Experimental Dross

You know it says "ponderings and random gibberish" at the top of the blog, here? Yeah...expect a bit more of that at the moment whilst I work through my "what is the point of art"-type thing. It's not exactly a critical meltdown of faculties, more a sense of futility and frustration, really. Bear with me.

I have a monkey mind when it comes to art and craft, as you might have picked up - I get obsessed with something and then drop it once I feel I've either mastered it as far as I need or can't get any further without a significant investment (usually of time, but sometimes of materials or space). My latest "thing" is papercutting - something which is challenging technically (though deceptively simple to get started with in terms of materials), but also demanding for my mindset. See, I make stuff. Stuff that has a purpose, or is decorative for something which has a purpose. I don't like greeting cards - the transience and waste bugs the hell out of me and I'm well-known for not sending Christmas or birthday cards. So I'm left with asking "what is the point of mastering this skill?". I don't art journal. I don't make art for walls. Why not? Well, mostly space constraints and a reaction against twee-ness - a lot of art journalling, with it's garish colours and peppy folk wisdom, just leaves me cold. I don't have faith (yet?) that I can make wall-art which would be saleable - and it has to be, because where, in my two-up-two-down terrace, would I put a ton of wall-art? This blog post by Joe Bagley (another "not formally trained" artist, yay!) is both inspirational and scary as hell. As is Paper Cutting, which is well worth a look at just how far you can push paper as a medium.


So why did I spend hours doing this?

Yes, for fun and practice. Of course. But to get any better, I have to do loads - and get much better at drawing because this is a long way from how far you can go.

And then there's this:


which I finished last night and haven't bothered to back as yet (it's just blutacked to the wall)...technically, yes, there are a few rough corners here and there, but the wonkiness/chubby lines of it is all about my drawing (which I did quickly, in white pencil, before I got too scared), and not understanding exactly how shapes would look once reversed. It's ok: it's a start, I'm learning. There are improvements I could make even to this.

But it takes a long time. And I have clothing to finish for the girls, birth samplers and height charts to stitch. I really should be doing something with the shop. There aren't enough hours in the day or strength in my hands to do everything and the "art" really ought to be back-burnered for a while.

And yet.

I can't seem to fight the drive to make something beautiful.

Fidgeting About With Paper

So, I said in my last post that I'd got new knives from Fred Aldous and then kind of trailed off about that because I got side-tracked talking about pens and drawing. As it happens, the knives have been out more than the pens this week. I blame Pinterest, mostly, for showing me lots of pretty butterfly mobiles; and I also ran across two really nice papercutting blogs: Papercuts By Joe and Mr Yen.

Anyway, the butterflies and the papercutting kinda got mashed together in my head, and I needed to make a card for my nan to send along with a nice photo of the girls. Whilst I was having meandering thoughts about the design over a cup of coffee and a sleeping D's head, @funkyhand tweeted about a new CD so I went over for a nosy and uncovered these lovely "Flutterby Flowers" digistamps - perfect for printing on patterned paper and then cutting out. So that's what I did (how much do I LOVE the Internet: from idea to printout in five minutes flat for the grand total of a couple of quid).

Papercut made from Funkyhand's Flutterby Flowers Digistamp template, cut from Papermania Capsule Collection yellow pack

There are quite a few images in the Funkyhand pack which look suitable for cutting, so I look forward to making some more!


This is all very well, I guess, but I wanted to try something more freehand and more three-dimensional without having to use glue or those sticky pad things. I had a go on the card above, but due to poor lighting and being in a bit of a rush I didn't get a decent pic. So I had another go at a semi-cut piece (I have no idea if this has a proper name, I'd love to know!).

Semi-cut freehand prototype - might be nice for a wedding invitation or menu, maybe?

Again, please excuse the quality of the photo here, it has done nothing but rain for weeks and my time to get the lighting right is very limited (mostly by baby D waking up at the most inconvenient moment; I've been trying to blog all week!).

Finally, baby D is enthralled with mobiles at the moment - she's learnt to push her lips out and blow so that someone will do the same and make things flutter around for her. I want to make a big butterfly mobile and to that end I've been punching out a couple of hundred 2ins butterflies from vellum all week - it's going to be lovely when I get chance to sit and sew it all together! I made a quick mock-up last night so I could get an idea of how everything threaded up.


