Doh! silly me....

....of course it hasn't been 6 weeks.

I just forgot to blog the entry from last month.

Would forget my head if it wasn't screwed on etc etc

So the sparrow was entry 12 of 12

here's 11 of 12

for Lou x

6 weeks since I last made anything??? poor show!

....and this could be the last thing for a while as this CJ is now officially over :(

I've so enjoyed the 12 mini quilty things I've made for this fabric round robin, and would love to do more of the same, but the truth is they are so time consuming that it just doesn't leave me time to do anything else.

So I've decided to revert to paper for my next couple of circle journals - one arty farty one with the girls from UKStampers, and a more scrapbooky Disney CJ over at UKS. Both start in November, so watch this space in a few months.

But today, for the last time, it's all about the fabric.

This is my contribution to Irboo's CJ, I do hope she likes it.



The swallow was hand appliqued, and then the whole thing was quilted with low loft batting.

I don't know what else to say about it really :) I'm out of practice with writing blog entries lol



Oh yes - I added some metal letters to spell "fly", forgot that bit :)

see you again in November or December

it's that time of year again....

...to make thank you cards for Connor's teachers

I hope they liked 'em :)

Buried Treasure - originally posted August 2007

Seth over at the Altered Page has had, as is his wont, a genius idea:

Let's get everyone to re-post one of their favourite blog entries, so that we can flit from blog to blog and wallow in all the amazingly creative wondrousness that we might just have missed the first time around.

So here's my contribution.....

This altered book spread was first posted on my blog in August 2007, and it's not even on here any more (well, until today :)), as I pruned my blog a while ago and removed everything prior to 2008.

So I'm glad of this opportunity to re-showcase this Day of the Dead piece, as I had so much fun making it :)

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I have always liked the look of altered books, but have never quite gotten around to trying one.

So I was chuffed to bits when the latest CJ turned up in the Take One Stamp circle, and it was exactly that - a fab old hardback book, with a really nice, versatile shrine stamp from Lost Coast. So nice in fact that I already own it myself.

This CJ belongs to my pal Julie, and I know she used to be a bit of a goth girlie, so I thought I could crack out my skeletons and skulls and have some real fun with a Day of the Dead spread. And that's exactly what I did. And fun, indeed, it was.

I started off with the Misfits stamp I made ages ago on the Imagepac, for my son - as I thought he'd look pretty cool inside the shrine. I stamped him in Starlite Black and then "coloured in" all the white bits with liquid pearls.

I cut a niche for him in a block of pages, and also cut an arch shaped niche above, to showcase the lovely design at the start of the next chapter. Why did they stop putting these in books? They looked great.

The bit I cut out of the top niche seemed too nice to waste, so I glued that at the bottom of the page, upside down.



Next I gave the whole thing a coat of gesso - with my fingers - I like getting messy :) and a swiping over with yellow and orange distress inks.

I wanted to mask the lettering for the title, but none of my Heidi Swapp mask alphas were "spooky" looking enough, so I cut some letters with my Cricut and ran them through a repo cartridge on the Xyron to make masks. The first letters I cut were way too small and in the wrong font, because I am spatially challenged and incapable of operating simple machinery - but they didn't go to waste because I used them on my sign in tag :)

I stuck the masked letters down, covered up my skull with a bit of tin foil to make sure he didn't get splashed, and then washed over the whole spread with watered down paint in crimson and violet.

Once the paint was dry I lifted the masks - with difficulty - that repositionable Xyron isn't as repositionable as you'd think :) - and the lettering looked like this <------------

I especially like the way the purple paint pooled around the letters in "Dia" to make a defined outline. A happy accident :)

I added various stamped images - some direct to the pages such as the ravens, the crosses beneath the shrine, and the "de los" - and some Third Coast dancing skeletons on yellow tissue paper adhered with mod podge, and bones stamped on ivory card. Then embellished with a stamped fabric trim and a jewel above the shrine and rays of dimensional paint below.

The shrine itself I stamped in royal purple Stazon onto glossy card that I had alcohol inked in yellow, orange and gold (Pinata inks and Ranger mixative), and I cut off the cupids at the top as they didn't really suit my theme.

