The New Year and Some Pretty Embroidery

Ahh it has been soooo long. To cut a long story short I got caught up in a new job- I am now teaching English as a foreign language at uni. I did not stop being creative, but I did stop blogging about it. I posted a bit on instagram and FB but really got quite irritated that I did not write here. For 2016 I am going to try to be better. I have set myself some creative objectives and I am going to try to stick to them...!

Someone I have recently discovered is Dottie Angel, I know I am mega behind...! I remember spotting a feature on her in Mollie Makes a few years back but I was very distracted by uni and it zapped all my creative spirit. Having then rediscovered her, I was hugely inspired by her "woolley tattoos" and just had to have a go. 

Dottie Angel Mittens

I was so smittened with Dottie's smittened mittens that I decided I must too embroider prettiness upon knitted things. But when I did mine I had not read this blog post (linked above) just stared at various instagram pics and sorta just made it up.

Both are found on her instagram.

So I just had to have a go. And I did. I just made it up.

First I needed a junper, two days after I decided this I walked into a street market and found an unwanted French Connection, vaguely fair isle cardi. I had three euros in my pocket so I offered the French old lady my 3e in exchange for the rather to big cardi (so she thought) and took him home.

From my instagram

Now, I have a confession. I can't knit, and at the time of starting this I could not crochet either (I can kinda crochet now, albeit totally askew). So I shared my woolley plans avec ma mere and persuaded her perfect knitting paws to knit me two pockets for me to then attempt to flower. 

I had no practice, no plan, no technique. I just went for it. Look what happened....!

In a rather daft and scatty manner, I stitched the pockets to the cardi before prettying them up, but as I wore it in between attacks with wool, it worked out for the best. 

Dungarees and a good comfy knit.

S

Pocket close up

Then one morning on my way to work I grabbed a perfectly fitting dark grey woolly cardi off my housemate's reject pile, it wasn't until a few hours later I realized it was riddled with nibbles. *Sniff* So over xmas I resolved to give him a new lease of life. It is an on-going WIP as I keep finding more holes. The battle against the winged ones is still on... But he is looking good so far I think.

Very nibbled arrm. 

Two flowers and two buds and a lone bee.

Itty bitty bee

So far I have only stitched where there are holes, and I have not yet covered them all up, but I am slowly winning this woolly war. I might have to do some evening out too??? Not sure....

I think maybe I would have had more success reading about what Dottie did first but then maybe I would not have had so much fun. Mine was zero stress, lets see what happens, oh dear it looks a bit weird, lets add some leaves instead. I think the secret it layering, and just add another colour or layer to the flower.... Or sit back and go make a cup of tea then look at it again. Or ask another human bean, "does this look totally nuts and weird or ok" to which hopefully you will get the answer "it looks like something you would wear". Maybe a bit nuts then.

Gold RImmed Stamped Clay Bowls

I saw this blog over on pinterest for stamped clay bowls and really loved the idea, I also needed to make something for a belated mother's day present for when I head back to the UK in the Easter hols. So I thought this would be perfect. But in my normal haphazard style, mine are of course far from the perfection of Gathering Beauty's bowls. But I still love them and think my mother will too.

WHAT YOU NEED

Air Dry Clay

A Stamp of Some Kind (mine was a clear plastic one but you can use wooden mounted rubber ones too, they can also be any size, you will just need to stamp more).

Ink

Gold Cermamic Paint

Rolling Pin

Knife

Sandpaper

Paintbrush

White Spirit

First of all I made a mount for my stamp because I did not have one of those plastic blocks big enough, and I was trying to do this on the cheap.

You can see it here inked up and ready to go.

Then get a chunk of clay, knead it then roll it out until the desired thickness.

There are two ways of going about the next bit, either you can stamp the rolled out clay, or you can cut it to shape first then stamp it. I found doing it the first way (as the other blog did), meant that I had scraps of clay with ink on it, thus making it more or less useless to use again. So I decided it was better to cut it to size first.

So put a bowl over it that is the desired size and cut around with a knife.

Voila!

Now stamp it. Remember to ink up your stamp thoroughly each time and apply equal pressure.

You will then have a stamped disk, as you can see my ain't perfect (but it is part of the charm!)

