Birthday Card

This is just a really quick post to show you the birthday card I made for one of my closest friends. I gave it to her already, so I won't be spoiling it for her as I know she reads my blogs, <3 you Genie!

Anyway, here is the card I made -

The dress is done in the same way as the snowflake christmas cards I posted about previously, by taking an outline sticker, and filling it in the the scraps from a contrasting colour sticker of the same design. In this instance I chose to leave the flowers on the dress not filled in, as I thought that the gold colour of the backing paper made for prettier details.

I started off by creating the dress, I then cut around it, and cut a slightly larger piece of red shiny paper. I stuck the red paper down first, and then the gold paper with the design on. I then waited for the whole lot to dry, before adding the little happy birthday sticker in the corner. I really like how it turned out, simple and elegant. My friend liked it too :)

That's it for now, S x

Olly Owl Is Finished!

So last night, I decided that I was going to finish my pinflair owl, I may have been up until 2am, but I'm proud that I have finished him, and he now has pride of place on my bookshelf :) This project was one that I didn't really think I would ever get around to finishing, as it was fiddly and repetitive to do, but once I got into it and started making some better progress it became much easier to motivate myself to finish him. By the time I only had the brown sequins left I would set myself little targets, by pouring a number of pins out onto the tray, and then treating myself to a cup of tea or something when all of those pins had been used!

Anyway, here he is, with no naked parts :) -

He is actually very sparkly, especially his beak and toes :) unfortunately my flat is quite dark, especially since it's winter and we're lucky to get 5 hours of daylight here! Slight exaggeration perhaps, but my other half is a doorman and works nights, so our sleeping patterns are a bit wonky. Anyway, point of that rant being, sorry about the rubbish pics! Next time we get a bit of sunlight, I will try to remember to take a picture of him to capture his sparklyness for you to see.

I have just shown my boyfriend the completed owl, and his response was - I had no idea you'd been working on that! - Clearly he has not been paying my blog as much attention as he claims hehehe.

Also, check out my funky nail art on my thumbnail, I'm loving playing around with nail polish at the moment, if you want to see this and the other designs I have tried in more detail, go here- http://myjourneyinnails.blogspot.co.uk/ :) cheeky bit of shameless self promotion.

My next craft projects are going to be a birthday card for a friend (I cannot post this until after giving it to her this friday though, she reads my blogs, love you Genie <3) and some more christmas cards hopefully :)

blog you soon, S x

Olly Owl Progress

I have done a little more of my sequin owl, and he is really taking shape now, here's what he looks like -

 And from a slightly different angle -

I am enjoying this project more now he is looking all shiny and pretty, and whilst it is time consuming, it is actually really easy to sit down and get into it properly if there are less distractions. All of this progress was made in one session, and all that is left to complete Olly the owl is the dark brown sequins to cover the rest of him :)

Hopefully I will soon be blogging about a finished sparkly owl, however I am a little distracted with all of my new nail art supplies that I got in the post today, so it may be a couple of days before I get back to him!

Until next time, S x

Another Owly Project

This owl is still in progress, just thought I would show you all the bits I have done this afternoon. This is a pinflair kit, which just involves pinning sequins onto a polystyrene model to create a sparkly ornament :) I only bought it because of my owl obsession, and he has been sitting in my drawer untouched for months, so I thought I would bring him to Devon with me so I would add some more to him.

This type of project is fiddly and time consuming, but you don't have to think about what you're doing too much so it's great to do while you're watching the TV or something, which is what I have been doing this afternoon.

The owl started today looking like this:

I did this little bit months ago so I thought it was about time to do some more, so I added the light brown sequins around his eyes like this:

Then I added his white chest with the bigger white sequins:

And now Olly Owl looks a lot more like he is taking shape :) so far the eye's have definitely been the most fiddly bit to make, it was difficult to try to get them symmetrical, but I am happy with how they look now.

I will keep you updated about his development!

Will blog you soon, S x

Project in Progress

Just a quick post to share with you one of the (many) projects that are currently in progress. This one is another scarf I am knitting, you can see the first knitted scarf in my previous post Past Projects, here - http://craftingmyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/past-projects.html

This second scarf has also been in progress for more than a year, but I have set myself a target to be finished by Christmas. Not necessarily to give it as a gift, although I may well do, just so I have a target to work towards. Scarves are a rather boring thing to make after a while, so I need that extra bit of motivation!