I really wanted some authentic Mexican milagros to finish the piece off, but I couldn't find any to buy in this country (ebay let me down, horror of horrors), and didn't have time to wait for them to get here from the US. So I made my own freehand with embossing tin. I made two burning hearts and an eye, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Must admit I had to make about 9 to get three usable ones, but I got there in the end :) I aged them a bit with a light swipe of brown acrylic paint, and adhered them with foam pads behind the raised parts which will hopefully stop them getting too squashed.

All in all a REALLY enjoyable project. It has certainly whetted my appetite for altered books, I can't wait to work in another, or even start my own.

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You'll be glad to hear, I have since started my own :)

Shroooooms

My 10th entry in the fabric round robin...only 2 more to go - sob - have really enjoyed it

This particular person's CJ (not really a "J" as it's not really a book) has evolved a nature theme on its travels, so I wanted to stay on topic...and mushrooms were the first subject that came to mind.

I used some fabric from a pair of kiddies trousers I got in the Matalan clearance store, and the same reverse applique technique that I used before on the jellyfish entry.

PS sorry for neglecting the blog...I only really post here when I've made something, and life has been way too busy lately for making stuff, I'm afraid.

I made a proper quilt!!! whoooot!!!

ok, maybe at 6 inches square it's not really much use, unless you're a dormouse and sleep in a very tiny bed, but it's a proper quilt all the same.

The top is foundation pieced to a traditional Amish pattern (although the batik fabrics aren't very Amish at all), and it has been quilted in (or at least close to!) the ditch.

The binding's a little unorthodox though, it's hockey tape lol. Does the job!

This is, like most things I've blogged recently, for the fabric round robin.

I was going to leave it as just the mini quilt, as I liked it as it stood, but decided to add a little embellishment. Hence the copper star bead and bugle beaded "rays".



This one's for Mandy over in Northern Ireland, hope she likes it!

Dedicated to ladies with complicated love lives everywhere...

This is my latest entry for the fabric round robin I'm a part of. Am enjoying this project so much, I'll be sad when it's over. 8 down, 4 to go.

I wanted to use needle felting on this one, so needed a fairly bold/simple focal motif. I settled on a heart and a triangle. No reason! :)

I didn't have a big enough piece of wool felt to use as the background, so sliced up two smaller pieces and sewed them back together in a stripey pattern.

Next the heart was felted on using merino roving, a border was cross stitched around it, and then I embroidered the three points of the triangle.

The background looked a little empty at this point, so I added some purple seed stitches to liven it up a bit.

A bit of red bias binding to finish, and it was all done.

A close up of all the textures, this one is very strokable:



Roll on the next one!

Time for my annual scrapbook page

I've averaged 1 layout a year since 2006, so I'm hardly the world's most prolific scrapbooker :D

But I do enjoy it when I give it a go.

Check back here Summer 2010 for my next one :)

This is for fellow Wildcats fans Michelle and Tracy, who know how to rock the Sherlock Holmes look...

The hat and magnifying glass are paper pieced, and the top bit of the magnifying glass lifts up to reveal more journalling.

The fingerprints are mine, and I made the mistake of using permanent black ink, so I turned up at the local crown court this morning for my first day of jury service looking like I had just had my dabs taken down the local nick! I didn't really think that one through...

Had fun with this. Thanks to Michelle for giving me the push to play with paper again.

Watch the skies!

This is another terminally late entry from me for the fabric round robin I'm currently enjoying very much, if slightly behind the published schedule.

For this one we were given the finished backgrounds - a floral fabric. I don't really do flowers, so I wasn't sure where to go with my entry, until I decided that the foliage on my piece looked a little exotic....maybe even alien....

And thus Wilbur the extra-terrestrial was born.

Wilbur was embroidered on the way to an ice hockey game in Peterborough, much to the bemusement of my friend who was driving the car.

He didn't bring us much luck, unfortunately, we lost. Boo.

I hope Annie, his new owner/abductee, likes him anyway.

Buy gorgeous stamps = help my long lost cousin

Admit it, you want these stamps!

Even if you don't, please please buy them, details here:

http://michelleward.typepad.com/michelleward/2009/03/hot-topic-new-rubber-special-benefit.html

because $10 from each sale is going directly to my very good friend and cuz (in spirit) Paula in Illinois, who recently lost her house and all its contents to fire :(

Dream assignment for gamer geek Kes :)

Ouch!!!

