CAL: One Dog Woof!

Strange title for a blog post I know, but not until you understand it. Along with learning how to sew this year, I really want to learn how to crochet. I decided this when a visit to my gran in December had me gifted with a beautiful crocheted bag and viewings of other items she had crocheted herself. I don't know much about crochet, but I do know that I think my gran is a master. Remind me to post a picture of the vintage Shawl she made out of mohair for herself to wear to my parents wedding. I was gifted this as well and will treasure it the rest of my life. Love you Gran, you are my crafting inspiration!

So, now for the title explanation. CAL stands for Crochet Along, and I have joined one over at One Dog Woof. ChiWei has a full explanation on how she chose the name One Dog Woof for her blog, if you're interested in looking at her more about me page :)

I have quite a few papercrafting friends that like to crochet, I know you're reading ladies, and I thought this would be fun to share with them. Heck, I think this would be fun for everyone to join in! The CAL is for beginners and veterans alike and will have us making a double strand infinity cowl.

If you're interested in seeing the timeline for the project, you can look here. And if you're eager to get started, we've been given our first 'assignment', which you can find here. The best way to tag along, I think, would probably be to add the blog link to your followed blogs so that you get regular updates. It's what I've done, else I would struggle to remember the dates given in the timeline.

Here is a picture of the cowl we'll be making (lovingly borrowed from ChiWei's blog)

Of course, being a tiny bit OC, I have purchased four different crochet hooks and two different colour yarns (all before I saw the pattern...silly me), none of which fit the spec for the pattern. LOL's! Too funny, but I wanted to get started and will get started following a couple of tutorials online in the meantime so that I can get my crochet brain cap fitting nicely.

I will have to go get the specified yarn and crochet hook some time in the week, but in the mean time, I'm going to sit here in my little corner of the world and get better acquainted with the hobby that my gran so loves*

This truly is my year for learning new things.

xoxo

Be Mine {TTT Guest)

Do you all remember when I won the Top Tip Tuesday, Top Tipper award? Well it came with a month long Guest Design spot :) And today is my first post! (three more to come! woohoo!)

 

I must admit to being in a design rut when I started this card, some days you just struggle with the mojo and nothing seems right. I think I changed colours about four times, and my layout about three. In the end, I'm still not even sure I like my own work, but hubby assures me it's gorgeous.

 

The girls at TTT are being sponsored by Stamp Fairy this week and the theme is Romance (Valentines or anything with a heart). The image I chose to use is called Molly Love 2, and you can find her here.

 

 

I used my singer again to sew all sorts of lines everywhere, and wrapped twine around the top edges of the card. Flowers are petaloo, die cuts are no-name-brand courtesy of a crafting friend called 'Sea Hag' during our Secret Pal swap this year.

Molly is coloured with Sharpies and Promarkers, as always.

hope to see you at the challenge!

 

xoxo

What's up with that?

At the end of December I got a really random e-mail from a challenge blog owner asking me to be a guest on their DT. To be fair, I had placed the usual GDT acronym behind my name when they suggested those who wanted to design do so, when I entered one of their challenges (so random might not be the right word) quite a while ago (maybe October?).

The e-mail asked me if I would like to Guest design for the Anything Goes challenge they were going to have. I sent an e-mail replying in the positive and was asked to have a photo of my creation e-mailed by a certain date (also end of December). I was on holiday at the time and advised the owner that I would send the picture once I got back home, which would still be before the given deadline.

Chuffed I was, not even thinking to ask when the challenge date would be, and when I would be allowed to post the same image on my blog.

I merrily made the card and sent it off, not forgetting my signature watermark on the photo. I haven't heard a word from the blog owner or seen my card on their blog since. What is up with that? And I feel a bit embarrassed to send her an e-mail to ask her why she hasn't used my card, I don't want to sound like I'm whining. Am I? After rereading the e-mail exchange, I wonder if she might be a bit miffed that I didn't take up her offer of using a free image from her personal Digi site?

Either way, I thought it was time that this card saw the light of my blog page and I've decided to post it whether or not it gets used on the challenge blog. It's my property and I can do what I want to.

I used a whole lot of Scrap paper, sewing bits together as I went along. I actually pretty much cased this card design straight out of the November (or was it December?) Cards and Papercraft magazine. I added my own twist to the mix, but that's where I got my inspiration. The stamp and sentiment, funny enough, is also a Cards and Papercraft freebie, but the brand name escapes me right now. The flowers are a mix of petaloo and something else (South African craft stores feel the need to repackage flowers and put their store names on the packaging, so I don't know who the manufacturer is, irritated much?)

