Last year I wrote about award-winning textile designer and artist Barbara Wilson and her cobweb scarf kitsets. Now I would like to share with you my experience making those cobweb scarves. The kitsets come with everything you need to make a designer scarf including water soluble film, various wool and silk fibres and cotton for sewing it all together. You need a flat surface that is long enough to take the full length of the scarf. Spread out the water soluble film and hold it in … [Read more...]
Cards: Distress Inks and Die Cuts
I was looking to get my crafting mojo back after a period of not doing any card-making, and on the way found a new favourite card style using distress inks and die cuts. I started by just making a whole heap of coloured backgrounds. I used Distress Inks because they have so many interesting properties but you could use whatever you happen to have. I tried a range of different cardstocks including Distress Watercolour paper as they all interact differently with the inks and give different … [Read more...]
‘Bottled Glow-worms’ aka Lights in a Bottle
Lights in a bottle is a quick and easy gift to make for friends. They look amazing and always get a good response. Better still, in preparation for making this gift you need to drink a few bottles of wine! Cork Seed Lights are a 2m string of lights connected to a battery pack disguised to look like a cork which fits perfectly in most wine bottles. I bought mine online from The Light Lady. They come in a whole range of different colours: warm white, cool white, red, blue, purple or … [Read more...]
Joseph’s Coat Technique
Joseph's Coat Technique uses clear embossing over a bright background to reveal these colours when a dark colour is applied over the top. My friend Steph and I explored this technique on one of our 'play dates'. There are lots of YouTube videos on the technique that you can watch. They all start with applying coloured ink to a piece of cardstock, whether by using a brayer or applicator. It doesn't really matter how you do this first stage, the idea is to create a background using clear bright … [Read more...]
Making Lampshades
For my birthday this year my friend Teresa gave me a lampshade making kit. It's not something I've ever done before but I remember my mother making lampshades when I was a child. But, as you probably know by now, I love to try making all sorts of different things so this was a perfect opportunity to try something new. This kit was for a 20cm diameter lampshade that is 18cm tall from Made Marion Craft in Wellington and came with everything you need to get creating. It had a self-adhesive PVC … [Read more...]
Learning about Distillation
Sometimes it feels like everything that you’ve learned across a whole range of subjects all comes together in one area. For me right now this is learning about distillation. It brings together my interests from biology and chemistry to gardening and horticulture to history and craft to preserving and making things. I’ve always been intrigued by distillation but assumed that you had to have large expensive gear and very specialist knowledge to do it. More recently I’ve learned that you can … [Read more...]
Life Drawing: reconnecting with creative expression
It has struck me recently how many creative and talented colleagues and friends I have and I wanted to showcase some of their creations and stories for you. I have known Simon Rowell for many years but in his non-artistic life so it was a delight for me to discover this side of him as well. Simon has an absolute talent for Life Drawing - and for writing too: I sent him some questions and he wrote his own story! I hope you will enjoy his journey as much as I did. I loved creating even as a … [Read more...]
Creating Scenes with Leading Ladies Stamps
In this post I share my creative journey to creating scenes with Leading Ladies stamps. This journey brings together two previous streams of focus (creating scenes with rubber stamps and colouring with Copic markers) and enabled me to gain the confidence to create free-hand scenes that capture something about my card recipients. I first came across the Leading Ladies series of clear stamps from Ellen Hutson via my favourite Copic marker guru, artist Sandy Allnock. I was instantly taken with … [Read more...]
Creating Scenes Using Rubber Stamps
This post shares my journey with creating scenes using rubber stamps and hopefully provides some inspiration for you to experiment with whatever stamps you have. Years ago now I was inspired by cards created with 'Stampscapes' rubber stamps and managed to track some down from a supplier in Australia so that I could try my hand at reproducing these amazing scenes. The cards that had caught my eye were mostly done on glossy cardstock using inks to create beautiful (planned) backgrounds that were … [Read more...]
Ceramic Painting
I recently had the opportunity to revisit a craft that I last did 20 years ago: ceramic painting. This was through a work function held at Paint & Create but I had previously been to Paint the Earth. You can go as an individual, with a few friends or organise a party. There were 8 in our group and we had booked for 2 hours. We were able to bring a catered picnic with us too as long as we took everything away with us. A big thank you to Margot for organising this! The format is … [Read more...]
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