I'm doing a Craft Fair!

Those of you that follow me on Pinterest may have noticed that I have a new board on there which I have called Craft Fair and the reason for that is I am running my own stall at a local Church Hall in just 7 days time!   This is one of the reasons that I've not been on here, I am working flat out to get things made.  The panic of it all is that I only booked the stall two days ago on a momentary whim when I noticed the Craft Fair being advertised. 

Earlier on in the week, before I knew I was making items for this craft fair (thank goodness for Pinterest for quick to make fair ideas) I made this Christmas decoration:

The rice was coloured with two different green food dyes

and the pearls were simply coloured with Sharpies

 They are difficult to photograph but they look like the retro metalic coloured baubles you see sometimes.  Paperchase often stocks them.

The bottle was a charity shop find.  I'm now thinking I might use it for a table decoration for my stall on Saturday, but I would sell it if someone wanted it.  

I made some other table decorations for my stall, also with Sharpies:

I bought a set of clear bulbs from the 99p shop (4 for 99p) and coloured them with the Sharpie pens.  Ideally they would look good on a wire, but at this moment in time I'm not sure how I get them fixed on

For the craft fair itself I have been making objects that I have made in the past, though when I made them before they were for individual christmas gifts.   Things like the 'Pint of Socks' and the Paper Snowmen that contain chocolate bars.  I've also been making beermat calendars and greetings cards, amongst other things.  (Most of these objects can be found using the search facility on the right hand side of this blog).  

As well as Pinterest I have been scouring FiddleFarts blog [so sad (but understandable) that its being wound down :(  ] and also the crafty section of the forum of MSE.  There are loads of ideas to be found on there, if you are prepared to go on a good mooch.

Finally today, I will show you the prize package I received from Creative Craft World when I won one of their blog hops recently:

(It was for the Rainbow Blog Hop and I won for the colour yellow).

Have a good weekend.

Not quite sure when I'll be able to be on next (busy, busy, busy, craft, craft, craft)

but I will see you shortly,

Nicky.

It's Time for some Unfinished Projects

I get nagged! No, not by my husband, or, for that matter, by anyone else, but by my own conscience!  It regularly reminds me that I have got a rather large list of UFO (unfinished objects) or, more accurately, unfinished projects, that I must get round to, well, finishing.

One of them is Natalie Malik's 'In the Sun' art journaling course that I  had been faithfully following every day in the Summer until I went on holiday to Ireland.   'But there are still prompts left undone!' nags the voice of my conscience.

So, despite the fact that Summer is most definately on its way out, I am feeling this (guilty) need to go back and complete this project, preferably before the next season comes along and makes me forget what this Summer was like! 

So, today I made a start and worked on the next in the series of prompts:

It was, "If you had an extra hour a day, what would you do?"

 

(Finished page above) 

To make the page, I sponged on some blue and brown distress inks and splashed water on to blend them together.  I then added lots of clock stamped images from stamps that I've had for yonks.  [Clocks are now 'on trend' again, they must be, I saw them for myself in Paperchase].  I used a fine Black Versafine ink pad for the stamping.  Some of the clocks were deliberately stamped with less ink to represent the fading passage of time.

I added some number washi tape (from Paperchase) and arrow stamps to represent the hands on a clock...

...and finished off with some co-ordinating labels to write my journaling on. 

* * * * *

Something else that I did yesterday, was to make a simplified version of my son's school timetable:

(detail)

I made it on the computer using Word and some fun downloaded fonts.  

It makes it look more interesting than the ruled table they get in their planners, and it has the added bonus that we can see at a glance what books he needs to take in each day.  This version is laminated and is kept in the kitchen where he can see it when eating breakfast.  

Thanks for stopping by today and for any comments,

Nicky

My Creative Week

Back again! And because it has been so long ( a whole week!) since I last did a post I have a week's worth of stuff to show you (yay!)

First of all, last Sunday, on another fantastic sunny day, we went to another local history place to see behind the scenes.  This time it was a place called Guy's Cliffe which is near Warwick.

 This was an interesting old building. Some information about it can be found here on wikipedia.

Part of it is just a shell because it was burned in a fire during the making of a film called 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' in 1992.

It also has a spooooky past, which makes it a good place for visitors that are into haunted activities.

(Click picture for details)

It is a great place for boys (of all ages!) to explore, with secret rooms, hidden doorways and caves to discover.  It is not open to the public generally, just on special opening days.  

Next, I'm moving on to some fancy dress and on Thursday they were celebrating Roald Dahl day at our youngest son's primary school.  He chose this character and I made the costume using velcro strips to stick the food on:

Keeping with the theme of fancy dress, we all went to a fabulous Lord of the Rings party at a friend's house last night.  

