Colour Inspiration #11 - A Hint of Spring

As the snow was melting in my garden and the sun was shining I thought I would take the time to practise my photography.  This viburnum produces pretty pink flowers in my garden throughout the winter and has a lovely scent – a hint that spring is not too far away.

Box Frame Collection

If you’re anything like me you probably have loads of random things stashed away in cupboards and boxes; things you have collected but don’t know what to do with them.  I thought it seemed such a shame to have these hidden away so decided to make a framed collection.

It’s taken me a while (too long pondering how to do it!) but I finally finished putting it all together today :)  I started with a 6x6 inch box frame and gathered together the objects I wanted to frame; some coins I have from trips to France and Belgium, a piece of Fool’s Gold I bought at the Natural History Museum in London, a conker from the chestnut tree in my Grandma’s garden, a button I found inside the sewing box my Nanna gave me, an old key I decorated with wire, beads and tiny cogs and a collection of fossils and teeth I picked up from Walton beach (one is definitely a shark’s tooth, the others look like teeth but could just be rocks!).

I divided the inner frame by making sections from pieces of mount board.  Each section was then painted and decorated with paper.  I wasn’t sure how to attach the objects but tested out using a hot melt glue gun on some spare bits.  It worked really well – the glue held the coins and stones to the paper but will come off again without damaging the objects.  The key and button have been stitched to their backing paper and the fool’s gold and conker just sit loose in their compartments.  To finish it off I gave the frame a couple of coats of varnish.

I’d love to make another one now – maybe a bigger one too!  Finishing this one has given me more confidence to know how to make the next one so hopefully it won’t take so long!

Cheese and Tomato Chelsea Buns

My favourite flavour combination has to be cheese and tomato – so that’s what we used when I baked these savoury Chelsea buns with my sister!

The recipe was based on Paul Hollywood’s turkey, stuffing and cranberry Chelsea buns which were on The Great British Bake Off.  We followed his method for making the dough but used our own filling:
I cooked some tomatoes (I prefer our home grown tomatoes for their flavour but canned tomatoes would work too) and added some sage and onion stuffing mix until the mixture wasn’t too runny.  Using dried stuffing mix feels like such a cheat but I love the smell and taste of these ingredients!

When the tomato mix was cool we spread it over the rolled out dough then sprinkled grated cheese on top.  Then we followed the Bake Off’s method for rolling and baking the buns. Yum!

A tiny meal…

Last year I bought a cake necklace from GiraffesKiss on Etsy for my sister and she loved it so much I thought I would get her another piece of food jewellery for Christmas.  I remember that she had seen a necklace with baked beans and potato smiley faces made from polymer clay on a plate – but could I find where we had seen it? No!  I looked on Etsy and Folksy and saw lots of cute things but not what I wanted.  Having left it rather late I didn’t think I had time to ask someone for a custom order, so thought since I had some Fimo would have a go myself and it turned out pretty well :)

The necklace is really small – the plate is just over an inch across so it was quite tricky, especially making the tiny beans!  The plate is made from Fimo with some wire bent into a loop for adding the chain later.  I can’t quite remember now but I think I added texture to the smiley faces and fish fingers with a needle.  Everything was stuck to the plate with Fimo Liquid then the sauce for the beans was made using Fimo Liquid coloured with some Fimo.  Finally, after it was cooked and cooled, the whole thing had a coat of varnish before I attached the chain (which was also tricky as the links were so small I kept dropping them!).

Colour Inspiration #10 - A Wintry Landscape

This photo is from a few days ago when we just had a light covering of snow.  Since then we’ve had more snow (about 4 inches on Sunday which is a lot for us!), it’s now melting fast and will soon be gone.  I like the snow for a short time as it looks pretty and brightens up the grey winter, but I will be glad when it’s Spring and not so cold anymore!

Handmade Gifts

At the craft fayres I went to before Christmas there were so many lovely handmade things for sale – I would have bought so much if my budget had let me!  Here are a few things I did get…

I did a swap with my sister on lip balms from Naturally Maldon. She picked the Cheeky Cherry flavour and my favourite was Very Vanilla.  They’re made from natural ingredients and not only smell gorgeous but are very moisturising too.  My sister also bought me some lavender soap – I love the smell of lavender and it’s supposed to be calming too.  I’m trying to grow a lavender hedge in my garden, I’ve been growing the plants from seed and it flowered properly for the first time last summer.  Although it didn’t do very well after our house was painted (there seemed to be something in the paint that killed off a lot of the leaves on plants near our house) hopefully it will survive the winter and grow well this year.

I also bought some porcelain buttons from Julie Pettitt Ceramics.  I bought the glossy heart for myself and the pick’n’mix buttons for my sister who loves all things to do with sweets and food!  Julie’s developed a beautiful range of pretty pastel colours which she uses on all her products, which include vases, bowls and pots.

Painting Cats

Just before Christmas I received a commission to paint this pet cat portrait.  I enjoy the challenge of capturing animals on paper and it’s lovely to be able to make something special for someone.

When I paint a portrait I work from several different photos to create a unique piece – so I can change the background or combine  different images to get the right pose.  Once the rough sketch has been approved I can start work on the final painting.  I work with pencil and watercolours, gradually building up layers of paint.  I also used masking fluid in this portrait to keep highlights such as the whiskers.

I recently updated the ‘animal art’ page on my website which has a little bit more information on how my pet portrait commissions work.

It’s cold outside!

It’s been so cold this week!  I took these photos yesterday morning after Tuesday’s snow and frost – it looks so pretty :)  We’ve had clear blue skies today but more snow is predicted for tomorrow.  I’m lucky that I don’t need to go out too far, so mostly I can enjoy seeing the snow from the warmth of my house!

New Website Design for 2013

As it’s a new year I decided it was time to give my blog and website a bit of a new look!  I thought I would try something a bit more modern and cleaner for a change – so have a new yellow zigzag pattern background and a simpler header.
I’ve made the blog a little wider and tweaked things like colours and fonts but still have a few other things I want to play around with over the next few weeks.

The website has had bigger changes with all of the pages being updated and new pages added for wedding stationery, party supplies and craft supplies.  There are still new pictures I want to add but for now I’m happy with it showing a wider range of my work.
Hope you like the changes so far! :)

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it's 2013!  Happy New Year!

Sorry it's been such a long time since my last post.  Things got very busy with craft fayres in November (see how my fayre went on the Creations Fayre blog) and other things have got in the way recently which have meant I've not felt like blogging.

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things again.  I have a long list of things to blog about and am thinking of doing some redesigning of my website / blog too.

I wonder what this year will bring - I find the number 13 often pops up when I'm doing things, like I'll be checking my stock and find I've made 13 of something, so I'm hoping that it's a lucky number and 2013 will be a good year!