A new bag for the summer

A couple of weeks ago the handle on my bag I use every day broke and I have been squeezing everything into a bag I usually use for evenings out. I need a larger bag to carry all the rubbish, or should that be essentials, for summer days out with three young children. When else in your life is it essential to carry around three colouring books and assorted crayons?!

I had a vague design in my head and this bag is based on the Teardrop bag from Amy Butler's Style Stitches book. I love this book. It has so many great bag patterns in it. I've made the strap a little longer than the original pattern and didn't include the pleat on the front so I could create the floral pattern.

The front of the bag has some flowers cut from the fabric I used for the back of the bag. I used Bondaweb to attach them to the fabric and then did free motion stitching around the edges of each piece. The neutral fabric on the front was some linen I bought from Ikea.

Here's the back...

The book suggests a magnetic snap closure, but I've found an elastic loop and button much simpler to make, plus I get to add a pretty button. This button is from the Basic Grey collection PB& J.

I'm really happy with my bag and I shall enjoy using it and filling it with crayons, tissues, suncream, nappies, puzzle books, sun hats etc etc etc......

Maisy Mouse Quilt # 3

I made a third version of a Maisy Mouse quilt recently for some friends' baby girl. This is my last Maisy quilt as I have finally used up my original fat quarters pack I bought last year. Maisy quilt design #1 is here and Maisy quilt design #2 is here.

I've been trying to keep cot quilts very simple recently so that I can actually get them finished before the baby's first birthday! This design is pieced together with squares and strips with Maisy circles appliquéd over the top. I had some strip pieced border strips leftover from quilt #2 to go around the edges. I quilted around some paper star templates in the centre of each square of four.

Some spotty blue stars for the back and some pink polka dot fabric for the binding.

An apple for the teacher

The end of term has come and gone and this year seems to have whizzed by. My girls have had some fantastic teachers this year and we are so happy that they love school - making friends and learning lots of new things.

We repeated the project we did last year for my older girl's two teachers and made some Thank You mini books. We sent out letters to all the children in the class along with two apple shaped pieces of card and asked them to write about what was their favourite thing about this year, or a thank you, or draw a picture. We had some great responses and lots of the children sent back pages (14 out of 21). I always feel a bit embarrassed to ask families to do this at the end of term as it's such a busy time for everyone, but I had lots of comments from parents who thought it was a wonderful idea.

The chipboard covers are from an Apple coaster minibook by Maya Road and we decorated the covers using paper and stickers from the Summertime collection by Echo Park. One of the teachers came out to see me on the last day to say thank you for the lovely books. She had no idea how we had got all the children involved!

I put this page together recently too. It's not my usual choice of materials, but I really like it. The background paper came from an old DCWV stack of school papers and it matched the photo so perfectly that I had to use it. The square, multicoloured tags behind the title are by Making Memories and they have been in my embellishment box for ages (probably at least 8 years!). I managed to use them all up in one go.

Bags, beads and brooches

I can't believe that it's been nearly a month since I made an appearance on here - whoops! It's end of term madness here with picnics, concerts, sports days, thank you presents, birthday parties and tired children all in the mix. I have managed to squeeze in quite a bit of crafting too, but it's all secret magazine projects. I have to try to get ahead of myself now as I know not much will get done over the summer. I hoping to have some time for playing in the evenings.

One of my secret projects is not so secret now though. Can you see the little bird brooch in the right hand lower corner of the bookazine above? He's one of mine! This is a bookazine just released by Traplet and it's got loads of great patterns and projects in it. I quite fancy making one of the bags in there, especially as the handle on my everyday bag broke last week! You can find out more about the bookazine HERE.

A circus double

I've been missing scrapbooking for the past week and finally found time to sit at my desk and get a double page done. It's been ages since I made a double. These photos have been sitting at the bottom of the box I take to crops and knew I had to get them on a page. My starting point was inspired by the quilt in my last post. The fabrics are from a collection from a while ago by Cosmo Cricket. I dug out all my old Cosmo Cricket papers and put this page together.

I have managed to use items from the following Cosmo Cricket collections...
Hello Sunshine and Storytime - Patterned papers
Pixie-Licious - Borders
Garden Variety - Patterned paper and borders
Jack's World - Stamps
Nutmeg - Ready Steady Chip alphabet
plus some Tiny Type stickers.

I used some more card Candi again as I thought it was perfect for this page - a bit like juggling balls.

A Snorkel quilt

A little while ago I found a pack of fat quarters from The Snorkel range by Cosmo Cricket. I love the Cosmo Cricket fabrics and I'm particularly pleased they are now working with Moda so the designs are much easier to get hold of. This was one of their older fabric ranges so I was really happy to find it. I knew they would be the perfect fabrics to make a quilt for my friends' new baby boy, who lives near the seaside.

I started with the background and picked out all the blue and fishy fabrics. I cut them into 3" strips and stitched them together.

I used bondaweb to stick down the fishy shapes, eyes and bubble circles. A zig zag stitch was used to go around each fish using navy thread to make the fish stand out.

Every time I make a quilt I try a new technique and this time it was my quilting. I'm trying to get a bit more inventive with my quilting as I usually just quilt in straight lines across the whole piece. I used my darning (free motion) foot and pinned card circles in various sizes onto the quilt as a stitching guide. I really like this quilting technique and I definitely think it adds to the finished look of the project. I used more navy thread and the darning foot to stitch around the bubbles and to add details to the fishes.

I've been trying to take better photos of my quilts, usually by taking them out into my garden. However I had to lay this one on the floor as I was going to see my friend and wanted to take the quilt but it has been raining  here for weeks - so outdoor photoshoots were out of the question.

My friends love the quilt and their little boy's bedroom already has a seaside theme - yay!

Dymo tape canvas

I have written an article in the current issue of Scrap365 about using Dymo tape on scrapbook pages and so I thought I'd share a canvas I recently made for a friend using more tape.

I was talking about church banners with my friend Kate and she came up with an idea for this Bible verse from Song of Songs to be written over a background of other verses about love. I took her idea and ran with it , using my embossed Dymo tape to write out the verses.
 

It took three evenings of clicking away with my Junior Dymo embossing label maker to complete enough tapes to cover the background (the finished canvas is a bit bigger than A4). I was able to use any colours of tape from my generous stash as I coated the whole thing with a couple of layers of gesso at the end.

I cut out a heart stencil from some scrap card and used my fingers to rub on the different paint colours. I then rubbed on some more paint around the edges of the canvas. Using my fingers to apply the paint meant that I had good control over where the paint was going and how it highlighted the embossed words.

I used matte multi medium to add pieces of tissue paper on the surface and I also used it to do an image transfer of some birds and book text. I added a few bits of microporous tape on the edge of the heart and printed with some bubble wrap too.

I wrote the verse with my large brush Pitt pen. That was the scary bit! I tired it out on some scrap paper first to check the size of my lettering and how it would fit in the heart and then I went for it. I was very relieved at the end to step back from the canvas and see no spelling mistakes!