Ripples…

One of my interests is crocheting. Earlier this year I came across Lucy’s blog, Attic 24. What a talented lady she is! She spends hours, getting inspiration, researching and designing patterns and then making the most beautiful things…blankets, cushions, mandala wheels and more.

Lucy, is then generous enough to share and allow us to use her patterns. How good is that?  I get to have the pleasure of crocheting, without sweating over the design, especially when she mentioned the maths involved…aaagghh!! Thank you, Lucy!!!

When I was in the UK recently, I ordered some yarn and started on Lucy’s Moorland Stripe Blanket.  I left the work-in-progress (WIP) in the UK and will continue with it when I return for another visit May. It helps to have unsuspecting family there, to clutter up their cupboards with my work 🙂

Anyhow, I got home and immediately felt the need to go out and buy some yarn to start another pattern that I had been admiring.

Such yummy colours! This is what I have started…

Can you see it in the background? Okay…enough teasing. It’s going to be a lap/baby blanket in the Ripple pattern found on Attic 24.

Here are the first 10 stripes of colour…2 rows per stripe = 20 rows.

I have not decided in which order I am going to do the colours. I don’t want to repeat these rows. I prefer to do them in a random order. Now that is going to take some thinking!!

WIP…

I have used Elle Pullskein DK yarns, which are made here in South Africa.

If you like the pattern, do go over to Lucy’s site and find the instructions there. Make sure you have plenty of time and are sitting down with a cup of coffee when you visit Attic 24! It is very easy to get sidetracked visiting all her pages 🙂

I have to confess…I have an eye on her latest design. I can see that I will have a lot of UFOs around my house if I don’t take care.

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Painting – Wine Bottle

A couple of weeks ago I went to the North Coast Art Group meeting, where the guest speaker was Heidi Shedlock. Heidi is an artist and she talked about her daily paintings and what started her on that particular journey. To read her story and see her wonderful paintings please visit her blog Paintings In The Post. She is a dynamic and inspiring speaker.  She also, in the time at the meeting, pretty much completed a painting! Amazing…I am soooo slow when I work! Anyway, I was so inspired that I went home and did this little painting the following day.

Wine Bottle – 7″x5″ oil on primed canvas panel

I can tell you how I am not happy with so many aspects of this painting, but…I am learning and I have to look at the parts that please me. I have to know that I will have successes and I will have even more failures…it is a process. Most importantly, I enjoyed doing the painting 🙂

TT Strawberry…

No “Post A Day” yesterday…I could not get online because our internet connection was playing up 😦

The theme for this week’s Tag Tuesday is “Strawberry”.  Not having anything strawberry-like, I visited The Graphic Fairy’s site and found a picture of a strawberry. I resized the picture, duplicated it (twice!), “painted” the background green, placed the pictures, then added an “S”. I then printed out two smaller pictures, cut them out and mounted on the tag. Added a green gauze ribbon and, voila, this is my tag…

TT The Deep…

Two Tag Tuesday posts in one week – wow! That is only because I posted one late and this one is not so late 🙂  The theme for this week’s challenge is “The Deep” i.e. anything that is found under the sea.

I lived on a tropical island, Mauritius, for 10 years and so blue, green, turquoise are the colours that spring to mind when I think of the sea there. When one went snorkelling one could see fish in lots of beautiful colours. The coral, funnily enough was not as bright as one would imagine. I read somewhere, that the coral in cold waters tends to be more colourful than the coral in warm waters.

For this tag, I used a background stamp of an underwater scene, using an inkpad containing lavender, blue, aqua, mint and turquoise. I embossed this with a blue pearl embossing powder. The fish and seahorses were stamped, embossed, cut out and mounted onto the background. At the bottom I glued on the coloured stones. After trying different colour ribbons I decided that the yellow one “tied” it all together.

On that note, here is my little tag…

As usual, please go to Rebecca’s site and have a look at the other entries.

Postcards…

The last week has not been a good one, health-wise again! I had another bout of malaria. Actually, I am not sure if it was a new infection or if the first lot of treatment did not work. In addition to that I have also had to have root canal treatment and on Wednesday I was feeling rather battered and bruised 😦

Anyway, all these woes led to my feeling totally uninspired about doing any photography or crafting. Finally got down to making a tag for Louise’s challenge this week. The theme is “Postcards”. Yay…I actually have some postcard related papers in my stock. I included a face on the tag. After all, what are postcards for, but to send them to someone.

