our church have made a fantastic video to promote the sheep trail. I'm not technically minded and can't get the video to appear on here , but you can see it on Youtube HERE.

A celebration postcard

I have finished my postcard for the Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap and here it is... This is my first attempt at felting and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The theme for the postcards this year was "celebrate" and I thought of chinese lanterns floating up into the sky (like in "Tangled"!). This was the image I tried to recreate with the felt. It's a little abstract but I think you can see the lanterns.

I tried to get a bit of perspective with smaller lanterns and beads in the background...

I did some free machine stitching around the felted image to add definition.

I hope my swap partner likes it and I'm looking forward to seeing what she has made for the swap.

Wednesday love: Felting

I have been looking at felting supplies for over a year and thinking about having a go. Last Christmas my Mum started making felted Christmas decorations. She asked for my advice as she was convinced I had made a felted robin in the past. I had to correct her that it wasn't me but Kirstie Allsopp on the television who had made the robin. I think it's quite flattering to be confused with Kirstie, but you'd think my own Mum could tell us apart!

I have finally succumbed and this little parcel of soft woolly treasures arrived this week. I have a couple of projects planned already. The first is The Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap over at Do What You Love For Life. As it will be my first felting experiment it will be very intriguing to see how it turns out!

The little white felt pebbles are destined to become sheep in various forms for a couple of church projects as we gear up towards Christmas. We have a great sheep initiative at church this year as we are creating a sheep treasure hunt around the town, with sheep knitted by people at church. It is to promote the Christmas services and some of the sheep are hidden at various churches in Clevedon. Look out for more sheep to come on here too!