Then press it carefully into a bowl. Do this evenly and gradually to avoid distorting the pattern.

Keep going until you use all your clay and all your bowls!

You then need to leave them to dry, I did this before work and by the time I came home (7 hours later in my very warm apartment) they were ready to turn out.

If you look carefully on this one you can see the rim is whiter where it is dry and the rest is still grey. It is not quite ready to be turned out.

This is how they looked when I left them to dry over night.

Once totally dry (about 24hours later) I gave them all a good sanding and evened out the rims as much as I felt like.

See, Much neater.

I then painted all their rims gold.

Some of them however had traces of blue ink on the bottom so I thought I would paint some of the bottoms gold too. Also as I am giving them as presents in sets of two, I thought this would make it more exciting!

Two coats later and I am done.

I am quite happy with how they turned out and will deff do this again. It was good fun and fairly cheap. And I think they look beautiful!

Next time I would like to get another stamp and colour to mix it up a bit. I nearly went with another colour because this is the same as the colour Gathering Beauty used, but its also the colour of my current bed and future bedroom AND my other choices of red or purple would not have been as appreciated by the intended recipients. Choosing another colour purely to be different seemed more daft than using the same! But if it had been just for me I would have done red for sure. 

Here is a pretty song

Up-cycling a Vintage Suitcase: The Grand Battle

So I have never re-done a suitcase before, I have never even used a glue gun, it was one huge experiment that went pretty well I think!

About a fortnight ago I was walking to work in zombie mode, really not feeling it, having one of those kind of days, y'know, just bad. When I happened upon a pile of rejected stuff, suitcase stuff. Now I must admit I have a massive thing for old luggage, to the point where back home in England I have several finds from car boots still hanging out in storage (at one point I was banned from collecting any more....). My pride is a steamer trunk (£15 on ebay, a steal!). So, of course, I had a root through and found a lovely little suitcase (it is in the pic on the right not the left). Sadly all the others were beyond hope, otherwise the doctors bag would have been taken too. But frankly it stank and was kinda filthy so I had to rush to the store to buy some bin bags so that I did not dirty up the rather nice apartment I was working in that afternoon.

I just want to say it REALLY smelt. Carrying it home I was acutely aware of it. So I stuck it on top of the washer in the bathroom and plotted my next move (whilst my two roommates febreezed the hell out of the bathroom at regular fifteen minute intervals. I am not going to detail the ins and outs of the war, but lets just say it was A WAR. I can only assume the white stuff on it was mold....

In brief the onslaught went as follows:

1.Wiped the outside thoroughly with warm water with washing up liquid and French Ariel equivalent.

2. Had a go at the inside with it.

3. More febreeze than is possibly required.

Momentarily thought I had conquered it OH NO. Ten min later it came back through the febreeze.

4. Washed it again with stronger solution, more thoroughly then left it to dry for 24hours in a really warm room.

5. Still bad, it is suggested I use lemon juice, so I dilute some lemon juice and tree oil (because the latter is anti-bacterial) in a spray bottle and blitz the inside. Blitzed the inside with the solution and left to dry. This was a miracle- it halved the smell.

6. Repeated miracle step.

7. Read that cat litter helps, persuade a friend to give me some kitty litter, throw it in, close it up and leave it for a week. 

At this point it had been kicked out the bathroom on the grounds of being an annoyance, both in location and smell. Despite my claims of it being way better than upon its arrival.

I lived with it for a week, kinda got used to the smell, started coughing more, got paranoid it was the case, but by this point we had bonded... So I decided to gut it.

It did not look great. 

Gutting the top was hard because it had a pocket, so whereas for the bottom half I just ripped it out, for the top I had to attack with a craft knife. It felt GOOD. As I had been contemplating the drastic move over the weekend prior, I had popped to Ikea on our free Ikea bus (so happy to discover we have a free Ikea bus!), and bought some rather lovely entomological themed fabric for 5E a meter.

I was not prepared for how fiddly this was....

I measured the inside panels and drew out one huge panel that was the two long interior sides and the base, plus the two sides and cut these out to put aside.

I initially thought I would trace around the panel inside the lid directly onto the fabric, but when I pulled it away some of the card came with it and I was worried about the structural integrity of the inside, so instead I dug out some cardboard Amazon packaging and made a template from the original panel onto that.

