Felted Easter Eggs

 

A while ago we bought some polystyrene eggs from Hobbycraft, having seen a programme on Create and Craft in felting them, and these are my two attempts.

 

Both eggs were needle felted, and then I washed them in hot soapy water, rolled them slightly and then rinsed off in cold water (so a bit like wet felting). 

 

When dried for the one on left I cut out some flowers with a marianne die and some freehand leaves.   Although I used stick-backed felt, the flowers didn't really stick, so glued them on with some matte accents, stuck on some gems for centres, and made a bow and loop which I pinned on with a fancy head pin.

 

For the beaded one - I started with a double ended thread and made the centre four pearls, then threaded on seed beeds and did the strands.  Again a bow and loop added (different colours) and pinned on with fancy headed pin.  To help keep the beads in place, I also pinned the strand of seed beads at the bottom of the egg with a fancy headed pin.

 

I am thinking I might make some more beaded flowers and glue them on to the egg, and possibly add some random pearl gems to it too.

 

 

March Jewellery

 

I have been busy experimenting the past couple of days.  I have been meaning to try a beaded kumihino for ages, and also wanted to try and make someting a bit more adventurous with pearls and seed beads - at last I have achieved it!

 

The bracelet at the top is the beaded Kumihino made with S-lon cord and size 8 seed beads.  The longest part was threading all the beads onto the cord!

 

The two lower bracelets are the same pattern.  The one on the right was my first attempt with pearls, crystal montees and crystal seed beads.  I loved it so much that I then made another one using the rest of my stash of pearls and jet montees and seed beads.  It is a fairly easy design once you get used to it - didn't even have to refer to the instructions for the black one!  The trickiest part is adding the wire protector at each end where the beads join the clasp - good eyesight needed for that bit!

 

 

 

The lower layer of the pearl bracelets

Starting the jet beaded layer

A few cards and a scarf

created in CAP2



Sheena's new Iris stamps and a little bit of CAP2



another CAP2 creation

Jacque's card from her stepson with a little help from me



another CAP creation - can you spot the OOPs!
 



another ruffle scarf



recipient wearing the scarf!

Cake again

The OBJ added to the cake!

A little addition to the cake

 

Sassie said that there was only one thing missing from the cake-  a bottle of "oh be joyful", as she said you need a bottle (or ten) for a celebration! - well we tried to get a candle in the shape of a bottle today, but were out of luck - however we did manage to pick up a little bottle cake decoration, and Sass said we needed to make a new label for it!  gosh I do have some difficult customers - good job she is a friend!

 

Well I took the measurements of the original label (5 cms x 3cms).  Sass said she thought there were some labels on the wine buff cds - so one was duly imported into CAP2, the colour of the label changed to co-ordinate with the cake, and her chosen wording added.   Original label soaked off, and this one added!  Result!

 

Will now have to fix it to cake and take another photo!

Joint 50th Birthday Cake

This week sees the 50th birthdays of my best craft pal and her husband. They are coming up to join us tomorrow for a few days and we shall be celebrating later in the week with them, my family and some other mutual friends who live locally.  (It was easier for them to come up here than the rest of us to go down there!)

Needless to say I was booked to make the joint birthday cake, and below are a few views of the cake.  (hopefully if we get some decent weather I can take some better photos).  

The request was for a rich fruit cake to my special recipe. Favourite colour: blue.  Favourite flower: Lily.   Being a joint birthday cake, I couldn't make it too pretty pretty.  

Those of my followers who know Sassie, will know the standing joke that she doesn't travel by broomstick but by dyson - so a dyson had to be on the cake!  Her husband is also a keen motorcyclist (and in fact Sassie used to ride a motorbike - I believe they originally met each other through bike racing!) so that as a must too.

Sassie is a crafter and has many hobbies, so I wanted to try and reflect her hobbies in the cake too.  Thus the little daisy to represent her needle felted and paper flowers, the swathe of material for her sewing, and brush embroidery and embroidery to represent another aspect.

As to the Lily - I took a bit of artistic licence with the blue colour!   The little dyson was in fact a doll's house item, and was purple - so that was painted with promarkers and H20s and then varnished with edible glaze to make it safe to put on the cake.

The cake was made in an oval tin, but placed toward the back of a circular board to accommodate the motorbike.

The Cake

side view of cake

close up for lily

names and a close up of a little of the embroidery and textured "material"

motorbike

top of cake

hopefully you can see a bit of the embroidery on this one if you click on it

Sassie and Ian have seen a photo - hope they like the cake when they see it in real life and can appreciate all the little nuances.  I can vouch for the actual cake, as when I levelled the top, I had to taste the cake to ensure that it was up to scratch!  It was! - do I really have to give it to them, can't I eat it all myself?  LOL!

Knitted fluffy scarf and a rainbow cake!

Last week we went to Farnborough to the Make It Show - my daughter, her 11 yr old daughter and my son's eldest daughter who is rising 7.  It was second eldest's first visit to a Craft Show, although her cousin has been a few times.

We had a lovely day out, and spent loads of money.  One of the stalls has some lovely wool, and some scarves made up - we all agreed that one particular scarf would look great on my daughter-in-law.  So No. 2 granddaughter chose the wool, and I knitted it.  (yes me knitting!).  Was really pleased with how it was going in the evening - but as I had no pattern I had to get some idea of the number of stitches I required from various sites on the web!  Most seemed to work with 10 stitiches - erm yes well I knitted this nice collar!  So on Sunday it was unravel and start again!   I had nearly finished it by time I had to go out for youngest granddaughter's first birthday - 1so I sat quietly in the corner at the birthday tea and finished it, so that I could leave it with my daughter-in-law.  It was really scrumptious wool, although a bit like knitting with a lump of fleece! 

I thought I would also share some pictures of the cake my daughter-in-law made for her youngest daughter's 1st birthday as you will see from the second pictures it was a rainbow cake with a ganache filling and coating, and rainbow butterflies.

slices were rather huge!

Wet Felting

Well I have had such fun tonight.  My daughter and I went on a wet felting course.  (Originally I wasn't going to go - but the numbers were down a tad the other week, so I said I would help make them up - am I glad I went!).

We learned how to make a little bowl:

the pot

When we had completed these we did a bit of needle felting and made eggs:

pot and matching egg

As I had already been on the felting course, I just made one egg tonight, but I decided I wanted to make a little flower to go on the bowl - so did a quick free-form flower.  Jay our tutor was really impressed!  (I actually need to finish "needling" the flower - I think I may then wash it to turn it into a wet felt addition, before "needling" it on to the pot.

pot, egg and flower

Trying something different

I have tried something a bit different with this card - I created the word and turned it into a frame, and then imported a picture from my garden of some clematis to fill it.  I then used a template from CAP2 and moved the elements slightly and tweaked them with shadows etc.   

Once printed the edges of the card were distressed slightly with bundled sage, and then edged with silver promarker as a faux mat.  I then glazed the words with glossy accents.

Happy St David's Day and a 1st Birthday Card

First of all Happy St David's Day to you all - here is a photo of my tub of miniature Daffs in my garden today.

 and this is a card I created in CAP2 for my youngest granddaughter's birthday.