Bee Happy.... Bee Safe

 Hello... So how is ever one doing ?

During lockdown I've been making lots of cards, one of the reasons being that it's a bit tricky to get hold of cards from home, another being that all crochet has been on hold now for quite a while due to me developing Tennis Elbow.

These Bee themed cards were made from a craft kit that came from 'Crafts Beautiful' magazine.

 I used the stamp from the kit

 some black ink and a yellow sharpie marker

 

To decorate some of my own papers

I also had a go at making some shaker cards, I made the one at the top of this post first and adding some cute little seqins to the cards.

Before sealing them up with some decorative tape.

 I used the stamped up papers, by gluing them to a card blanks and adding some cute little bees I found in my stash then a scattering of the sequins for some sparkle.

All the other slogans and cute scrabble tiles came in the little kit.

I think I like the rainbow one the best. 

I hope you are all keeping well?

Bee Happy and please Bee safe

Clare xx

Patchwork February

Hello.......... As ever I'm running behind with my patchwork post here's February in review.

A month mostly spent getting things finished off for the Craft Club exhibition, I did finally get to grips with my sewing machine, only two years on from when I bought it. !!! A little bit of art too, plus lots of pacing and resting up, I also finished a course of antivirals, which fingers crossed helped my energy levels improve a little until I finished them and crashed back down,  so we're going to try them for another month, thankfully with time the nasty side effects seem to be easing.

Out in the garden the bulbs were waking up and until the frost got them last summers geraniums were still going strong, we even still have strawberries growing.

After a year of planning and making our local crafts clubs exhibition went up in the local library, as you can see, there are a wide variety of crafts on display, crochet, sewing, painting and jewellery to name a few.

Here's a closer look at our group project that represents the seasons.

Well that about sums up February, crafting, resting up, eating clean with a bit of art thrown into the mix, some new crafts too in the form of paper cutting and machine sewing.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Five on a Friday - Lately

 Hello.......... Today I'm going to be joining in again with Amy's Five on a Friday link up, where I'm going to be sharing five things that have been going on lately, here at the Summerhouse.

The Summerhouse had been getting Spring ready with pretty Primroses and Polyanthus, I've never seen pastel pink Primroses before and just had to have some for the window boxes, mixing them in with white and these gorgeous purple ones.

A big thank you to my lovely sister for texting me a photo when she spotted them in the garden centre and kindly getting them and delivering them to me.

Lately I've been playing around with fabrics, after my Sewing machine starter course a few weeks ago I just couldn't wait to get started, they'll be a post all about this make soon.

As always there has been a little bit of crochet too, I'm really hoping to get my Seaside Pebble Cosy blanket finished sometime this Spring. I'll share a colour order update very soon.

Now as for all those crochet ends well I've been saving them up for about a year, to do a little experiment, I'm not sure if this is going to work, but I've put them into a bird feeder and I'm hoping the birds will use them for nesting materials.  I have no idea if this will work or not but I love the idea of the birds knitting there nests from my left over ends.

Last but not least, it's a yay for new craft materials, I couldn't resist this book and some merino when I spotted it on Amazon the other day, I'm looking forward to having a go at making some felt fairies, fingers crossed it's not to tricky.  So hopefully sometime soon, there will be a 'Something New' post all about my felt fairy adventures, I'm loving my new years resolution to try new crafts.

Well that's about it for now, have a fabulous weekend

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Pour Maman

Hello......... This Sunday here in the UK it's Mothers Day and I really have huge amount to thank my lovely Mum for, she has been there and cared for my sister and I all our lives as most Mum's do, but since the age of 14 when I developed what we then thought was ME, she has had to do so very much, looking after me throughout my illness. Seeing her child go from being perfectly healthy one minute to being severely effected, through relapses and hospital appointments, seeing the day to day effects and hardships of living with Chronic illness and the effect that has on all the family.

For over twenty five years now she has been both Mum, friend and carer to me.  So she deserved to be spoilt so much Mothers Day.

So for all that and more, a card from the shop was just not going to be enough to say thank you.

