The Topsy Turvy doll is a doll that has a sad face at one side and a happy face at the other.  Traditionally, they had a coloured face at one side and a white face at the other but these have fallen out of favour to be replaced with sad/happy face.  Normally the sad doll was dressed in rags and the happy doll dressed in gowns.  I had one as a child that was Cinderella in rags and Cinderella at the ball.  She was beautiful.  I don’t know if she was made for me or if she had been bought but I loved her all the same.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to make one for quite some time now and never quite managed to get the arms right.  Recently though, while looking through books in a charity shop, I came across an old series of books called Stitch By Stitch (which, by the way, reminds me of the song Step By Step by Annie Lennox and now I can’t get that song out of my head).  Within the pages of this book was a pattern and instructions on how to make your very own Topsy Turvy doll.

Happy

Shortly after I also bought a copy of the stitching magazine, Inspirations, which also contained a pattern and instructions for a far more elaborate doll that I might try one day.  This doll is from the pattern in the book.

Surely this was a sign, so I have been making my very own doll this past week.  It’s a lengthy process, not least of all because I don’t have a working sewing machine and have to hand stitch it all, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the end.

Sad

I’ve been working from home the past two months, which has saved a couple of hours (and more) on my working day, allowing me some crafting time in the evening.  Tomorrow I go back to work in the office so I doubt this will progress any further until the weekend.

I’ve promised it to Iona when it’s finished.  She wants me to dress it in a kilt and jumper…not at all a girly girl!

I know you also need to hear Annie Lennox so you too can have that song stuck in your head.  Right now I’m alternating between this and Van Morrison’s Moondance, which Alasdair is learning to play on the trumpet.

Those readers who know me personally or pay attention to the small details will know that I spend time away from home on a fairly regular basis.  This has seen me occupying almost every room on some floors of the Holiday Inn Express in Bridge of Don over the past year or so.  There’s clearly only so much of this I can take before I start going slightly mad, so on my most recent visit I bought a needlefelting book and the requisite tools for the job, thinking it would be an easy way to while away the evening in front of the TV.

This fellow is not the result of that night’s work, nay the result of that night’s work was an hour spent on a conference call and a few hours of frustration and sore fingers as I tried to figure out how to attach a head to a body with my needle.  This fellow is the result of me doing some proper research into the techniques.  There are many videos on You Tube for those of you who wonder how to use the tools that look so easy yet cause so much pain and frustration.

Once you master the technique it’s really easy and creating the shape is just a matter of folding and stabbing the felt so it sticks together, adding bits to make more defined shapes or to hide the bits where I stabbed too much!

The book I bought that night, Little Felted Animals: Create 16 Irresistible Creatures with Simple Needle-felting Techniques, doesn’t go into a great deal of detail about how to make the shapes but once you’ve done some reading it’s fairly self explanatory.  What this book does allow you to do is match up your shapes with those on the page so you have a shape that is similar to the one you’re aiming for.  The rest really is open to your imagination.

So, next time I set off for the night I’ll certainly be packing my felting needles and felt.  It pleases me that I need such few materials for a productive evening, because the worst bit about those nights spent away from home is the feeling I’ve wasted another evening in another nondescript hotel room…sorry Holiday Inn.

If you fancy a go yourself, you could do worse than to follow the instructions on this video to make an owl.  I did make the owl but because it’s red, it’s not photographing well.  My top tip would be to keep stabbing even if you think nothing is happening…it takes ages.

I sewed a small hoop to the top of mine for the Christmas Tree…I know too much Christmas round here these days but it won’t be long you know.

The idea of printing on fabric has been something I’ve been wanting to try for some time now.  I’ve neither had the time nor the inclination until this weekend, when the urge suddenly took me to get my finger out and make something for a change.

In my head this was going to be a quick craft that would satisfy the need to have some cheap Christmas ornaments for sale at our upcoming craft fairs.  In reality it took me all day to find a suitable image and even longer messing around with different techniques of colouring the image and transferring it to the fabric.  As they say patience is a virtue and in the end I was rewarded with some pretty special hanging dolls.  The most recent ones such as the one second from the left have a watercolour appearance.

Here they are all printed up and waiting to be sewn.  I think I’m in love – is that a bit narcissistic?

It was about two years ago that someone suggested that I should have a go working with clay when they saw the wood carvings I was turning out, at the time it wasn’t a suggestion I took particularly seriously, not to say that I wasn’t interested I just couldn’t get my head around it as a medium.

