Acrylic Painting - Poppy Field

So here is my second acrylic painting:

I quite like it, though I can see I have plenty of room for improvement.

I followed this tutorial by Angela Anderson.

It's good to try a very different style of painting and I like the bold colours.  I'm a huge fan of flowers so it was fun to paint different types of flowers too.

The painting over all was easy but poppies themselves were quite hard to do.  If I try this one again I would look up a photo of some real poppies in a field and try to copy the light and shade on those as they were very difficult to highlight.

Overall though, I am very pleased with the outcome!

My First Acrylic Picture

I loved art at school and was a pretty good drawer, but I never, ever got the hang of painting.  I tried oil, I tried water colour, but I never tried acrylic.

I'm sure the artists out there will say that I probably wasn't taught well, but I did learn the basics, especially for water colour and never got the hang of it.

So, I have been delighted to find that I can paint with acrylics!!!

I have used acrylics to decorate my picture frame, my mini chest of drawers and my sewing box as well as a few other bits and bobs before, but I have been far from adventurous with it and haven't used any "proper techniques".

I have started a project to hopefully sell some mini hand-painted chests of drawers and knew I needed to up my game if I want to sell them so I started looking up ways to paint certain things with acrylic and discovered a whole host of Youtubers who give tutorials on acrylic painting.  And now I am hooked.

I will write another post about my long-term mini hand-painted chests of drawers projects once I've got the ball rolling with that, but for now I want to share with you my acrylic success to motivate you to give it a go too, because it is super easy with a little patience!

So first of all, these are the reasons I have fallen in love with acrylics:

• If you make mistakes you can easily fix them, usually by just wiping it off the canvas or waiting for the paint to dry and then going over the mistakes you made.
• You can paint on practically anything.  
• Blending colours is really easy.

So here is what I've been working on...

I discovered Angela Anderson's channel which inspired me to learn how to paint daisies.  I looked up some other tutorials, in particular Allison Prior's video and played around with different techniques.

I eventually used a mixture of techniques I'd seen to create my own version, and you'll be seeing more of these in my up-coming project!

Then I decided to actually follow one of the tutorials to make an actual picture and decided to do this zen painting by Painting with Jane.

I struggled a little bit at first with shading the rocks, and it took me a few attempts... I left it over night and came back to it and I ended up really happy with the finished product.

I like the painting.  Obviously it's not perfect, but it looks good, I think.  The problems I've spotted with it are that firstly the vines look like they're in front of the rocks, which isn't really a big deal because you could be looking through the vines at the rocks, but in that case the back-ground looks like it's missing something.  Also, if you look at it as though the vines are on a level or behind the rocks I think there's a depth missing to them and maybe I should have put more vines of different lengths in there and darkened the ones I wanted to look farther away.  Also, the background looks a little bit wrong to me in terms of where the water stops and where the ground is... I think the rocks have made the ground look like it's behind them in an odd way.  But over-all these aren't major problems and it's a learning curve.

So what do you think?

Knitted Mini Teddy Bear

This is something I made for someone to send to them as a gift and it worked out perfectly.

I got the pattern from here which was really easy to follow as a beginner knitter and I did the whole project within a few short hours so it felt really rewarding to make it.

I changed the face a bit on mine to make it look more like a bear than a koala.

Basically, you knit all the different parts of the bear, and sew on the face.  (I made sure to keep checking where the eyes and nose would sit once the head was stuffed to make sure they wouldn't be too close together or too far apart).

Then you stuff the parts which need stuffing, sewing up these parts as you go.

And then sew all of the limbs and the ears together, and voilà!  It really was that simple!

Draught Excluder

My lovely boyfriend decided to take me to Hobbycraft yesterday and since he knew I've been wanting to buy a sewing machine for a long time got me a mini one to practise with while I save up for a "real" one.

It just does one type of stitching and can only stitch through thin material, but it's perfect for a beginner wanting to practise some not-too-taxing sewing projects.

And speaking of which, I decided to make a draught excluder for our back door.  We've been looking everywhere for one and can't seem to find any in the shops at the moment, and this was a much cheaper way of doing it anyway!

