What's On Your Hook Thursday (WoYHT) #2

Hello and welcome to week 2 of What's on Your Hook Thursday (WoYHT).

This week is my first week back at the day job.  It's been a long week already and seems even longer as I've had nearly 3 weeks off over the holidays.

So this week there hasn't been much crochet time but I did finish the granny square crochet/fabric baby dress that I showed you in last weeks post.  I've had so many compliments about it.  I'm thinking I might make one in cream and a lovely lace over satin for the skirt.

Yay I finished the dress. 

This week I've been having a play with some cotton/acrylic yarn which I bought in a sale last year - that sounds like 2018 was ages ago doesn't it?  I tried out the same granny square design as for the dress but it didn't look quite right.  I think it's because the yarn has a fuzzy feel to it and not smooth like the one in the dress.  Anyway I undid it and used it to make a Crabapple Square by Rachele Carmona - you can follow her pattern here on YouTube they're fairly easy to follow if you're confident in making the different stitches and don't expect guidance at every stage. Good thing about videos is you can pause and rewind at your own leisure.  

Trial granny square same as the dress

Crabapple Square  

Close up of the square - still need to add the last row. 

I hope you will join me in sharing what's on your hook.

See you next week and happy hooking.

For my daily ramblings you can follow me on instagram 

Anita

Junker Jane Style Art Doll

I've spent this Sunday afternoon playing with fabric and my sewing machine.  I wanted to have a go at making the Junker Jane style art dolls after making the ATC's a couple of weeks ago.  Now I have a stash of fabric which have been left over from other sewing projects and like most artists I hate throwing things away and in this I found some light cream/beige material to make the body.  I added some lace, buttons and a fabric flower which I painted with some acrylic paint.  The arms and the patch on the body are bits of canvas that I painted.  I used embroidery thread for the mouth using back and chain stitch.

The one thing I found with the body material is that it frayed which meant that it didn't hold very well when sewn up - hence the grey patch on the face and the odd stitching on the side.  It was a good learning process as I've never made a doll or any other kind of soft toy.  I think this one will be living with me so it doesn't matter if it's not perfect.

Stencils and Texture Paste

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Happy Stampers Festival at PortSunlight - this is a papercrafts/stampers trade/retail show where quite a lot of the well known rubber stamp companies come to sell their products.

One of the things I like about the show is the variety of rubber stamps on offer.  However, it seems the stencil is what everyone is into instead of rubber stamps.  There seemed to be stencils on every stall I visited.  Now I've been using stencils in my work for a number of years now so maybe I've been 'on trend' without realising it.  

As most people know I have an affection for butterflies (and elephants) so I bought myself a couple of stencils in different style.  Today I had a play with one of the stencils a pretty butterfly in 2 different sizes.  The one I used fits neatly on an ATC size card (2.5inch x 3.5inch). For my canvas I've used a medium weight calico for 2 of the butterflies and an ATC size board for the other.  The orange/red butterfly is watered down acrylic paint, I then used some light molding paste from Golden (I didn't have any grunge paste) I got the same effect as the grunge paste.   The black and gold butterfly is on card board - ATC size I used the molding paste on this one to - for some reason the paste isn't as smooth as the one on the fabric but I like the difference between the two.

I'm going to try and embroider the butterflies when I have a free moment.  I think they will look pretty cool.

I'm linking this to the Handmade Monday thread over on Handmade Harbour 

Pop over and see what everyone else has been up to this week.

Flutterby, Butterfly

So it'a a bank holiday weekend over here in the UK which means a lovely long weekend to play with all your crafty items without feeling guilty about not doing the more tedious jobs around the house.  

These butterflies were stenciled onto fabric a few weeks ago but I've not had time to do anything with them.  So with the long weekend I decided that this was the perfect time to finish them and to catch up on some movies I've been meaning to watch.  

Here they are my textile butterflies with lots of sequins and beads.  I can't decide which one I like the best.  I'm drawn to both as they have different aspects that I like.  Which one do you prefer?

I'm including this in the Handmade Monday blog over on Handmade Harbour.  Why not pop on over and see what the other lovely crafters have been up to.

Happy Crafting 

Anita

Balanced Heart Project

I seemed to have lost the will to write any blog posts since March.  I guess sometimes you just have to leave things alone and not get too stressed.  This doesn't mean that I've not been creative.  I have carried on with a couple of art projects and handmade card orders.   

Jewellery making has been put on hold since April/May after an accident at work which caused an inflamed tendon and using any of my tools is very painful.  The ultra-sound hasn't helped so I am now waiting on having a cortisone injection which I am NOT looking forward to as I don't like needles.

Anyway like I said earlier I have been creating artwork and since May I have been involved in a project that has been started by my friend Ang West over on The Balanced Heart Project .  Every month myself and 4 other artists create 2 pieces of artwork which incorporates "hearts" as the main feature.  The inspiration for this Project, is Ang's little boy, Andrew who passed away on 22nd of October 2001-please pop over to the blog for the full details.  My involvement came about after Ang posted on facebook asking for artist to collaborate in a heart project.  At the time I didn't know what it was about only that "hearts" were involved and as I have a rather lovely collection of "heart Art" I thought this would be a great way of collecting more original artwork.  It was only after hearing Ang's story that I remembered how art and the support from my artist friends had helped me through a very dark time a few years ago and I wanted even more to "help" Ang with her healing.  I am honoured to be part of this project and hope that my "hearts" help her in her journey.


Here are the hearts I sent to Ang for May and June.

 

Hearts for May

Airdry clay hearts for June

These are the hearts I have received from Ang -

 To see all the hearts that have been created for May and June by all the artist involved please pop on over to The Balanced Heart Project blog.  You can also read Ang's full story there.

  

I hope to be back on a regular basis with more updates of the last few months.  


Thank you for visiting and please do leave your comments - they are really appreciated.


Anita