CAL Wednesday: Pick 'n' Mix part 4

Oooh, lacy.  This is part 4 of the Simply Crochet Pick 'n' Mix CAL (crochet-a-long).  The colours I chose are different to the suggested palette because I adore cool colours.  I am also using Paintbox Yarns in Aran, from lovecrochet.com instead of the recommended Cascade 220.

Have I said all this before?  I probably have.

I have got two CALs on the go and I am falling ever so slightly behind... well, if there is a such thing.  I like to get the squares done when they are released, but it just isn't playing out that way at the moment.  I got these squares done quite a while ago, so not only am I behind on the actual crochet but I am also behind on blogging them!

I'm getting back into it, I promise... and no more new CALs until I get these two done and dusted!!!

Mandala Monday #10

Happy Mandala Monday, everyone!

Ok, smarty-pants,  I know it's Tuesday, but I kinda fell asleep and forces are telling me to go with the flow lately.  So sleep I did!!!  Now that I'm awake, here's a Mandala to brighten your week.

This one is another one from my bargain book from The Range.  I do love them and they are such good value.  The cardstock is great quality too.  One swipe on a scoring board turns your creation into a simple card that will bring cheer into someone's life!  All you need to do is go buy some envelopes to fit.

I coloured this an the previous Mandala with my handy-dandy Chameleon pens.  You may have seen them advertised all over social media and magazines.  That's because they are good.  This design was made with four markers:  an olive green, two purples and a blue.  The variety of tints came from using the marker according to the instructions for creating a gradient.  Do search for Chameleon Pens on YouTube or indeed anywhere to see videos of this process, I highly recommend it.

I'm thinking next week's Mandala may be a Featured Artist one instead of just my own... I shall ask about it and report back next week!  Have a Marvellous Mandala Monday.  Even if it's Tuesday.  Or Wednesday... or indeed any day you may be reading this.

Citrus crochet day

Nothing like seeing a new follower pop up on Bloglovin' to remind a gal she hasn't been blogging!!  Hello new follower!

What shall I share?  It's not Monday... so the mandala will have to wait... wednesday is for CAL updates... I had planned something for Fridays but I can't remember, so let's find a pic to share...

I guess I should catch you all up... I seem to have started selling essential oils.  I just took delivery of a lovely citrus trio of oils and so I was inspired to make this little orange crocheted car diffuser.  It has a loop on the top and bottom and I clip it to one of the vents in my car with mini clothespegs.  Then I just drop some essential oil on and presto, citrusy freshness.

Just in case you're curious and would like a look at what I've got myself into, check out my page:

http://mydoterra.com/sycares

Any questions, message me across my social media channels... Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram @hapaxstudios if you please.

Happy Friday!

CAL Wednesday: Pick 'n' Mix Part 3

I haven't been posting my Pick 'n' Mix CAL squares in a while, but I assure you, I have been making them!!  I did get a little bit behind on them as the other CAL I'm doing, the Secret Garden CAL, has been taking up a lot of my crochet time too!  I love them both!

This pair of squares, at first glance, appeared to be standard grannies, but they're not!  Instead of three treble crochets in each chain space, they in fact are 3 treble clusters!  So they make little points instead of little rectangles.  I love this small difference.  It adds character.

You'll notice the lighting conditions and background are different... this is because I was far far away in a country cottage in Herefordshire with several other mad birds this weekend just gone.  I used the time to catch up on a lot of CAL squares but I'm not quite there yet!!!

I thought I'd pace myself posting it all though, so Wednesdays will be for posting CAL squares until I run out... although I have discovered that I do love a CAL so the two I'm doing will not likely be my last.

So, Mondays are for Mandalas, Wednesdays are for CALs... What's coming up on Friday?

Watch this space!

Mandala Monday #9

This week's Mandala is a quite simple one.  I picked up an absolute bargain- two books of 50 mandala cards for 1.99 each at The Range.  These are quicker than the ones in the book if you need a colouring fix, plus you can use them later as cards!  I plan on adding a few details to them so that they aren't just mandalas on their own.  I may add jewels, glitter, a sentiment on a raised panel or tag, something... but this is the base.

