Owl Mobile

Hi everyone. Hope you all have had a good weekend with plenty of sunshine. This is my latest craft project: the little knitted owls. My first knitted toy and the first owls I've ever knitted. I'm very pleased how they turned out. They had been on my to-do craft list but my work colleague motivated me to have a go at them as she couldn't read the pattern. The owls turned out to be easy-peasy to make :) I have a feeling I will be knitting more of them in the future!

The owls come from a lovely book Baby and Toddler Knits made easy. I bought it at my workplace from a bookman and it only cost me a fiver! Bargain! Funnily, this book turned out to be a selling hit among my colleagues and quite a few of us got their own copy. The book is published by DK - one of my favourite publishing houses. They are good at releasing handbooks and the instructions and photos in their books are always clear. There's also a knitting guide at the back of this book too. It's a hardback with glossy paper and beautiful photographs. Another lovely add-on to my crafty book bookshelf. I just love the knitted pattern on the cover!

The whole project is an owl mobile for a baby :) My owls are more of a key ring type. Actually I've already given them away to people at work. 3 went to my colleagues who have a special liking for owls and one went to an autistic boy who loves his book about baby owls - he always brings it to school from home :) 

I had to take a few photos before I let them fly away :)

They came out pretty small, about 7-8 cm high. Very light as stuffed with polyestre. They don't take much yarn, literally scraps and some tiny amount of felt. They are also fast to knit. Just finishing off the bits may take a bit longer but I always like to get my details right :) I didn't have the same yarn as recommended in the book so I used grey yarn to combine with different colours. I think it combines very well with all sorts of colours. 

I hung them on my seasonal tree just to see what they would look like:

This gave me an idea: I'm going to knit my own owl gang, just using different colours to match my mantlepiece decoration :)

A few photos outside :) I even made a crude rustic mobile for them using garden stitcks ;)

My cat Cookie aka Mr Nosey was "helping" me take the photos outside. He's got to be everywhere where something is going on. His job was to hang around the bushes and check if any stranger is approaching :)

But after 5 min. he was ready to take a chilling break :P

Cooling down with his leg sticking up in the air ha ha

Ready with my knitted owl gang for Handmade Monday blog hop. Do join in and have fun reading about other crafters' doings. Have a good weekend and thank you for your comments. x x

Tropical Bookmark

Finally. The book mark with parrots has been finished :) I stitched it quickly but I took a little time to wash it, iron it and mount it (stitching is fun but I'm always a bit lazy about the technical finishes) :) Overall it came out nicely with all these cheerful breezy colours and trendy chevrons in energizing hues. I'm pleased. The bookmark was a freebie kit from one of the current issues of Cross Stitcher. 

Will test the bookmark tonight :)

By the way, to whoever commented on the book "Thousand Splendid Suns" here - I'm really enjoying it :) The heroine, the happenings, the culture, the events the book describes. The author seems to have his own special way of describing things - his language is simple and easy to take in yet picturesque and striking. The marriage of Mariam (the main heroine in the book) to a much older Kabul shoemaker - Rasheed is so heartbreaking and her six unsuccessful attempts to give him a son and to please her husband in many ways is very touching. I'm looking forward to finding out what else will happen in this book.

Linking up to Hand-made Monday tonight. Do join in :)

Foxes: cross stitched and stamped

As I promised in one of my earlier posts, I've stitched a little cute fox to match the cross stitched raccoon I stitched earlier this month. Again, it was a freebie kit from an old issue of Cross Stitcher and since I'm currently under the charm of forest critters, here it it! 

It was pleasure to stitch and I particularly enjoyed the contrast between the orange white and blue. So that my ginger cross stitched fella is not lonely yesterday I sat down to make some cards with stamped foxes :) I used a HeroArts stamp from this post.

And the whole fox gang together :)

Really enjoyed myself creating those. Especially I enjoyed using the wood grain patterned papers and adding the toadstools. More foxes on their way :)

Thanks for popping by and leaving your kind comments x x

edit: Would love to share these foxes at Hand-made Monday blog hop :) Do join in! 

Card for Dad

My dad had his celebration day last March which actually falls on the same time as St Patrick's day. I made a card with a vintage car for him and used some lovely rich brown scrapbooking paper for the background. I've kept this pretty paper in my crafty stash for a long time hesitating each time if I should use it or not - touching it, looking at it and putting it away each time (don't we all do that sometimes with our resources?:P) Dad definitely deserves this. The edges of the paper and the badge have been distressed for the old look ;) 

The vintage card was well received. Dad and mum really like it :)
I also jazzed up one Easter card :) Initially it looked like this:

I found it a bit too plain so I embellished it with a relief paste I normally use when I do glass painting :) I thought the little dots would add a bit cheer to it.

Now it looks like this:

Currently I'm enjoying my 2nd week of Easter (school) break so plenty of lying-ins, reading and working on some little cross stitched cards :)

Thanks for visiting my blog. Please feel free to comment or ask. 

