Christmas is Coming!!

It's been a rough year this far. After several months of severe pain I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. This really put a dent in my creativity as I struggled to work with my hands. Fortunately the treatment is now helping and I am back to work. Work at this time of year, of course, is Christmas decorations. Here is a reminder of the work I did last year, but I will hopefully have some pictures up later this work of new designs for this year.

 

Some crafts are just not my cup of tea!

Whilst I can turn my hand to many different crafts, it would appear that cake decorating is just not my thing. I should have anticipated trouble when son no. 1 said he wanted to make his history homework model out of cake! Between the two of us we finally managed to make a motte and bailey castle, even if it doesn't look totally realistic.

I decided to cheer myself up with some crochet and mastered the pattern for a daffodil, that a friend of mine was looking for as a St David's day gift.

I'm heading over to Handmade Harbour to see what my fellow crafters have been doing this week.

It's spring!! Well almost.

It's been a lovely sunny day down here in the south - I'm just hoping the weather forecast is wrong about snow on Friday! At least with no rain forecast in the next few days I get a moderately unmuddy child coming home from rugby camp each day.

As is typical of the first day of half term, I plan several things that I must do and inevitably don't do them because of interruptions of the "Muuum" kind. Needless to say I didn't have to concentration skills to work on my Daffodil cuff, but I did make some new kits for my classes. All nice and flowery to welcome the spring - if it ever arrives!

I tried to persuade the girlie Scotties that with their nice new haircuts they should pose for me so I could put a picture on the blog, but they are determined not to oblige. Ah well I will have to go over to Handmade Harbour to see what lovely pictures my fellow artists on Handmade Monday have put up.

Beads at last!

Exactly a week after I ordered them, I braved the snow and got my beads from the Post Office. But disappointed as I paid Special Delivery and it took the supplier ages to post them out and then I wasn't home when the postman arrived. However,.... take a look at my lovely stash.

I now have to sort them into lovely kits for some new people joining our beading club and also my own beading classes. Plus I finally get to start working on my daffodil cuff.

I'm about to pop on over to Handmade Harbour to see what lovely handmade goodies other people are making. Why don't you join me?

Sneak peak

You may remember in my last post I put up a picture of my daffodils that had given me some inspiration. Well here is a sneak peak of my designing.

From this:

To this:

I am now eagerly awaiting the arrival of some tiny delica beads to see if my design translate well into a beaded cuff or whether it needs a little tweaking. Hubby is, however, not in my good books after I proudly showed him my design and he said it looked like a dog! Don't know many yellow dogs with green ears myself!

Glad to be back

All of my crafting has had to take a sudden backstep (well almost all) after I unexpectedly landed up in hospital for emergency surgery. Apart from a few minor niggles I'm now back in work mode. I did make some good use of my enforced bedrest though and have been working on some granny squares for a lovely rainbow blanket for my youngest - modelled by my own favourite blanket. Bet you can't guess why!

Although our weather has warmed after our snowy spell, it is still rather gloomy so I bought myself a bunch of daffodils to cheer me up. I had them sitting on my work table and slowly a new idea for a beading project has crept into place. Just need to do some tweaking on my design and then I can start stitching it, so watch this space for more.

Monday makes it Handmade Monday over at Handmade Harbour so do pop over there to see some other blogs by incredibly talented people. I am having some serious bead envy of the gorgeous lily jewellery by Poppy Designs.

Back to Normal

Things are all back to normal in our house! The 2 legged kids are back to school and the 4 leggeds have decided that as it is a bit nippy out, they will stay in bed all day.

After some time of having all my buttons carefully split into different coloured bags that I would have to tip out everytime I want to find a button, I decided to use my gorgeous Scottie tin to keep all my buttons in. I'm really loving having a good rummage through all my buttons.

I've not been quite on the crafting front, I'm just midway through a beading project. Actually Adam the Scottie has been slowly ticking over for some time now, as I was only working on him at my beading club, BUT he is getting very close to being finished. I just need to bead his head and add some furnishings and then I will reveal him in all his glory. In the meantime, here is a sneak peak at an early picture of his evolution.

That darn dog!!

Nothing is innocence personified quite like a Ridgeback with threads in it's mouth. Not content with getting her nose everywhere yesterday today Quizzy dog (she's not behaving like a Star at the moment!) stole 2 skeins of thread whilst I was getting a cuppa. Then in the middle of sewing the lovely blue bird you can see pictured, I suddenly came to a halt as my thread was caught on something - the something was her teeth!!! She's worse than a toddler. By comparision the real children were exceedingly well behaved - I didn't hear a squeak out of them all afternoon.

Still have some embroidery to do on blue bird, but hopefully I'll be able to show off his completed wing tomorrow.

Happy New year!

After 10 days of virtually non-stop decluttering the whole house in preparation for redecorating, I'm burnt out tidying, so today I settled down to do some crafting. Actually the little Scottie keyring I started last night, but only finished him today. With my studio (aka the spare room) in total disarray and my secondary studio (aka the sofa) taken up by children, I ended up working at my dining room table. This was far too interesting for Quizzy Dog so I ended up with a big brown nose inspecting what I was doing far too much!!

Yes I know she's not a Scottie (Ridgebacks are my hubby's breed of preference), but you can just see Jamie the Scottie in the corner of the picture.

I will be putting my New Year makes up in my Folksy shop later today, so drop by and have a look. http://folksy.com/shops/ScottiCreations