May Day Catchup

Well April flew by and was surely a month of contrasts! We did have a few sunny days for walking on the beach and even a visit to the local nature reserve.

But there have been plenty of dull, cold and wet days just right for staying in and sewing. I discovered flex frames and gave them a go. I've always wanted to make little coin purses but have been put off those snap frames as they looked rather difficult and I didn't fancy all that glueing.

The flex frame is much easier and suitable for straightforward flat purses or the boxed corner kind. I found a nice pattern in this gorgeous Japanese craft book (don't worry it's the English version).

Anyway, it seems I missed Easter altogether here on the blog but I did enjoy making a few Eastery bits and bobs when I found Manuela's Etsy shop and her cute felties. These chickens were my favourites. I managed to machine stitch them rather than hand stitching as recommended in the pattern.

Okay, I know snails aren't normally an Easter image but they were so cute I couldn't resist! Could you!

The garden has come to life again and is demanding my attention.... rather more attention than I've been able to give and there's a lot of weeding to catch up on!

The trouble with leaving the blog for a month is there is much to catch up on - I think rather more than will fit into one blog post. So I'll finish now and hopefully write a bit more later.

But one more photo from the garden. These little creatures demand feeding every day now as they are busy with courting, nest building, egg laying and brood feeding. They are costing me a small fortune but they give so much pleasure I don't begrudge them one shilling! 

HAPPY EASTER!

Happy Easter all! Its been a miserable Easter here in North Wales so far - but the perfect time for crafting without the guilt of staying indoors! Love this illustration from an Enid Blyton Holiday book though I really can't work out what the girl is offering the little chick - a worm perhaps??

I recently treated myself to a Free Motion Stitching workshop at The Coach House. I've struggled to find time to practise much since and I really really want to improve on what I learnt from the delightful and hugely talented tutor Fliss Owens.  But I have finished one project and yesterday started another.......

I made my first embroidered picture into a peg bag as I much prefer things I make to have a practical use rather than just sticking them on the wall or leaving them in a pile on the side.  And guess what, the sun has suddenly broken through the cloud cover so maybe I can use it this morning!!!!

My picture was inspired by this little sketch in Rebecca Crompton's Modern Design in Embroidery published in 1936.  Rebecca, Kathleen Mann and Priscilla M Warner are embroidery heroines of mine and I've been lucky enough to collect a lovely library of books by them full of gorgeous inspirational work and advice, mostly at very modest prices. However for some reason this book of Rebecca's commands a very high price so when I saw it on sale as what I thought was a very reasonable amount I jumped at it and was not disappointed when it arrived. If you are curious I've a Pinterest board of their work you might like to look at here.

I'll definitely be dipping into it for inspiration for my next creation. Lastly here are a few photos from our class at the Coach House last month, including my very first attempt - the flower in a pot. Although I wasn't happy with it as I was creating the embroidery, Fliss was right when she said it would turn out fine and I really liked it once it was finished and sewn into a lavender sachet.

Easter Cheap Cheap!

If you watch my Plowmen's Clocks facebook page you may have noticed I changed my banner to a herd of origami bunnies for Easter.  I wanted to make some decorations for the window of the Greyhound Rescue charity shop where I volunteer but didn't want to spend much money.  The bunnies were the first thing I thought of. I used a pad of quite thin pastel coloured craft paper I found at Poundland and a simple instruction video - you can find it here.

Don't they look cute all lined up on this lovely table.  I also made the banner you can see in the top photo. I printed out the letters as big as would fit on an A4 sheet (using an outline font I found in my word processing programme), cut them out, laminated them and strung them on cotton twine.

Next I wanted to add some egg decorations but couldn't find any I liked cheap enough so back again to Poundland where I bought two bags of polystyrene eggs and a packet of pretty tissue paper.

If you want a cheap Easter too here's how I did them. To make it easier and less of a sticky process I stuck the eggs on wooden kebab sticks. Cut strips of tissue paper about three quarters of an inch wide and tear them into pieces about 2 inches long. Use a brush to paint the egg with watered down PVA glue. Make it about the consistency of single cream.

Starting at the bottom stick the strips on using the brush to smooth down the paper and at the same time coating with the glue. Carry on layering the strips until the egg is covered nicely.

Leave them to dry somewhere warm. The tissue is very thin so don't be too rough with the brush. When they dry the paper will shrink a little making a smoother covering but they will still look handmade.

Then decide how you want to display them. I wanted to thread them onto twine to hang down in the window. I used a long doll making needle to pierce and thread twine through the egg.

Lastly I used paper punches to create some quick flower shapes and to make the job even quicker I stapled two flowers back to back between the eggs onto the twine, making sure I didn't trap the twine so I could slide them evenly into position.

I think they look quite effective in the window - you can just about see them in the top photo.  So was that cheap enough for you? Total outlay £4 for the pad of paper, two bags of eggs and a packet of tissue paper.  All from Poundland's Easter range.  Everything else I already had in my craft stash. Poundland also had some lovely little craft projects for the kiddos - I couldn't resist and hope our lot wouldn't have preferred chocolate eggs.

I have to say I was quite impressed with the range on offer.  All very pretty in spring-like colours. I loved the traditional yellow "pipecleaner chicks" and they had black and white lambs too. Hypocritical I know, but I just don't like to think about how much the manufacturers paid their workers to produce such lovely items at such a low cost!!!