Again, hard to photograph but you get the idea. It's very light - just the updraught from the radiator has it dancing all day. D loves it.


What I've learned so far:

- Boy, do I need to take my time with the cutting. But I'm rapidly improving and I do like the semi-cut style very much.

- Punches and WD40 go together like bacon and maple syrup.


Up next: busy busy bee! It's my birthday next week, hurrah! And I have booked a couple of hours kid-free so I can get the sewing machine out; my order from Gone To Earth has arrived super-quickly (cheers Julia!) so I'm champing at the bit to get sewing. Here are the tutorials for the things I want to make:

Soule Mama's Love In Voile scarf
Bloom & Blossom's Fabric Journal Cover
Biscuits & Jam's Fabric Headbands

And a couple of other things I may get to before next weekend:

Smitten Kitten's Hollow Book Kindle Holder
Very Berry Handmade's Lacy Crochet Bracelet

Oh, and I've signed up for the Crafteroo Button Swap - sign-ups are open til midnight tonight, be quick!

Sekrit Project #4: Patchwork Notebook Decoupage

Yes, I know I've missed out Sekrit Project #3. That's because I started it, then the Winnie costume had to be done, then I suddenly realised I MUST start work on #4 because it was for a birthday. And here it is!

Patchwork Quilt Inspired Decoupaged Notebook

This is a birthday gift for Lou. She and I met many years ago - crumbs, must be 14 or more now - on the Internet, waaaaay before it was cool, via a BBS called Monochrome. We lost touch for various reasons (admittedly mostly my fault as I had a habit of disappearing in a snit when I was younger!) for a long time, and then a mutal friend's wedding turned up the odd fact that we were now living just a couple of towns away from each other, not at opposite ends of the country. Older and wiser, we've rebuilt our friendship - whilst I love my mummy friends dearly and have circles of old uni friends, roleplaying friends, and crafty friends, Lou is one of the few people who seems to overlap in all those areas and more. Her work is similar to what I used to do before having the girls and starting signing, so I really value her for keeping me in touch with the professional, "grown up" world outside of hearth and home - she never makes me feel persona non grata because I don't have a nine-to-five job. Being a stay-at-home or work-from-home mum can be a lonely, sometimes dehumanising business after leaving professional life, even despite my awesome classes. Plus, as human beings go, she's pretty cool ;-)

Anyway, enough gushing and on with the make! I saw Ali at Very Berry's log cabin quilt coin purse some time ago. You know how sometimes you get a little bug in your brain that won't go away til you make something? That purse was a proper itchy bug for me, but I'm terrified of quilting and frankly there's so much crap piled atop my sewing machine I'll be lucky if it doesn't turn into coal sometime soon. I'd been thinking about doing some decoupage for a while and learned it by making Sekrit Projects #1 and #2. Then my brain thought "well, can't you quilt with paper?". Turns out you can - by sewing it together. But I didn't want to do that, I wanted to glue stuff. So I started fiddling about with a log cabin paper patchwork.

Lou is a great writer and recently had a number of articles published in The Guardian and various other places. As I was reading one my eye fell on a Daler-Rowney sketchpad that K had been using. I have a big heap of these and it dawned on me that a writer always needs notebooks, whether to write, jot ideas or simply doodle in. And it's her birthday soon. Notebooks should be pretty. I have black and white...oh yes... monochrome...decoupage papers.

I started a "monochrome" inspiration board on Pinterest, gathering ideas. Lou was posting some interesting typography, so I snaffled some of that too.

Then a new decoupage book arrived in the post and it actually had a pattern for a star-shaped quilt-inspired book cover.

Close-up of the "quilted" star.
These are DoCrafts PaperMania Capsule Collection Papers in Monochrome.

Yeah, you can hear the lego bricks all clicking into place, can't you! I love it when a project comes together like that. I cut out all the pieces for the covers (front and back), and then I went looking for quotes and phrases, as they kept coming up when I searched Pinterest for "black and white". It was so much fun I decided to fill the inside covers and some of the pages at random with funny and inspiring quotes as well as making the outer covers. Here they are:

Inside front cover

Inside back cover

What I learned from this project: it needed more time. Glue and varnish, despite much dampening, really caused the covers to bend and it could have done with at least another overnight's weighting down. And I am yet to get the hang of completely smooth varnishing - I did try sanding but it didn't seem to make much difference; with only two layers of varnish I was a bit nervous of damaging the paper. Perhaps with more layers that will give a better finish - if you can confirm that theory do say so in the comments, I'd be grateful!

