Count down to Christmas begins at home

Weeeeeee I got a new space to sit on!!

Me too! Look at me I love this seat of mine.

I feel like a queen sitting amongst these lovely decorations.

I got a lovely place too to put my nest. I must keep an eye on that fairy though she is eyeing my nest hmmm...

I got my usual favourite seat on the tree too but I am not sure if I like so many people for company. Hope they don't get too noisy in the night.

You know I love to collect flowers, I wonder if there are any amongst this foliage.

After a long time I get to sit near my favourite person the little deer. We have a good time laughing and going out for a ride. I think he has a little pressie for me in that pouch of his but he is keeping very quiet about it.

So how is everyone doing with preparations for the festive season? I got started early as I will be away early this year.

If you are still humming and hawing over ornaments here is a cute tutorial for some ginger bread ornaments by Jules.
Have a lovely weekend

Boneyard Challenge

In my internet doll club Dollstreet we are doing a challenge called the Boneyard Challenge. We are supposed to make a doll out of the parts that we have discarded while making our dolls for one reason or the other. Here are my boneyard body parts that I am going to use. Actually I don't have many so I have to choose what is available and decided these might just be ok. Now I have to assemble them and make them look presentable. It will be fun as I do have an idea of what I am going to do with them.



L' imparfait !!

Today our French teacher was ill so we had another teacher take our class. He went over the l'imparfait with us and then this is what he made us listen. It was a fun class. The music made me think of Eurovision Song Contest in the 70s. Now I must check out all the words I didn't know the meaning for.

http://www.last.fm/music/Sylvie+Vartan/_/Nicolas

I am so excited

I had ordered some tickets for Leonardo Da Vinci's exhibition in London. They arrived today, I am really so very excited about it. Some of his art that has never been displayed before will be shown and a new find of his also. I was watching a programme on him yesterday and it is so amazing to know that what a talented man he was. Here is a link to the programme if you are interested to watch. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016xjq6/Da_Vinci_The_Lost_Treasure/

I think the presenter gave a great insight into some of his life and paintings. Get a cup of coffee and enjoy it for a while.

A Gift For You!!

Here I am as promised the surprise I have in store for you for my Blogoversary. A little gift for you in the form of a little Ladybird pin doll. Hope you will enjoy making her and share a photo if you do make her.

Ladybird Pattern


Ladybird Instructions

If you do have problems downloading her do contact me and let me know.
Have a great day

After another long silence

Sorry for the long silence again. Hope you all are well and still around. I have not done much creatively. I have been trying to reorganise my work room and space after all the upheaval of redecorating. However I did go for our play day in September to our doll club Fancifulfigures as we were swapping our RR dolls. Here is what I got mine was a summer theme. Didn't they do a lovely job of it. You can see rest of the dolls here.

Then I made these little easy projects which are easy on the hands.

Then one day when I was out looking at some shops I saw a lovely Robin in the christmas decorations section so I decided to make a small one for myself. I love to look at all the Christmas decorations during Christmas time as I get lots of inspiration just looking around. I have more ideas going on in my head which I hope to make.

I notice that my Blogaversary is approaching fast so I have got something up my sleeve so keep tuned.

Glue gun mat

Gosh it is a long time since I blogged about something. The reason being I have been having problems with my finger. I am not able to put pressure on it so typing has been a bit painful and so has dollmaking. Hopefully it will be sorted out soon. But I find ipad is easier to use so I am going to blog about this glue gun mat which I found the other day in our craft store briefly. I am not affliated to it in any way so I don't gain anything from this but just thought I would share. Sometime ago when I was having problems with spilling beads and wasting time constantly trying to pick them up from the floor, Linda suggested that I buy a bead mat on which the beads stick and then I won't be losing them.  Well I meant to buy it but didn't get round to doing it. However the other day I found this glue gun pad in our craft store, it says I can pour out glue on this mat and I can clean it easily as the glue just peals off once it is dry. Now you know I use  little quantities of glue in my projects a lot, so I am constantly using bits of paper or little bottle lids to pour it out into so I thought this pad was a good idea. While using it, I found that little objects sort of stick to it as well and don't fall off. So hey presto found it works for little beads as well perfectly. I have a sneaking feeling that the bead mat and the glue gun pad could be the same thing but just being sold under 2 different names. Whatever it is thought I would share as I like things that have a multipurpose use.

Out for a ride

It was a lovely day today, perfect for a ride, so Choc volunteered to take these girls out for a ride before they flew off to far away lands.

I made these pindolls for a swap. They are inspired by one of Nancy Williams dolls.

I have not been posting or visiting blogs much as I seem to be having an issue with one of my fingers. I am not able to put pressure on it so for now I am not doing much dollmaking to avoid hand sewing, neither am I on the computer much. I made these little dolls which was a bit of a struggle but I managed it since there was not much hand sewing of stuffing involved.  Hope whoever gets them will like them. They will be flying to Alaska soon.

Experimenting a little

We were talking about dyeing pearls in one of our doll groups and Diane mentioned that she dyed her pearls with Rit Dye. So I decided to try out some other dyes as well to see if those worked so here is what I did.

The fushia pink pearl is a natural pearl and I used wild plum alcohol ink to dye it.

 The one below is also a natural white pearl dyed with alcohol ink. I used Stream

 This one below is a synthetic pearl dyed with Lettuce alcohol ink

 These two are synthetic pearls the one on the left is the original colour and the one on the right is dipped in alcohal ink diluted with water and heated. I had to leave it in hot water for sometime to get this delicate pink colour.

The ones below on the left is the synthetic pearl and the one on the right is the natural freshwater pearl. I used orange Quick Color for microwave dyeing . Again I mixed a little bit in water heated it and dropped the pearls in it. These coloured more quickly but strangely the synthetic pearl took the red colour from the dye and the natural pearl took the yellow colour from the dye. I liked these the best as they were uniformly coloured

However I think colouring the pearls with the inks is also interesting as you could get swirls of colour on them if you remembered to use forceps to hold the pearls with them instead of your fingers. One has to be quick with the inks as they dry quickly because of the alcohol in them.  I foolishly used my fingers and not only did I blotch the colours but in the process coloured my fingers in very bright colours lol!

At last

At last I am snatching a few minutes to update my blog. Have been so very busy with house redecorating and kitchen renovations that time has just flown by since I came back from my US trip. I enjoyed myself thoroughly there as always. The doll below was my challenge doll for CIFI. The theme for this year's challenge was Enchanted Forest. My doll is an exotic bird couldn't think of an original name for him so I just named him Exoteeque lol! He is the early bird of the enchanted forest who catches the worms but he does not eat them. He just keeps them as his pets. I didn't think I would win a ribbon as there were some amazing dolls so when I did get an award I was thunder struck.

 Here is a closer view of him

 A closer view of the little worm wondering if he will be swallowed up soon lol!

 He is a happy little camper.

I will visit your blogs soon but at the moment my life is a big rush so do forgive me for not visiting them yet.