A New Year and doing more craft challenges.

Hopefully, now that 2020, the year of covid, is over and with the vaccine being slowly rolled out, we may have some semblance of normality at some stage this year. That being said, we're now in out third lockdown. Not that things actually change that much to me. The only real difference is that I' not going out with my Dad to Liverpool every thursday. As he's part of our bubble he can come down to ours as  normal, that's the main difference between this lockdown and the first one last year, we didn't have support bubbles then so Father was on his own apart from when I did his shopping once a week. Basically lockdown means I have another day of crafting! Not a hardship for me.

I've decided that in 2021, I'm going to do more challenges like the 100 day project, to broaden my stitching, art and papercrafting skills.

This year's 100 day project is starting earlier this year on the 31st January (previously it's been an April start). I'll talk about that in a future post. The first challenge that I have started this year is Anne Brooke's 52 week tag challenge. This challenge involves stitching a tag following the theme for that  week and you can see people's work with the hashtag #52tagshannemade

For week one, the theme was white.

To make this tag I had a base of vintage linen napkin that I decorated with lace, a ruffle of net, suffolk puffs, beads and lots of french knots. I stitched the piece onto a Tracie Fox tag.

Week two's theme was heart.

For this tag I kantha stitched scraps of Victorian silk and floral cotton fabrics onto a piece of cotton. I added a blue silk heart and a heart charm and a strip of pink and gold trim. I stitched it onto another Tracie Fox tag and I added a tab made from a scrap of broderie anglais.

I'm looking forward to seeing what week three's theme is.

There's at least one more year long challenge that I'm going to do and I'll talk abut that in my next post.

TTFN

Louise

Birthday cards and more buttons

My sister recently had her 50th Birthday and I made two cards for her (one from us and one from my Dad).

One was art nouveau themed.

The other one had an art deco theme.

Some of my most recent buttons for the 100 day project.

I hope to be back soon.

Ttfm

Louise 

ATCs* and buttons.

Earlier this year I joined Amy of @amys_art_alchemy 's ATC (*artist trading card) card swap  - #a3atcswapgroup via Instagram. I'd made the odd ATC before and I used to be part of a cross-stitch atc swap too, so I knew about the concept, i.e. create a 2.5 inch x 3.5 inch piece of art. 

Seaside themed ATCs  - embossed paper with watercolour 

In the #a3atcswapgroup you create five ATCs each month and send these to Amy. In return, you receive 5 cards back all from different artists.  You can still get in touch with Amy to take part (search for @amys_art_alchemy on Instagram).

Regency themed ATCs - paper and lac

The past week's buttons from my #100dayproject2020

Ttfn 
Louise

Fabric musings and a few buttons

When I first started on my little Elsie May and Bertha shop, I bought fabric whenever I found it, usually in charity shops and remnants, stuff I liked of course. However ,over the past 10 years my work has changed, it's a lot smaller in size. So it's scraps that excite me these days.

To me, big pieces shout clothes, bags, cushions etc and I jut don't want to make them anymore (plus selling these got a lot harder!). Now, I make little things out of scraps of fabric.

Like many of us at the moment, I'm spending a lot more time in my workroom and I've been staring at all of the fabric on the shelves. To make some space (and allow for new purchases!) I've decided to give away a lot of it, either back to charity shops or in the community if I find anyone who needs fabric. As for my scraps,  I keep them in categories - stripes, floral, patterns etc though I'm planning on sorting my little scraps into colours.

Consequently,  a large portion of my workroom looks like an explosion in a fabric factory as it's taking me a bit of time to do this as I can only do a bit at a time (I have chronic fatigue syndrome). I'll share photos when it's done.

Buttons
The 100 day project reached its halfway point a couple of days ago - it's going so fast! Here's a selection of some of my buttons. You can see all of them on my Instagram feed.

Ttfn
Louise

Hello again

It's been nearly a year since I last posted here as I've been relying on my Instagram to show what I've been up to. However, instagram does have its limitations of space and no of photos etc, so I'm going to endeavour to share more on here.

What I'm up to at the moment 

It's 2020's 100 day project time and I'm taking part again (I did finish last year's).) This year I'm making buttons using old ones.

I have two jars full of brown and black buttons that I'm not likely to use in the normal way, so I'm using them to create 'new' buttons. As you can see in the above photo, I cover the button in its own jacket of cotton fabric. I then use these to create the new button.

These are the first four buttons that I made. I'll share the others (It's day 38 today) in the next few days till I'm all caught up.  I have quite a few new things to share with you got.

TTFN
Louise