Welcome my new followers from Germany :)

Sun stamped cards

Hi all! A bit celestial today :)

Nula from Noolibird.com has recently sent me a lovely stamp with the sun as a thank-you for the photos and a testimonial I wrote for her blog/website. I loved the stamp and immediately sat down to card making to make some fresh cards using different techniques and colour combos. What a perfect timing with this stamp! We are short of sun and natural sunlight right now, in December, longing for some dryness and warmth. So it was good fun to make some cards with sunny warm hues. 

I stamped the image a few times with the black ink on yellow card or on a watercolour pad and then coloured it with my watecolour pencils or gold Twinkling H2os. The more sparkle the better. Cutting out the paper from in between the sun rays can be a hell of a job and a good test for decoupage skills though :)

I tried different backgrounds too, even the grassy green :) - it makes a good contrast with the orangey sun rays. The stamp is quite sizeable so it can be used as a card topper on its own, decorative and ornamental as it is. I wanted it to be in the focus of attention.

Now, the cards individually...

Day and Night duo ;)

Folksy stripes and a doily texture...

Metallic crepe paper in juicy green colour... The sun has been watercoloured with pencils.

With an orange background. Twinkling H2os in action.

And the last card I made in this set - a card with an acetate front onto which the image had been stamped first, then covered with glue and glitter :) - a new technique I wanted to try out for this image and acetate cards. Quite pleased with the results although it's virtually impossible to keep the acetate free from micro-bits of the very fine glitter.

and all together :)

Actually I  fancy making more "Splendid Suns" so there may be more cards with this design coming soon!

In the meantime I'm sending my cards to the Hand-made Monday no. 94 blog hop fun. Do join in! 

"Glass Painted" Cards

I've recently come back to creating cards using a glass painting technique. It's exactly like painting on glass with the exception that you use an acetate sheet instead of  a real glassy surface. The use of aperture card is common in this type of cardmaking too. 

Here are the two random cards I've finished off recently - a card with three tulips and a paisley motif. I think the tulips are my favourite. I love cards with acetate - it gives you so many possibilities and the transparency and lightness of the card is appealing too, I think. It doesn't take much embellishing as the transparent motif on its own looks decorative. As for the text, you can either write your message right inside or make an insert out of a piece of paper, glue it in and write inside it so that the message is discreet and doesn't show through the painted front. I usually decide on it just before writing a card out.

The other thing I like about this type of acetate cards is that it's a pretty rare technique among the card makers and not many people actually make cards using their glass paints, which is a shame cause I'd love to see some other creations like mine :) If you, my dear reader, are the person who makes such cards, please let me know, I'd love to have a look at your glass painted creations :)

Crafty Storage Jars

Hi all. Hope you all had a good weekend. Mine was very crafty, busy, full of craft shopping and I really enjoyed it - I've got a lot projects running on at the moment and many are unfinished so they will have to wait for the future blog posts. However my craft creation stars of the week have been for me my two crafty jars :) A while ago I showed you the two little cross stitch designs and here is what I've done with them:

2 storage jars (I used the kilner brand) for some of my craft stash - ribbons, in this case. The cross stitch I made forms a nice padded pin cushion and needless to say is the central attraction of the jar lid :)

 A close-up of the stitches :)

I loved both designs and I kind of regret the Cross Stitcher magazine didn't have a design for a pink/purple option either! I may alter one of these designs in the future and adjust the chart for the purplish colours, if I find some time to do it, naturally :)

Here, the jars have been filled up with colour-coordinated ribbons :)

Since I love combining craft techniques I couldn't resist glass painting the jars too! More "vitrail" pics of the jars below:

In my (still imaginary) craft room these two will find their place somewhere on a shelf among the other crafty boxes :) Such is the vision, at least ;P I shall be making more of this type of storage jars in the future :)

Now with the jars being finished, I moved on to glass painting some acetate fronts for my "vitrail" cards. These are both Scandinavian motifs and some occasional patterns. I haven't made this technique for cards for ages and I missed it. I thought it would be nice to have a set of festive cards like these for Christmas. 

The photo shows them being outlined with a relief paste and drying up. Now the fun part lying ahead - filling the outlines up with colours, putting the pieces together and embellishing! Can't wait! 

In the meantime I also knit. My 35th knitted ball :) currently finished and waiting to be stuffed.

If you ever wondered what glass painting looks like, here is a reality behind it :))) Well, stuff scattered all over the table - half painted drying glass, printed patterns, cutouts, paint pots, brushes... and only 15 cm of free space to paint! Dear me! Is it just me or do other crafters practise that too?

Glass painting isn't only about painting with paints, it involves a great deal of squeezing the tubes and dabbing with the relief paste too! In fact the beauty of the painted vitrail glass depends largely on a professional artistic relief application. The more precise, neat and artful, the better!

It's time to join up the blog linking party Hand-made Monday at Hand-made Harbour. Head over there to see some other fabulous crafty creations. I missed my last Hand-made Monday blog hop which is a shame cause I had had quite a lot to show. Thought I could link up on Tuesday morning but it turned out we had to be cut off the electricity for most of the day. So no laptop, no telly, no even a cup of tea! How dependent we are on electricity these days!!!

If you wanna have a peek what I had for show last week, here is the post ;)

Thanks everyone for their visit and comments left behind. x x x