Handmade Christmas Cards

 A few hand made Christmas cards -  once again I forgot while making them that adding 3D embellishment makes the cards a lot thicker to go through the post!

Some detailed shots...

Knitting Patterns and WOYWW

 Happy New Year! 

Not much to show and here's why...

  

After Christmas, instead of squishing the Christmas boxes back into the eaves that run along the length of our house I decided I could reduce everything by half and give myself some room to move!  I emptied everything into my studio - lots of large memory boxes, trunks and old suitcases stuffed with memorabilia from in-laws to Great grandparents! And behind all that a huge collection of paintings by my mother and her father, probably 50% of them unfinished!  I can see my desk across the workroom but can't actually get to it!  The dining table downstairs is loaded with boxes being unpacked, 'halved' and re-packed. I obviously come from a long line of hoarders!   

It has been an emotional roller coaster, a few of the boxes haven't been opened for years. I came across this old knitting pattern and small Sindy doll coat that I made with my Grandmother's help (or maybe she made it with a little help from me!) - I'd forgotten all about it but it has evoked such happy memories of her teaching me how to knit and crochet.

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

 

Christmas and WOYWW

 This week has been void of crafty stuff I'm afraid.  Both of us have been fighting a bug of some kind (not Covid) and are now thankfully feeling much better, but it meant there was no enthusiasm or energy for pretty much anything!

So here's a festive photo and a lot of warm wishes to everyone to have a happy and peaceful Christmas - stay safe and well. 

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW

Christmas Preparations

 It finally happened last week - I was wondering when I'd feel the panic coming on and sure enough I went to bed last Tuesday feeling fine and woke up last Wednesday hardly able to believe I was half way through December and nothing had been done.

Consequently the following 5 days were spent planning and making Christmas cards, gift boxes and tags, putting up the trees and decorations and Christmas shopping (the safer way, on the internet!).

I am confident my nephews and brother-in-law will not be looking at my blog any time soon - in fact, I'm not sure they even know I have one, so I'm safe to show the gift boxes I made for their cash and gift cards.

And now the boxes are sitting on my desk waiting to be filled and the cards are nearly all written.  

Gosh, that feels good!

 

 

I am linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week. 

 

Collage - Image Pairings

In between making a small handful of Christmas cards this week I've continued with Challenge 6 in the Collage Workbook, which is called Image Pairings - to cut an image in half and use each half in a separate and distinctly different collage.

I chose the image of the birds hovering over the sea, and found the collages weren't as distinctly different as I had imagined they would be!  However, it was an enjoyable little project.

Together you can see the continuation of the main picture.

I have also been playing about with some more collages - not quite in the order of the book but I suddenly had an idea and had to act on it!  This one is about peeling back the layers to reveal what's underneath - quite a messy process!

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

Colour Plunge Collage!

 I've been working on challenge 5 - Colour Plunge - in Randel Plowman's Collage Workbook this week and the prompt is to make a (mostly) monochromatic collage.  I couldn't decide on which colour so ended up doing several and will probably do some more as I'm enjoying these a lot!

 

Just as I was about to pack up and tidy everything away yesterday evening I remembered to take a desk shot - several things are out of shot so it's actually messier than it looks - add a pair of scissors, a steel rule and another two punches!   

I am linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

Colour Charge Collage!

I'm still working my way through Randel Plowman's Collage Workbook and challenge 4 is called Colour Charge   - add a colour to a black and white collage. 

 For this collage I used Fluid Acrylic in my favourite colour of Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold.

Piled up by my desk are a bundle of old magazines a very thoughtful friend has been passing on to me, so today's task will be be browsing through them for images for my next collages.   

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW

Collage - Black to White

 I'm continuing my collage journey and using prompts from Randel Plowman's The Collage Workbook.  

Challenge 3 is using shades of black to white.  I collected so many scraps I had more than enough to make two collages, although I think I prefer the top one.

I also made another white collage (you can see my previous white collage here).

I made it alongside last week's white collage but it really wasn't working for me. So before finally binning it I played around with it and added some buttons and somehow it seemed to work and bring it all together. 

And finally, I printed off some textures for a future collage and this is how my desk looked last night.  I grabbed a quick photo before tackling the roller and glass plate - the one job I don't like doing when I've been printing!

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.