Star Garland (2) - finished!

This week I've worked on various projects. Mostly crochet. Finally I've managed to finish off my crocheted star garland :) Here's what it looks like now when all done and dusted :) This project comes from the book: Ros Badger Hook, yarn and crochet and it's been my favourite since the very beginning. It's even made into the cover star (yes, literally too, pun intended)

Below you can see the stars both on their right and wrong side.

I'm really pleased with how the whole thing has turned out. It's my first completed (more significant that just the simple crocheted flowers) project from a crafty book. I've learnt a lot about crochet with this one and now I can finally see the similarities and differences between the basic crochet stitches. At last I can make them out of my head, without help from any books. Everything in crochet starts to make sense to me. Like a jigsaw puzzle. That's a big step ahead. I feel like I'm getting more confident and adventurous with my crochet now that I can read better written instructions. I feel so encouraged to go further now with my still-basic crochet skills.

The garland is made of 15 stars - the brown and cream coloured ones have been knitted with an organic cotton Freedom Sincere yarn and the red ones have been made with Lerke of Dalegarn cotton.

Because it has been cold and rainy today I couldn't take my garland outside to take a photo of. Instead I had to do with some photos at home :-/ This is what it looks like when the garland is stretched over the mantlepiece:

This is just a temporary presentation to show you the span of the garland. I'm still looking forward to some nice weather to take it outside and will add the photos to this post later. Standing back and looking at it, I'm pleased with the colour combination. It doesn't look particularly Christmassy so I believe it could be used throughout the whole year, what do you think? However, I'll surely come back to this project as I'd like to crochet some stars in more Christmassy colours. Perhaps I'll crochet just single stars on their own to hang on the tree too.

Before the garland was finished it had to be blocked. This is something I hadn't done before. The books suggested to pin it down and steam it with an iron. I did exactly what it said but also sprayed the stars with some spray starch for the crisp finish. Not bad overall. The stars do keep their shape! Yay!

What to do with the rest of the cotton yarn? Obriously knit an Easter egg! I'm slowly building up my Easter egg collection this year. I have a vision in my head of making my Easter decoration in plain pastels and au naturel this year :)

Anybody on their Easter projects already?

Joining up the Hand-made Monday blog hop no 157 tonight. Very curious what others have been up to!
Thank you for your visits and feedback. x x

Star Garland (1)

I think I'm already in a full crochet swing :) Here is an update on my crocheted stars:

I'm planning to crochet a garland made of 15 stars but I may decide on a longer one if it comes out too short to my liking.  If it goes on the mantlepiece, 15 stars should do but if it goes on my Christmas tree, it needs to be much longer. I'll see about that :) So far I've crocheted 13 complete stars.

I crochet them using only 3 colours, cream and brown are organic cotton yarn called Sincere and since there's no red colour in the Sincere colour palette, I went for the red Lerke from Dale of Norway, half merino, half cotton mixture.

The yarn naturally curls up when it's knit or crocheted so when I've finished them, I'll have to do some steaming / ironing and blocking. It will be a new thing for me as Ive never blocked any knit or crocheted items before. I must read some theory about it.
My dear crocheting friends, if you happen to have any suggestions as for blocking, I'm all ears listening out there for you. 

Some shopping goodies: this is my recent buy from Lidl - a continental German supermarket. It made me really happy. They were selling these cotton yarns at about £3.49 per pack while it's usually a price for only one 50g yarn ball! It was a great bargain and I couldn't resist those Easter'y colours.  I hope the yarn will be pleasure to knit.

Also the knitting needles and crochet hooks were on offer for only £1.49 a piece! I took a piece of circular needles (something to try out in the future), 2 sets of cable needles (also something on my to-do-in-the-very-near-future list) and some nice girly crochet hooks of a very small size. Lovely! 