I looked on Youtube for some inspiration on how to make one, and watched several videos, but I basically ended up making it up as I went along, and it worked a treat.  So here's what I did.

First of all, since I'd decided I wanted to do a patchwork pattern, I cut squares out of some 

material I picked up at Hobbycraft after ironing it, using fabric scissors, and then decided how I wanted the patchwork to look by laying it out on the floor.  

I was a little worried that the squares weren't perfect (I don't have the ideal measuring or cutting materials usually used for these types of projects), but that didn't seem to matter in the end.

I started sewing the squares; sewing them together wrong side out.  I checked the length of the rows of squares I'd made against the door and decided I needed one more square of patchwork on each row to make it the correct length for the door.  Again, I did this because this project wasn't an exact science.  Had I been able to properly measure the squares and been able to do all the seams the same size, I would have been able to measure the door width and measured out the material accordingly.  But this was an experiment, and experiment I did!

Once I'd sewn both rows of patchwork together I ironed down the seams on the back to make them flat.

Then I sewed together the two rows, wrong sides out.

I continued by sewing the other edge shut to make a tube and the sewed one end shut before turning the material right-way out.

I then stuffed the material with super soft toy filling (again, picked up at Hobbycraft) and double folded the open end and sewed it shut.

I'm really pleased with how it looks, and am very proud of myself for having worked out how to use the machine and how to make this little project without following specific instructions!

Also, it definitely saved on money, since buying a draught excluder would have been expensive, and my little draught-stopper is now helping to keep my home nice and cosy and warm, while looking really cute too!

Now all I have to do it decide what my next easy-to-make mini-machine project is going to be!

Cable Knit Bag

This is my first attempt at cable stitch, and it turned out quite well I think!  I followed one of the projects in my Knitty Gritty (knitting for the absolute beginner) book by Aneeta Patel. 

There are a couple of mistakes on the bag, but I'm trying not to be too much of a perfectionist and remember that I'm only a beginner, so mistakes are normal, and it hasn't affected the look of the bag too much.

The main mistake I made with the bag is that I accidentally put an extra row of knitting in at some point which turned the cable stitch to the other side of the bag, as you can just about see in the picture below.  But since it's near the handles, it's not very noticeable, so I don't really mind.

Also, when stitching on the handles, I attached them to each side of the bag instead of giving each side of the bag its own handle.  It's not really a mistake as such, because it works, but it's not what was suggested in the book and was an absent-minded change to the pattern suggested.  The book doesn't actually explain how to sew the handles on in detail so I sort of made it up as I went along, but you can't actually see the stitches used to attach the bag so I think I did a good job with it.

At some point I had a major disaster when I got to the end of a row and counted the stitches... I'd dropped a stitch at some point without realising but then couldn't see in the pattern where it was.  I did undo the row carefully and found what I thought was the dropped stitch.  It took a lot of creative thinking and I thought I'd rectified it correctly until I knitted the next row and noticed a random big loop in the row below, but apart from it looking a little odd, it's not very noticeable and the work isn't going to unravel, so never mind!

I like the look of this little bag and was pleased with the finished product.  You can adjust this pattern quite easily to make bigger or smaller bags as needed, so I'd definitely experiment with this technique now I know how to do it!

Spanish Dancer - Cross Stitch

This is a landmark day.  Remember this day, because this is the day I finished my Spanish Dancer cross stitch.

This project has been ongoing for literally years.  Here's a couple of pictures of me working on it at different times:

Since I started this project I have moved house four times, moved to France and back, have fallen in love and settled down with the loveliest man I could have found, I've had five different jobs, learnt an entire language, broken my arm twice (a possible excuse for having taken so long to complete this project), people I know have died and been born, I've made new friends and lost old ones, the shop I bought the cross stitch kit from closed... And through all of this, one thing has remained constant... my slow progress with the Spanish Dancer.  

Well, here she is:

It's been an enjoyable project, though a slow one.  