Fast forward to 2010 and I finally plucked up the courage to get some clay, a reinforced air-drying variety that means I don’t need to worry about getting access to a kiln … although I can think of at least two people who might be able to provide access if I asked nicely!  The images here are representative of my first tentative toyings with the substance, and show a distinct lack of adventure on my part …

… first up is a clay version of the bonnie birds …

… the bird here is about 5″ or 6″ tall to the tip of it’s tail.  Whilst this little lady below is more like 3.5″ tall …

You may notice that both pieces use the same palette, there’s a very good reason for this.  I’m tight.  That is all … lol

We’ve been renovating our house since moving in almost four years ago.  Progress is slow but steady and lately we’ve (read Alasdair) been ripping out the old electrics in one room that will eventually be our living room.  The old wire is a lovely thick copper wire that we just couldn’t throw away.  So, I made some Christmas hanging decorations, while Alasdair replastered the walls!

Simple one first…the star.  Made from heavy grade copper wire that has been lightly sanded and bent to shape.

So pleased was I with the star, that I decided to branch out and try an angel.  I must admit to having to raid some colouring books for the basic outline!

Pretty good, eh?  The star and angel set will be available from our stall at the fairs we’re attending this winter.  Who knows, they might be joined by a gingerbread man or two.

Just in case all that Christmas decor is making you feel a little out of season, I also made this rather fetching copper and vintage button bangle.  I am particularly proud of this, my first attempt at real jewellery from scratch.

With copper in such short supply, it makes me feel I’m doing my bit for the planet by recycling the wire rather than throwing it out.

Now, back to the renovating I think.  Today the central heating is having a good old clean out.

I don’t think I’ve owned a pair of plimsolls since, ooooo, forever!  If I had to make a guess then I might suggest it’s been at least 25 years, certainly not since leaving primary school!  This is something that’s been pulling at me for some time to do and, Mmmmmm, there’s nothing quite like the smell of new plimsolls is there – or does that just make me a bit weird!?

Anyway I’ve been noticing images of customised plimsolls ever since I joined up with DeviantArt a couple of years back and I’ve got to say they are something of an inspiration, even if my own initial efforts are a far cry from those featured in that link – these pictured here really are an initial effort.  If nothing else it gave me a chance to try out taking photo’s in my new light-box!

The lass has made me promise to do her a pair and I can envisage something in pink/lilac with love hearts for her and she seems happy with the idea.  Of course if I do a pair for her then no doubt the lad will want a pair too so I guess I’ll need to do two more pairs at the very least.

I think I may be becoming a fanatic, well, maybe not quite; although I did find myself outside in the rain this morning pulling weeds and re-arranging pots!?  The garden really has quite a lure to me, being confined to quarters over the winter and suffering a wee bit with cabin fever really makes you appreciate being able to get outside … of course, being fortunate enough to live in a beautiful part of the country helps too!

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been making the most of the good weather doing some chores in the garden, like installing an outside tap (I hate plumbing with a passion) and building a retaining wall – amongst other odds and ends.

Click to enlarge

I don’t have a good history with plumbing projects going back to a project when we first moved into our current house when a plan to replace the element in the immersion tank took around 4-5 days and ended up with me having to remove and replace the entire tank, then there’s been the radiators and pipes that have burst and the cursing that occurs whenever a newly jointed pipe turns out to not be water tight … seriously, you have no idea!

Fortunately I had no such problems with the plumbing this time around … maybe I’m getting better at it.  The wall took a little longer than I had anticipated and massively more mortar than I’d have imagined was possible, it looks like it’s about to fall over in the picture but that’s as a result of some, er, clever photography.  Maybe I should find a clever photographer to explain it!

As luck would have it though the garden has some wee gems in it at the moment, and as I mentioned earlier the area we live in is beautiful.  It all helps to lower my blood pressure.  Here are a few samples of what’s going on in the garden just now:

Strawberries are beginning to flower, yum!

Black Currant blooms. Plain flowers, yummy berries!

Some pretty lilac flowers - does anyone know what they're called?

Blue Bells, except they're white ...

Pretty blue 'weed'

Black Currant (or possibly red) berries coming along nicely

You may notice that the currants feature twice, we’re fortunate enough to have quite a few and I’ve discovered this year that they’re easily propagated, something I’m hoping to do more of once the polytunnel has arrived and been assembled.  I’m not sure if it’s something we’ve mentioned on here previously but we decided to invest in large (14′ x 30′) poly-tunnel as our site is extremely exposed which can make growing much of anything extremely difficult.  More on that at a later date though.

