Wednesday Love: Nativity plays

We've loved watching the kids in the school nativity plays over the years. This year we have two in the nativity, one "Child" and one "King". We had fun making a sparkly crown with card, tin foil and some sticky jewels - along with a tunic made from curtain lining and decorated with ribbons.

My favourite costume seen in the school nativity was in last year's play and it wasn't one of our kids - it was the dancing Etch-A-Sketch! The girl's family made a fantastic job of her costume and it looked exactly like a giant version of the toy. We have to hope that there won't be so much illness going around the school this year. Last year Mary was missing in the stable as she was poorly.

We are definitely getting into the Christmas Spirit in our house now.

Wednesday Love: Crayon Love

This week I bought a little box of happiness - also known as Crayola crayons. I saw this box of 96 crayons on special offer for only £1.50 (in Tesco). How could I resist! The smell of a new box of crayons takes me back to childhood and I remember so strongly reading the labels on the crayons and loving all the different names for the colours...

There are lots of ideas for using crayons and I've started collecting some on a Pinterest board called "Crayon Love".

We've just got the new book "The Day the Crayons Quit" and it's great. The book is illustrated by my favourite illustrator, Oliver Jeffers. My kids know that all the Oliver Jeffers children's books we have are actually mine and I am letting them borrow them! You don't have to be a child to enjoy a good story and fabulous drawings.

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!

Wednesday Love: Cocoa Daisy

Here's a little midweek happiness in a busy time of part time school and general house tidying (nearly there now!). I received a parcel last week which brought a smile to my face. I have signed up to Cocoa Daisy kits. I was persuaded by seeing the lovely work of Lisa Saunders, who is a fellow design team member for Scrap365 magazine.

The Cocoa Daisy website looks great with challenges and chat running alongside the kits. They also produce some lovely exclusive stamps. The Cocoa Daisy Design team are great and include Ashley Calder (I love her scrapbooking style) as well as Lisa and many other talented inspiring scrapbookers.

I am looking forward to having a go with this kit and getting involved with the online community too.

Wednesday Love: Fairisle

Denny Yoke Fairisle jumper from Fatface

 I have been looking for a fairisle jumper for about a year. Last year there were a couple around, but they seemed to be mostly "reverse fairisle" which to me just looks like you are wearing your jumper inside out!

At last there are lots to choose from. Needless to say my budget doesn't stretch to all these, but my Mum has said I can choose one as a Christmas present - Yay!  I think I am going to choose the jumper in the top picture from FatFace as I love the colours.

Fatface have a lovely selection of fairisle this season including this gilet...

Erin Fairisle Gilet from Fatface

...and this cardigan.

Lucy Fairisle cardigan from Fatface

 This is a top from Seasalt

Thimble cardigan from Seasalt

I am particulalry fond of this Tank top from Joules as it reminds me of a tank top my Mum knitted me in the early 80's. My little sister and my Mum and I had matching ones!

Alfreda Fairisle women's knit from Joules

 The next three are from Crew Clothing. I love the length of the tunic (3rd picture).

Brighton jumper from Crew Clothing

Bridford jumper by Crew Clothing

Bridford tunic by Crew Clothing

Wednesday Love: Back to school

Phew! School started yesterday and I was more than ready for the girls to go back to school. The bickering had gradually been increasing every day. The boy starts school next week too which means it is all change for me. After 8 year of full time babies and preschoolers, it will be a bit of a shock to the system. I am all geared up to go "back to school" myself though with a stack of books and some online classes I am going to be working through.

Wednesday Love: I Love London

We had a day last week when we hopped on the train to London. We were staying in Surrey with family so it was only a short trip to Waterloo, where we encountered hordes of people around Westminster Bridge. There were queues for the London Eye, queues for the London Dungeon and (thankfully the shortest) queue for the London Aquarium, which was where we were headed. 

The Aquarium is great and the kids had a fantastic time. We bought our tickets through the Clubcard scheme at Tesco. I don't know if we would have paid full price to go in otherwise as it's very expensive. It took us about an hour and a half to go round it and there is a lot to different things to see. Our favourite bit was the huge tank of sharks.

It's a fun area of London as there is a real buzz with all the crowds and the photos with Big Ben in the background are a London essential!  We headed into Jubilee Gardens, at the base of the London Eye, where there were lots of street performers, fairground rides and a great playground. The Boy found the climbing equipment a bit too big for his little legs but it's perfect for slightly bigger children. 

It was a successful day out all round.

Wednesday Love: I Love Paris

We have been away for a week to one of my favourite places - Paris. We went to do the Disney thing with the kids but managed to catch the train into Paris for a day.

