Bootcamp Day 11 and Peace Shirt Revamp

'Hush'

This was the theme of today's Creativity Bootcamp and I found this lovely sunset picture that fits the theme for me.  This picture was taken on a beach in Normandy, France quite a long time ago. My first son was just one and we went away with my husband and his parents to a holiday cottage for a week.  My husband took this picture of me at the end of the day.  I was having a quiet reflection...completely lost in my own thoughts. 

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For today's craft, I would like to thank K of K's Craft who showed me how to revamp a long sleeved shirt into a sleeveless vest.   I needed a hippy type shirt to wear for the 'Leamington Peace Festival' this weekend, an event we all go to every year.  It's a mass of environmental awareness, loud music, fun, shopping and people wearing lots of bright colours.  It takes me back to my more hippy days! Just a shame that my husband won't be here this year to go :-( 

Anyway, I'd got this shirt ages ago from a charity shop:

Love the message:

But it was for a 12 year old!   So I snipped it as per K's instructions...

..and put holes under the arms in preparation for eyelets and ribbons.

 But when I put the eyelets in with my Big Bite, I think the material was too thin and they kept falling off.   So, I had to abandon the eyelets and threaded the ribbon in the holes I'd made anyway.

 

I will try and get my children to take a successful picture of me wearing it.  I am quite happy with it but it still stretches across the bust area so people will be reading the message across my chest!  Not sure that is the desired effect!

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Bootcamp Day 10 and Birthday Card

The other day when I was doing this Creative Bootcamp project, I said I 'don't do ornaments' and only thought I had the one, the paperweight I showed you.  Well today, I was up in the attic and found this model I made about 15 years ago out of air drying clay:

It's perfect for today's Creative Bootcamp theme, 'Full-bodied':

Painted with good old poster paint and glossy varnish!

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When I was up in the attic, I couldn't resist doing some more sorting and tidying and so it only left a little time for crafting tonight.  But before I go on, if you are one of my bestest mates who I go for a coffee with on Thursday mornings, then no peaking! I'm working on your birthday card (y'know who you are!):

The photo hasn't shown it very well but both the cup and the dark brown background have been swirl embossed using a Cuttlebug.  The idea came from the new range of Kanban Coffee papers.  

When it is this friend's birthday at the end of the month, a big group of us are going camping for the weekend , we go every year, and its always great fun! 

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Bootcamp and Circle Knitting

I'm still Creative Bootcamping and this, day 8, is the start of the second and final week.  I wondered whether some of the subjects we would be given would be really difficult but so far (touch wood) I've managed them.  Today's prompt was 'drizzle' and with the weather we have had recently I thought today would be a sure thing. But no, no rain fell in this central part of the country today.  So, I've had to look on my computer and I found this one:

(And it wasn't taken by me, it was taken by my 10 year old son, Ryan)

It is of course, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben - taken from the London Eye (I won't go up there, I hate heights!)

As for a craft?  Well today's craft was a joint effort, again with Ryan, and he is featured on today's craft pictures:

We were trying out the new Circle Knitter (bought a few days ago, called Knifty Knitter) It's meant to be easier than conventional knitting. 

We wanted to make a scarf for my husband's grandmother who is 90 in a couple of weeks, but after following a nice simple video on the internet, we realised that the pattern we were using was for a hat, not a scarf - doh!

Ryan gave up after that, and I've had a late night attempt to continue but its not looking like any scarf I've ever seen, lol.  It's no wonder I normally keep to papercrafts!

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Stamping and Bootcamp

Today's prompt on Bootcamp was 'Ornament'.  I am not a great lover of ornaments, and my husband just calls them 'dust collectors'.  This compostion is of one of the only ornaments I have in my possession, its a really pretty paperweight.  Not that I can ever see me using it for its proper purpose - who uses paperweights these days anyway?

Regular readers may remember me buying this reasonably recently, its made of glass and is multi-faceted. Turning it round produces completely different, but equally beautiful, views of the shell-like fabric contained inside:

(Photos don't do this justice, its so sparkly and irridescent in RL)

 I have a little craft for you tonight.  It's part of something I made a long time ago and was shown on the Scrapbooking thread of MSE.  I made myself a ring binder book and on each page I have stamped each of my stamps which shows me at a glance which stamps I have in my collection. 

