Month: April 2018

‘Hama’ time

As you may have noticed from my Easter makes post, we have been going iron bead (the ones we are using are not all from Hama but ‘iron on bead’ time wouldn’t have sounded half as catchy!) crazy in this house recently. It all started with little miss getting some for Christmas and spending hours painstakingly making different shapes, first with random colours and then following a pattern. She then moved on to making princesses from a kit that we bought. She absolutely amazed me with the time she spent and the perseverance she showed to complete them, we really only had to help her with the more detailed bits. She did such a super job of them that I decided they must be framed:

Not bad for a 4 year old!

When we bought the princess kit, I found a kit for making iron on bead mandalas and just had to have it. Little miss thought they were for her but I soon put her straight on that one! These were for me!

I know iron beads are largely for children but so was colouring once upon a time and I just loved making the mandalas, I found it so relaxing and therapeutic and could easily make them in whilst helping little miss with her princesses.

The kit came with 3 patterns but I only followed one of the patterns exactly and then adapted the others slightly. There were so many beads left that I’m planning on making another, completely my own design this time.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with them yet but they will almost certainly be displayed in my craft room somehow. I tried framing them in box frames like the princesses but they just didn’t look quite right, the frames just didn’t make the most of their roundness if that makes sense. Once I’ve made some more I may try  attaching them together somehow maybe with ribbon. If you have any ideas of how I could display them to show them off at their best, please do let me know.

 

Karen x

 

 

 

April project goals

Just a quick post to record my project goals for April:

  • This WILL be the month I FINALLY finish the bright stripes blanket! Here it was before I sewed in the ends:

  • To reach a total of at least 200 itty bitty squares in the bright colour way,

(I currently have 137  and have calculated that I need 288 to make a single sized bed blanket but with my track record recently I’d be pushing it to try to reach that in a month!)

  • Finish the winter craftpod berry embroidery
  • Finish iron bead mandalas: these should be finished tomorrow, I’m very excited about them!

This month I am determined to complete everything on my list!! Hmmm, where have you heard that before!

 

Karen x

March project review

To recap, in March I decided not to set myself many goals so that I didn’t set myself up for disappointment once again. So, March’s project goals were:

  1. Crochet the border on the bright stripes blanket after sewing in all the ends…
  2. Make as many itty bitty squares as I possibly can by the end of the month (and add to each of the colourways as the mood takes me. I’ve even counted how many I have so far so I can see how many I manage to get done.)

Well, as usual I haven’t quite completed my goals but I’m not at all disappointed this time. I’ve sewn in the ends on the blanket and have done 3 out of the 6 rounds on the border (pics to follow in a separate post once FINALLY completed!)

My itty bitty squares stash  in one of the colour ways I was working on grew a fair bit and another grew a teensy bit…

And, I’ve managed to do a fair few other crafty makes.:

Tuddy Pat and Wowly were created and became rubber stamps.

I got crafty with my Easter Makes

I started the berry twigs embroidery from my winter craftpod box (photos to follow once complete)

And I got bitten by the ‘iron bead’ bug. After making the Easter decorations and helping Little Miss with her princess bead kit, I found a fabulous mandala kit which I have almost finished (pics to follow, those beauties deserve their own post!)

So, all in all, March has been a fairly crafty month and my creative juices have been flowing at every available opportunity. I may not have totally achieved my goals this month but I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, I just love it when ‘must make’ projects crop up out of the blue, even if it does mean that the longer term projects take a back seat for a little while.

Karen x

Easter makes

I love decorating the house up for  Easter and Christmas and have become more and more interested in  handmade decorations rather than the shop bought mass produced decorations I used to favour. Whilst there’s absolutely nothing wrong with shop bought decorations I get such a buzz from making my own and seeing them in pride of place around the house. A few weeks ago I’d hung up the plastic eggs I had but they didn’t bring me quite as much joy as usual, I wanted to make some of my own but wasn’t sure how. I tried sprucing up plastic eggs a couple of years ago with sticky ribbon and stick on gems but they didn’t last and the sticky bits fell off. This year I wanted to do something different. Imagine my delight when I found a kit in a local shop with wooden eggs to cross stitch. It took me 3 nights to complete all 6 eggs but was well worth it, I just love how they turned out…

I bought some fake pussy willow branches to hang them on and displayed them in the hall…

Whilst I did love it, it just didn’t look complete, I wanted something else to hang on the branches too. Watching little miss making shapes with her giant Hama beads, the idea came to me, I could make decorations with the tiny Hama beads that I had in my stash from a Hama bead phase I went through about 10 years ago. These were the first ones I made…

Then, on Good Friday, Mr O had a bad back and was struggling to move so he decided to sack off the gardening he’d planned to do,join us on our Hama bead session and made us each an egg with our initial on…

 

Between us we made a few more…

I’m very pleased with how it all looks and they now have pride of place in the hall (pictured on kitchen table for lighting purposes). A real family effort! However, I am quite pleased that little miss found the tiny beads a bit too tricky so decided to stick to using her own maxi sized ones. It means that my beads are safe…for the time being anyway!

In other Easter makes I made these eggs with little miss by simply winding thread around a cardboard egg.

And then of course there was the obligatory Easter cake.

(sorry about the rubbish picture, we’d actually eaten some of it before I remembered to take a picture, plus the light was bad. The cake however, tasted delicious!!)

I had been looking forward to making this for weeks as it reminds me of Easter at home when I was little. Looking back I think I was actually more interested in eating the left over mini eggs than I was in actually helping to decorate the cake, hehe, some things never change!!

Karen x

 

These are about A5 paper size but I’m thinking smaller eggs with very thin thread may work as hanging Easter ornaments too…maybe an idea to store away for next year.