Hi everyone - it was my birthday mid-June and I definitely felt the love from family and friends with lots of lovely messages, outings, and gifts that show how much they know and care for me. I thought I'd share the creative ones and you might get to know me a bit better too.
I've had in mind for a while that I would like to do another hand embroidery project. When I stitch, it's mainly by machine, but I did love when I made this Sari Ribbon project completed back in 2012 (I can't believe it was that long ago!)
In 2013 I felted this piece
Those projects were in my mind when I talked to my husband about this craftsy class by Sue Spargo which I received as part of my birthday present. I've watched a few of the lessons and it looks great. Sue talks about backgrounds, needles, threads, and you get to see her demonstrating various embroidery stitches and can watch over and over again - now I just need to start!
On my actual birthday, my eldest was home sick, so we weren't able to go out and celebrate as expected. Happily I had started a quilt on the weekend before, and while his Dad took him to the Dr and to collect takeaways for an evening in, I was able to finish piecing my 9 patch blocks
and then to slice and have first go at rearranging them
This pattern is called Disappearing Nine Patch and it was the perfect way to spend a couple of hours on my birthday.
My celebrations continued through the week with a lovely dinner out with friends, and then a play day with other creative friends on the weekend. Some joked that they could give me lovely wrapping paper and forget the presents since I enjoy keeping the packaging for later use...who wouldn't want to use all this loveliness?
Some even buy packaging (and ribbon and reusable tape) with my art habit in mind - the feathers above are actually a fat quarter of fabric.... love that. So I began my page with some lovely birthday paper - hello letter box surprise :-) Favourite colours and shapes - they look like little explosions of happiness ♥
The journal spread contains memories from the birthday Tuesday through to the Friday and as well as including pieces of that gorgeous paper, I decided to include my favourite arty cards and the # Best Mum Ever assigned by my youngest on my card envelope ;-)
I have fabulous girlfriends who know how to treat a girl who has an addiction to hearts and butterflies
The candles in the wee receycled teacups are handmade natural soy and divinely scented. The beautiful stitched butterfly is a lavender pillow which rests beside my bed and helps me sleep. Another friend made a hand stamped envelope which I was able to pull apart and utilise as the base of my next journal page.
It makes me happy to have this in my background. She also bought me this set of 3 mini gelli printing plates
I have so many ideas about how these can be used....enough for a full separate blog post!
This page contains my memories of the weekend - it's funny how some pages contain a whole week and others just a day! I'll share the rest of this journal spread when the second page is done
If you missed my blog post about making those crepe paper flowers, you can see it HERE.
And you can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads from the year HERE. Happy weekend to you.
I was starting a blog post about my birthday week, and realised I hadn't shared my daily journaling from the week before. Last time I shared my daily pages, I showed some cake stencils that I'd got cheap
and was dying to use the large tapa one so started my page with that and my favourite poppy stencil.
I wanted to add a Pocket Art Card (PAC) so looked to another piece of the cut card I had shared last spread. I used the upper doily last time.
I thought I would revisit the prompt "add stamps" with some white stamping of a favourite face (and the wee white circles), and then added various trims and found words that suit being tucked up cosily on a wintery night.
I did quite a lot of writing on the page, and I felt like my stenciling needed more to make them an artful feature on the page. Another prompt for Documented Life early in June was "doodle a flower", so with that in mind I decided to doodle ON my flowers. Love the metallic pen effect :
Note the addition of another small flower stamped on the sheet music above. And I felt the need to also add a butterfly stamp to the flowers at the top of the page (had to do this with paint so the ink behind didn't soak through) before adding pink metallic Sakura Gelly Roll pen to finish those
Here's the finished daily journaling
It faces my Effy Life Book lesson I shared HERE.
You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE. You can find out more about DLP 2016 the unPlanner HERE.
It was my birthday last week. Had a wonderful time and have lots to share but I have to start at the end! I finished my birthday week with a play day yesterday where we made crepe paper peonies from a pattern by Lia Griffith - that link will take you to her photo tutorial. You need to join her site (only $5 per month) to get the pattern templates, and she has a youtube video of her process as well - all very helpful.
Didn't take process photos because you pretty much cut the crepe paper and then start gluing with a hot glue gun. But was so thrilled with how they turned out. Mine was purple - used the gold for the stamens. Because of the way I've set the outer petals, my flower looks more like an Oriental poppy - but I am just fine with that :-)
My friends made the pink and the red
I don't know if you've used a hot glue gun, but you need to be careful about the drips of glue and the stringiness can be a challenge....we used an old cake tin for the mess
I took lots of photos from different angles because I so love how they turned out
And then they took theirs home...so last night, while watching the rugby, I cut more petals and this morning I was able to make 2 more so I now have a bunch on my table :-)
I took a progress photo of this one before adding the outer petals to show that you could make them more like Californian poppies
and here it is complete. I tried the yellow stamens instead of the gold on this one.
I also made a yellow one, and I can't decide which one is my favourite
And then, just for fun, I tried spraying through the hot glue leavings since I've had past experience with hot glue stencil fun.
Not a fabulous result of circle detail, but fun backgrounds for cards.
Just one more photo of my flowers :-)
Hope you've had a creative and fun weekend. Talk to you again soon.