How about you?  Have you had a Marvellous Mandala Monday?  Share a link to your mandala entry here, whether or not it is on Monday. :)

See you next week for another Mandala!

Mandala Monday #8 - late!

Hello folks, I hope you had a Marvellous Mandala Monday!  I wasn't feeling particularly Marvellous and I forgot to post. So sorry, but here it is, a day late.

This Mandala was so fine in detail that I moved onto fineliner marker pens for it.  I love it, it made for some great moments of concentration and now it's amazing to look at.  For now, it is staying in the book with all the rest of them, but maybe someday I'll come up with a great way to use them in something bigger.

Feel free to share links to your mandalas in the comments, or any Instagram accounts with great mandalas in them!

I look forward to sharing more Mandalas with you soon!  Keep it Marvellous!  x

Mandala Monday #7

...and a Marvellous Mandala Monday to you again!

This week's mandala is another limited colour palette with plenty of uncoloured parts again!  This one is a bit patchy because I was using water-based markers this time.  I'm not the biggest fan of water-based markers, but I am a fan of using what you have to make art, so I thought I'd have a bash.  They are misbehaving miscreants!  Back to alcohol markers, methinks!

How about you?  Any mandalas to share?  Link in the comments.  Even if the link doesn't click, I will copy and paste and go see your lovely work!

Mandala Monday #6

A Majestic Mandala Monday to you!

This one was a first for me- using a limited colour palette and leaving some parts of the mandala uncoloured!  I really love to look at this one.  I can get lost in it.  I particularly like the gradient details in the largest petal shape in the close-up.  Some of the pencils I used were metallic ones, and I just adore the effect.

Have you a Mandala to share?  Please do link to it in the comments.  Share the Mandala love!

Mandala Monday #5

Here's another Mandala Monday, a little late again, sorry!  Another one from my fantastic Mandala colouring book, this one goes round in a rainbow circle of sorts.  I really enjoyed leaving parts of this un-coloured.  It's like having another colour in my palette!

I have been drawing Mandalas too, but I'm going to get through the coloured ones for now, so tune in next week for another page in my Mandala book!

Got a Mandala Monday post too?  Link it in the comments section.  I'd love to go have a peek!

Have a Marvellous Mandala Monday!

Mandala Monday #4

Mandala Monday again!  Sorry it's a little bit late.  This Mandala is from a fantastic colouring book that I found at The Works.  Here's what I love about it:

1. The book is round.  How cool is that?  No wasted corners.
2. The pages are 'one sided.' no hard choices to make if you're facing bleed-through.
3. Variety of small and larger spaces to colour in.

I used a set of six ball-point shiny gel pens for this design... some metallic, some sparkly.  They were smaller than the average pen and some colours got nearly run down doing this design!  It was worth it though.  I do love to look at it.

Want to join in with Mandala Monday?  Just link back to my blog in your own Mandala Monday entry, and don't forget to link your entry into the comments below!

Mandala Monday #3

Magnificent Mandala Monday to you all!  Here's a double- mandala entry today, and not in a form that you are expecting:

This started out as one complete Mandala, and it was very important to select one for this that can be quartered.  This one could.  I used a teabag folding technique on the mandala that I took from a colouring book.  After folding it, I worked out what needed to be coloured and then adhered the sections together into this fan shape.  I cut around the mandala shape because there was a lot of extra paper hanging off that was plain white and I didn't like it.

Here's another one that I made the same way.  I enjoyed making them and I may continue in this way as I complete the designs in the book.  I like to use my colouring in projects rather than just doing it and shutting it away or trying to display everything I've made.

My plan for these is to adhere them to notebook covers and then cover the cover with acetate, so that the finished fan shape can keep its form without snagging on things and damaging the design.

Of course, I will post the finished article when it's done.

And now it's over to you- share your Mandala blog posts in the comments section and I will try to visit and comment on all of them!!

Daisies on the Steering Wheel...

