Canvas commissions

I go to a Toddler group every week with my little boy and for the past year we have been meeting in a different place while our church underwent major renovation work. The Clevedon Family Church welcomed our group in and let us share their lovely space. This week was our last week there before moving back to the newly refurbished church and I was asked to make two canvases as thank you presents. One for the church and one for the lovely lady who has been helping us every week.

This first canvas was the one I made for the church. It's a little bigger than A4 size. My stamping is a bit wobbly but I'm happy with how it turned out.

I started by sticking down pieces of patterned paper onto the canvas. You can see some of the paper showing through the paint here...

I dug out some old alphabet stickers and wrote out the words "love" and "thanks" repeating across the canvas, which I gessoed so they would disappear into the paint.

I then painted and stamped to finish the design, using a variety of stamps so that the Bible verse would fit in. I also discovered when I came to stamping out the numbers - I hardly have any number stamps!

This next canvas was for the lady who helped us every week. My friend tipped me off that this was a verse she liked.

I used moulding paste mixed in my acrylic paint to give it some lovely texture. The sunburst was done with the Crafters Workshop template "Burst". The flowers are from the Insightful Meadow set by Unity Stamps and I stamped them onto an old sewing pattern before using white embossing powder and then tearing them out.

I knew that would come in handy one day

Recently I have been thinking I have too much craft stash. Is that possible? I think maybe I should have a declutter and get rid of some old bits and bobs that I haven't used in years? Well, this page proved I do need to keep it!

This is a page about when I took the ginger one crabbing last summer and I knew I had the perfect thing hiding away in one of boxes of embellishments. Can you see it here?...

Yes, it's a crab eyelet! I knew that would come in handy one day. Now I can't possibly get rid of things can I!

We're off to see the wizard

Before everything went pear shaped last month I managed to make it to my local crop and get some pages finished including these two.

In our town we have the longest running cinema in the UK and it has been celebrating it's centenary this year. In the summer there was a fancy dress parade through the town finishing at the cinema and if you came in fancy dress the  you got a free ticket to see "The Wizard of Oz". It was brilliant and the girls loved it. There was a fabulous sense of community and there were cheers and boos and singing along to the songs!

I was doubly excited to find die cuts from the Wizard of Oz at Scrapping the Magic - perfect for my scrapbook page. I took my latest Quirky Kit with me to the crop and combined all the sparkly elements from the kit with the die cuts.

I also completed the quickest page I have ever done. It took me all of 5 minutes but I think it works perfectly. I used 12 x 12 black cardstock, a packet of Batman stickers, some comic book style die-cuts from SEI and a photo. I think that's all it needed...

Some nice things at the end of a yucky month

So things have been pretty quiet on here this month. We have been besieged by illness in our family for the past four weeks which, thankfully, weren't too serious but have just taken up the whole month. There has been a horrible sickness bug which hit my little boy one week, me the next week, the blonde one the week after and my husband the week after that. It has led me to a very unusual decision... I am not making Christmas gifts this year, or even handmade cards (GASP!!!).

This will be the first Christmas as a grown-up when I won't be sending handmade cards - sorry in advance to friends and family who tell me how they look forward to seeing my designs. I've bought cards from school that my girls designed so they will still be unique - just not the "finished individually at 1 in the morning" unique!

On a much happier note I am featuring in three magazines this month and even made it onto the cover of two of them - yay!

You can see my Scandinavian inspired bag on the front of the current issue of Sewing World.

My Fimo star bracelet is nestled nicely in the bottom left corner on the front of Beads and Beyond, and there is a chipboard robin hiding in the current issue of Scrap365 by me too.

A parcel of layouts

I had a big parcel arrive last week from Scrap365 with lots of my layouts returning home. There are so many I'm going to have to buy a new scrapbook album - which is always a good excuse for a few other goodies to find their way into my shopping basket!

Here are a few of my favourite details you may have seen in the magazine...

A bit of felty softness

Dymo tape love

Corrugated cardboard branches

Lots of lovely ribbons

Fimo - of course

A bit of stitching

Washi tape bunting

Happy happy tape

Some craft materials make me happy. I can't help it, they bring a smile to my face. Today my two new rolls of washi tape have made me so happy - Black and white chevron tape and film strip tape - YAY!

Is it just me??

Fimo bracelets and a peacock feather cane

These are the final finished project from my Fimo weekend and I'm so pleased with how they've turned out. I attempted a peacock feather cane for the first time. I could definitely refine the technique a little but it does look like a peacock feather. I wanted to have gold and coloured circles around the feather so that it would look a little like it came from a painting by Klimt. My circles look a little more like fairy lights. I seem to have made a disco peacock feather!

The construction of the bracelet was taught to me years ago in a workshop by Sarah Shriver ( a seriously talented polymer clay artist). I remembered the technique quite well.

This is what it looks like when I'm wearing it...

This is my second attempt at a bracelet. The sections aren't quite as even on this one.

The pattern is made using a layered technique with a Fimo texture sheet pressed into the top. The top layers are then carefully shaved off to reveal the colourful pattern. There is a helpful tutorial here. It was really fun to do and it's very exciting when the pattern starts to appear.

I've had so much fun working with my Fimo over the past couple of weeks and I'm feeling a little sad as I pack it away for a bit so I can get on with my sewing. But I have an exciting new sewing project to work on and I get to immerse myself in fabric so I'll be happy in no time!