Two things remained: a pen (had to be a purple one, and I chose a Pilot Frixion thanks to a recommendation from Flossie Teacakes' blog lately), and some nice wrapping. I've been interested in Furoshiki, the Japanese art of wrapping with cloth rather than paper, for a while and...whaddya know, I recently aquired a book about it. One conveniently purple piece of voile later, here is the finished and wrapped present. Apologies for not such a great pic here - you try taking good snaps when you've a 20lbs baby asleep in a sling on your front!

Furoshiki Wrapped Gift.

So there we go, that's what I've been up to this week since I finished Winnie. Tonight I think I will reclaim the XBox from A (which he has been hogging since I bought him Halo Reach last week just for being wonderful, cos he is) and get on with Dragon Age 2 for a few nights. Then, Sekrit Project #3 needs sanding/gluing and finishing, and a crochet cardigan for D. It never ends...thank goodness.

Sekrit Project #2

Hurray, Sekrit Project #2 is also confirmed as safely arrived. So now I can show you our decoupage on a larger scale!


This is a gift for the lovely Dr J's birthday. I've been wanting to make these gorgeous peppermint fondant hearts from the Flossie Teacakes blog for ages, but I know I'd just snarf down the entire batch in one afternoon and regret it, so the majority had to be going out of the house to someone else. When I suggested making them for J's birthday on our way to Hobbycraft for the Spring Ring, K said "It'll need to have a nice box. Can it have butterflies?". Of course I said yes, and floated the idea of a heart-shaped box (not entirely randomly, given the fact that K had attempted to bring Nirvana's In Utero for our road trip music*. She was firmly turned down, since she's only five, but it was rather stuck in my head!). She lobbied hard for a butterfly-shaped box, but we decided it would be more difficult to ship without getting battered to bits.



Our hearts came out a bit paler than the ones on Flossie Teacakes, but that's because I was using liquid food colouring and I'm always wary of it, having made some revolting-looking mistakes in the past. We made about five dozen, I think...I'm not sure how many finally made it over to J's (there were four or five layers in the end), but we managed not to scoff too many! It's a really easy recipe and I'd recommend it as one to do with kids; K was able to handle almost all of it without a great deal of help. Oh, and a big thank you to Gail from Gailmade who sent us some perfect heart-shaped cutters - I must blog the lovely Kindle pouch she made for me as part of the Valentine swap.



As you can see we used the nice gold paint from the previous box to do the inside. On the outside K painted the top and bottom with poster paint - in retrospect I think I would not do this in future and use acrylic instead, because with the thinned glue over the top it was rather wet and suceptible to scratching until it had a number of layers. Also: damned balding brush - with K painting I got busy with cutting out the smaller butterflies and a load of hairs had dried in before I spotted it. I am most unhappy about this, but with time snapping at our heels we figured it was better to leave it than damage our work trying to pick them all off.

K helped me to decide on the layout of the butterflies on the lid, and as ever I think she did a lovely job. Onwards - she has one of her own to do now ("with spots and spotty butterflies!") and I want to make one for my sister to go with her new bedroom decor.



* The entire exchange went something like this:

"K, can you get a CD for the car, please?"

"This one!" (Nirvana's In Utero)

"Oh, dear, perhaps not that one, love, it's got a few naughty words in that aren't suitable for you yet"

"Ok. Is this one suitable?" (Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales)

"Oh yes, that's a lovely one."

"I don't want it, then. THIS is the one for me. It's called Pretty Hate Machine."

*facepalm*

Needless to say, Nine Inch Nails did not accompany us to Hobbycraft that afternoon. We finally settled on The Bangles Greatest Hits...