The fairy is coloured with a mix of my trusty Sharpies and Promarkers. The little butterflies from the swappable no-name-brand punch i bought last year. All sewn together with my Singer ;)

xoxo

The Pinterest Debate...and a Peony

How many of you that own a Pinterest account, actually try out some of the cool stuff you pin? Truthfully? I know that when I see something magically fantastical, I have to Pin it so that I can 'try' it or use it for inspiration later. Sound familiar?

With all the inspiration that is available out there on the big wide internets (yes, I meant to add an 's' there), you would think that we would soak up the information like cotton balls and squeeze it out onto our own craft/sewing/desk tables.

Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, life happens. We're all busy with our own thing. Be it work, studies, homemaking, or simply spending time with your loved ones. Sometimes, we're so engrossed in making something that our own brains have conjured up that we simply forget about all the lovely things we wanted to do via our Pinterest boards! These things take priority. I hope I'm not sounding too philosophical here, but I thought the subject needed some musing after I happily pinned away at marvelous ideas and creations today. And yes, I did think.."ooh! this would be awesome for a party!"...and..."Wow! wouldn't that look lovely on my desk?"..."I must Pin this so that I can make it sometime". I realised that sometime isn't going to happen unless I make it happen, Pinterest idea speaking, that is.

So, in honour of all those wonderful pins on my board, I am going to aim to make at least one project a week that is inspired or copied cased from an item on one of my boards. heck, I'll even share it with my readers, maybe you'll be inspired too! and in the process, we'll give fellow internets people the credit for our inspiration :)

So, without further adieu, my first Pinterest inspired project!

I credit Michelle Dupuis from Rust & Sunshine for today's inspiration. I tagged her tissue paper flower tutorial a very long time ago, and if you follow the link I've attached to her blog name, you'll see her original post was done in May last year.

Michelle credits these flowers as quick and easy to do, she is not wrong. It took me all of about five minutes to have pieces of tissue paper looking like a peony. The flower recipe calls for tissue paper (obviously) and green pipe cleaners. Unfortunately I only have white pipe cleaners, but being a crafter in love with ribbon I quickly found a length of green that would substitute the green colour for the stem just fine. I wrapped the ribbon around the stem and secured with a pin.

It really does make for a lovely decor piece, and I am sure that as a bouquet these may even make a beautiful addition to a brides attire.

So, that's my two cents for today. Hope I have in turn inspired you to do something with your own Pinterest Boards?

xoxo

Sewing: A Silhouette Cameo Dust Cover

I have spent my entire weekend pondering over what to make. Should it be a card for a challenge? What about working on the mini album I'm putting together? What about a 3D Project for Valentines day? ...or... how about a sewing project?.....

After my disastrous attempt at a skirt some months ago, I have been respectfully staying away from my sewing machine with all things material. Yes, I have sewed on many a paper project, but fabric has been banished from my machine for quite some time. Until now. I bring you, my handmade Silhouette Cameo Dust cover!

Do you remember this?

 

 

Well, it has been unpicked and recycled! I simply could not bare the thought of either throwing the fabric away, or having it lie in a drawer gathering moth holes. I have needed a dust cover for my Silhouette for some time now, what with hubby and his father renovating our bathrooms. It never ceases to amaze me how the dust wafts through the house and eventually settles on just about everything, including my machine.

 

Before I explain my colour choice, let me first show you my Silhouette's personalised face plate, which is the first file that I cut with my machine when I bought it last year.

 

 

Apart from the obvious fact that I love pink, I have a little bit of an obsessive disorder, whereby everything either needs to be colour co-ordinated or matching. enough said? This meant that, even though I wanted to recycle my skirt fabric, I had to somehow bring the colour pink into the mix.

 

Thankfully my lovely mommy gave me some fabric from her own stash when we went to visit for Christmas, and a beautiful pink floral was included in the mix. Out it came, to be added to my project materials. I also bought a gorgeous pink rose ribbon length a while back that I have been saving for a special occasion, and I thought this might just be it. As you read the post, if you're interested in getting the ribbon for yourself, it's an American Crafts Premium Ribbon and is called Peony.

 

 

See how cleverly I used the pink fabric to create piping along the seam of the dust cover? And how I sewed the ribbon all along the front? Delicious don't you think?

 

 

I am loving the final product quite a bit, and am thankful to these two ladies for posting their patterns on the net, Taylor and Mz Daisy. I used the Side panel pattern off of Taylor's design and the General dimensions of the main panel from Mz Daisy's pattern. I then added a one centimetre seam allowance onto Taylor's pattern so that I had enough fabric to work with (being a novice and all, I thought it might just be safer).

