An extra large picture for and extra important post!

There are two main reasons as to why I want to raise money for charity...

1) I am completely in awe of Martha Payne and her blog "NeverSeconds". At a young age she raised a lot of money for a lot of people in Malawi! She a better Martha than I am for sure!

2) I would love to honour a friend who passed away because of cancer so I want to raise money for cancer victims!

I also bet you will be wondering why a strange owl is in the picture. This is because Posy (named by one of the viewers on this blog later this year) will be with me at each fundraising thing I do! so might appear in quite a few pictures on this blog.

Hopefully by around this time next year if I could raise lets say... £1,000. So lets see how it goes!

It is very Important people give me some advice as to how I go round doing this so please comment!

box !

Wood is a wonderful medium, I've used copper once in another resistant materials project however wood has something about it that I prefer much more than metal.

As you can tell this small box is made using veneer but if I were to be more precise I made it out of MDF with a veneer in-lay. To make it I used all kinds of tools: coping saw, tenon saw, files, wax, scalpels, band saws ETC (you get the point).

How I deigned and made the ducks on the lid....

I copied off a cartoon painting of ducks from when I was younger I then scanned it into the computer and traced around it on a design program called 2D design which was then sent to the laser scanner and the design (the ducks) were cut out three times each in a different shades/types of veneer.

To finish of the box I waxed and polished it!

My hard work was paid off when my teacher gave me an A* for it! Even though there may be a few little chips here and there on the veneer.

First Animation!

I apologise for not posting anything for a while however here is my new addition to my crafty scrap book...

I don't want to say to much about this as I think you should watch it and see for yourself. I personally think it could be improved with a little music and a few tweaks but apart from that I am impressed with my self for not only plucking up the courage to run for year rep at school but also I am proud of my self for doing my first stop motion animation.

As always if you have any questions or comments they are welcome. x

strawberry

This is a small, however cute bit of embroidery!

I made this for my mum because it was her birthday and at the time a strawberry was pretty appropriate for the occasion because Wimbledon was on ( whoo Murray! ) 

In order to make this strawberry it was pretty stress-free and would be great for a beginner in embroidery or for someone who doesn't have a lot of spare time as it was a simple and small design so was reasonable quick (bearing in mind that it was hand embroidery after all.)

And if you would prefer machine embroidery instead of hand embroidery that is always an option, plus it would be quicker! 

Mermaid

on holiday stitching!

final piece

 

I did this hand embroidered mermaid around this time last year. (Hence the photo of me sewing in front of the caravan on a summer holiday.) It was for my Bronze Art Award, which is an equivalent to the Duke of Edinburgh, D of E,  in the art world, consisting of four clauses I had to do with one of them being a new skill (mine: hand embroidery).
 

The way I got the idea of sewing a mermaid was, after doing some thumbnails, looking at my old picture books including my particular favourite “Can you catch a mermaid”. And so by using the front cover of the book I got inspiration for the position of the mermaid and the style of hair.

This mermaid is the first major hand embroidered piece I have done and ever since I have felt that I have improved in hand embroidery. In fact now I even sometimes choose hand embroidery over machine embroidery! I guess I love hand embroidery so much because it is a lot more relaxing. I often stitch in front of the TV, happy and content; but don't get me wrong I love machine embroidery after all it was my first "textiles love".

Now you may be questioning who Maggie is and why I was inspired by her so I will try and sum her up as best as I can in a paragraph, instead of a 8 page essay, which is easy to do bearing in mind just how incredible she was...

Maggie was my wonderful friend who sadly passed away. She introduced me to this wonderful world of textiles and without her I wouldn't be the person I am today let alone be writing this blog. She was my teacher as well as my best friend. So I dedicated my mermaid to her because not only do I owe everything I know about textiles to her but hand embroidery was her very favourite type of textiles.

Earrings!

 

 

Earrings

Other a small workshop at school once this pair of silver hooped earrings is the first (proper) jewellery I  have made and infact I am pretty proud of them.

Jewellery making all came about around a month or two ago when my mum and I decided to do a jewellery class every other week. This Is because I want to explore different crafts and art.

The process in order to make these involved some new techniques and media for example needle files, ------saws (and some other stuff I could describe but can't name). However some of they stuff we used I was familiar with because I had either seen or used them before in resistant materials at school.

The idea of doing the little silver flower and leaves was a pretty simple process I suppose. I did my usual research for inspiration as well as jotting down some designs. And I knew I wanted something along the lines of flowers (or birds etc) to make them unique because otherwise what is the point of making them?!

I've already decided that my next jewellery challenge will be an elephant brooch.

And finally I would like to thank Catherine for helping me and my mum with our jewellery making! X

Milk bottle Elephant

 

 

 

 

I absolutely love elephants they are my favourite animal and these particular elephants were made afew months ago for a science project at school on elephants- where my love for elephants began!

Though these are incredibly simple and very easy to make I still decided to put them on my blog for the viewers who may be children, have children or just love elephants and using recycled materials like I do.

 

Just a few facts about them…

 

• I decided to not paint them  too neatly and instead with curves and slightly rough as I like the texture and it makes them more unique (not that milk bottle elephants aren’t unique).
• I used two different types of milk bottles, a really small one and a really big one, even though originally I wanted to make them out of 4 pint milk bottles. Which proves that even if everything doesn’t go to plan just improvise and you might get even better results and in my case I didn’t get two of the same elephants I got a mummy and a baby elephant instead!
• I didn’t know what to do with the green bottle caps and I suppose it’s abit lazy but I just put some pretty paper on top, with a elastic band, and made them look like the festival elephants you would often see in places like Asia.

 

Simple but effective. xxx