We spent a lovely hot sunny day by the banks of the Seine. We started by the Eiffel Tower and walked along to the Musee D'Orsay. It was a great place to take the kids. When we got there I ran into the bookshop and bought their guide book "My Little Orsay" which highlighted 10 paintings and sculptures. We looked through the book over lunch in the restaurant and then went to find some of the items. I particularly enjoyed showing the kids the Pointillism paintings, so they could see all the tiny dots up close. The Boy surprised us at being good at spotting paintings by Cezanne (not bad for a 4 year old!).

We took a Batobus (a boat bus) down the river, playing on the quay while we waited for it to arrive.

We stopped off at Notre Dame, where we stumbled across a big procession coming out of the church with the bells ringing loudly. 

We would definitely love to come back again another year.

Wednesday Love: I love Bristol

I love living near Bristol. It is such a vibrant city with fabulous things going on all the time - most of which are free! Last weekend was the annual Balloon Fiesta. We took a picnic, sat just outside the gates and viewed all the balloons taking off (as inside the gates is a huge scrum of people and a very loud funfair). We counted 92 balloons in total.

I am training my children well! The blonde one pointed at this balloon (below) and said what a great quilt this would make. I think she's right.

We've got the Kite festival coming up in a couple of weeks, which is held in the same place as the balloons. The Harbour festival happened a little while ago and there is also Upfest, which is the largest street art festival in Europe. Bristol is just brilliant.

Wednesday Love: Gromit Unleashed

Over the past couple of years we have spent our summers hunting for things. Two years ago there were 60 multicoloured gorilla statues dotted around Bristol which we searched out (well, some of them anyway). Last year we spent a great day in Wells looking for lots of beautiful swans. This year I was delighted to hear that there would be Gromits arriving in Bristol all summer - 80 in total. 

Gromit Unleashed is a trail of Gromit sculptures designed by a wide range of artists and celebrities to help raise money for Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's hospital charity. We are having great fun looking for Gromits and have discovered some new places to visit that we haven't been to before, such as the Windmill Hill City Farm. We also found ourselves at the Bristol Museum on the day they were teaching the kids to do mono-printing - we had to join in and get inky!

  

The boy is loving the trail. He is particularly excited about going to see the Gromit Buzz Lightyear soon.

Wednesday Love: A new project

This week I am feeling very happy to be crocheting again. I have projects which I call my "Pick up, put down" projects and they can take years to finish. I am coming to the end of my last project like this which is a double bed quilt I am paper piecing by hand for my friend's wedding (4 and a half years ago - nearly there!). It is now so big that I can't easily carry it around with me when we go out so I have started my new project a little early. I have had four quilts to finish before I allowed myself to start anything new with knitting or crochet but I have had itchy fingers to get back to it for a while.

So here is my new blanket (in progress). My nephew, who's 3, was a little confused that I referred to a strip of 5 flowers as a blanket. The kids seemed to think it looked more like a hairband!

I found the pattern on Pinterest and here's the link to buying the pattern on Etsy. It's simple in that it really is just one flower repeated but the pattern also shows you how to crochet it together as you go so when I finish the last flower it won't be a case of having to start a huge sewing together job, it will be finished - hurray! I found this lovely yarn, which is a blend of cotton, cashmere and silk (Bella by Debbie Bliss) in a flash sale on the Black Sheep Wools website for just £1.99 a ball. I think it's being discontinued so I stocked up and we'll see how big this blanket turns out, depending on if I think I've had enough or I run out of yarn!

Wednesday Love: Going to the Air Tattoo

We had a great (hot) day out on Sunday at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. 

We heard some very LOUD planes and saw some very smiley planes...

The Red Arrows put on a fantastic display (as well as the French and Swiss display teams)...

...and we had a lovely picnic in the sun.

And here's a little bit of Wednesday love, courtesy of the Red Arrows...

Wednesday Love: Eyebombing

Wednesday Love is all about a little bit of happiness in the middle of the week and what could be happier than googly eyes! I used to work at HobbyCraft, making display boards and organising craft workshops, and my friend who I worked with and I had a theory that every project we made instantly looked better with the application of googly eyes.

We have been proved right as the craze of Eyebombing has now popped up on the web. Eyebombing is

"The art of sticking googly eyes onto an inanimate object in the public sphere, in a way that cleverly lends the object the appearance of a living creature".

There are rules..

1. Only images of inanimate objects with googly eyes - not stickers.

2.Only images taken in a public space.

Now, where did I leave my packet of googly eyes....

Wednesday Love: Pinterest

I've been on Pinterest for a while and I feel like I am just getting the hang of it. I have now organised my boards instead of having one huge board just titled "inspiration". 

My Boards are now...

