too soon for Christmas decorations?

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.

Glasgow West End Craft Fair – Saturday 10th July 2010

Preparations are well under way for our first craft fair of 2010, which will take place in Hillhead Library in Glasgow’s West End this coming Saturday.

In the true spirit of leaving everything until the last minute, we have a list as long as both our arms of work to complete before Saturday morning and, in the true spirit of procrastination (something that we are very good at) Alasdair is currently rewiring the house and replacing the plasterboard, while I am busy redesigning and packaging my button pendants.

Going off on a tangent for a moment, these boards to hold my necklaces were made partially from the paper I made a couple of weeks ago.  I mounted the paper onto mount board and stamped ‘madestuff’ along the bottom, cut a couple of notches in the top to hold the cord and (in a later version) threaded a piece of wire through to hold the cord in place.  I’m so pleased with the way they worked out.

So, the list of things to do is still as long as our arms; however it’ll be alright on the day and if you would like to come along and meet us in person, and see some of the many other wonderful crafts on sale from numerous other makers, we’d love to see you there.

The details are on our events page.

making paper while the sun shines

Back in April I entered a competition on the Craft Scotland website to win a copy of Papermaking and Bookbinding: Coastal Inspirations by Joanne B Kaar and was delighted to learn a few weeks ago that I was one of the lucky winners.  I was even more delighted when I received my book last week to find that making paper isn’t the painful experience I remember it to be from my childhood attempts, where the paper ends up all pulpy and useless.  The book also contains all sorts of suggestions for jazzing up your handmade papers and what to do with all that paper you’ve made.  I particularly like the embossing from driftwood idea.

This Instructable describes the very method I used.

On a complete whim today (so wholly unprepared with any sort of shop bought materials) I made my first batch of paper, which is now handing merrily in the bathroom drying slowly – as directed in the book.

Tomorrow I get the iron out to flatten them out and decide what their fate might be.  I can’t decide between labels for my handmade photo notebooks or whether I should print onto them and frame them as works of art.  I kind of like that idea though…such ugly, unnecessary junk turned into art.

Just in case you think we’re really clatty, that grout is in fact pink and not dirty!  We inherited a baby blue and pink bathroom (complete with pink grout and, for some very odd reason, an orange shower tray) when we bought our current house and it’s not up there on the list of priorities to change, in spite of it’s very scary appearance.

Given wings, would we fly?

It seems like forever and a day since I originally thought about giving my bonnie birds wings, indeed, it seems like forever and a day since I actually started making this one!  Based around the same principles as it’s forebears I had to add some additional armature to build the wings both from a practical point of view but also to ensure that they would be strong enough to stand-up to life’s little knocks.  This is the end result

I’m reasonably pleased with the finished product although, contrary to what it looks like, I had an abstraction of a Green Finch in mind when I painted it!

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You would think that given, aside from chaffinches, that this is the only bird that visits our garden with any regularity that I’d be able to summon up an image in my minds eye and work it up on one of my bonnie birds; it seems my mind is prone to wandering when I pick up a paintbrush and the notion that I might paint anything in the fashion that I originally intended is completely lost!!

Available to buy from the shop

Webs of development

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.

Sewing with Kids: Dog

Not to be outdone by his sister, the lad (aged nearly 7) decided to have a go at making his own soft toy.  He designed and sewed this chap (almost) all by himself.  I’m very proud of his ability to take his idea and turn it into something tangible.  We worked together on turning his picture into a pattern, I showed him how to sew it up and off he went.

A couple of hours later, it was all finished.  I think it looks a bit like something from ‘Charlie and Lola’.  Not surprisingly, the most enjoyable part for both the kids seemed to be stuffing their creations.  I love that they could see their ideas coming to life with the aid of some polyfibre stuffing and both are delighted with their creations.

Course, when you’ve been sewing for two hours solid, you need a rest.

