Flower Power!

Its a special someone's birthday today!

These are her presents....!

Happy Birthday!
xxxx

Busy.. Busy.. Flop!

Spring has certainly sprung around here - there are beautiful blooms all over the garden, plenty of  magpies and pigeons (and I hope some robins) building nests, clear blue skies and our vehicle's MOT is due...

I have been busying away creating for a bonanza of birthdays, and celebrations until  things reached fever pitch.....(nearly literally) and I flopped!

Since then I have been resting (or trying to...) and the antibiotics are slowly dragging me out of my fuzzy head...I'm even considering picking up my crochet hook again..so until then here's some I prepared earlier:

They are both slightly different!

 

This string is a full crochet one  made using Sirdar Squiggle yarns

and Lucy at Attic 24s teeny tiny heart and teeny tiny flower patterns,

though with super bulky yarn the teeny tiny bit may be a little unnecessary!

I have made huge progress on the book front!

 Chopping and slicing....

I found a fantastic well used map in a charity shop - it wasn't until I got it home I found its true beauty...it was 2 maps carefully taped together and annotated with red and blue biro. Its folds were also individualised and this has given some interesting edges and sticky out bits in the finished books! (I did chop it up as I thought it must have served its original purpose and then been donated!)

Some finished volumes....

and inner details!...

I have finished the commission and handed it over to my satisfied friend...I will post about it when I know it has been given to its recipients!

Following Tracey's post about her fabulous  gift bags I had a go...
its the first time I followed a longer pattern with lots of rows, holes and a spiral...
I realised where I had gone astray, but wanted to try out the handles so I modified mine into a basket sort of bag! It is unique I admit  -  but I love it, and it will be filled with chocolate goodies soon!

I'll certainly be making more in the future - hopefully they'll look more like Tracey's!

Whilst on the subject!..... Carrad over at Faded Reverie has a fab bag of handmade goodies to  give away to make Spring a bit more colourful...

...and finally here's a teaser of some Easter goodies I am itching to get back to....

I'll be using one of Helen's tried and tested tips on some of the contents! 

I also used this one on the bag!

Hope you are all enjoying some of the joys of Spring!!

xx

Booking time to relax and create!

 I have long admired Jenny's fabulous creations at love and peas*  she is currently debating whether her beautiful volumes are  journals or books....

I love books! The smell, feel, weight, contents, covers, pages...words,  spaces, fonts...I could go on for reams!

The other Saturday I spent a relaxing and enjoyable afternoon learning a new skill alongside two interesting  and humourous ladies. It was a  stab stitch book binding workshop led by Christina at Fibre Flurry. We had expert tuition, Christina was very patient and informative, and gave us lots of tips and hints from her wide artistic experience. We learned about the Japanese art of binding and folding (so the pages are double) alongside placing leaves in folio.
We were able to use materials from Christina's new plain or colourful paper collection and her bulging boxful of preloved paper - quite a distracting challenge to choose from such an amazing array of pages containing words, music, pictures, destinations, diagrams, lines and notes.

The tricky task requiring concentration was measuring, puncturing holes, and sewing the binding but we had two stabs (haha) at it and were able to make our mistakes in a friendly atmosphere!

We came away with two books, templates to make more of the same size, and a stacks of ideas.

The covers have two sides...

the pattern on the outside and inside..

I included lots of different pages...

Since the workshop I have been browsing charity shops for tatty books to chop into and reuse and reinvigorate! Before shopping I thought it would be easy to slice a book that was not mine..however just trying to choose one was really tricky; all the books were pristine, and by making the choice it meant that I had become attached to the book in question.
I know others have worked through these issues - thanks to Kate for voicing it on her blog and to her daughter Kirsty for the initial inspiration for my paper folding forays !

Today  I had several brilliant finds though, and feel that I can reuse these volumes of music

...just look at all these notes..and (someones) notes!!

Here's some of the beautiful items I have gathered ...

soon to be bound and given away to be used by new readers writers and drawers!!