Yep, here I go again, crafting in the car.  The car is where I spend a great deal of my dedicated crafting time these days.  It's down to parking up early at the school in order to secure a legal parking place during the afternoon school run.  There just isn't enough room there to park legally and I seem to have that magic ju-ju that means that if I slip up just once, I will get caught and fined.  The ones who always do it seem to slip through the cracks, but all eyes are on me.  So I give up the possibility of doing anything useful in the house or wherever else and I get to the school an entire hour early.

I had to leave my volunteering session at Unravel & Unwind CIC early today due to an appointment with the nurse.  That appointment ran a little over, which is expected, and I ended up with too much time on my hands but not enough to do anything with, so I showed up at the school an hour and a half early!!

There were still cars there.  I am not even lying for effect.

So I just enjoyed some crochet.  This is the start of what is going to be a fantastically challenging two weeks.  The first four squares of the Secret Garden CAL (crochet-a-long) have been released and I started work on it.

This CAL is beautiful!  Please do search Facebook for Rainbow Valley Crochet to get involved in this beautiful CAL.

Mandala Monday #2

How has your week been?  I hope it's been full of creative loveliness as mine has.

This is Week 2 of Mandala Monday, and here is this week's Mandala:

This is the first ever Mandala that I have drawn.  I started out using a compass to draw the original circle.  Then I put the compass point at 4 equidistant points around the circle and drew semi-circles.  Honestly, I can't remember where I went from there but I ended up with a flower shape, and that flower shape dictated an inner circle which I drew freehand which you can probably see here.

Once the main shape was drawn and subsequently outlined with an 08 pigment pen, I proceeded to mark out small areas and fill them with patterns, working from the inside out, first on each petal and then around the outside, wihch led me to try making the arch shapes.  I was thrilled with how these shapes came to look!

All in all, I'm very surprised that I was able to do this, and it felt good to start with an initial framework and fill it in without too much forethought, but just concentrating in the moment and enjoying the process!

Did you blog a Mandala this Monday?  If so, please do join in and leave a comment below linking us to your Mandala Monday entry for this week.  I'd really love to see what you've done too!

Back on the Tatty-Wagon!

This is a photo of my footrest that I took during a "butt-rot" weekend.  That's when I just sit on the sofa, catch up on TV and do crafts.  This time it was tatting and pinning out other tatting to block it.  I got an Amazon delivery, hence the packing tape in the photo too... this is descriptive of many of my weekends at home.  I just happened to photograph it this time.  Thought I'd share.   On a Tuesday.  Random.

I have been tatting quite a lot lately, because I decided to teach myself needle tatting.  In the photo below, the items were shuttle tatted and the blue and pink plastic pieces on the bottom are shuttles.  You  wind the thread around the shuttles and then make your design.  I had been doing cro-tat ornaments over the holidays and that is yet another form of tatting which incorporates crochet to make the designs more flexible.  Shuttle tatting, Needle tatting, and Cro-tat.  Three different ways and I know them all now!

I must say that I am enjoying all types but needle tatting is the easiest one to fix if it goes wrong.

For a great needle tatting tutorial in three parts, try making Ruby Lockwood's Mug Rug.  It's on YouTube.  Warning- she has a bird!  In the third part, Miku is getting a bit cheeky... caw!!!  She's a normal human being as well, so she does make a few mistakes and undoes them.  This is great because there's too many perfectionists out there.  Watch it through before you join in.  If you  make anything from it, please don't forget to like the video, and send me a little note too to let me know if you've tried it!

Mandala Monday #1!

Seems that this is The Year of The Mandala.  So declares Simply Crochet, and as I have recently received a 'How to draw Mandalas' book and a crochet Mandalas book, I thought, why not start a little theme for this year, Mandala Monday?

So here we are, the first Mandala Monday.  And I would like to start out by inviting people to join in!

Here's what you do:

1. Blog a Mandala that you have made- this could be crocheted, embroidered, knitted, drawn, painted, done in sand... any method at all, and I will include 'adult colouring' too- if you have a book of mandala patterns and you've added colour, you're in it too!  I would like it if you would include my blog address on there so people can come and join in too!

