Colouring in

I am looking forward to getting back into sketching and drawing and creating some original artwork in the near future. I have the challenge of tidying the whole house first, excavating through the detritus of the summer holidays! I thought I would start my artistic journey off gently with a little bit of colouring in.

I bought this beautiful book called the Secret Garden by Johanna Basford. The illustrations are lovely and so detailed. I was a little concerned about the quality of the paper as it's not the thick white paper that Usborne use in their kids colouring books, but actually it works really nicely. I'm using my favourite Staedtler Triplus fineliners to colour. The pictures are so detailed that the colouring you can see above has taken me a couple of hours already. It is very therapeutic to sit and colour in.

Needless to say, all three of my kids have decided they need new colouring books ("Detailed ones Mummy, like yours") but I would rather they were colouring in than playing on the computer or watching the TV so I think the new books will be a good investment - particularly if it means they let me colour in my book without asking if they can "help"!

Wednesday Love: Stencil 201

Time for a little mid-week happiness and this week I was very happy to receive a new book in the post. It's called Stencil 201 by Ed Roth. I already have Stencil 101 but I saw this scrapbook page that used one of the stencils from this book and so decided to get it. 

Stencil 201 is even better than Stencil 101 as the stencil are made from plastic this time and come in a lovely envelope at the back of the book. There are 25 stencils in the book which costs £16.99, which I think is brilliant value considering the cost of individual craft stencils. There are lots of ideas in this book on how to use stencils on a wide variety of projects.

I have taken some photos of my favourite stencils in the book. I placed them on a piece of 12 x 12 cardstock so you can see the scale. 

Firstly, this cute rabbit which can be layered.

Another layered design and this time it's a skate.

I'm not sure I'd use the bit about War Over, but the rest of this stencil will be really useful.

And now for some general patterns (they are so versatile).

OK, so I've saved the best two for last. This typewriter (love it!)...

 ... and a camera - "Hurray" shout all the scrapbookers!!

UKS Blog Hop - Washi tape jewellery

Hello and welcome to everyone who's hopped over from Sarah's blog on the UKScrappers End of Summer Blog Hop - and hello to everyone else too. I hope you are having a great time looking at lots of inspiring posts (with the chance of winning a prize too!).

As I was thinking about which project I would like to do for the blog hop my eyes glanced around my desk and spotted some washi tape - it wasn't difficult as I have quite a collection now. I wondered if I could do something a little different with it. I did a bit of research (oh, how I love Pinterest) and came across jewellery made with paperclips and electrical tape. I had a go at making some using using washi tape and I was so pleased with the results. 

(By the way, if you like this style of jewellery, but don't fancy making it, maybe you could find the paperclip necklace they were selling on Anthropologie a while ago for $168 !!!)

So, I started out with a simple bracelet. Wrap some tape around a paperclip, then clip another paperclip on and wrap some more tape around. Continue until it is long enough - I liked the look of it going around my wrist three times. I love how the pink tape and yellow paperclips really pop with colour.

I used my needle nosed pliers to bend one end of the last paperclip to look like this (before adding the tape). It makes a great closure which is quite secure.

I wound it three times around my wrist, but found it went four times around my daughter's wrist. She really liked it, so now I'm wondering about making these with the Brownies too.

I also tried a multi strand necklace using the same technique, where each strand has one extra paperclip on than the last.

This time I used two jump rings and a proper jewellery clasp to finish it. 

This was lovely to wear as it is so light which makes it really comfortable.

I tried to get a bit more sculptural with the paperclips this time and tried to link them together in triangles. I did find it more tricky and there were quite a few occasions of peeling tape off and clipping and unclipping.

I think the design looks a little clearer when I'm wearing it.

I hope you like my washi tape jewellery.  If you want to carry on hopping then the next blog is Furrypig's blog. Hop over to see what she has in store for you. To be in with a chance of winning the prizes you need to leave a comment on every blog AND on the UKScrappers Blog Hop thread.You have until 6am 10th September 2013 to complete the hop. Good luck!

A little bit about me... I am a freelance crafter and I write for 3 UK craft magazines; Scrap365, Sewing World and Beads & Beyond. I love scrapbooking, Fimo polymer clay, patchwork and quilting, knitting, stained glass and mosaic.  I am mum to three young children and I'm also a Brownie leader and so I frequently blog about kids crafts too. My youngest child is just starting school and so I am about to embark on relaunching my career. Things have changed a lot since I started out being freelance (15 years ago), for example, for the first three years I didn't even own a computer! Please do join me on my journey of discovery over the next year as I am taking time to work out how to turn making lovely things back into a full time job. Hope you can come along for the ride.

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.

A sweet page with stitching

Here's a scrapbook page I completed this week. I am really enjoying stitching on pages and I think it worked particularly well here.  

I used a mist spray with a butterfly stencil to add to the patterned paper background. The butterfly mask is an acetate one I found on Ebay, which is described as an airbrush stencil. It's not as sturdy as the Crafters Workshop type stencil but does the job well.

After I had added the layers of papers and embellishments I sketched out the design for the stitching on the back of the page. It's based on a motif in the book "Doodle Stitching" by Aimee Ray. I bought this book ages ago and then wondered why I had. Now I know!

I thought the finished page needed a little more texture and so I used my sewing machine to stitch on some daisy lace and a strip of felt.

A little button finished off the stitched motif. I loved sewing on the page - look out for more stitching on pages soon!

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.

A sketch for September with a Quirky prize

It's sketch challenge time again on the Sketchbook365 blog and it's a sketch based on a layout in Scrap365 by Paula Ridley. This month's prize is the fabulous new kit from Quirky Kits. I know how great this prize is as I received the same kit in the post last week (as a subscriber to Quirky Kits) and it's really lovely.

Here's my page based on the sketch....

I started out making a painty background and adding texture by spreading some moulding paste through a strip of sequin waste to create these small raised dots. When that was dry I played around with some watercolours with some colourful drips and some foam stamps too.

I used a border punch for the first time in ages when I started building up my layers of colour.

These papers and stickers come from the Knee Highs collection by Basic Grey. I added some of the element stickers but they didn't have quite the pop I was hoping for. I went around each sticker with a fine black journalling pan and this really brought them forward on the page.

You have until 11pm GMT on the 12th September to have ago at entering the competition and check out the blog for more examples based on the sketch from the lovely design team.