There are so many kits with those nasty plastic blunt needles that are really good for nothing and must frustrate rather than entertain, it’s no wonder sewing is a dying craft.  I really can’t see the problem with giving proper needles, and for that matter proper scissors, so long as there is proper supervision and I would encourage all parents to allow their kids the freedom to create in this manner…it’s very rewarding for both parent and child.

bonnie birds – taking lessons from the master

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.

How To Make a Very Simple Notebook

Recently in the MadeStuff house there has been a tidying up effort.  Many of our supplies have been stored in the one room that we really need to renovate so Alasdair has been busy boxing up supplies and moving them to another room while I’ve been busy making new things out of old supplies!

Last year we had a load of photos printed for sale at craft fairs and spent many hours mounting them.  There’s only so much mounting that you can stand so naturally there were some left over.  Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been making notebooks with the leftovers and I want to share with you how to make them.

The first thing you need to do is find a nice size of photo (ours are 6×8) and remove any white space from the top and bottom.

Then you need some paper that is cut to be bigger than your photo height and width, quite a bit bigger or you’ll struggle to cut the pages square.  You need several sheets of paper (I had 7 to give my book 28 pages).

Fold the photo in half widthways and mark 1cm intervals right down the middle of the fold (on the unprinted side).  Try and leave the same amount of space at each end.

Fold your paper in half and place each sheet of paper on top of the other, with the photo on top (wrong side up).

Take a large book such as the phone book, or I used the Screwfix catalogue and open it towards the middle.  Place your pile of paper and photo so the the fold of the pile sits in the spine of the book.

Take a dressmakers pin, or drawing pin, or any sort of pin (you might have the proper tool, I don’t) and stick it through the pile of paper at the marked 1cm intervals.  Make sure each hole goes all the way through.

Once all of the holes have been made take the photo from the top of the pile and put it on the bottom, photo side out.

Take a long length of strong thread and start sewing a running stitch through the holes to sew the pages together.  When you get to the last hole, sew all the way back to the top again.  Secure with square stitches and cut the end off.  You could also attach beads to the ends for a decorative bookmark.

Close the book over and use a paper cutting knife to trim the edges square all the way through.  If you’ve got access to a guillotine then I suggest you use that to save your hands the pain of cutting through pages and pages of paper.

Put the closed notebook under something heavy to encourage it to stay closed.

That’s it…seemed easier to do than to write down so I hope that’s easy enough to follow.

I added some nice cellophane and button packaging which you could do if you want to give one of your hand bound books as a gift.

It’s a bit like the Hitchcock classic around here

Hitchcock’s, The Birds, was one of my favourite films as I grew up, the eerie notion that birds of all shapes and sizes should be overcome with an insatiable lust for human flesh, attacking young and old alike without provocation and otherwise simply sitting and waiting on some playground climbing frame for their next unsuspecting victim …

… actually, no, it’s nothing like that around here … although we do seem to have an increasing number of slightly suspicious looking birds sitting in the windowsill!  And so it was that I finished my latest papier mache birds.  My latest obsession.

In terms of scale the one in the middle is a tad over 6″ tall at it’s tallest point.  I decided to render these ones in shades of green with the now familiar pattern of white dots, I’ve got a couple more under-way as I type this, although I imagine it’ll be a good few days before I finish them – other commitments such as life tends to throw at you … like blocked drains … ugh!

As ever, these are available to buy from our shop.

more bonnie birds … an obsession in papier mache!

It’s funny how an idea can sprout wings and take-off (dreadful pun entirely intended), such as it has been with these bonnie birds.  It’s rather refreshing to have something I can make out of papier mache that doesn’t take forever and a day and that isn’t a bowl!  Aside from this pair I’m hatching three more and they should be fully fledged in the next few days (and yes, that was a couple more of dreadful puns that were entirely intended).

This pair seem to be diametrically opposed in terms of form, one’s short and fat and the other a bit leggy with a great fan of a tail, the tail’s something I can see me repeating and refining on future versions.

Of course, like all birds that flock, it doesn’t take long for them to catch-up with more of their own kind …

… I imagine this flock will be growing as they, ahem, get to know each other better … well, it is almost Spring!!

All of these birds are available for sale in our shop.