made = clay mobile

continuing my fling with clay, i've made a mobile

mobiles are meant to be innocent and childish
so i kept mine simple and naive in keeping with that feeling

this was fiddly task
threading the hand made bead stars onto the wire, painting each one...
i could go on but i won't bore you
nevertheless, i think it was worth it

made = birthday bag

my mother loves the place were we live
she loves most things about it but she loves swimming in the Bay the best
so brain + fabric pens + tote = original gift
i did an illustration of Freshwater Bay in a sort of panorama style (very simplified)
i sketched a very light basic outline first in pencil directly onto the tote
then went over this and added detail with the fabric pens themselves (Fabrico)

the ones i bought had a different style nib at both ends and, actually, it came in really handy as they it gave different intensity of colour and I had a limited palette (5 colours)
i wanted the focus to be on the water and sky


i didn't want to waste the space on the reverse so i thought up some words
i tried to describe the Bay in all its seasonal moods

 

i hope i caught the wild essence of the sea

my mum loved it and i don't think it was ONLY because she's biased
by the way, that is AFTER ironing (i just ain't that good)

paper + card = birthday card with a bonus

 Hello again,

This was a quickie card I made for my aunty Betty.

I hand drew (very casually) the card with tiny nibbed pens.

Then made two slits for the emboidered book mark.

 I pushed the ends through so the felt embellishment was in the middle.

 Here's a close up of the embroidery (I made a few earlier and stashed 'em).

She loved it (as well as the macaroons that I sent which were made by a proper baker!) and that's what matters ain't it?!
Tinkety Tonk

paper + card = congratulations card

My colleagues are all desperate to leave our place of work 

(a secondary school on the Isle of Wight, if everyone is interested).

I've handed my notice in sans new job but a colleague has secured another job -woo hoo!

We share a love of musical theatre and we've both played Reno Sweeny in Anything Goes (about 10 years ago and really badly in my case) and I wanted to show her how pleased  was for her.

She has only every taught at our current school and I want her to experience the nice side of teaching somewhere else, obviously.

I conceived the design from a sweetest occasion post that I found and I put my own spin on it.

 I used a phrase from a song in Anything Goes 

I started with some white pen as above then went over it in felt tipped pen.

I'm not sure which I prefer.

Plain white:

 or with a retro colour style:

What do you think, eh?

Tinkety Tonk

DIY = strawberry bookmark

Sometime ago I share a step by step guide to making these little strawberry badge beauties. 

I had a couple left over and thought, why not make a stylish bookmark with it!

Here's how - it's a piece of pee-pee:

Get your pre-made strawberry badge and a length of binding or ribbon.

Hot glue the badge onto a piece of binding. You could sew it if you prepare.

Now allow it to beautifully adorn a lucky book.

Tinkety Tonk