Inspiration

Scrapbooky Things

Polymer Clay

Banner Thoughts (inspiration for my church banner group)

Brownies Ideas

Using up fabric scraps

Quilty Quilts

I heart words

Yarn, threads and woolly loveliness

I do love Pinterest - there are so many great ideas out there. If only someone could pin the instructions on how to make a time machine, I might be able to have a go at making some of them!

Wednesday Love: We love cardboard boxes

My little bit of midweek happiness this week is all about cardboard boxes - We love cardboard boxes! A couple of weeks ago the Boy announced it was his favourite toy's birthday and that the toy needed a house to live in as well as birthday presents, cake, party etc etc. This is a picture of Doggie's house being decorated. Apparently Doggie likes things that are multicoloured!

We have 6 weeks of summer holiday approaching where I will have all 3 kids at home, all the time, for the first time (instead of having 1 or 2 in nursery). I am saving every cardboard box that comes into our house. The girls are already planning the houses they want to make for their toys. I think we could have a cardboard box metropolis taking over our house by the time we get to September.

I appears that we aren't the only people who love cardboard boxes though. My most popular post on here (by a huge margin) is "Cardboard Box Castles" - which has been viewed nearly 4000 times!

Wednesday love: Collective nouns

Time for a little midweek happiness and this is what is making me very happy at the moment - my new picture in the lounge. I LOVE this! Following on from last week's "Alphabet Love", this is all about collective nouns. I adore the colours and there is something about a printed image like these which really appeals to me. I bought the unframed version of this print and then had it framed at our local framing shop - keeping it local.

This picture is by Woop Studios. They also produce greetings cards, alphabet flashcards and a gorgeous alphabet book.

Wednesday Love: Alphabet love

I love fonts, and different representations of alphabets and quotes written in beautiful lettering. To celebrate the start of my friend Faye's new e-course "The Art of Typography" I thought I would share a couple of my favourite alphabets with you.

The video at the top shows you a book I have with a pop-up alphabet. I've always been fascinated by pop-ups and these are so clever.


Click HERE to see another amazing alphabet video which is described as "playing with different techniques and materials into little and big spaces...where each character visually represents the meaning of the word itself". In summary - it's really fascinating!

Wednesday love: Neon

Ooooo - look what's arrived in the post for me! Six neon embossing powders by American Crafts. I am loving the neon and having lots of fun playing with embossing powders, which feels very "old school" as I haven't used embossing powders for years. I think they will look great with papers from Amy Tangerine's sketchbook collection from American Crafts.

I couldn't resist this too!...

Come back tomorrow to see my first page with neon embossing powders.

Wednesday love: a stone's throw to the sea

I love living in a seaside town. It's short walk and we are by the sea. Standing on the beach listening to the waves and taking a few deep breaths of sea air and it feels like I'm on holiday.

Throwing pebbles in the sea makes such a satisfying splash!

Wednesday Love: Love to Learn

This week I am loving online classes. O.K., so maybe just a little too much as I have a few waiting to be completed and I've just signed up for a couple more. Online classes are the best! They can be squeezed in around the everyday stuff and can be very inexpensive. Having said that, I stumbled across some super expensive ones too this week, but I won't be signing up for those.

So the classes I have yet to complete are "Artsy Bangles" and "Bless this Mess" from Christy Tomlinson (and Junelle Jacobson). These classes are time sensitive and so I really need to get on and have a go. I've done a couple of classes with Christy before and they are always packed with ideas.

I've also signed up for "Finding your Photo Style" over on Big Picture Classes. I've done quite a few Big Picture Classes in the past and I would recommend them. There's a great choice of scrapbooking/photography classes to choose from and no expiry date to the class materials. Some are only open for class registration at certain times but other short classes are available permanently. They also have their own e-books.

And finally I've signed up for two classes on the Skillshare website. This is a new one for me but my friend Faye is teaching the first one - "The Art of Typography" . I couldn't resist signing up for this one too - "Reign Repeats - create perfect repeat patterns", even though I'm not really expecting to have a go at it until Autumn (I'll miss the competition that's attached to the class, but these are skills I really want to learn).

As you can see, that's quite a range of classes! My head is a bit all over the place at the moment as the Boy starts school in September and so I am trying to work out which way to take my freelance work. The workplace I entered 15 years ago as a freelance artist/crafter has changed enormously. I didn't even own a computer for the first three years I was self employed. I am going to have to go back to basics, with drawing skills and computer skills too.

There are more classes on my wish list too... Alisa Burke's classes "Sketchbook Delight" and "Anti Scrapbooking" and also "Drawing and Painting for Textile Design" which is an online 8 week class run by Central St Martins University.

( I have also taken classes with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, Shimelle Laine and Donna Downey - and I would recommend them all too)

Does anyone know any good online classes for learning Photoshop!?