This little tag was soooo difficult to photograph. I tried it indoors and I tried it outside and still it did not come out nicely. I must say it is a gloomy day, blah light and raining.

Postcard tag…

TT Friends…

Louise’s Tag Tuesday challenge this week is “Friends”. As usual, I sweated and toiled, only to come up with yet another simple tag.

This tag is in the form a a small gift card. A friend has asked me to make some gift tags for her shop, so I started with this one.

Can you believe…I do not have a “Friend/s” stamp! I live in a country where I have not found a shop that sells stamping supplies, so I cannot pop out and buy such a stamp. Before anyone suggests that I start up such a business, I can tell you that I do not have the stamina or patience to deal with the…ummm…shall I call it bureaucracy here! Neither do I order things online to be delivered here, because there is a strong likelihood that they would disappear before I could get them. That, or either I would have huge hassles with import duties etc. Nah…it is simpler for me to wait until I go to the UK or South Africa to look for supplies. I guess the upside of all this is that I have to use what I already have or improvise.

Anyway, the stamps I used were:

Teddy Hug – Stamp Africa

Soft Knit Tweed Print – Hero Arts. I used that for the background with the Teddies.

Writing Stamp – Tin Can Mail – used for the general background.

Inks – Green and Laurel Leaf by Versa Color.

I was going to write “friends’ inside the card, but decided to leave the inside blank, but hopefully this tag will qualify for the “Friends” challenge. I think these little teddies look as if they are friends , don’t you 🙂

Monday Stitching…

On Mondays I usually go to a Stitching group and this morning was the first time I managed to attend since last year. The stitching activities are varied including quilting, embroidery, knitting and cross-stitching, to name a few. We all work on whatever project we are doing at the time. When we are lacking motivation, inspiration or knowledge there is always someone to help out and I must say that having gone to the group this morning, it has definitely inspired me to get one of my projects out to work on.

Of course, there are mornings that more talking gets done than stitching, but that is the fun of the morning.

As usual, I was very disorganised before I left home. I got to the group, only to find that I had left my threads at home…ho hum…what to do??? Well, I got out my camera and took a couple of photos. At least I had my camera with me! The photos are rather “noisy”, due to having used a high ISO.

Quilting underway…

TT Tag on a Tag…

It’s another Kard Krazy challenge and this week Louise’s challenge is to make a tag  and include another tag on it.

This tag involved a lot of cutting and glueing, resulting in sticky fingers! I decided to go with earthy, natural tones. I have gone totally blank on the name of the “stuff” I used for the background. The best way I can describe it is as a papery/strawy kind of thing. Hmmm…that is as clear as mud! I am having to keep it away from my computer as it is shedding all over the place. Anyway, the triangles were cut out of handmade paper using two different colours and glued onto to darker background. The green odd-shaped buttony things give it a little bit of extra colour and zing, that is, to my eyes 🙂 I hope the 2nd tag is visible to you…it is at the top along with a piece of rafia.

He he…I had added a bow again, just as I did for the last tag 🙂

As always do go and have a look at the other beautiful entries.

Cards…

Today has been a productive day for me – yay! I finally got through mounds of filing – that is such a boring job and one easily put off. Every time I leave it for so long I swear that I will keep up with it on a regular basis – hah!

Well, I was feeling rather virtuous about my work and thought I deserved a treat. So I decided to put some of my photos to use (a good one,  I hope!) and printed some to use as cards.

About 15 minutes ago my beloved (says she through gritted teeth) came and dumped more papers for filing on my desk – grrr!

Cards…

TT Circles…

Finally…I have managed to make a tag to take part in Louise’s Tag Tuesday challenge. This week’s theme is “Circles”. Easy…you say? Well, as usual, I did not find it easy. but then that is the point of a challenge – to stretch one. My tags always look so pathetic when I compare them to the other beautiful ones that the very talented people out there make.

After having tried a couple of tags, I decided this was the one that pleased my eye the best. I worked mainly in lilac tones. The colours do not come out as well in the photo. The darker circles are not red, they are more mauve…

However, there was still something missing. When I tried to put a ribbon to make a little hanging bit, it just did not look right. Then, looking through the photos of the first one, I felt that a little bow (as pictured below) would finish it off.

The end product…

Go over to Kard Krazy and have a look at the other entries for this week’s challenge.