 

In hindsight, I would have adjusted Mz Daisy's dimensions as well, shortening the breadth by a good Five centimetres, as my hem along the bottom of the cover is quite massive.

 

 

I'm quite proud of myself, and proud of my new dust cover. I may just venture a bit more into my sewing now :)

 

xoxo

Happy Thoughts

It seems to be a craft filled evening for me today, the combination of challenges and receiving happy mail from a crafting friend in Germany (thank you Maria!) have truly given me an oomph. A much needed one at that, I have been feeling under the weather the last two days, nothing too serious, just a bit of a head cold I think.

Maria sent me a lovely background set of stamps which I used for inspiration in combination with a challenge I found.

I used another two new techniques on this one...masking and colouring/inking over embossed areas. Doing all these 'new' techniques, really have me thinking that it might be useful for beginners if I did a couple of simple tutorials. I'll think on it and get back to you all on that one, I think it could turn into a lot of work.

I'm not really sure about the bear image on this one, it was a second hand stamp that wasn't labelled with the company or name. Sorry. I stamped the bear image twice and used the second one to mask the first before stamping the background image in a clear ink. I then heat embossed the background image and carefully inked over it with my light blue Mica ink pad. I wiped off the excess blue ink and voila! the clear image made it's appearance :) The background stamp is by My Paper World and is called Vintage Lace (Art. Nr 400301800).

The sentiment is stamped in the same green as used for the grass, and is from a Kaisercraft set greeting stamp set that I have. If you live in South Africa, these Kaisercraft stamp sets can be bought at a variety of stores, mine are from Crafters Market and Scrapbook and Things. Kaisercraft is an Australian brand, so all you Ozzies should find it pretty easily I'm assuming?

I coloured the bear, kitty and flowers with a combination of Promarkers and Sharpies. Cats always seem to call for orange when I colour and this time was no different :) I used a dark green stamp pad to ink the grass patches, this took quite a bit of technique on my part to avoid having straight edged lines when inking straight from the pad, I pat myself on the back when I was done (excuse the bragging).

TOP TIP: I think my top tip today is very much linked to the technique I used on my card. You do not always need to have the latest product on hand to get the effect you want. Use an ink pad, for example, to create the illusion of a mist spray. It's cheaper, saves you space and challenges your inner creativity!

UPDATE: I won the Top Tip Tuesday's 'Top Tip' award for this post! woohoo!

No need to guess then that I'm entering the following challenge:

Top Tip Tuesday - Fur or Feathers

Have a happy Tuesday evening, may your Hump day approach quickly!

xoxo

Two Hearts



When I first saw the sketch over at CTS (click on the acronym to go to the challenge page, I immediately had an idea! It didn't help though that I was at work, checking through my blog roll during lunch... no craftiness gonna happen at my desk that's for sure. Funny how sometimes the best ideas come when you're unable to actually carry them out. I literally felt my fingers itching to touch the piles of paper in my stash, and not new pieces, old ones lying dead and lost in 'THÉ' scrap heap of snippets.

The inspirational sketch

I had the idea in my head, and there it stayed. When I eventually got home, I had 40 minutes to whip up my card, photograph it, and get it on a blog post ready to enter the challenge! It closed today at 6PM EST you see, tsk tsk that I saw it so late.

I did cheat a little, my post started out with only the sketch, the card and the link to the challenge... LOL's! {So, technically, what you're reading here is an edit}

Anyways, after all that rush, I missed the deadline by a minute...one minute people. sigh* all that rushed crafting for (almost) nothing, almost because I actually love the card and I think it so fitting with next month's Valentines Day theme don't you think?

I used only scraps for this card (apart from the actual white card base), though it didn't truly make a dent in the heap. I used the heart portion from this image in the silhouette store, and a phrase from a stamp set that I haven't used in over a year, it felt good to break open it's plastic chains. The set is CS917 Wedding, by Kaisercraft.

I plan on doing a {14} days of Valentines feature on my blog as we get closer to February and I want to give everything I make to hubby in his Lunchboxes leading up to V-day. We don't actually, ever, celebrate the day but I thought it might be a nice way to make something, get it on the blog (see, I'm being more dedicated here), and still have it be practical enough to give away. Make sense? I hope so, feels like I'm starting to ramble and try to explain myself....

Anywhoooo, just for formality, even though I was late, Challenges entered:

Case this Sketch - #10

[PS] - I realised too late that this blog post has the same name as the last one LOL! did you notice?