My husband went as this spider:

..with a costume he made himself

and our eldest went as this character:

Who some of you who know the story of Lord of the Rings will recognise (Confession, I don't know it!)

I've also made another page in my Ireland Holiday Journal:

And finally (phew!), when we were on holiday, the youngest boy had a challenge set by his school.  It was to take a photo of himself reading a book in an interesting place.  I'm glad to say he won the competition with this picture of him reading a book with a boa constrictor around his neck:

Hope you enjoyed your weekend.

Nicky

Celebrities for the Day

What fabulous (but dare I say it, almost too hot?!) weather we are having here in the UK at the moment.  This week, just as the children are back at school we are finally getting the weather we were meant to get during the holidays.  But anyway, I'm not here just to discuss the weather....

I've got some interesting pictures of where we went today:

Our home town had a 'behind the scenes' look at some local historical places event on this weekend. 

First we went on a visit to our local railway station where we had a guide telling us all about our Art Deco station.

He was a volunteer gardener there and was mainly going on about the wonderful flowers that he and his team of volunteers had planted.  Admitedly they were nice but the discussion was a bit too flower oriented for our family who are non-gardeners. 

From there we went on to another art deco building, the one in the top picture, called 'The Assembly Rooms'.  It is now a place where rock and pop singers of past and present come to perform but in the past it had been an upmarket Tea Dance venue. 

  (Below this ceiling pic, is a ballroom dance type floor) 

The building was renovated a few years ago, by the TV Designer, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen 

..with his flamboyant touches.  

When we got there, there was nobody around to show us so we were able to freely wander, which turned out to be interesting.  Down some stairs by the stage we wandered into what we guessed was the star's 'green room':

  ...Which was a strange place, with unusual 'toys' for the stars to play with, before and after performing.

A mirror and glass vintage caravan that was fitted with glass shelves throughout....

There was a full sized dalek for my boys to pose with.

Ride on toys like a dodgem car, a horse and this ostrich!

 and there was also a display panel of hotel room key fobs.

It was an unusual find and I had visions of Peter Andre who performed there a while back, 'relaxing' in this very room.  Makes me wonder what other theatre's green rooms are like?...

I also have made another couple of pages in my Ireland Journal:

Which I have done in similar style to the other pages.  This time I've just added more journaling and less pictures.

We are off to some more local places tomorrow, wonder what we will be seeing behind closed doors this time?

Thanks for looking and for any non-spam (grrr! still getting loads!) comments,

Nicky

A-mazing Colours

This project would have been easier with Photoshop:

...but instead I used a 'hard copy' (a scanned printout) and Pitt Brush Pens.

I had scanned some black and white mazes from a book a while back and when I saw this coloured picture whilst browsing my photos I thought it would look good as a contrast with the black and white as a background.

The coloured photo is of my son's Aquadraw, the water mat that you can draw on with  pens filled with water.  This was a picture of the mat when it had been rained on and then held up to a sunny window (typical Summer weather this year!)

Anyway, I put the photo on the picture of the black and white scan - and decided instead that it would look good with the maze coloured using the same colours as the photo.  

An 'in progress shot'.  The maze almost look like pipes.

It was fun to do but it would have been easier just clicking the colours using my mouse and 'Photoshop' (what a shame that my 6 week free trial is up - Bah!) ....

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

Nicky

Go Create Art!

I decided to make myself a colourful inspirational reminder for my studio wall:

 The 'reminder' part is just the word 'Create' on the ink splattered cardboard background.  I photographed it on an enormous set of pens that I have had since, ahem, the 1990s!

The letters for the word 'Create' were made by drawing freehand on to some Crayola Color Explosion paper, which was a charity shop bargain for 99p!   I love this paper, even though its meant for kids!   You use a special pen and where you write it creates a pattern. You don't know what colours will appear and they take a few seconds to emerge from the black paper but it is fun!  

  I cut out my letters and then stuck them down on my 'Tippex' splattered black card with 'Sellotape' Sticky Fixer Strips which gave them the 3d effect.

The box of pens was a bit unusual (found it in my attic room) and it opens out like this:

It closes into one semi-circle and contains 6 thicker pens and a protractor (the green ruler semi-circle).   I think it was about £10, back in it's day but I'm not sure about the quality of those pens.  I've never taken them out because I always thought it would be a shame to spoil the pattern!

So now I have several reminders that I can use, the photos I have taken of the artwork and the artwork itself.  This will mean I can put them on noticeboards all around the house and inspire the rest of the family to create too! Yay! 

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

Nicky