Conkers!

We have had great fun collecting conkers the last few days over the park and on walks. The boys collected exactly 100 on their first outing - couldn't have managed that if they had tried to count!

Anyway, we weren't sure what to do with them all until I left the boys on their own to play and came back to this! A giant conker man!

Driftwood embroidery

A lovely project for today combining drills and embroidery needle - great fun!

I found a small piece of driftwood which I then marked out the word 'home'.

I then drilled holes along the wording. I initially used my Dremel, but it struggled a little. I then tried my Grandad's old hand drill which worked perfectly! The oldies are the goodies!

When all the holes were drilled I then threaded wool onto a needle and backstitched along the wording. 

I love the end result! Simple but effective! I have popped it on the printers tray with the stones I 'sharpied' in Spain, and  the wood weaving from our recent camping trip. I think it fit's very well!

Eden's 4th Dinosaur Party

Eden wanted a dinosaur party for his 4th birthday. Well actually it was initially a batman party, then a 'ladybird dinosaur' party and then he decided to drop the ladybirds!

I started with the invitations. These were great fun to make!

For the food I kept it fairly simple with dino twists where I could! I was working all the previous day and the party was at 11am so there really wasn't time to go too fancy. 

Book page drawing / greeting card art

My lovely friend has just moved into a new house and I popped round for the grand tour this evening.
I wanted to give her a welcome card / gift and came up with this artwork based around a torn book page. I have seen similar around and love the mixed media approach. My drawing ability is very limited but the paint markers providing the smash of colour around the basic line drawing on an old book page was simple yet effective!

Sweetie Wreath take 2! (Secret weapon loom bands!)

I have been making sweetie wreaths such as this pervious post here each Christmas for the last few years since a visit to Dan's sister in New Zealand who always makes one for Christmas!
I was approached a couple of weeks ago by a good friend who works for a firm wanting to put on a charity fundraiser / team-building craft workshop. As the company distributes sweets it seemed the perfect craft to take advantage of the raw materials available! As I will be teaching to a team rather than individuals however, some tweaks needed to be made to simplify it.

The first step is with a wire coat hanger. This needs to be stretched to form a circle shape.

This is followed by winding a long strip(s) of fleece around the hanger. 

Now comes the new secret weapon .... Loom Bands! After the 24 hour initial enthusiasm from my son we now have hundreds around the house and they seemed the perfect solution.