Happy Easter Everyone!

I'm wishing all my wonderful followers a VERY HAPPY EASTER.  The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I'm hoping for a walk in the beautiful Welsh countryside and lunch out today!  Make sure you find something special to do if you have time to yourself too.  I made these Scrabble and Hama bead signs for my stall last weekend but forgot to take them with me!  Oh well, they'll come in for next year.

Rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit.......

If you've never heard of Chas & Dave the title of this post won't make any sense at all!  Search on Youtube if you are curious!  Anyway, its been a while I know but I have been getting creative and working hard towards the first of the year's craft fairs next Saturday.  I've made lots of my felt brooches with an Easter theme, mostly these cute little rabbits.  I found the Impression Obsession die set at Dies to Die For online craft store.

I made some more using my Papertrey Ink egg and rabbit dies and as usual I've carded them up for sale using the Button Boutique stamps and dies, also from Papertrey. 

Finally I made animal brooches using the On the Farm die set, again from Papertrey.  These dies are quite small and fiddly to sew so I used iron-on adhesive to avoid having to stitch the animals to the brooches which apart from being very tedious, would have distorted the shapes. 

I'm sure she thought she was helping but..................

First Paddle

I hope everyone is enjoying their Easter break - its been wonderful here in the UK, even though the garden is in desperate need of rain. We need a few heavy downpours to please the gardeners and farmers. But on Friday, the last day of my sister's visit, we wanted the good weather and got it. We had a lovely time at Porthmadoc and Borth-y-Guest. I was determined to get my feet wet and enjoyed a paddle with my nephew in the large pools on Borth beach.
Borth is a favourite with us as no matter when you go there, even if its a Bank Holiday and the sun is shining, there is plenty of space for everyone. So we stayed late and only ominous clouds and a rumble of thunder in the mountains persuaded us to leave.
So there were a few downpours somewhere in the distance but we didn't see any of them - and neither did my garden!

Quick Crafty Easter

Just realised I haven't posted for over a week! So I'd better get a quick post in before we set off for a day out at the seaside - hurray... we're having a heatwave here in the UK! A couple of years ago it was snowing at Easter! What a strange climate we have - but always interesting!
We spent most of yesterday on my Mother's shady front porch watching the children play on the grass. Here is the youngest with the Purl Bee fingerpuppet bunnies I made her from this pattern. Quick, easy and very cute! And for the older girls I made some more bunny brooches from Jenny's cute pattern here.

And a few cards using the Papertrey Friendship Jar Spring Fillers - love that set!
Don't you think my little silver hen and chick is cute - a lovely charity shop find. Its a little box and the chick is the head of a tiny silver spoon. To hold salt for your soft boiled Easter breakfast egg perhaps? Not sure - but when I saw her I grabbed her quickly as I have a passion for hens and would love my own little flock one day.

Easter Gingerbread

I decided I wouldn't give chocolate eggs this Easter as the kids get so many every year. So I baked ginger- bread Easter eggs - just the normal gingerbread recipe cut with one of these cutters.

Then I made these little packages and slipped the gingerbread in glassine bags inside. I used my lovely Darkroom Door plaid background stamp again and all the other stamps are from two Papertrey sets - Tin Types and Tags for Spring. This pink, green and yellow colour combination always says Easter to me. Its so pretty.

The current Passion for Papertrey blog challenge is for Easter theme projects so I'm entering these - and here's my Easter card too. The flower is from another Papertrey set, Garden of Life, a set I don't seem to use often enough.

Happy Easter Holiday!

The sun is shining and the sky is blue with fluffy white clouds skudding about - perfect Easter weather. We're having a family day today with fish and chips for lunch (hope there's a veggie option for me!) and a wander round the local shops. I had a baking day yesterday and we will have an Easter Tea before the everyone departs for home.

I picked up a lovely book in a charity shop recently. "Good Housekeeping's Picture Cake Making" and both these recipes are from it. Its dated 1958 by it's previous owner and, as well as loads of yummy recipes, is full of lovely photos - some colour, adverts, and advice and suggestions on the best equipment to use in your 1950s kitchen. What I really love about old cookery books is that the recipes don't use any hard to find fancy ingredients and the recipes use imperial measurements - being of a certain age, I just can't get my head round metric - I can't visualise 500gms or 10cms in my head and I don't suppose I ever will. When someone says something is 10 kilometers away I haven't a clue how far that is but I can easily visualise 5 miles!

Anyway, these are Easter Biscuits - a simple recipe using flour, butter, sugar, egg and currants, and the cake is a Cinnamon Sponge made with semolina - an easy recipe from one of the advertisement pages. I halved both recipes as we aren't a large family and I would end up eating the left-overs for the rest of the week! Isn't that teaset in the photo pretty!

I'm going to post my Easter crafts tonight as, as usual, I'm running very late!

Easter Baskets

I'm sure these eggs have been demolished by now but here are the Easter treats I made for the kids courtesy of an idea I saw on Dawn's Stampin Thoughts. Aren't they pretty! I used stamps from a children's craft set made by Djeco and called Ferme.

And I can't resist including my photo of a Pasque Flower in the garden - so called because it blooms at Easter but its real name is Anemone pulsatilla.