Here is the scarf as it is now:

 Please excuse the mess in the background! I will get around to cleaning any day now, honest ;-).

This scarf is pretty much the inverse of the first one, even made using the same needles (they are a size 6, which have a diameter of 5mm, this seems to be ideal). This scarf is slightly narrower than the original, being only 40 stitches wide rather than 50 - after seeing the other one finished I decided that I could loose a bit on the width in the hope that it wouldn't take quite as long to make! I have been doing 40 rows in green, followed by 10 rows in the cream colour,using only garter stitch. I will finish this scarf with a few tassels of the cream colour on each end :) When it is done, I will be sure to show you all!

Bye for now, S x

Cross-stitch Mouse and Blackwork Owl

Here are a couple of little projects I have recently completed, I am only posting them now as one of them was a gift I have only recently given :).

This is the blackwork owl, I have named him Horace because of his angry eyebrows! I have a bit of an owl obsession :) It's about the time of year that my infamous owl hat, Monty needs to come out of the cupboard! Anyway, this little blackwork piece was done from a kit that I bought at a stitch craft show last year, he only took me a couple of days to complete, and is currently framed, hanging up in my little living room :)

Horace

The next little piece was originally planned as a card for a friend and her husband congratulating them on the birth of their daughter, but then I decided to frame it and give it to them as something that they can keep instead :) I decided on a design with a mouse, as these friends run a mouse and small animal rescue and rehome operation, I myself have adopted mice from them, 8 in total I think, but unfortunately I have none left, I miss those little critters, full of personality, but my flat now is just too small to accommodate them as well as the bunny and hamster!

Anyway, back to my mousey cross stitch, this is my first attempt at this sort of thing without a kit, using the supplies I bought from amazon (see previous post "supplies") and a book of cross stitch designs. I used 14 count white aida, and a selection of different embroidery flosses. Unfortunately the cheap floss I bought doesn't have a coding system at all that I could tell, so I just had to select the colours I thought would fit best, and I think it turned out ok. The aida was great to work with, no more fraying than any other aida I have used, and the floss didn't fray either, the only drawback was the lack of a coding system, but considering how cheap it was (£15 for 100 skeins) I am very impressed. Here is the finished and framed mousey:

My nail kit has still not arrived yet, I called up the company I ordered it from and they said it should be here early next week, so hopefully soon I shall have another blog up and running following the progress of learning nail skills :) I am so excited for it's arrival, I've been daily checking my emails for a dispatch notice!

Anyway, my dinner is just about ready to come out of the oven - yum! So I will leave you now, with a picture of my bunny rabbit Bert, just 'cos he's awesome :)

Much love, S x

New Arty Idea... Nails?

So, something a little bit different now. I recently signed up for groupon, and some of the offers that have come up have got me thinking about how much I used to love everything nail art related. I used to spend my pocket money on fancy nail art pens and nail decorations, and my idea of a great afternoon with my friends would be when they let me paint tiny butterflies or angled tips on their nails! Even whilst at university I enjoyed helping my housemate with her nails before a night out.

I once told my mum I wanted to be a nail technician, she laughed at me and said no you don't! I tried pursueing a more academic route, but that didn't work out, and I have ended up flitting between jobs I don't like. I enjoy my current job, but even that has its problems! Anyway, I have decided to give this Nail art thing another little go :)

I spent my birthday present money (and some of my own) on a groupon for an online acrylics training course and kit including a training hand that you can just click the completed nails off of when your done! Groupon is awesome, its a £500 deal that I paid £199 for! This course ends with an industry recognized qualification that would allow me to begin practicing as an acrylics nail technician, should I choose to :) However, I am a lot more interested in gel nails, and nail art, so would need to do a couple more courses before I could do the type of work I'm really interested in.

I spent a lot of time uhming and aahing whether I should go for this course, or save up some more and choose a course that covers all the forms of nail enhancements. I ultimately decided on this one as I thought acrylics is pretty much an essential skill for all nail technicians, and I can always build upon that foundation later on, assuming that I even get on with it! I may not even enjoy it that much, but then I've only wasted £200 rather than£800!

Whilst personally I don't think I am really one for huge long fake nails, I really think I would enjoy making them, as they are like mini works of art that the client will be taking with her everywhere. I have spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks watching tutorials on youtube (If you are interested, this channel is brilliant, all of her designs are stunning http://www.youtube.com/naiouk and she talks you through step by step how they have been created) just thinking I reckon I could do that :).