2. View your blog entry like a regular viewer would, and copy the entire URL (web address).   You may need to click on the title of the entry to get the full URL of the entry itself.

3. Comment on the current week's Mandala Monday entry here, and paste the URL of your entry for the week (not the blog front page) in the comments section.

That's it!

Mandalas are great fun, for pattern lovers and spiritualists and everyone in between!

My first Mandala was made on Christmas Day, when I finally allowed myself to open the Mandala Book that Wendy got me!  Here it is, and have a Majestic Mandala Monday!!

Until next week!

SIPIDI: Reindeer with Lindor Noses

SIPIDI: It stands for See It, Pin It, Do It!  And I did!

I saw this pattern for a cut file for Rudolph Lollipop covers where the lollipop sticks through as Rudolph's nose.  I decided to use Lindor chocolates instead of lollipops, so no stick needed, no hole needed.  I altered the file, made a new layout just for antlers while I was at it, cut the entire shape out of a medium brown and the antlers out of a dark brown. I added eyes and a smile and felt pretty good about it- and the bows made the final addition.

I gave some of them to my crafter friends at my monthly crop in  Eastbourne and ten were for my daughter's friends.  They went down a treat in both places.

They are a bit on the expensive side since I'm using Bazzill and the heads take up more than 6  inches in width, so I can only get one head out of a sheet of Bazzill.  49p a sheet for that, plus I can get 3 pairs of antlers out of a sheet too... so it's 1 and 1/3 sheets of cardstock per reindeer!  The eyes were made out of some scraps of white I had lying around.  They look a little cross-eyed in this photo but I changed how I made the eyes and I'm happier with those.  I didn't take a picture before they all went out though.

It's difficult to blog in the lead-up to Christmas because the things I'm making are either cards or gifts, but I'm posting what I can.  I want to get back on the blog-wagon after Blogtober!

Have you tried anything that you've pinned lately?  Let me know in the comments. :)

Blogtober 2016: The Result.

Aaah.  Nothing like the smell of slightly caramelised pumpkin in the evening... and the sense that the month, and Blogtober, are coming to a close.

I set my own goal for Blogtober, which was the standard "blog every day" goal.  I am happy to say I only missed one day!  And nobody's perfect... so hey!  I'm very pleased with myself.

I had a few setbacks this year, the worst one being that my Blogger app no longer works on my phone.  This means that I could not have a set time of day to blog (such as the school run) and as such I ended up scheduling posts on a mass scale.  I am hoping that maybe a fresh install will solve it, but if not, I may have to strategise.

I am looking beyond Blogtober into my blog-future.

I haven't been blogging regularly since the emergence of the quicker social media-- like Twitter and Instagram.  These days when I have a photo to share, I just plonk it right up on these other sites without as much wordsmithery or explanation at all.  The immediacy is great, but at the same time I feel like I'm leaving behind a part of myself; the verbose part!

I am all over the internet now like a rash, as I explained in an earlier post this month.  Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Twitch, YouTube, and not forgetting the website.  There's nine right there that I've mentioned, so I can't even dedicate one day a week to posting on each!  Vine is the one that suffers.  I love Vine as a viewer, but as a contributor I have a hard time condensing anything good into 6 seconds. The next least-used is Pinterest.  I need to find a good way to link my pins into websites and web shops so that I can better publicise my stuff.

I am considering getting back into regular blogging by doing certain posts on certain days of the week, and I'm sure you'll know all about it the moment I decide exactly what I'm doing!!!

Until then, why not drink the dregs of Blogtober 2016 by visiting my original post, following the links to the three other blogs participating and give them some loving (or maybe just friendly) comments. :)  I know I intend to!

Thanks to Karen, Wendy and Lyn for joining me, and I hope to see you far more frequently leading up to next Blogtober!

Oh... and Happy Hallowe'en!