Thank you Lidle! :D

Somewhere between the stacks of my craft books I found this:

a crochet diary for 2014, freebie from one of the mags - not sure what I'm going to put in it yet - perhaps some urls to crochet tutorials or something :)

And finally, the books I've been in love recently:

I have mentioned buying Mollie Makes Crochet book before but some later after that I got myself another lovely book Hook, yarn and crochet by Ros Badger and Crochet step by step by Sally Harding from DK publishing house. I love all crafty books from DK! - they are always good books full of content and good advice as opposed to many with just waffling and pretty pictures. Oh! and I love this dotty cover - supa cute and just matches the whole girly-crochety-hand-made theme. All these 3 books give me a good crochet theory as well as some easy crochet projects. The star garland comes from Ros Badger's book.

A full weekend ahead. Yipeee! What are your (crafty) plans? Hope you all have a nice chillout.

Christmas Cards 2013 (13): Red and white once more

Although Christmas is technically over, I still got some more of my Christmas cards to reveal on the blog. I've been very card-productive this year so I've given some sets of my cards as gifts to those friends of mine who don't make their own but are appreciative of hand-made creations. 

This batch of cards is, again, revolving around the Scandi theme. I used my favourite stamps and scrapbooking papers of all various brands on them (Panduro, Papermania, Martha Stewart). 

The focus here is on the scalloped edges. I love scallops. So do the baker's twine and all folksy stripes :)

The card below is an attempt at making a hand-stitched patchwork card (a perfect way to use up the scraps of pretty scrapbooking papers you don't want to chuck away) and also the christmas tree with a 3D effect made by piping a white glass painting relief paste. Sort of a "gingerbread" effect.

The papers I used for these cards is Papermania "Home for Christmas" series from last year. They are one of my favourite themed papers available on the market. Their designs are so ultimately Scandinavian and they add a lot of charm to the cards. Think, after the New Year I'm going to look for some more of these papers and have an extra supply before they disappear from sale ;)

One more card with hand stitching - I really enjoy adding this feature. It adds that extra "hand-made, rustic" decorative touch.

So what do you think, huh? :) Enjoy the rest of the weekend. x x x

Christmas Eve. Gingerbreads.

What a busy day for me Christmas Eve always is. We always finish this day with a special evening supper with everybody in the family gathered at the table. This year it has been different to me - I've stayed in the UK to celebrate Christmas with my bf. It will be a fusion of cultures at our place - Christmas Eve in the Polish style, Christmas day with the British roast dinner and the whole house has been decorated in.... (surprise! surprise!) Scandi theme (I'm soooo lovin' it!) It will be a quiet Christmas for us and hopefully nice and relaxing. The New Years eve should, hopefully, be the same. I'm definitely more chilled about not having to worry about my flights and the worsening weather conditions as currently there have been some issues with the British airports, flight cancellations, power cuts and all.

Today I've done a lot of baking. Done my "signature" cream-filled cake with the meringue top plus baked the spiced biscuits. I so much love the aroma of the freshly baked cakes and biscuits. It's nice, it's warm, it's cosy and festive then.There's been some gingerbread decorating too which I always find great fun to do. I ended up with the 4 full platters of the gingerbread people! That's almost like a gingerbread village!

I like the white icing on the gingerbreads best - such a charming classic decoration but I, of course, couldn't resist throwing in some coloured icing too. I'm pretty confident with my piping skills - my acquired glass painting skills of piping the relief paste onto glass turned out to be very useful at the biscuits decorating. So I was pleased with myself.

And here's the big festive tin with my little fellas inside:

(By the way, anybody recognizing a festive motif from an old Christmas song? Not telling you the answer tho! ;P )

Oh, do you know that story of a Gingerbread man? Surely you do.

"Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

We've done the gingerbread topic with kids at school so many times that I feel so well familiar with it. We also baked gingerbread people at school and decorated them this term. Guess who was the guiding gingerbread guru then? ;)

Loving and leaving you with the freshly baked gingerbreads. But before I go I'd like to wish you all

a very Merry Christmas with all the blessings coming from the little Baby Jesus born in Betlehem and lots of joy and delight in celebrating this wonderful time of year .

Christmas Cards 2013 (12) : Red, white and brown.

