The Summerhouse by the sea: Fabric painting

Hello......... I wasn't planning on doing a year in review post, this year as well I didn't think there would be a awful lot to share, 2016 was not so great here at the Summerhouse I spent most of the year trying to recover from a relapse of my ME/Lyme disease that hit in the Autumn 2015.

So instead of a general review I thought it might be good to just focus on the fun stuff and look back on all the crafts, so this is going to be a happy little post.

Over the past week I've been putting together 12 colourful crafty mosaics, enjoying seeing the colours change throughout the year with the different makes but all in a way still linked by the same colour palette I always seem drawn to here at the Summerhouse.

You see she maybe a bit old and shabby but magical crafty things happen inside this grand old lady, who is known affectionately around these parts as 'the shed'

I hope you enjoy them.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

So there you have it, a whole year of Summerhouse crafting fun, although I have to admit a great deal of it has take place and been created from my comfy bed.

Here's to 2017.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Thank you for all the kind comments left on my last post, I'm going to try my very best to stick around in blogland, I might not be able to post as often as I'd like to and I'm sorry I probably won't be able to make it round to visit all you're lovely blogs but as always I'm going to keep trying.

Hello .......... I'm finally back with a crafty post and something new as well, yesterday at craft club we tried fabric painting.

Luckily I already had this wonderful stencil at home so when I found out we were going to be trying fabric paints, I just couldn't resist taking my elephant stencil along.

As this is a new craft for me I had a bit of a test run, which was a good idea as my first attempt ended up with this jelly ellie phant, not quite what I was hoping for.

So I tried again with the purple this time using a foam dabber instead of a paint brush, but the outcome was not much better. You see it turns out that not all fabric paints are created equal, so I tried a different brand and things turned out a little better.

So it was time to put the calico away and be brave and attempt to paint on a bag.

I had no need to worry, as the thicker texture of the recycled cotton bag took the fabric paint much better, yippee I was so pleased with the result when I peeled back the stencil. All I needed to do now was make my Ellie a little friend .........

As you can see our little group created quite a lot of craftermath in the process of making some pretty bags, of the completed ones so far was have butterflies, ladybirds and my little elephants with other bags to come.

Ta-Dah

Here they are, I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and I love love love that blue. It felt so good to get my craft on and try something new. All I have to do now is wait three days before running the iron over to set the paint and make it water proof.