Textile & Fibre Art
Felted Crochet Bowl

Whilst teaching my improver’s crochet class over at Quorn Country Crafts last week, I was asked to look into making felted wool bowls. So, this week, I got hold of the wool, dusted off my 9mm crochet hook and got to working double crochets in ever-increasing circles. A quick hot wash in the washing machine with a couple of towels and the process was complete. I need to make a wider diameter bowl to start with, but I didn’t have enough wool on this occasion to go much bigger. I hope to have a class making them in the autumn programme.

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Altered Art
Altered Art: Chuck it all on

I’m a fan of Finnabair and her combination of collage and assemblage in her mixed media pieces. There are numerous other artists following the style, and plenty of videos on YouTube showing step-by-step ways of working. Silly old me – I watched one and thought I could remember it as I did my own… This wasn’t the case, so this is pretty much all my own work. It’s the result of a couple of hours work, including cutting out the various chipboard/greyboard elements with my laser cutter. I’ve chucked everything at it!

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Card Craft
Less Is More: a CAS thank you card

CAS? It stands for ‘Clean And Simple’ and refers to a card that has plenty of whitespace around the elements. Ideally a one layer, no embellishment type of card, it is perfect for the Less Is More challenge site. And it usually is anything but simple to make. This time, the theme is ‘more’ – we did ‘less’ last time. Here’s my take on the challenge:

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ProMarker Projects
ProMarker Challenge: Three Beach Huts

Over at the Passion for ProMarkers challenge blog this week is the theme of ‘three of something’. I had a rummage through my stamps and found all manner of fours, fives and sixes. Eventually, I found an often used, but not recently, Michael Powell stamp of three beach huts. I love his style and when I was making cards, used several of his other stamp designs.

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Design Team Projects
Trimcraft Maker: Spiin yarn blanket

I’ve been away from the Studio for a few days. Not far away, in front of the TV in fact so that I can listen to daytime telly drivel while I have been beavering away. I’ve been making a baby blanket ready for a new arrival later this year. 

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ProMarker Projects
ProMarker Challenge: Photo Inspiration

This week at Passion for ProMarkers, the challenge is to use a photo as inspiration for your artwork.

As it happens, I knew I had a stamp featuring roses and peonies, so used that and some of the colours from the photo for my palette. I cropped the stamped image to fit the card size… I’m not sure that worked out well, but a simple mount using the same lavender colour I think helped.

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Design Team Projects
Trimcraft Maker: Spiin Yarn

My second goodie box from Trimcraft is a box of double knit Spiin yarn. Twenty 100g balls of it! The rainbow colours are impressive and with it being 100% acrylic, project will be washable. The 8ply construction means the yarn is relatively soft and in use resists splitting more than other yarns I have used. There is a downloadable project pattern book, which I will get to after I have finished my first project, a baby blanket.

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