Hi everybody. Sooooo busy and rushing with everything now as most of us are with only a few days to go before Christmas. Just popping here for a moment to blog about these cards:

It was great fun with Marianne Designs dies, Papermania papers and Martha Stewart stamps. Loved making these. 

And all three together:

Hope everybody is ok and enjoying preparing for the festivities :)

Kraft cardstock

Just a quick update on what I've been up to. 

Have I ever mentioned before that I'm in love with natural brown (recycled) kraft cardstock? :) I so well am! 'Twas time to top up my cardstock resources :))) My new order off eBay:

I ordered two new card formats this time - narrow tall cards and large size cards. Very happy with these card blanks :)

Most of my Christmas cards this year will have a natural brown card base. It just seems perfect for vintage and Scandi-themed cards. It blends well with various colours and it's got that rustic and hand-made feel too. Ideal for tags as well.  

But the discovery of the month for me has been this paper!

I sooo much love it!!! It was a must-have for me. I love everything about it - the colour, the patterns, the texture, the thickness, even... the smell :) I've been looking for papers of this style for a long time and now Lili of the Valley shop sells them. Gonna cut some them up tonight for some new cards! :) Noticed my new lovely small set of "stitchy" stamps? :) A little treasure in my stamp collection. 

Back to my crafting now. Have a good evening and thank you for your visits x x x

(Early) Christmas Cards 2013 (7): Nordic Blue (2). The Gold Mold Cape.

Hi. In this windy and rainy weather we've had for the past few days I've been feeling inclined to stay with a book and blanket on the sofa rather than to venture somewhere outside. Looks like the season for cold rainy and windy days is just round the corner. 

Craftwise, I'm still working on my Christmas cards and I've been thinking of having a go at selling them at my workplace this year. Just out of curiosity and for fun. I even bought the protecting cello bags for my cards yesterday. I've never sold my cards before as I tend to be rather pessimistic about the card sales considering the fact how many people can make their own cards these days and how many of them still prefer to buy a pack of 10 for £1 and which end up in a recycling bin after the festive days. So all the excess of my Christmas cards will go on sale at work. I really wonder how much interest they will receive :) 

But in the meantime here are some more cards in the frosty blue shades but this time with the mixture of natural brown kraft cardstock :) I love to use this natural brown card - it combines well with lots of colours and it is a nice change from a traditional white card. 

The card below was made using a card sketch I found on the internet. I think it was the one from the Mojo Monday blog where there's a great choice of card sketches to choose from.

Beneath, a simple card with a stamped and heat-embossed Snow Bird - a stamp from Noolibird.

The two cards together :)

And my first attempt at embellishing a gate fold card. The snowflakes have been punched with Martha Stewart punches and the reindeer stamp comes from Noolibird again. 

This type of card kind of reminds me of ... a cupboard so I embellished "the doors" too :)

I kind of like how it opens and closed and stands on it own :) More cards coming soon!

*  *  *

Saturday was luckily a nice sunny day here in North Wales so me and my bf grabbed an opportunity and went out to Wrexham County Borough Museum to see the Gold Mold Cape - we just made it on the last day of exhibition as the Mold Cape is back to its house now - The British Museum in London. For those who don't know it, it's a piece of ceremonial outfit that was unexpectedly discovered buried in a stony grave found in one of the Welsh fields and it comes from the Early Bronze Age, being about 3000 years old! What amazing craftmanship!
The cape was well displayed and I was very pleased how the photos came out :)

The cape must have received lots of interest from the public as there were crowds at the museum, even on the last day of exhibition. Below, this is how the archeologists imagine the cape was used during the ceremonies - completed by a necklace which agrees nicely with the upper line of the cape. It's assumed it once belonged to a woman of a high status. No skeleton parts survived in the grave unfortunately. Apparently some other capes existed too as some extra bits of gold leaf were found in the soil too. 

Below, a contemporary attempt at creating a tool that would reproduce the embossed pattern on the cape. Surely the bronze age people couldn't have one like this! ;) It must have been done by hand somehow.

I really enjoyed this short museum trip. You just don't get to see such things everyday. So fascinating!

Linking up to Hand-made Monday tonight :)