Potting around in Spring

My daughter has been learning about plants at school, and so I thought it was a good time to start sowing some seeds.

Every year we plant some seeds to watch how they grow, last year we planted peppers which grew huge. This year we're planting a selection of flowers to put into the borders around our garden (they need filling up).

My eldest knows pretty much what to do so I let her do it all by herself, this is the first time the youngest has helped (she was more interested in eating the mud than anything else).

I'm going to try to take photos (if I remember) as they emerge from their trays.

So here's the initial shot:

Talk about getting ahead of oneself

The sun must be getting to me. That's the only reasoning I've got. I have put my name down for a stall at Pippa's Mayfair!

This is a craft fair in our local town, on the 21st of May. I've never done anything like this, or even been to this before as a customer, but thought if I really am contemplating selling some of my cards what better way to get some feedback on my designs.

Now I have a deadline to work to, I'll have to pull my finger out to make up enough things to fill a stall/table. Oh dear, what have I done?

And I have now also opened an Etsy shop, eeeschk! I find all the postage and converting pounds into dollars type things scary, and not sure if I've even put the right amounts anyway but you've got to start somewhere.

Summer is on it's way!

Well we've had some gorgeous weather here recently, there's something about the flowers popping up everywhere and the days getting longer that puts a bounce in my step. And for some strange reason I start to think about bunting.

Not sure if it's because I just celebrated a birthday recently, or that I'm already starting to count off the weeks until my daughters next one, but I felt in the need to make some bunting (as we don't have any, it is a necessity).

I was very lucky to have been given a bag full of bits of material by a lady  (via my mother-in-law) who knew I'd make good use of it, so I routed through the bag and my fabric stash and found a nice bright friendly selection of fabrics to put together. Along with some ribbon that I bought a couple of weeks ago, and a couple of hours here and there, it was done. It was so easy that I'm thinking of making some more, but I'm not sure when or where I'll use it all.

It kind of reminds me of street fairs that we had when I was little, or some sort of special occasions - I'm not quite sure. It does cheer me up though just to look at it, weird!

Folksy here I come

After completing my first two cards designs, I have decided to take the plunge and see if anyone will buy them off me.

Now where to start?

I decided to start on Folksy, it's a site I have looked at a few times and feel comfy with it. It's also handy that it's all in good ol' sterling so I didn't have to do any conversion maths just yet. Although I do plan to try out Etsy as well, just maybe later on this week.

It all seemed a good idea until it came down to writing the description, I had no idea what to say. After quite a lot of dilly-dallying, I decided to keep it short and sweet but now I worry that it all sounds too formal. Well it'll do for now, I can always change it further down the line if I come up with anything better.

What a beautiful day

Yesterday the sun was shining so brightly, we decided it was time to roll out the barbie. The first of the year, in April, unheard of. Woo hoo!
But anyway, as we were sitting down to eat we heard some strange noises in the distance and look what came into sight.

'Put a sausage on for me!' they shouted.

One - part one

After loving making my number 2 zebra card, I thought I'd follow up with a 1 card.

As you can see from my photos, the sun has been shining brightly today. I thought it was great at first, and set myself up in the dining room printing away. Then I notice that the ink seems to be a bit gloopier than normal, then the screen looks like it's drying up. That's when it clicks, I'm printing away in front of a huge window with the sun beating down on me and it's drying everything out quicker than I can work! What started out as a fun, carefree project has suddenly changed into a race - to try to get as many printed before I need to clean out the screen again.

I'm a glutton for punishment though, I decided to still go for the next colour, I just can't wait to see if my design works.

Can you tell what it is yet?

Been buying again!

But it's not for me, it my mum's birthday tomorrow (I'm not spoiling the surprise, she's already opened her pressie). This time I've bought a well coveted brooch from a talented girl called Lupin (she's also a fellow blogger). And a set of biscuit soaps that I bought off Bits n bobs on Folksy.

These soaps smell gorgeous, and they look just like the biscuits they are meant to be (they'd photograph better if I had unwrapped them, but thought I'd best leave that for my mum to do).

I wonder how they were made, can you take a mould off a biscuit? That could be worth trying one day. Although you have to be good a resisting eating them. Tricky.

Two - part two

A touch of pink, a few stripes in black and hey presto - a zebra has appeared!

Now I just have to cut them all down to my card size, crease them neatly (that's a big ask for me), and I'm done, cool huh?

Two - part one

Ah what a blissful day! I've finally started printing and my press works marvelously.

I've started with printing a card that I can use on my daughter's friend's birthdays. So a bit of weekend fun that's also a little practical.

