Garden Stone Tutorial

This is such a lovely idea...and a nice, personalised touch for your garden or courtyard.

Image: Sunset Gurl Design 

Video: On Handwork

Making something from hand is such a rewarding experience, be it sewing, knitting, crochet, needlework, workwork or any other number of handiwork crafts.

I found this video really interesting, and how Renate talks about knitting being a form of meditation rang true with me. I know anytime I am crafting, I am lost in my own little world, and it does feel very meditation like. I also liked the importance she placed on handicrafts within our busy, modern (often cold) world.


Video Source: Fibercraft Studios on YouTube, via Craftzine

Crafters, and others interested in any kind of handmade skill, do yourself a favour and watch this great video.

DIY Watercolour Paints

Creative Jewish Mom's DIY watercolour tutorial is certainly worth a try. For your own kids, the neighbours or little nieces and nephews.

The ingredients are pretty common pantry items, so check it out!

She has a great blog, with lots of creative and crafty ideas.

Quick Craft Tip: DIY Stencil

I've seen lots of people blogging about printing out their own stencils straight from Word or Publisher. This is great and shows us how wonderful this technology can be.

My tip is not to use normal paper as some have suggested, although you can. I find that it is too flimsy. I use photo paper, it is more heavyweight and I find it leaves cleaner paint lines.

Just enlarge your font to the required size, print on photo paper and cut out the printed letters with a craft knife or small box cutter/stanley knife.

I used spray paint with this method the other day and the result was really good :)

With spray paint, the edges are a little fuzzier and in my opinion makes it a little more 'aged' looking, if that is the look you are going for. You can tidy it up with a paint pen after if you really want to. It's also really quick!

You'll see in the picture about, the cut line is a bit wobbly. That is just fine and dandy, as long as you do it within the letter and not in the white space. You'll be discarding the black bits, as the white piece is your stencil. You can tidy the edges whenever you need to, as long as the mistake is in the black bit/actual letter.

Christmas Crafted Item 1

From our home to theirs :)

Sewing

I'm using this gorgeous fabric for a new project - the most ambitious I have attempted! Cross your fingers for me that it works out! For accomplished sewers it would be a breeze, I'm sure. As a born again sewer I'm nervous about these things though.

Also working on some Christmas craft. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as the song goes.

Cross stitch stuff

I am all into cross stitch again! I have been looking at new, funky patterns and designing my own...I want to do different sort of projects and make a whole heap of presents for family and friends for Christmas. I did the snail teatowel as a 'quickie' thank you present for my sister (only a few hours!) but the stuff I am thinking about is quite involved so will take me ages.

Wish me luck!

Loving these http://www.emilypeacock.com