Pound shop find!

It's rare that I find something this good at the pound shop.  Here it is!  A pair of earrings made of eight ultra-light metal flowers suspended from a larger rosette.  I bought the three pairs I could find on the shelf.  I will be taking my pliers to them and separating the pieces.  I'll show you what I use them for soon... Here's hoping anyway!

Cards from the Scraps

There was a later class in the Pretty Paper Party about paper weaving. I incorporated this into my stash dive when making some cards out of the smaller scraps when I was done making pages. First, I wove the papers on straight, and for the second one, I wove them separately and stuck them on at an angle. I like them both. :)

Art of Crochet Square 91

This one went quickly. I forgot how "holey" designs take so much less time!

Short and sweet-- less talking, more crafting!

Debden 2009

This page is the last one I did with my stash dive. I have smaller pieces now to make cards with. I think I have filed them in my scraps only section.

I'm a lot happier with this one than I was with the previous one. This one uses strips of paper, anchoring the paper to the top and the bottom of the layout. I punctuated it with flowers punched with EK Success retro flowers and button middles.

Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party is still on in this house! I'm going to go through each class slowly as and when I have time. I'm really enjoying it.

Art of Crochet Square 90

Could I finally be getting the hang of putting the designs in the middle where they belong?? Looks like it...

M&M World

Another page from my creative stash dive. You may have noticed the letter blocks on the previous two pages. These are most of the rest of them. I'm not very good at clustering embellishments yet, and I did intend to make a cluster but the photos sort of took over and I didn't really have any room for anything else. I still have a lot to learn as a scrapper.

Art of Crochet Square 89

This was not the square I was looking forward to doing right after I'd made those sofa cushions for my Mother-In-Law. This pattern was the one I used on the cushions, and after making two large ones, this basketweave was the last thing I wanted to make! But I soldiered on.

Debden 2010...

In 2008, 2009 and 2010, a group of us would hire out the conference room at Debden House in Loughton and stay there for the weekend. We would arrive on a Friday afternoon, set up all our crafty stuff, have dinner, craft into the night, trundle up to bed, come down for breakfast and a full day of free-form craft time (no classes scheduled, just do what you like), lunch, dinner, some tv (there was a huge plasma on one wall of the conference room), and late-night belly laughing and just a little bit of drinking... some more than most... followed by Sunday breakfast, more crafting, Sunday lunch and packing up and going home at about 4pm. Usually sometime before the lunch we would all pile outside to set up some photos. This is the group shot that we took in 2010.

This is another layout made with my "stash dive" from Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party (see link). Pleating is the order of the day here. I did some box pleats on a border-punched piece at the top, and I fanned out some bits along the side with the striped paper. Fun!!

Art of Crochet Square 88

Happy New Year to my readers!! This is my first post of the year.

I have been otherwise engaged since late November. I decided to develop and teach beginners' cardmaking course. If you know anyone in the East London (UK) area who would like to start at square one and see what it's all about, send them to my website. I teach at set venues or in students' homes, party-style.

Shameless plugs aside, I have been crocheting a bit. I had laid my crochet squares aside so I could make two sofa cushions for my mother-in-law for Christmas as I did last year. I worked like mad on them and finished them in record time, then went back to the squares after about a week off.

This one was fun to re-visit in a different colour combination. I love colourwork. This one requires that I carry the most-used colour up the side of the work and I don't think I quite have the hang of keeping it neat. I may have to hide it when I sew it all together.

Getting back on the partwork horse lit a fire under me so I've been churning out squares like mad! I still have a few to make before I catch up with deliveries, but what is more exciting for me is that I have the instructions to assemble the third quarter of the throw! I will be doing that in the next few days, I hope. Then I can get back to the crochet.