So this week I've been assembling a butterfly, it's from the same kit I used here, I made it the same way layering up the pieces with form pads to make a 3D effect Butterfly.

Then using a white a card blank with a port hole at the front (I'm sure they have a proper craft name) but my foggy brain can't think of it at the mo.  I started adding some pretty mulberry paper flowers.

The plan was to cover the entire circle with a ring of flowers, but I just didn't have enough, so in the end I added in some sequin leaves, I also removed some of the the cream flower centres and replaced them with a bit of sparkle.

Then it was time to raid my stash for a suitable piece of backing paper, I tried spots

and varying

stripes but it just wasn't working out.

In the end I opted for a simple pastel blue piece which I glued into place, on the backing card.

All ready to add the butterfly 

Talking of which, after I'd added some pearls to the wings I gently folded the butterfly so the wings were slightly bent as if it had just landed on the card.

Before attaching it to the card with some form pads.

 Ta-Dah

 

It's a good job I won't have to pop it in the post as I think I'm going to struggle with the envelope, fingers crossed she'll like it, so that's part one of operartion mothers day complete

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Layered Butterfly Card

Hello........ Today I thought I'd share with you this pretty little flutterby card.

The butterfly came as part of a kit, that I recieved as a Christmas gift, which had sheets of coloured card and also a sheet of pre cut butterflies.

So it was just a case of popping out the pieces and building up in layers to make a 3d butterfly.

It was a bit fiddly as some of the pieces were so tiny that I had to cut the smallest 5mm foam pads I had in half,

The flowers for the wings were much easier

Just a bit of peeling and sticking

Until my three layered butterfly was almost complete

Well you know me I couldn't resist adding a bit of sparkle.

Ta-Dah

Then I just added some lilac polka dot paper to the bottom of a card blank

before sticking the butterfly in place

and adding a pretty green ribbon

Ta-Dah

One butterfly birthday card.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx

Patchwork October

It's patchwork time again....

October was a mixed month here at the Summerhouse my health has taken a quite a nosedive so I've been struggling lots over the last few weeks, we also lost out lovely Dylan, who used to make life so much better, with his funny antics and cuddles.  Not a awful lot of crafting really but I did finished off my ice cream cushion, plus make some cards, as well as some top secret Christmas crafting. 

There has been lots of thinking and planning to do though, about a exciting project.  As some of you know I'm a folk singer/song writer and the plan was that this November I was going into the studio to record a EP.  Very exciting, so over the past few weeks I've been trying to select which songs to record, which is quite a tricky business, decisions decisions.  Sadly with my health in a full on flare, the recording date has had to be postponed at the moment as I'm struggling to even lift the guitar, but at least that gives me more time to decide on the songs.   So I'll keep you posted just need to get my joint pain under control and find some energy.

Out in the Summerhouse garden there is still lots of colour to be seen, as the Autumn so far has been so mild, yippee!!

Over on Instagram the month of October looked something like this, you can find my instagram page 'here'

So a sad farewell to our lovely crafting assistant, I'm really missing Dylan, it's so strange to have a house without any fur people in, since I was eight year old there has always been a cat or two around so losing both Merlin and Dylan in the last six months has been very hard.  They both lived good lives to grand old ages but are surely missed around the Summerhouse.

Now as for the Blog award and paying it forward, I've not forgotten, but I've just not been well enough to do it, I think this time reluctantly  I have decided not to forward on the award.  I'm just feeling too ill to cope with anything much at the moment.  So a big thank you to Sharon for nominating me and a bigger sorry for not being able to pay it forward.

Pesky Chronic illness, I'm hoping things will start to improve again soon for me as the dosage of my Lyme disease medication has been put back up. It was reduced on a consultants say so a couple of months ago, as the NHS would have you believe that there is no such things as Chronic Lyme disease and that it certainly doesn't need treatment. However my health falling to pieces seems to suggest it does exist (or least that I'm fighting some sort of infection that is effecting every part of my body and that this is not purely ME/CFS)   the treatment I was receiving before was at least holding it at bay.

Happy Crafting

Clare xx