Bagsy

It seems a while!
Thank you all you lovely commenters. I hope I managed to reply to everyone.

I seem to have been making nothing but brooches lately . Time for a bit of a change. I started with the felt motif as usual.

Can you tell what it is yet? As Rolf would say.
I stole a bit of delicious jade linen from some yards I had for curtains because I just knew it would be right for it.

A lightweight roomy shopper.
I made one a couple of years ago when I went to Ally Pally and I was actually recognised by it!
Here it is.

(Ooh I just went back to 'that post'..I can't believe how long ago it was.2009 was 'the weird year' for me  with tremendous ups and downs. I read it again and all the 40 comments and it was a lovely reminder of some bloggers and a friend who I seem to have 'lost').

Its something I still use regularly, its crumpled but its useful! I take it to shows in my handbag and then when I have bought stuff it gets swapped and I put my handbag inside it. Its a bit like Mary Poppins' carpet bag and holds more than you might imagine.
(Its currently doing its duty as the dog class bag..toting the brush, the toy, the treats, the poo bags, and the vaccination certificates every tuesday night to the place where we feel like failures! Hetty has NOT been entered for the bronze test tomorrow.."sob" I am mortified..Hetty doesn't care a fig)


Anyway I thought I'd cut down on making time by using lovely cream webbing for the long handles.

I love the look of them against the jade.

I love the deliciously soft linen-y crumply-ness which I must say isn't as pronounced as it looks in this picture.

Its been so dull here since I made it I couldn't get a good picture so I hope this will do.

Also: many thanks to all who click the 'top blogs by crafters' button in my sidebar. I am hovering between first and second on the list at the moment and its all down to those who click!

(Update: it seems the button isn't loading its picture at the moment. Its the one below the words that say I'm hovering between top and second..)

Bye for now.

The Felt Group

We meet on the second Friday of the month in a village hall. 

We take our own lunch and as I was making my salad last friday I was wondering if I could manage without bread but then thought..'oh well, there'll be cake'

There is cake. We have a rota.

Last week lots of members were unable to attend. I was, as usual late but had a good reason, not just not getting up early enough.

I walked in to half a dozen eager faces and the cry 'Have you brought cake?' (It wasn't my turn)

Horror..no one had taken cake. There were only about 8 of us and we didn't get down to felting with any great gusto. Instead we chatted.

We go for friendship as well as felting.

I eventually spread some wool tops out for a piece to make brooches.

I took ages just adding wisps of many different colours mixing and 'painting' with the wool.

Then it was lunch time.

(No Cake)

After lunch I wet the felt and did about three rolls and then there was a bit of discussion about who was going to lock up as our usual key person was away, and second in command of the keys wanted to go early. One by one we said 'Oh well, I'm going early' until we all decided to pack up.

So I didn't get to finish my piece of felt until Monday.

Ah I love the felt group! Usually its a room full of variety, laughter, and heavy duty felting. The offering of advice, the family news, and general good feeling. It was just a bit thin on the ground last week.

So I'm leading up to my latest piece of felt. Very hard to photograph. If the light is good, the colour disappears as it bounces back. If its not good light it looks dreary. I hope this is just about middling.

 It worked out well from a sewing point of view. I'm happy with the mixing and went to my sewing room to work with it and these are what happened. I've increased the colour in the one below...its a bit vivid.

 This is better. 

 I like this the best but in reality the left hand side of the leaf is a lovely duck egg felt. I'll have to try these again.

 Anyway thank you to all the people who commented on my invitations. Rebecca loved them. I'm sorry if I didn't get to reply to all of you. Your comments are very welcome.

Stationary

 Scrap bookers and card makers look away now. This will not meet with your standards. I've seen some amazing creations done with inks and stamps and goodness knows what else, and I can't hope to reach those dizzy heights.

However I have been up to some cutty choppy printy stuff lately.

I rashly offered to make some wedding invitations for one of my former pupils.

I'm already booked to do her flowers and she wants only Gypsophila tied with string for a bouquet, and on the tables at the reception she wants flowers in jam jars decorated with scrim and string, which I think I can manage.

 So when she sent some ideas for invitations I think I knew what she would like.

My initial thoughts were to cut a stamp of a perching bird but my rubber carving skills were such that the legs caused me a terrible problem.

So I got out my tablet and opened photoshop. Think monkey and typewriter with me and photoshop...and then the wretched Macbook wouldn't speak to the tablet so I couldn't draw a bird even if I'd wanted to, so back to the drawing board..literally.

If a bird is flying you can't see its legs so here's what I carved.

I'd ordered some super duper 'Hairy Manilla' recycled card and envelopes and it came very quickly and printed up beautifully.

Not being accustomed to working in mixed media lately the only paint I could find  was a box of watercolour tubes. Within this box only about three of them were still moist so I mixed two of them , cobalt blue and alizarin crimson, with a roller..er sorry..a brayer.... and got a nice purply brown.

The paper just sucked it up.

Perfect.

I cut out the birds, and printed the names on the card. (I've scribbled on them to keep them anonymous)

I liked the bird being a sort of closure on the card.

 So I stuck it on half off!

For the other side I printed a sheet with the words 'wedding invitation' and cut out hearts

 I quite like them and I love the VT Remington font ( but I think it caused word to crash)

Inside I stuck printed sheets with the details of the wedding on cream paper in the same font.

 I did a few extra in case of mistakes and here they all are, ready for delivery at church in the morning.

 Sadly I think I've worked for about 10p per hour. 

But I enjoyed it.

(I also did a spare sheet of bird prints in case I found another use for them.

 They are the ones in the fourth photo . That was my mistake ..I took a photo and then left them at low level and Hetty ate them.)

 I found the cards fit exactly into and old Nokia phone box. I turned it inside out so thats another recycled bit. Don't you just love it when that happens?

UPDATE: She loves them!

Full stop or comma?

Just how many pictures of the the same thing scan one blog post risk?

 I just like making these these so much.

 The black one is difficult to photograph so I've put them all in!

 Sidey slidey view

 And then a little Paisley job with it.

 I like the assymetrical nature of these. the pale blue and blue has a quirky outline.

 The black ones are backed with moire. Ooh nice.

Sadly these have to come to a standstill while I try to source some more brooch backs like these

I've found some over the other side of the world and I've bought them but they might take two or three weeks to get here, so these will be the last for quite a while.

 Now here's where the camera does lie...this pink is beeee-ooo-teee-ful. But the picture isn't.

 Lets try one on the kitchen table.

Ooh . Yummy!

(Sorry)