Kesler dropped to the ice to block Jere Lehtinen's second-period shot, missed the puck but not the Star's skate, which clipped the back of his head as Lehtinen jumped over Kesler.

He appeared dazed, but was able to skate off the ice.

"I got lucky," Kesler said. "It could have been way worse. Obviously, I was pretty worried walking into the locker room but they were able to fix it up so I could go back out. "

With the shallow, four-inch laceration closed, Kesler returned to the game and in the third period cut hard around defenceman Darryl Sydor and fired under Turco to make it 4-1 at 2:26.

That's my boy, head cut open by a skate blade, what does he do? Come straight back out and score :)

I am almost getting bored with saying "I told you so" now, but I TOLD YOU SO! Kesler for the C.

Dank Sedin bled all over the ice from a high stick to the chops and scored shortly afterwards too, maybe next time we hit a slump AV should randomly punch a couple of the guys to wake them up? Seems to work!

Final result Van 5 Dal 2 - whoot!

That makes up for Saturday :)

my Canucks are 14-3-1 since the start of February

get innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's go jellyfishing!

(I think I've been watching too much Spongebob)

I made this last night while waiting for the Canucks game to start, it's 2 weeks overdue, eeek! Sorry Irboo!

This is for the fabric round robin I am currently involved in (and am enjoying very much). We were each given a square of dark blue fabric to work with, with a request to leave the edges unfinished as the recipient isn't yet sure whether she is going to quilt them into a wallhanging or bind them into a book.

Other than that, anything goes.

I had been wanting to try reverse applique for a while, and I have some lovely "under the sea" style batik fabric, which kind of went with the blue backing fabric, so that's what I went with.

It was a toss up between fish swimming through coral, or a jellyfish and bubbles, but I swiftly discovered I can't draw fish to save my life....so a jellyfish it was to be :D

Close up so you can see where the upper layers of fabric have been cut through to reveal the other patterns underneath (NB both this and the main pic above would really benefit from being clicked on - the Blogger-shrunk pics mess the colours and the details up):



I wanted to wash this to encourage the edges to fray more, but was paranoid in case after all that work, it shrank or ran or something....but hopefully they will scuff up a bit with handling.

Meet the diseased squid

Another one of those things that worked better in my head...

This particular infected marine mollusc is SUPPOSED to be a tree :)

Even placing it on a nice grassy hill and embroidering it a few leaves doesn't detract from its undeniable cephalopod-ness.

Ah well, it was worth a try :D

This is my entry for last month's Art Raffle, which I need to send out this week. It's late. Sorry all. Life got in the way big time.


The background is acrylics, Squidney Crosby there was made from airdry clay and painted with brown and bronze acrylics before being varnished, and the leaves are embroidered straight onto the canvas with variegated floss.

I hope the raffle winner doesn't have an irrational fear of poorly sealife.


In other news. Awwwwwww. Darcy. Awwwwww. Now give that baby back to its mother and come heeeeeeere! :D

You know, I think Mr Kesler is getting a leeeetle jealous at all the attention I'm giving his cutie enforcer pal, because this is what he had to say about the Hordibaby photo:

“Embarrassing,” said Ryan Kesler, who sits next to Hordichuk in the Canuck dressing room. “There should be a fine. For him to actually pose for a picture with his shirt off... You’ve seen his body, He doesn’t have the greatest body. It’s like the ‘before’ picture in the Jenny Craig commercials.”

Now now boys, there's enough of me to go round, you don't have to bicker :D :D :D

Happy Birthday John

No waaaaayyyy!!!!!

Markus!!!

I'm shocked!!

(seriously though, wtg Nas!!! lol)

Oh. Dear. Lord.

Helllooooooooooo Mr Hordichuk!!

I know, I know, I know - those 6 words hardly constitiute serious hockey analysis, and I do try so hard to keep the inner bunny under control.

But sheeesh, I have a pulse!! (and it appears to be going a little faster than usual!)

This is what happens....

....when you give a digital SLR to a 6 year old and say "take a nice pic of mummy's new haircut"

:D

From Alison, to the Charmed ladies (and gent)....

A few months back, a group of you came together to make a gorgeous gift for Alison, who is *still* in hospital - one year today :(

Allie doesn't have all your addresses, so has asked me to pass on this, her thank you note, via my blog

Thanks, everybody, from me too