Sekrit Project #1

I've been cackling all week on Twitter about having a couple of secret (quite why I keep writing it "sekrit" I don't know but it amuses me for no good reason) projects on the go, and now that I know #1 has been safely received I can reveal it and tell you all about our exciting experiments with decoupage. Ok, maybe not that exciting if you've done it before but it's something I've always wanted to have a go at and this presented the perfect opportunity.


The project (#2) which set off the inspiration train is still in transit, so I can't tell you why I picked this particular shaped box as yet, but project #1 was meant to be a sort of trial piece to see if I could get the technique right. It worked ridiculously well, and as I left it to dry next to me, I turned to look at Twitter and saw a friend of ours was in hospital fighting a nasty infection. I loathe hospitals almost to the point of terror and can't help but feel for anyone stuck in one, so a speedy conflab with K (who was going to have the original piece and is now getting a larger box to work on by herself) and our friend's partner meant I could quickly reassign the piece to her.


So yes, butterflies again. The cardboard heart box came from Hobbycraft, picked up when we went for the Spring Ring supplies; as did the papers which are the Sunshine Capsule Collection from DoCrafts. Of course, this being me and my luck, the papers seem to be the end of the range, so whilst I got them cheaply I'm now struggling to pick up other packs in different shades (thank goodness for eBay). They're really pretty though, and since I'd got A4 I was able to plop them straight in the printer and use our template from the Spring Ring project. K chose the patterns and then joyfully cut them out whilst I used a punch for the much smaller ones round the side. I do think K has a good eye for colour - I'm often dubious when she initially picks things out but somehow they always come togther well.



The box itself is painted sort-of gold - I say sort-of because I used this very odd paint I picked up ages ago from Unique Scrapstore (which, upsettingly, seems to be no longer operative - anyone in Newark know what's happening?). The paint is a gloopy PVA-ish mixture of gold, copper and silver which goes on in streaks and whirls of shade. The pictures here really don't do it justice and I'm not a good enough photographer to capture it, sadly.

Mistakes I made with this project:

1. Not outlining the butterflies until I'd pasted them on the box. DOH. Luckily I had an india ink pen to use so it didn't run, but it was blimming awkward.
2. Not finding a glue brush that didn't drop hairs all over the damn place. That was SO frustrating. Next time I do this I'll experiment with sponges and spreaders.
3. Not sanding between layers. I didn't actually need to with this one but I'd like to see what difference it will make in future.

However, I think it's come out pretty nicely! All that remained was to fill it with something delicious and wicked, so we chose these awesome chocolate truffles which are so easy and so evil that they're one of my gift standards now. And they don't contain cream, so they travel well. Though I wouldn't post them as far as Cambridge in summer time, that's for sure!

On arrival

Hopefully project #2 will arrive shortly and I'll be able to show off that one too. In the meantime, I'll try and find another baby naptime to blog about the squares I made for the 100 Million Stitches project (look, there's my name on the Wall of Fame!). And my evenings...? Well, they're now taken up with a desperate effort to get a precisely-detailed Winnie The Witch costume together for K's school event combining World Book Day with Comic Relief. Work on the dress is going great guns!

Spring Ring

K looooooves butterflies. She's not an especially girly-girl - we seem to have skipped the pink princesses phase so far (there's still time, I'm under no illusions!) - but butterflies are The Biz as far as she's concerned.

On her bedroom door she's had some big butterflies we made through mirror-image printing (you know, where you paint half the picture and fold it over), but they've been up there since she was about two and they were looking really tired and scruffy. So when I saw this project in Popular Crafts on Sunday we barely paused for breath before leaping into the car to get the equipment.

This is SUCH a simple project - wrap yarn round a polystyrene ring and pin on some paper butterflies - and a joy to do with her. She chose the rather fluorescent green herself, of course, and picked out some silk flowers to be woven in too (I recommend doing this bit after you've wrapped the whole ring first as it's easy to knock them out otherwise). We didn't get a butterfly punch, as recommended in the magazine; we just Googled for a good template and printed it out onto patterned and pearlised paper (all of which we'd aquired for free, so total cost was under £4!). K's pretty nifty with the scissors so she cut them all out herself and pinned them on, too. I'd probably use fewer myself, but it's absolutely bursting with five-year-old's exuberance...I love it.

It really breathes life into the rather dark stairwell at the top of our stairs, and it's inspired several other sekrit projects which are now on the boil. Hurray!