Here's some photos I took of the progress I was making over the years:

The Lanarte kit I bought back in what must have been 2008 or 2009, I think, cost about £50.  I've put hours of work in to it, and love the image itself, so it's priceless to me now.

It's a very large image, measuring 30 x 50cm, so I had to keep track of where I was up to by marking off the stitches I'd already done on the chart that comes in the pack.  I did this with a highlighter pen, but as you can see in the photo below, I had to double check I'd not made any mistakes in some areas of the cross stitch and went over the chart again with a pen.

The kit came with the chart, the threads needed (and there was more than enough of each colour to complete the project without needing to buy more), the fabric and a needle.
I also had to use an embroidery hoop and provided my own scissors, but basically with these kits you're good to go as soon as you buy them.

Now all that's left for me to do is decide what I want to do with my finished piece.  Ideas are welcome, so let me know if you have any!

I've thought about turning her in to a cushion, or framing her; but there's another idea that popped in to my head which particularly appeals, and that is to put her on a padded memory-box lid.  I'm thinking of a box with hinges.  If you've ever seen Little Women, something rather like the memory boxes each of the girls has in the attic.  It seems like a fitting end for this lovely lady, since she's been through so much with me and is a memory in herself, so why shouldn't she guard my other bits and bobs collected over the years?








Here are the last two pictures I took of my progress on the project.













I particularly like the shading effects and all the details on this cross stitch; and though it was difficult to do in places because I kept needing to change colour, I think you'll agree that the end product is really something quite special.  So here are some close-ups of the detail.

I particularly like the shading of her eye-shadow and lips, and love the contrast of colours with the black background. 

I think my next cross stitch project will be something a little less demanding and probably smaller so that I'm motivated to finish it quicker, but I might do another large project some time as it is very satisfying to see the progress, even if it does take a long time to complete.

And just one little tip for you wannabe cross stitchers out there... Don't drink and stitch... You'll make mistakes and have to mop up the mess with a hangover, so just... don't. 

Grey Knitted Hat and Scarf

I haven't posted for a while because moving country and settling in to a new home has been taking up most of my energy.  But I'm back, and I'm motivated to bring you more craft posts!

Today I finished a project I've been working on on-and-off during the move: a nice warm scarf and hat for my partner.

I used a nice soft wool, because there's nothing worse than having an itchy neck.  It's got a nice stretch in it too.

I think I made the hat a little big because I went with the average size suggested in my knitting book instead of trying my hand at measuring his head and altering the pattern to fit, but it still looks good, and at least it's not too small!

The scarf was a nice de-stressing project to pick up at moments when I had time during the move, and since it's just a straight-forward scarf with no embellishments, I didn't have to keep track of a pattern, so it was an ideal project to be getting on with from time to time without losing where I was with it.  

I did have a problem with it a few days ago however!  Since I've not been knitting it very regularly I'd put it aside and tidied up and when I came back to it half of the stitches on the last row I knitted had slid off.  I tried patiently looping the stitches back on the needle, which I thought had worked, until I continued knitting and realised I'd knit two rows together and it looked a mess.  I looked in my knitting book to see how to rectify this kind of mistake but it didn't mention a solution to this particular problem.

I didn't take a photo of it at the time, because I was very frustrated and ready to just undo the whole thing, when I was struck by a brain-wave.  My experiment paid off!

I decided to try picking up one of the previous rows I'd knitted correctly by weaving the other knitting needle through one of the rows.  I chose one a little way down from where I'd gone wrong (about 5 rows down) in case it started unravelling while I worked.

Once I'd got the knitting needle through each loop (picking up the parts of the stitches which look like the tops of little waves, as you can see in the pictures) and counted how many stitches there were to verify I still had the correct amount, I unravelled the work I'd done above it.  I waited with baited breath to see if it worked, and it did!

I was then able to continue knitting from this row; and although the stitches were a little tighter to work from, the second row I knitted was back to normal.  Phew!

This trick also came in handy a little while later when I made a mistake while casting off.

I was really pleased with the end result, and particularly pleased with the casting off, which I managed to keep loose enough to not bunch up at the end.

So there you have it, my first adult sized hat and scarf!