This page is of some vintage stamps from We R Memory Keepers (bought from QVC without seeing an image first :-O ) :

Each stamp has an outline and a middle that you combine together to get your finished image (see butterfly). 

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It's a good organisational tip though, stamp an image of all your rubber stamps so you know what you have to do your project - and you shouldn't accidently buy similar ones again!  ;-)

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Bootcamp and Template Creativity

Today's Bootcamp theme was 'Fly' and my son helpfully suggested I photographed a few of the dead insects that they have on their bedroom windowsill but no, I didn't fancy that grizly project. 

So when we were in town I spotted this ENORMOUS England flag hanging down from a corner shop so I thought I'd photograph it as it was appropriate for today, England are playing USA in their first World Cup Match. Loads of people were dressed up in preparation, flags were on lots of cars and horns were being blasted from cars all over town.

You know why its like this?  Because I forgot to take my camera and my son took it using the camera on his PSP game console and you know why its out of focus?

...Because the camera had been left on macro mode from when they took this photo earlier! Doh!

(Incidently, if any of my UK readers have got a PSP, there was a deal mentioned on MSE where you can buy a game called 'invizimals' for £10 (down from £25) from Gamestation and it includes the Sony camera (which normally retails at £30!) as part of the game)

As you can appreciate, I would have taken a better picture of the flag had I got my camera but I did tell him to wait until he could see the whole red cross so he did pretty well considering (apart from the focus!)

My craft tonight was a quick one, I need an early night for a change!

I have recently purchased some stencils from QVC:

These are just 5 out of 40 different ones, incl animals and Christmas...

So I just decided to play around and doodle with them tonight:

I like the idea of using them in a doodle fashion - first draw around the pattern as it is, then move the stencil just a fraction and draw again and repeat.  Gives a more sketchy look.  I also like to colour outside the lines (omve!) to complete the effect.

See you tomorrow,
qwiksave

Messing about on the River

This is a bit of an indulgent post.  It's purely photography.  Hope you don't mind me doing lots of photos as my craft but since I've been doing photography as my Bootcamp medium (we had to choose just one) it's given me the taste for it (I personally would have liked to vary my mediums because it would have been more creative but I'll follow the rules, it is a Bootcamp!)  

Today the random word we were given was 'Fluid'.  I was rather lucky with that theme because my sons as part of Cubs were due to go rowing at a local Boat Centre on this wonderful sunny evening. 

While they were on the Boat Centre lake and then the river (with life jackets on and instructors nearby) I went photographing the area (and them, sometimes!)

This was the one I chose for fluid:

(You can just see the two ducks on the left that have made this water trail)

So, here are some other pictures I took:

This was the location

The Cubs did some warming exercises including jumping

This is my youngest boy on the left in a pedalo

Kayaks/Canoes? stacked up

Abstract - van headlight reflections

An instructor's kayak/canoe

It's a busy night on the River Highway!

The End - beautiful! (but, like me, looks as though it needs a haircut!)

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Puzzle Block, Bootcamp Day 5 and Shopping

..but not necessarily in that order!  In fact, I'll start with Creativity Bootcamp Day 5. The Random word theme today was 'Grow'.

I have chosen this compostition I made today of my older son Ryan:

He was a 'Millenium Baby', born in January 2000 (the 11th) and the 'Daily Mail' had a scheme, where they planted a tree in fields all over Britain with the names of babies born in January 2000.  This page (which I would have combined better if I knew how to use Photoshop) shows the little tree we planted when he was 5 months old.  We remember the day well, there was a howling gale, wind, rain and lots of parents with babies in this field planting trees!  As you can see, he is now 10 years old.  We have visited the tree, but not recently, must go again soon.

There was another part of the challenge where we were asked to listen to some music from our teenage years.  I've done this while washing up today and loved singing along to The Carpenters and Elton John, David Cassidy and The Osmonds. 

