Ceramic Painting Ta-Dah

Hello........... I'm back with part two of my Birthday yarn bowl adventure. I can't tell how excited we were to see how our makes turned out.

We went here for our ceramic painting afternoon and it was so much fun, the lady who runs the place was sooo helpful.

So are you ready for a closer look, I love how the sky blue came out and the little blossoms

The Butterflies look OK too, I was a little worried they might not have turned out so well, so I'm  happy with them, I've not go the steadiest of hands.

The inside of bowl is the perfect Spring time mix of blue skies and clouds and I love the little blossom flowers around the inside of the bowl.

Around the outside of the bowl there are three set of cherry blossom Sprigs

Ta-Dah

It's coming in so handy as balls of yarn were forever falling off the bed before.

Here's some of the other makes, I think they all turned out just fabulous, plus we all tried a new craft.

As for me I'm very happy with my new yarn bowl and I'm putting it to good use. I'm also looking forward to going back to the Cermaics Cafe again.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Ceramic Painting : part one

Hello............. How have you been, sorry long time, no post, just struggling with my health lately, but today I have a very exciting birthday post to share with you, yes back in April some friends and I went off to a local Ceramics Cafe for a afternoon of craft,cake and tea.

After a bit of tuition about the paints and pottery from the lady who runs the cafe, we all set to work.  

You know me I just couldn't resist having a go at decorating a yarn bowl, probably not the easiest option for my first visit to the cafe, but hey ho

 I was thinking blue skies, cherry blossom and butterflies, for my design, and painted a little watercolour at home a few days before we went.

Now I did find it a bit tricky drawing my design onto the bowl, I really should have gone with a flat surface, but luckily you can use pencil and do some rubbing out on the pre fired bisque, once I had drawn my design on and before getting painty it was time for..........

some yummy cake and a cuppa

Here we all are, getting arty, I can tell you it was pretty quiet with all that concentrating, as we were all new to this pottery painting malarkey.

 I did find the paints a little confuggling at first with my foggy brain as they come out a different colours when fired but I soon got the hang of it.  First up I sponged sky blue over my bowl before painting in the cherry blossom and butterflies

You have to give each bit three coats of paint and in the excitment of it all I was a little worried I might have missed some bits.

Fingers crossed it comes out OK when it's been glazed and fired eek.

Here's what my lovely friends created, we all really want to go back again, although I did find it really tiring it was just so much fun.

 I promise I won't make you wait too long for the ta- dah post, we had to wait just under a week with the bank holiday but it was so exciting waiting to see how everything would turn out.

Happy Crafting 

Clare xx

April Catch Up

Hello.......... Long time no speakie, things have been running a bit slower here at the summerhouse, so I thought I'd do a bit of a catch post for April.

Earlier in the month there was some patchwork and I used my whizzy rotary cutter for the first time, 

a friend and I decided to have a attempt at some patchwork more of a quilting line than a circle seeing as it was just the two of us.

Things didn't exactly go to plan as you can see but I guess it's a start.

I've also been having a pretty bad time of it with my health and have been stuck in bed most of the time, just no energy, which is really rubbish, I'm just trying to take things as slow as possible and hope I improve soon.

There has of course been a bit of crochet, I'm working on my Springtime throw again, easy squares for my foggy brain, it's slow going though since Saturday I've manged to make only three as my pain levels are high and my energy so low.

So still a long way to go.........

I've been doing a little gentle colouring too, with water colour pencils,

Sadly I was feeling pretty rubbish for my birthday this year and probably should have cancelled, (judging by how ill I've been over the last week,) but I so wanted to go to a local ceramics cafe with some friends for a afternoon of crafty fun.

I'm glad I went, as you can probably guess mines the yarn bowl, I can wait to see how they turn out after they have been glazed and fired.

Sorry I've not be able to keep up with all you're blogs

Happy Crafting

Clare xxx

Festival Bunting

Hello........ Sorry I've not been around I've been struggling with my health and trying to rest up for, then recover from a appointment I had on Wednesday.

So onto the bunting, at the beginning of April a musician friend of mine had a birthday, so I decided to make some festival bunting as gift, so they can decorate there massive bell tent when they go to festivals. The idea for this came when I spotted this musical fabric when I went for my Sewing machine lesson back in February.

So I cut out some bunting pennants using pinking shears

and used Bondaweb to fuses two pieces together to make my flags, as well as the musical fabric I also added some orange 

and golden gingham to the mix to help balance up the colours.

Now you see I'm a bit rubbish at maths but knew I needed quite a lot of bunting, so in the end I just used all that was left on this reel bias binding, I previously used this binding to make some seaside bunting .here

Cutting the binding into two equal strips I ended up with about a nine metres length for my bunting.

9 metres!!! 

now that's a lot of pinning and sewing, I pinned the pennants in place under the binding in groups of about six before

getting busy with the sewing machine, then pinning the next lot and so on......

It took a while (we're talking days, with my limited crafting time) to sew it all together, after the flags were all stitched to the bias binding I then put another piece over the top and stitched back along lenght until....

Ta-Dah

I had bunting that looked like this.

The next problem was how take you photograph of bunting that is this long, well in the end  'P' kindly hung it in the tree for a bit of a photo shoot.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Butterfly Birthdays

Hello........... Just a quick card making post for today, more butterflies they do seem to be a bit of a theme for me this year.

These were a couple of cards I made for friends birthdays recently, using some pretty butterfly attachments I received for Christmas. Using cream and blue card blanks I added the butterflies and a  paper border

some pretty ribbon,

not forgetting a bit of added sparkle

Ta-Dah

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Patchwork March

Hello............. Here's my March round up.

Lots of Yarny goodness and some new crafts too, eating clean and some music, I've been trying to learn a old time fiddle tune each week on the mandolin, with my brain fog and playing just a few minutes a day it's hard to get them to stick, so one a weeks about my limit at the moment.

Spring time out in the garden is so very pretty I love this time a year, the Easter bunny very kindly left me some lovely Viola's I just love how they look like they are painted with watercolour, lots else going on too with Polyanthus and lots of spring bulbs.

Here are  a couple of patchworks I shared to sum up the month of March over on Instagram

Well that's about it for March, sorry I've not been about too much lately I've been struggling a lot with dizziness I'm like a human weeble, (except sometimes I do fall down).  Thanks for all the lovely comments on my last few posts, I read them all, sorry I'm just not well enough to respond to them at the moment.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx