Showing posts with label polka dots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label polka dots. Show all posts

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Inspiration is Blooming


Sunshine, rain, wind.....
A rainbow here, blue sky and sunshine over there and grey clouds looming
It's 9 degrees out, brrrr......

Surely it's Spring flexing her muscles....
Let's head indoors where it's warmer and....

SPRING
 is on my mind




Bright colours, 
polka dots, 
florals,





Snipping playing then stitching



Another WIP tea cosy.......

A little out of the usual for me.
 It needs a crocheted edging in blue and a polka dot lining....








The Manchurian Pear is in flower......
well one flower!!

If that's not proof that Spring is creeping up on us, I don't know what is!!
Better go throw another long on the fire.......







More projects on the go........
crocheted flowers blooming on my work table.

Reminding me of beautiful coloured Macaroons... yum





Sewing needle books.......more Daffodils and 
some stitched poetry.



Wild flower tea cosy....inspired by the swathes of wildflowers growing around the Olympic Stadium
(see previous post)



Views from outside

White winged Chough, looking for a tasty morsel in the chook run.
Chooks looking for a snack 
Japonica, it may be past it's prime, but it's still beautiful

Do the seasons inspire you to create?
Are they reflected in your work?
I'd love to know......thanks for visiting.

Joining in with other creative people over here and my tip for staying creative is:


Tuck a pen and book into your bag and when you're out and about doodle/draw/sketch something. 
It makes you take more notice of patterns, shapes, colours....
Have fun



Take Care,

Claire
☀☁☂♥

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Let's get cosy


A tea cosy for a friend who loves a good old cuppa...........

Some WIP pics.......... 'i's still need to be dotted

Bright colours and polka dots were the order of the day.

The red and green together make me happy, there's something about them that makes me smile and reminds me of................... Summer !!



The other side still needs some work.
A little bit of stitchy decoration on the teapot and cups just to lift them and add a bit more interest.

My creative mojo has been lost while I was on hols.

A reward is offered if anyone can find it.

The tea cosy is an order that has been on the back burner.
I thought I should crack on with it while waiting for the return of my mojo.........



Talking about hols, I managed a bloggy catchup with some lovely bloggers........

Tanya from Suburban Jubilee hosted the get together at Resurekt the wonderful shop she spends two days playing in.
I say playing as it can't be work when you are surrounded by wonderful, creative products made using recycled items and between customers you get to whip up items to sell in the shop.

Sounds like a dream job to me...........


We were also joined by Lee from Killiecrankie Farm and wee Herman who was feeling under the weather but was so well behaved .

We spent a couple of lovely hours getting to know each other better and discussing all sorts of subjects.

It was so much fun meeting these ladies face to face.
If you ever get the chance for a bloggy catchup go for it.

Lee spoilt me with some handmade gifts, the 'apple cosy' above which I have actually put on a mandarin as no apples were available for the pic. I love the bright colour and the gorgeous button. I have secretly admired these on her blog, so I was very happy to unwrap it.



I also received some wonderful birds Lee whipped up.

I wonder how she knew red and pale blue are one of my fave colour combos?
Ooh, I would love to look out the window and see some of these beauties in the garden.
I have just realised I forgot to upload a pic of the beautiful card Lee painted for me.
A fab picture of the Rotunda in The Gorge, Launceston...........next time.
Some people have so much talent.........

Tanya had put out a blog call out to any other bloggers in the area who would like to join us and Chris from Chrisartist dropped by, a lovely surprise.

Funny thing is, Chris has met my son and hubby. She is one of the organisers of the Tamar Valley Folk Festival which No. 1 has played at for the last two years.
Small world isn't it?



You may remember back in December one of my chooks hatched 3 chicks, 2 of which turned out to be roosters..........

Well, as they grew it became apparent that they were not going to be best buddies (something I knew, but fingers crossed there wouldn't be any problems........tell her she's dreaming!!)
A decision had to be made about which to keep and which to rehome.
Noddy above is now King of the Castle and the other rooster who was very handsome has gone to live at the home of a work colleague.
I am yet to hear how he is going, I hope he has settled in............

Noddy needs a wing clipped as he likes to escape from the run and come over to the house and let me know it's time for their breakfast.
Guess, he's just doing his job and looking after the girls.


Sheesh, can't anyone have a little sleep in?!!

I secretly, suspect he's checking out the flight path..........over the fence and into the paddock.

Or just surveying his domain.



Before our trip away, we had a family dinner here.
It was a double birthday celebration for hubby and I as we both celebrated significant birthdays.................

I wanted to show what you can do with some milk cartons cut in half and a tealight candle.

No. 1 and I ran around in the late afternoon setting them up in the 'wild wood' and lighting them.
The light shining at the base of the Silver Birches was very effective.


They looked beautiful in the gathering dusk and when the daylight had completely disappeared it was absolutely magical.


A little bit of effort and the effect was stunning.

I had told my family to arrive at 6 sharpish as unbeknowns to them I had some 'entertainment ' organised and didn't want to give the game away.

Sister no. 2 decided to come out early to see if I needed a hand.
She rocked up at 5.30pm thereby missing out on the light show........... I had to insist that she stay inside as we lit the candles and then come out to have a look.
Not quite the same but hey.........

At 6.30pm my 'visitor' turned up (no pics sorry) and No. 1 had been primed to look after him.
At the appointed time I asked my guests to don coats and we all went out to the verandah.
With oil lamps providing light along the dam wall a piper played 3 tunes I had chosen

Scotland the Brave
Amazing Grace
Mull of Kintyre

In the beautiful starry night, the sound carried across the valley, this was my birthday treat to myself.
I had wanted to do this for ages and it was beautiful until the lamps went out and he was standing there in the darkness of the night, hehehe...............

I love the bagpipes, I know they are either love 'em or hate 'em instrument.

Anyway, it was a night to remember and I'm so glad I did it............

------------00000-----------

Well, here we are at the end of June.

One month of Winter over, two more to go...........

I'm still enjoying it and looking forward to many more hot chocolates, wood fires, rugging up, warming soups and all those things I love doing in the cold weather.
But it's back to work on Monday which means getting up at 5am, in the dark and cold, euughhhh.

Oh well, that's the way it goes...........holidays and then back to work to help pay off the bill.

I hope you are enjoying the season wherever you are.

Thanks for dropping by and for leaving a comment, I love reading them and finding out where you are visiting from.

Til next time, take care,

Claire X






Thursday, July 15, 2010

I Heart Bluebirds and Robins

The latest in my little obsession with polka dots and zips. Nice, vintage yellow polka dot fabric and a Bluebird on the front. It took me a while to think of a design and I am happy with the finished product.

Here are the finished three.
I will see if anyone else loves them as much as I do, when I put them on my market stall Sunday morning.
Fingers crossed the rain holds off till the afternoon.
They would make cute little coin purses, make up bags or just something to keep all your bits and bobs together.
Or hey, you could just look at them and feel happy, all those jolly polka dots, can't help but make you smile.


I was seeing more dots and spots as I drove past a local dairy farm this afternoon. Love the colour combinations.



Ooh, my favourite sort of weather. Had to take a snap out of the car window. Shame I had to leave the warmth of the heater and head off to work.

Just love all those droplets running down the window.

For any of you enduring a heatwave, I hope you find this nice and cooling.




We had a wonderful storm Tuesday night, wind howling around the house and rain lashing at the windows. I was warm and snug inside, enjoying every minute of it.

Four inches of rain up in the hills had the creeks running a 'banker' Wednesday morning.
This is the creek at the bottom of our property, good blackberry picking in summer.
Don't you just love the reflections?





Hard to believe last Saturday I was out gardening in a T- shirt the weather was that mild.

I let the girls out for a bit of a scratch about and Mrs Brown was intent on gobbling every grub, worm and creepy crawly that I unearthed.
Talk about right had man ahem chook!



The Williams sisters ( Serena pictured above or is it Venus?!!) have settled in nicely. I even spied one in the nesting box during the week.
Despite the Wintery weather some of the girls have started laying again which is just lovely and the egg cartons are filling up. So nice to have farm fresh, free range eggs.



A little gift the boys bought me in typical 'blokey' style yesterday.

Despite the fact it wasn't wrapped and still had the sale price tag on it and No. 1 had bought it with money he had borrowed from me in the first place - the thought was still there and doesn't the tiered egg rack look fab. Just need a matching one for cupcakes!!
The egg cosy I perched on the top for the photo is one I made based on a Giselle? Graham design.

Hope you have all had a good week and all the best for a great weekend.

I shall be finishing off some sewing and thinking up new ideas for more bags no doubt. I have a tea cosy comission for a lovely friend and wouldn't you know it polka dots are involved.


Thanks for stopping by, please take a moment to leave a note and say 'hi'. I love reading all your comments. If I am a regular visitor to your blog and haven't commented recently, it's not that I haven't visited. I'm having trouble with my password on blog comments which prevents me from leaving a comment at the moment.
Hopefully it will be rectified as soon as I figure out how!!

Till next time, take care,
Claire X




Thursday, July 8, 2010

The 4 B's Not The 3 R's!



BAGS AND BIRDS


A little bit of inspiration landed on the house paddock fence this morning much to my delight.

Yes, you guessed it a Robin (Flame Robin) paid a visit, a rather long overdue visit considering we are into the second month of Winter.


My calender has been looking a little bare........ everytime I see a Robin in Winter I put a red dot on the calender for that day. Why?..... Why not!


So,to celebrate this most handsome little visitor I decided to zip up or should I say whip up a lovely, little polka dot bag.

These little bags happen to be my latest project. After studying a variety of tutorials on the net about lined, zip bags, these are my first two. Still needing a bit of tweaking, but getting better at it each time.

Don't you just love polka dots, they remind me of Noddy and his little polka dot scarf.





They are lined with a plain drill fabric, which coincidentally was meant to be the outer fabric but by happy accident we have polka dots on the outside. They are such cheery colours and I think I would even use the "J" word....Jolly!



Oooh, what have we here?

An unexpected purchase from an auction last weekend. There was an amazing collection of antiques and collectibles and when I saw that someone was going to purchase this little beauty for the meagre sum of $10.00 I suddenly found my hand waving wildly in the air and it was mine for $20.00.
I can see it gracing my market stall with all it's vintage charm, maybe with a few crocheted goodies on display.
If you click on the photo to enlarge you will be able to see a very special purchase hanging from the door handle, made by thetalented Karen at www.mimilove.net.
Little did I know when I purchased the dolls carriage that it was filled up with rubbish which I immediately threw into a bin.Buried underneath all that rubbish were these 3 beauties......


BUCKLES

Isn't it nice when you find little surprises like these gems tucked away somewhere?

I think the pale green one is made from Bakelite, so is ridgey didge vintage. Not sure about the dark green one but the white buckle is Mother of Pearl.

What am I going to do with them? Just admire them until I find a use for them.




BOOKS

A little op shop find recently has been keeping me entertained and feeding my love for the English countryside.

September Moon was written by John Moore an English author who wrote over 30 novels.

I always look for older style hard cover books. The picture on it's cover had me holding my breath as I read some of the reviews:- ..."


"A full blooded story of the great green world of the countryside and its fascinating people...." John Bull.


"....captures fully the atmosphere, the sensuous ripeness, which this writer always imports into his work..... " Richard Church, Truth


"John Moore is as quiet, authoritative and aesthetically satisfying as Constable or Crome when he is describing the countryside....." Oxford Mail


The story is about hop picking season in a corner of Herefordshire in September. There are colourful characters from the Midlands, Wales and gipsies as well add a touch of romance and I am hooked. So for the princely sum of $1.00 I tucked this little beauty under my arm and have been rationing myself to 3 or 4 pages a night just to eek it out and I am enjoying every sentence. In fact some of the phrases used would be seen as quite un PC these days, so I get a bit of a giggle out of them.


My other little find at the same op shop , was a brand new skirt (sorry no pic) by SATCH, who I believe are Melbourne based. It still had it's swing tag on it and was being sold in shops for $199.00 but I paid $7.00, yes you read correctly. It is a charcoal grey fleck with 3 pleats front and back, made from 85% wool fabric imported from Italy, so not a horrible puce colour and style that will date quickly.

Just between you and me I saw the very same skirts being sold in my local oppy, still with their swing tags on BUT they were being sold for $59.99!!

Now is that the bargain of the year or not?

Hope you have found a bargain or two recently or a little surprise tucked away somewhere.I hope your week has been enjoyable, have a great weekend.

Until next time,

Claire X