Crafty As L

Last week, I had another trip up to Oswestry for what I think will become an annual pilgrimage to attend one of Alison Holt’s free-motion embroidery courses.   I had a great time up there and met friends old and new.  You can see all the students' work here  on Alison's website.   As my Mum is not able to sew any longer, I have inherited her old sewing machine and I’d decided to take this with me as it is considerably better behaved than my basic old sewing machine.   (My new computerised machine isn’t ideal for this course).   At the last minute, I realised that I didn’t have an extension table for it, but with my new-found skills for cutting polycarbonate, I fashioned one to fit. My craft room is not at its tidiest at present! The theme for this course was Colourful Landscapes and I found a great image of a lavender field, presumably at sunset due to the shadows, which I was immediately drawn to.   My style choices always seem to include contra...

Next week is the end of term prize giving for our art group competition.   I’m heading up to Oswestry for another free-motion embroidery course later today so I shall miss it but I’d procured the prizes for the event so I wanted to make some tags for them. Looking through my stash, I could find no stamp set more appropriate for an art group than Color My World by Colorado Craft Company.   I cut two strips of kraft card 2¾” wide plus a tag and stamped them with the various paintbrushes. I coloured them in using my Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils. For the bottle tags, I punched a circle from one end and scored a line across.   For the smaller tag, I used a tag-topper punch to trim the fancy top.   To finish them off nicely, I used a corner rounder punch on all the tags.   I decided to add first, second and third to the tags and die-cut the number from glitter card in gold, silver and bronze, backing them with an offset black die-cut. Here are ...

Here I am (already!) with the last post of 2025.   It seems to me that the year has absolutely flown by.   We had a lovely time over the festive period, spending time with family and friends, old and new.   My sister and I had a visit to Waddesdon Manor, near Aylesbury, to see their light show and manor.   We are like Kevin from Home Alone in that we love Christmas trees and we were weren’t disappointed as the house was full of them.   There was a light show on the house and a light trail in the grounds, all of which made for a great day out. For this last post, I’m sharing a few of the cards and crafts I’ve made during the run up to Christmas.   My friend and I went to a glass fusing workshop to make Christmas decorations and these were my collection.   I was slightly addicted to making wreaths!   Some of these were given as gifts and some adorn my various trees. Although I try to make some Christmas cards each month, I’d not made any since e...

This past week has been about remembering those who served and, sadly are still serving, in the various wars.   We were delighted to have our dear friend, Dougie, a WW2 veteran, staying with us for a few days and we had some lovely trips out together.  My crocheted poppy  wreath  was also dug out of storage and hung on the front door. On Monday, it was my Visible Image DT post which remembered the role of animals during conflicts.   I go to a local art group on a Monday morning and I didn’t have anything sketched so I had a go at copying a painting I saw on Facebook which accompanied a very poignant poem called “One Thousand Men Are Walking”.   I can’t credit the artist as I can't find the name anywhere.  Anyway, here is my version. On 11 th , Project 71, the veteran’s group where I volunteer, were invited by the Royal Navy to a remembrance service followed by a lunch in the wardroom at HMS Excellent on Whale Island.   One of the ve...