Anyway, my kit and course could take up to 10 days to arrive, so watch this space... If I do end up loving this as much as I think (hope) that I will, there may well be a whole seperate blog for my nail designs, or this one might become over run by nails!

Anyway, I have a couple of little stitched peices that are finished and just waiting to be photographed and uploaded, I will try to get to doing that later on today :)

Until Next Time :) S x

Preperation

So, it may be a little early, but I remember frantically trying to make all my Christmas cards at the last minute a couple of years back and having to post them all first class, so this year I have made a start good and early!

My other half has a friend over and they are having a hardcore gaming session of sorts in the lounge, so I have been hiding out in the bedroon all evening to leave them to it! I settled down in front of an episode of midsomer murders (I'm sounding like such an old lady, I know) got some of my card making bits out, just to see what I would come up with :) I am quite happy with the results thus far, even if I did only get 4 cards made in 5 hours, they are very fiddly, requiring much tweezer work and patience, but the results are rather pleasing. Here are the photo's of what I have made:

Mid way through filling in. 

I am very pleased with the effect of filling in the outline sticker with the scrap inner pieces from a sticker of a contrasting colour. Whilst fiddly and time consuming, the end result is fairly striking :) although I won't have time to make this sort of card for everyone on my Christmas card list for sure!

Here are some examples of cards I have made in previous years, these are decorated with glitter and take a long time to dry, but are fun to make, even if a little bit messy! The edgings are made sprinkling glitter over very thin strips of transparent double sided sticky tape. I have also used punches, in various ways, and used the 'waste' from the punches to add decorations to cards, some with a 3D effect by using 5mm squares of double sided tape to make them stand out. I'm sure I will make some more of these this year, though the clearing up and cleaning of the stamps takes almost as long as making the cards!

These types of cards are very versatile and can easily be personalised, as I have done for a couple of them. Some of them are a little scruffy, but mostly I'm pleased with them, and hope that the people who received them were too. I always think there is something a bit more special about a handmade card, even if they are a little rough around the edges! It's difficult to get these perfect, sometimes the wet glue crinkles the card as it dries, and it is difficult to get an even spread of the glue even with the special tip I have, but they are all certainly one of a kind!

Over the last week I have also completed a couple of small sewing projects, including another little blackwork piece. Pictures of those will follow shortly :)

Catch ya later, S x

Last Weekend

So last weekend was an eventful one for me, but I've been so busy all week with work that this is the first chance I've had to post about it!

So, it all started when I took my car down to Devon to get Dad to have a look at it due to a noisy exhaust. This is my car, I call her Edna -

I bought Edna for £800 off of a dodgy dealer 5 years ago, she has had her problems, but in 5 years she never once broke down, and she never once failed to start. Anyway, turned out the problem with the exhaust was a much bigger job than first thought, so, I now have a new car, courtesy of bank of Dad :) and here she is -

I haven't yet decided what she is called, but I'm thinking Betty is appropriate :) It took a lot of getting used to, having a car that works as it should! But I love it, even if she doesn't have Edna's personality quite yet, she is great fun to drive, very economical, and best of all, only £20 a year to tax!

Anyway, to the point - I was essentially car-less in Devon from Saturday to Tuesday, so I needed a project! And here are some photographs of what I made. It is a little messy, but it was all hand-stitched, as my machine was here in Bristol.

Lining and zip pull

Zip

Pocket

Beaded handles

I didn't have to buy anything to make this handbag, I started off with an old pair of jeans, cut the legs off and cut across the crotch. I then stitched up the bottom, created handles by plaiting 2 lots of 3 strips of demin cut from the entire length of the leg of the jeans. I decorated the handles by stitching on some beads, and decorated the outside of the bag using some old pink net I had left over from a fancy dress costume. The lining is made out of an old work shirt, and my mum supplied the zip, which she had cut out of something else herself. Whilst the stitching is perhaps a little untidy, it is holding together fine and I have been using it all week :)

In other news, all of the amazon supplies that I ordered have finally arrived, so hopefully there will be some cross stitch cards up here soon too :) I am in the process of doing a small owl in blackwork too, so photos of that one to follow shortly.

Anyhow, I have some Indian food just about ready to come out of the oven (yey) so bye for now! S x

Past Projects

So, here are a few photos of 2 projects I completed last year and gave away as Christmas presents. The first one is a scarf I knitted, not very ambitious I know, but a lot of work went into it and I am pleased with the end result. And so is my Dad, which is lucky as it was his Christmas present :-D He is modelling his scarf.