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Shopping?

Quite a bit today:

We have a Provocraft Circle Knitter (wow!), a 'How to Knit' kiddy book (for me!), a 'Made with Paper' book, Some JML FixIt which bonds metal, wood, glass, concrete! (should be good for crafting...),

a puzzle block which I am using for my craft tonight (details to follow) and some lovely lace to use in my scrapbooking.

The craft I made tonight (the personalised puzzle blocks) involved lots of complicated and precise measuring.

Here is a picture of it in progress:

 

and I finished it off in daylight the next day:

As you can see, I have covered all the sides of the cubes with family pics that we can mix and match to make silly combinations.  The blocks weren't all the same size which made the measuring tricky.  I will be using some inkjet spray varnish to protect all the pictures.

Another little tip I used:

Remember those old children's blocks I bought a while back?

 I covered one with sandpaper to use as a sanding block.

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

More bookmarks and Bootcamp Day 4

One of the parts of today's assignment on Creativity Bootcamp was to go out and photograph things that interest you. Well I didn't get a chance earlier in the day, but after school I took my two sons to a soft play place.  It wasn't very busy, apart from a Birthday Party group and when that group went in to the birthday room to celebrate, the place was pretty empty, apart from my boys who were happy amusing themselves, so I went on a photographic hunt.  The place has been recently refurbished so lots of the equipment is all clean, shiny and very colourful!

Here's the pictures I took, lots of colour and not a child in site!:

Apologies.Slideshow not working because it was created using Picnik

"Picnik Show"

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Love all those graphic lines!  This one was my fave:

The assignment itself was to illustrate/photograph 'Heavy Metal':

This was an old lampost that I think used to be an original gas lamp.  Lots of lovely rusted metal!
(Taken today on the way back from the Soft Play Centre).

I've been watching the launch night of Big Brother, but I really don't want to get sucked in like last year, no crafting will get done!

Today, apart from the above, I also made some more bookmarks with paperclips and beads:

Good, creative day,

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave

Creativity Bootcamp Parts 3 and 2

I know, they are meant to be the other way round but I am not so keen on my entry for Part 2, 'Picnic', I much preferred Part 3's theme of 'Multilayers'. 

I have two offerings, both of which I like, but on reflection (sorry, bad joke!), I will go for this one:

It was a window of a fishing tackle shop in London.  I did take the picture but not today.  Today I altered the contrast to bring out the layers so hope thats not counted as cheating!

The other picture I love, simply because I am really into textures and decay:

 

I reckon Tim Holtz would be proud of me!

As for Part 2, yesterday's theme, I found that tricky.  But then I gave it some thought and I associate picnics with that yucky brown liquid that passes for tea in an old fashioned vacuum flask:

I modified this photo I took of a flask to 1960's style colouring and rounded the corners using Picnik! lol (groan!)

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The craft I made today was this paperclip bookmark:

(just need to bend the bottom curve around a little more)

It's just a paperclip bent around with beads and whatever knicknacks you have around threaded onto it. 

Little tip I found useful:

To prevent beads rolling away off your work surface, put them on a cheap bathmat.

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave 

Creativity Boot Camp

One of my good blogging friends, Carmen from Whoopidoo...ings, told me about this (free!) 'Creativity Boot Camp' this morning that is taking place between June 6th and June 18th.  See the details here of the first day's prompt (which was yesterday).

I'm not sure I will be following it religiously, because as you know, I like to do lots of different crafts here on my blog and I don't want to only show work I do for this project.  (Also, today's prompt word was 'Picnic!' How difficult is that?!) 

But anyway, here is my fave picture out of the ones that I took around my house today on the first day's theme, 'Ivory':

It's one of my son's shells/fishbone collection

 I'm tempted to do other day's prompts but maybe I could do it together with another craft?

I also covered the other side of the clipboard I made yesterday with some distressed Basic Grey paper:

I added some more peeloffs to the bulldog clip this side and also some more ribbons.  Looks quite different doesn't it?

See you tomorrow,

qwiksave