While I was on a roll I decided to keep going until I used up every piece of red card that I owned. It feels like quite a productive day, not sure I know enough one year olds though :)

For the man who has everything…

I'm always at a loss as to what to buy my dad for his birthday, and this year was no exception. However, recently I've been loving all the unusual bits that you can get off Etsy and Folksy. We have so many clever people, making great stuff so that this year I only looked online for inspiration.
My dad is now at that age where he has simple pleasures (a game of golf, nice bottle of wine, that kind of thing) and he's in a position to buy the things he wants, as he wants them. So instead of getting him some golf balls as my husband suggested (you never can have too many balls!) I found this wonderful object from www.etsy.com/shop/Libbie.

It's a proper golf club that has been altered into a wine bottle stopper, I love it! Even if he never uses it, hopefully it made him smile.

How to: Make a table top screen press

Easter Sunday was very exciting for me - my husband put my table top screen press together. Yay! So as promised, I'm going to try to describe how we put it all together. I say we, I only took photos and skipped around in the background clapping my hands.

First we got a piece of wood the same height as your frame and cut it to the same length as the frame.

Then we drilled two holes to fit a couple of bolts into (we used 10x100mm bolts).

Then with the rest of the strip of wood that we cut earlier, we cut it into batons that we then screwed onto the underside of our base board (flat sheet of mdf). This was to give the whole press more height, and to allow for the depth of the bolt heads.

Then we screwed two hinges (the fancy ones bought last week) to attach the screen to our base. We also screwed one last strip of wood onto the side of the screen to act as a prop keeping the screen up (very useful bit).

Finally we pad the whole frame up by roughly 5mm, to make sure the frame doesn't sit on the base board. Obviously the fabric part of the screen has to be able to stretch down to the base board when pressed with a squeegee but pop back away afterwards.

When padding up the frame you have to do under the two bottom corners and the whole strip of wood with the bolt holes through, and make sure they all match.

Poppy

Yesterday I had the urge to do some sewing, and planned to make a toy of some kind. Over the years I have amassed lots of pattern books that as yet I've never made one out of them, and as it happens I still haven't.

Instead I stumbled across an owl kit that I had purchased from www.paper-and-string.co.uk several weeks ago. Perfect!
I didn't want to do anything too taxing as I'm aware that I have a quilt that needs finishing, but I just wanted to do some quick easy enjoyable sewing this fitted the bill perfectly (obviously household sewing like adjusting trousers, or sewing names into school skirts doesn't count).

These are the pieces that I cut out:

I'm a big fan of things made out of felt, and enjoy reading blogs such as the delightful  www.bugsandfishes.blogspot.com but this is my first time of sewing in felt, and Wow! I can see now how people get really into it. It's a lovely fabric to use. It's so satisfying.
The owl came together rapidly, and I fortunately always have a bag of stuffing to hand (bought ages ago for a just in case situation like this).  So here he is, my daughter named him Poppy! So I guess he's a girl now.

He enabled me to get the quick sewing fix out of my system and so my itchy fingers went on to doing another hour on the quilt as well. Still not much closer in finishing it though.

Big Parcel Day

Today my hubby shouted for me to come downstairs, where I spied this big parcel in his hands that had been delivered for me!

What could it be?

Why joy of joys, it's my new screen. Isn't it lovely? (start the happy dance, plenty of clapping and skipping).

I know that you can be very good and make your own screen, but that would entail skills that I don't feel I possess. I also know that if I had attempted to make my own, the chances are that it wouldn't have turned out nice and tight, but saggy and unusable instead. Lots of rippley, blotchy prints. That's why I ordered it from here: www.lawrence.co.uk

Since I'm planning on mainly printing on card I got a screen with 90T mesh in it. I believe that the number relates to how many threads there are per cm, and the letter relates to how thick each one of those threads are. I'd like to eventually get a 120T screen as I would be able to get finer details on that. The often seen 43T's are really for printing onto fabric, like T-shirts, as they allow more ink to get through the mesh (as the fabric soaks up a lot).

I also bought these special hinges to keep the screen in place, you can get bigger, fancier ones but I thought these would do to start off with.

When I did my course at silkwormstudios.com I was given instructions by Nobby on how to set up a table top silk screen press which I plan to follow. Don't be mistaken, I wont actually construct it myself. But I'm thinking I'll take photos of the hubby constructing it, and try to put it on here as a kind of tutorial. I just need to bribe him to do it, probably a beer will do. I always love to see tutorials on things.

On another note, happy birthday Dad!