I forgot to take a photo here, after I had cut out my cardboard panel I threw out the original rather gross one and stuck the fabric on with my brand new glue gun, pulling it taught as I went.

Then by hand I stitched up the lining for the bottom. It took a while....

Me making sure the side panels were level.

Then I placed it all in to see if it fit, it did. So then I started gluing.... HAHA It was messy.

I did the top first which was easy, glue and then press it in. The bottom was, uh, not so easy.

So I pegged the bits of leather that used to be attached to the lid out the way, then pinned part of the lining excess to the top edge of the suitcase- this was so I had something to work against. I started with the top right corner and glued that in place and then gradually worked around, taking special care with the corners.

Demonstrating the use of my new gun. (Or more helpfully doing a corner).

I found when it came to doing the top seam it was just fiddly and there was no way of escaping it. It helped to peg bits in place so I had something to work against, but no matter what this seemed to be a pain. I just took it bit by bit, putting hot glue on the suitcase and pressing the fabric in, then moving along, until I had done the whole thing.

Et voila! Fini. Looks good right? 

It wasn't perfect because it was rather warped so the lining isn't totally straight but for a first attempt with little practice at this kind of thing, I am quite proud. And ripping out the inside really helped. Ignore the incense, I will actually fill it with incense now and leave it closed a while longer whilst I ponder exactly what I am going to use it for...

Case closed. Haha. Battle almost over....

I have not quite finished it, I will probably put something on the exterior leather as it doesn't feel great after my attack. But as I am sat here writing this I can't smell the suitcase, so that has to be a good sign. 

Co-habitation may indeed be possible.

Let me know if you have had any suitcase/similar experiences. I am thinking when I finally get my others back I may do them up too...

DIY Christmas Decorations Pt. 1

So this is just going to be a short one, Christmas is nearly here and I wanted to give my friends a homemade present they would appreciate. Being that they are all in fairly new apartments (we are all expats in Paris) and that I have very limited finances, I was a bit stuck. And there is the perpetual problem of just because I like it does not mean THEY will... So after much brain wracking and making several things including these tea light holder (below), I settled on tree decorations.

As you can see the one on the left is much more Christmassy than the other, I was toying with ideas... I will do a tutorial of the tea light jars on the weekend as I have a lot of ideas for these (and I have been saving a lot of jars).

Who knows, maybe they would have preferred up-cycled jam jars now candle holders, but these are new friends and maybe I shouldn't experiment TOO much.

So instead I made TONS of these...

Really simple, I bought air dry clay and cut the shapes out using a glass (I am currently sans cookie cutters- this would have opened a whole host of options I simply did not have this time). Once I had the shape I ran my finger around the edges so soften them then got creative. I searched the cupboards for ANYTHING I could use to make imprints on them. I am lucky in that I live with an eccentric French lady who happened to be out at the time.... 

I mostly used the bottoms of crystal dishes and glasses (yes I know what you are thinking...) and the edges of her silverware. The crimpled edges that you can see clearly on the top two in the right picture were as a result of the bottom of a dish, the more ornate patterns were the same section of silverware I simply pressed my decoration into several times (they looked cute on a few blank ones around the edges).

I then made holes with a nail and stamped in the words. As you can see "Christmas" was too long, so I switched to French...! I tried coloured acid free distress inks on my letters, when they dried the colour was gone. My cheap black was deff best.

I did not even paint them! White and black is classic. I waited for them to dry for 24hours, then flipped them.

Once they were dry I added string. Just rustic ordinary string I had, which I love. This is the only one that remains now that I haven't given away for me to show you... Partly because it was a bad one haha.

After I split them up int sets of six or so. However I then saw my roommates tree and saw how glittery it was, so to make hers extra special, I attacked them with glitter:

The Paris ones did not really work, but I thought its squiffiness would make her laugh. In order for the glitter to stay I coated them PVA first, then glittered, then once dry I coated again in glue (this is all before adding the string).

Et voila! I made tags from recycled xmas paper from last year and some festive paper bags I found in a local craft store. I have already given out two packets and they were well received. I was pleased with the results...

Jam jar candle holders next up I think!