Nuts About Origami

Gotta love these scheduled updates.

Hello from the other side of the country to where I usually am! It's my other half's birthday today and I'm writing this several days ago in the midst of packing to visit his parents. We've carried a bagful of presents with us and here are the ones which I have made (I went a bit mad, as you can see!).

Ticket Mouth Card

We're going to see Tim Minchin the day after A's birthday - I've had the tickets for ages and I'm sure he's mostly forgotten about it. I didn't want to take the tickets with us in case they got mislaid, so I photocopied them several times onto one piece of paper, then folded it into a mouth shape. Inside the mouth is one of Tim's poems (an epic 9min beat poem, so it printed out to about four lengths of A4! Listen here), to form the tongue. So I hope this will give A a good laugh and have him looking foreward to the show.

I made this amazing Chocolate Macadamia Fudge Cake (which has probably all vanished by the time you read this) - I just wanted to use up some egg whites but I think this will become a favourite. It's incredibly rich - half a kilo of Green & Black's 70%, for starters. Also very gooey! Follow the link for a pic - mine is already packed away at the time of writing.

I had some leftovers from the cake and have recently mastered the not-very-difficult sugaring of nuts, so I syruped up the last of the macadamias and made a little sanbo box for them.

Sanbo Box of sugared macadamias

This box is made from vellum, which I hope will keep the sugar and any grease in the box. Nice and easy to fold but a bit deceptive - the bottom of the box is much higher up than you think it will be so it's not very deep. Nice for a table display, but not as practical for a gift - I'd go for my usual masu box next time, I think, although again these don't come out very deep.

And finally - a major left-over from this cake is a bottle of rum. A's favourite fudge is rum & raisin, so I had a go at making some. It's not great in texture, though it tastes pretty good! I had a lot of fun making it and learned a lot about boiling sugar very quickly, eep. Many thanks to a Kiwi friend for the recipe, which does not include condensed milk (hurray for evil-free sweets!).

Rum & Raisin Fudge

Of course, you need a fancy bag for such homemade goodness and here it is.

Origami Gift Bag

This is made of duel-colour card. I think in retrospect it was a bit stiff and I didn't crease it very well, but again hopefully the thickness of it will stop any grease coming through for a few days. And skilled as it undoubtedly is, I am a lazy person and would probably not bother with the top folds next time - a couple of punched holes and a ribbon would be just as effective!

All origami is from A Handbook of Origami, which I would certainly recommend if you fancy having a go!


I wonder if there's any of that fudge left...

Bubbling

Not had that much of a crafty time, recently - the lead-up to doing the
Bump & Beyond Show for Sing and Sign was so busy and stressful I've not fitted much in (other than designing posters for it!). As ever when my hand-outlet is blocked, my brain starts teeming with project ideas and of course I went and made the mistake of raiding the craft shelves at the library a couple of weeks ago too. I think I would very much like to take up crochet for xmas; if I go buying anything now I'll never get anything else done. There is a brilliant crochet messenger bag in one of these books, and I really want to be able to make crochet flowers and the like.

Row of Fairies is almost complete - half a fairy, a mushroom, a flower and the stars/beading to go, and it looks lovely. I think I will have to get this professionally finished as it's an odd size. Framing is something which baffles the hell out of me but I MUST do some soon - not a single piece of my work is on the walls, which sucks.

I am desperate to get my sewing machine out now, and get some silk on a frame to play with, but it's requiring a top-to-bottom house declutter in order to get the space to do it in. The more clutter I shift, the more seems to appear; it's incredibly frustrating. We've got rid of SO much recently and I STILL can't get into the cupboard under the stairs. I even *SHOCK* decluttered the bottom of my bureau the other day and it's still heaving! I must take a pic of all my stuff as it's rather silly.

K is very interested in the weather at the moment and I plan to make her a little wall hanging with various pictures on velcro so she can move them around etc. Actually I'd like to make her a full calendar as she's very into words and numbers at the moment; this is a much bigger project. And I haven't started designing the lai si for the wedding yet either...


Almost forgot - we DID do something crafty this week! V.pleased as this is using up leftovers of card from K's scrapbook and from the latch-hook rug I made for her room whilst I was pregnant.