Cro-tat Christmas Ornaments

It's been such a long time since I'd been to a crafting class that I wasn't teaching!  When I signed up to this Cro-tat class from Rainbow Valley Crochet, I was so excited... I could hardly sleep the night before, and I got there so early the workshop wasn't even open yet and I had to go looking for a cafe that was actually open before 10am (strange, you'd think most of them would be... but apparently not on Rochester High St).

The class was being held at Unravel & Unwind CIC and when I got there and got to meet Helen from Rainbow Valley Crochet and get stuck in, I was just so thrilled.  The time went by very quickly indeed and I got nearly one entire ornament done, minus the final round, before I had to pick my daughter up from school.

What a great workshop it was!  I ordered all of the kits so I could make more at home with my new skills.

Cro-tat is a combination of crochet and needle tatting and it was actually the first type of tatting that I ever learned, but I only tried it a couple of times and then years later I discovered shuttle tatting... but I think now that I've tried it, I like cro-tat better. :)  I suppose really I could now try needle tatting too!

Anyway... This is my first foray into Christmas Crafting for the year, not counting the samples I made for the beginner's cardmaking classes at Unravel & Unwind.  The first one is on Monday the 14th of November, in case you were wondering... :)

And I'm sure you were wondering what this Blogtober 2016 thing is that I keep banging on about.  Check it out on the original post.

As Blogtober 2016 draws to a close, I will be blogging my thoughts about it all... tomorrow.

Broomstick Lace Scarf

Seems like there's a halo over this, probably because it's just that good.... if I do say so myself...

I have had a go at broomstick lace several times, but have never actually persevered long enough to make anything useful... until now!

I saw a broomstick lace scarf made using the self-striping yarn with very subtle colour changes.   I love this kind of yarn, but as a crocheter, I don't often get the desired effect with them.  I still buy them because I just love to look at them.  I had started making a lacy bolero with this yarn-- King Cole Riot-- and the project sort of stalled.  I knew I needed more yarn to make it and I ordered some.  It came and I never even unwrapped the bag... until this pattern reminded me of its existence!

So I took the new balls of this yarn and started to make this.  I am really enjoying watching the colours change and watching this new pattern take shape... each time I finish a row, I enjoy just admiring it for a minute before starting on the next one.  I just love it.

Broomstick lace is one of those things that I can see my friends watching me make and going, "Oh, I could never do that, it's too fiddly!" and yeah... it was for about 3 rows.  After that, you just get into it and you get used to it.  Patience, that's all it takes.  Perseverance.  And for effect I should use one more word beginning with P.  Patience, Perseverance, and... Perniciousness?  I don't know what Pernicious means but ah well.  None of the other words I was thinking were at all appropriate.  Pernickety?  Pyewacket?  Precocious?  Pro-active?  Professional?  ... no, definitely not that.

Pumpkins!  That reminds me of October.  October?  Blogtober.  Take a look at other Blogtober 2016 participants by visiting this post.

Bookmarks, All Finished!

Here they are, as promised... well, three of them at least.

This is what became of the coloured-in bookmark sheet kindly provided by Crafters Companion, the company behind the Spectrum Noir Colorista colouring course that I took online a couple of months back.

Once the sheet had been coloured, I cut out each individual bookmark, laminated all of them, punched holes where indicated, then lined the holes with some no-setting-required "snap" eyelets that I have had in my stash for years.  I'm happy to have started using them up, and they were perfect for this project!

As a finishing touch, I dug through my stash for some weird yarn to use, and came up with this teal eyelash yarn, which I think worked a treat!

I liked the bleed-through effect that was on the back of the card, so I just laminated the one sheet with no backing layer.  Now I can enjoy both sides of the design... at least until I give them away!

My daughter has already taken one, and I believe I reserved one for myself as well... but where did it go?  I only have three here and there should be four... kitty?

So... we are rapidly nearing the end of Blogtober 2016.  I am pleased to say that through a great deal of scheduling (I maintain that scheduling is not cheating!) I have managed to do every day but one.  I missed yesterday because I was having a great time at a local craft drop-in centre, at which I am now volunteering twice a week.  We ended up just sitting and having a staff natter and it got very late indeed.

I hope that the one day is the only one that I will miss this month.