This scarf took me around 3 years to make in total, but only because I kept on getting bored and putting it away for months. I did more than half of it in one session, whilst watching the entire first series of 24, in 24 hours :-) I miss being a student sometimes!

The next project took me much less time to complete. It is a blackwork piece that I made for my Mum for her Christmas present last year. It was made from a kit, which provided the pattern, aida and thread. It was my first attempt at blackwork, and I think it turned out fairly well :-) I enjoyed doing this project, blackwork is particularly rewarding to me as you can see the design taking shape relatively quickly, compared to cross stitch. I have a much larger blackwork kit waiting to be started, but I am determined to finish the big cross stitch I am currently working on first, so it may be a long while before I even open that one! Anyway, here are the pictures of the finished and framed final product -

My embroidery floss that I ordered from amazon has now arrived, it has all of the colours that I need for the card designs that I have in mind, but sadly, none of the aida that I ordered has arrived yet, which means I can't start work on them just yet!

I started and finished an entire project this weekend, as I have been without a car, and the weather has been crazy bad with floods and suchlike, but that is a whole other story, which will follow soon :-)

Cheerio for now, S x

Supplies

So, Christmas is on the way (I feel like I shouldn't be bringing this up in mid September, but there are only 3 months in which to make all of my Christmas cards!) which means, supplies are required! I have done a cheeky bit of ordering from amazon, last year I made all of my Christmas cards using ink stamps and glitters, so this year I have decided to make cross stitch cards as well :)

Money is very tight at the moment, so the items I bought are not brands that I have heard of before - hopefully they are still easy to work with, I will let you know. I have bought:- some holly green and santa red 14 count Aida, and a selection of 100 skeins of stranded cotton in various colours. I have also bought a small 4" embroidery hoop, to enable me to use less material and therefore minimise wastage.

There are a couple more bits and pieces that I need to get, such as masking tape to stop the Aida from fraying as I am working with it, some double sided sticky tape for mounting the cards, and possibly some double folded blank cards with apertures cut out for a more professional look for some of the nicest cards, although I may be able to make this base myself given a bit of patience.

I am eager for my supplies to arrive :) although I am going to Devon to see my lovely folks, and possibly get a new car(.....) over the weekend, so not much opportunity for card making.

Also, I did make it to the gym this evening :) good thing too as it was pizza for dinner tonight!

Over and out S x

The Beginning

Hi, I'm Steph. Right now it is 6pm and I am lounging on the sofa in my fleecy owl pj's, trying to avoid going to the gym. I will go today... probably! This blog is going to be about me, and my crafting journey, I will include little snippets about myself, details and photographs of my projects and mini tutorials for specific techniques I have used - If anyone would like to learn how I have done any of my projects just leave a comment. Any feedback and constructive criticism will also be gratefully received.

I have called this blog Crafting My Journey as I am pretty much starting with nothing but aspirations and hope. I have completed a few small projects, and have a couple more underway (photos to follow in the near future) but I have little craft experience, and hope to learn a lot myself as I progress. At the moment my main interests are cross stitch, knitting and card making, but I have always been interested in making and carving candles since I was a little girl. The only thing stopping me from focusing on candle making is the size of my flat (very small - no space for all the melting equipment etc.) and not having the money to start myself off! Hopefully in a year or so, this blog will be more centered around candle making.

The title also holds significance to me, in the sense of finding my journey through life. Other than in my boyfriends arms, and the hearts of my family, I often feel I have no defined place, as of yet. I have had many different jobs, and never particularly enjoyed them or fitted in. I was unemployed for a few months and enjoyed that even less. I feel that my ideal job would be to own a little shop selling the things I make. I can sit in the shop working on my next project while customers are browsing. Maybe I could even run evening classes in some of the crafts I learn to do - assuming of course that I am any good at them! So this blog will also be about finding myself.

The most important thing to me, is making other people happy, and I am looking for a way of doing that through my job. My dad used to say I would be an author, as I have a very vivid imagination, my problem is (as you can probably tell) that my writing skills aren't up to much. I am also passionate about music, having been involved in numerous choirs, bands and activities since a very young age, however, I could not accept the hate that comes with the love a famous musician may get. There are so many directions my life could take, but I am 23, and still yet to decide which one to embark upon.

Anyway, It is now 7:30pm and I am still not at the gym! I must make a move :)

Much Love S x