Spoonflower Contest - 90s Nostalgia

This week's Spoonflower challenge theme is 90s' Nostalgia, which resulted in me having a good rummage around my cupboards to dig out some of my old toys and collections! I couldn't resist sharing a photo of some of the things I rediscovered... 

I felt just like a child again! Remembering the things I used to play with, like my Polly Pockets, trolls, plastic dinosaurs and animals.  I even found a website that lists all the Polly Pockets they made by year - I found the Polly Princess ring I had, but lost the Polly doll, and the Midge doll from a pencil, but I lost the pencil and dome - I wonder what happened to them!?
I also looked through some of my collections of erasers, pencils and badges which brought back memories of where they came from - like the little frog erasers from one of the first school trips I went on at a nature reserve.  I considered getting out all my old Lego too - but thought I would save that for another time since I had already made quite a mess getting everything else out!

Apart from a taking a trip down memory lane, I was searching for inspiration for designing an entry for the Spoonflower contest.  Lots of the things I came across were trademarked toys, which I didn't want to include in my design, so I chose to incorporate other things - like rollerskates, cassette tapes, floppy disks, pencils, smiley face and 'flump' shaped erasers.  The rollerskates were inspired by a pair of purple and yellow ones I used to have (but was mostly too afraid to use!).  This is the finished design I came up with...

   

You can see all the other entries to '90s Nostalgia', and vote for your favourites, on Spoonflower's website...
http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=319

Colour Inspiration #12 - A Greyed Jade Collection

I thought I would experiment with something a little different for this colour palette.  Instead of taking the palette from a photograph I went on a hunt around my house for objects to photograph as a collection.  I started with the bits of sea glass and was thinking of doing a blue/ green theme but it turned into this instead!  The colours I chose reminded me of the greyed jade in Pantone’s Fashion colour report for Spring 2013.

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!