It seems that the higher the temperatures get with the incredible – if not late – onset of spring and summer the lower my enthusiasm for doing crafts becomes.  Given the choice of doing ‘work’ in the garden or sitting doing crafts it seems that the garden chores win out every-time … not that there isn’t plenty to be getting on with out there!

I’ve not been completely idle though on the craft front with a couple of developmental pieces underway.  This one was just done for fun when I was messing about with some left over mache.

The spider in the foreground here was my first, half-hearted attempt at a spider, partially inspired by some fabric spiders I caught a glimpse of on Ann Wood’s blog that Jolene follows, clearly it bears no real resemblance to that spider – it really just provided the kernel of a notion that later developed (and is developing) into an idea.

Following the creation of this rather cartoon-like spider I went on to work on something a bit more life-like with reference to a variety of spider photo’s and biology models that I found around and about on the internet.  The end result was this spider pictured below.

I’m still not entirely satisfied with the spider – although I do like the mandible’s – I think the Abdomen (back bit) is too small in relation to the Cephalothorax (front bit).  I may work up another version of this, weather permitting, that’s a bit more anatomically correct – although I don’t think I’ve ever made anything that’s not largely abstract … it might be an interesting challenge.

I’ve nearly finished working on a winged version of my bonnie birds, another development piece, and I’ll share that when it’s finished too.

Following Jolene’s last post I couldn’t resist the post title, nor – I’m afraid – could I resist including a little musical flashback to my youth … I’ll leave that till the end though!

As Jolene said in her post I have been making more bonnie birds and taking her through the process at the same time, I could be wrong, but I think it falls into the harder than it looks category.   Certainly I think it’s taken a bit of practice and development to get them to the stage they’re at now, I only wish I had saved the original prototypes to share with you by way of a comparison with the ones I’m making now … the difference is quite startling!

I’m working on something else now and have saved the prototype of that one so you can see that these things don’t simply materialise without any thought … although that’s often the way these things begin, with a random convergence of whimsical and divergent partial thoughts!  Anyway these will be my last Bonnie Birds for a while so that I can concentrate on other things.

Click for full size!

These and others available from the shop.

And finally, as promised, some classic rock!

Actually that was released in 1980 … a little before my time :)

Alasdair has been guiding me through the process of making one of his Bonnie Birds…it’s not a process I will be repeating in the near future!

First you have to make the armature, which is quick and easy enough.  Then comes the mache, which refuses to stick to the armature.  Alasdair’s most helpful advice was to keep squeezing it together until it looked body like…yeah, ok…the more I squeezed, the more determined the stuff was to stick to me and not the armature!  Then, and I am not the most patient of people, you have to wait overnight for the body to dry…

…next night you can make the tail in the same way…mache stuck everywhere but where it was supposed to be, and once again we had to leave them overnight to dry.  The next night was a repeat performance for the head…I nearly threw it on the fire that night!  My beak was huge, then too thin, then it all fell off…argh!

Alasdair assured me that it would all be ok in the end and to just try and get a sort of shape that sort of resembled a bird.  I trust him, because he’s my husband, so I persevered, tried my best and created something resembling a bird.

This is Alasdair’s bird after sanding.  Mine was too ugly to contemplate at this stage.

The next stage was to sand it all down…I needed to wait for the weekend for this…I won’t bore you with the whys and wherefores.  Alasdair insists that sanding is key and other than advising me ‘not to be shy about it’ his other top tip was to mind my fingers!?  That exercise went a whole lot better than I imagined it would and I ended up with the shape you see in the finished article.  Alasdair was right…all of the mistakes I made earlier were wiped out at this point.

The final stage of painting and varnishing were nerve-racking for me.  I’d spent all week making this bird and was about to ruin it all with one wrong brushstroke.  Fortunately the Bonnie Bird is a forgiving creature and I was able to rescue it from an overzealous paint job by imagining target practice where the wings should be.

This is me fixing the bits that I missed the first time I varnished it…oops!

As I said, it took me two weeks to make mine from start to finish…Alasdair made five in that same time.  See them all in the background laughing at my bird’s short legs and lumpy backside…still I think it’s pretty good for a first (and only) attempt.