Lovely goodies

Earlier this week I received some lovely goodies in the form of children's vintage books from Barbara. 

Sadly I just found out that Barbara is closing her shop due to health reasons but if you are interested in children's books hurry she has some lovely books on Sale which you will never get them at this price. 

Here is the link http://www.marchhousebooks.com

So let me tell you that my books came beautifully wrapped up that it felt as though I was opening my Christmas presents.

These are the beautiful books I got with beautiful illustrations which are so inspiring.

Barbara included these delightful book marks

And she is so generous that she even included a little something special . This beautiful vintage post card is so adorable. They take me right back to my childhood days. Thank you Barbara for your generous thoughtful inclusion of this delightful postcard. I shall treasure it.

First ever

Yesterday morning I was so delighted to see that our water Lilly flowered for the first time. I was so excited about it :-) then I saw another bud coming up which I am sure will flower today. I was amazed at the speed at which the first one opened. I looked at it when it was just coming out of the water and then after five minutes when I looked it was completely out of the water and begining to open. After another five minutes it was almost fully open amazing!  I have to keep the netting on the pond because we get early morning visits by the Heron. He thinks he can have his breakfast in our house :)

Snip snip snip

This is how the final embroidery looks. I did it all without a pattern as you will notice every thing is not symertrical. Went a bit crazy and did it on the top of the skirt too forgetting that a lot of it will be hidden by embellishments.

I am not too pleased with the underskirt skirt. I thought it looked awful. 

So panic stations! What shall I do change the whole thing? Use a different fabric? Oh my goodness have to dye the whole lot again! Cupboards open in a mad dash to find the right fabric!

Oh no don't have enough fabric can't find something suitable this one won't do. Do I have to order more? It will take ages to come!

So finally I went snip snip snip so now it looks a bit better but I still don't like it too much but I cannot change it now it's too late for that .

She is looking completely different to the way I wanted sigh!

Simple embroidery

Angela suggested doing some simple embroidery on the skirt and I think what she has done is so beautiful and affective. This is what I started. Not much of a photo and I am so rusty with regards embroidery that even these simple stitches look as though a child has done it!. It must be at least 40 or more years since I picked up a needle to embroider. The last I remember doing was when I was at school where it was compulsory for us to learn a few needle work, sewing, knitting skills.  The idea is to do some simple stitching. Since I can do this sitting on the bed I quiet enjoyed it. I have to find some thread for the flowers now as I could not find the right colour in the charity shop. By the way charity  shops are a great place to shop for craft projects. You never know when you will come across something that is so right for your project.

More flowers

This year it has been a great year for roses here. Even this shrub I didn't know was there flowered"

There has been flowers galore and buds too. We will see how long all this lasts

Thank you for visiting and enjoy the flowers in my garden

Dyeing fabrics

I wanted to finish my doll this weekend but on Friday I did my back in so could not do much as I found sitting up very painful. However I did manage to dye some fabrics for the doll. Nothing strenuous I used some of the shavings from the inktense pencils since I did not want to waste the colour and it is amazing how much of colour gets shaved off while sharpening pencils as you can see. So I managed to dye some cheesecloth with this water.

I wet the lace and gently ran the pencil over it to colour the lace. So this is what I have been doing while resting my back

Hope you all had a creative and restful weekend

Stockings

Today I got my doll's stockings ready. Since I did not have any suitable fabrics for the stockings I decided to make my own designed fabric for her. I bought some plain white knitted fabric and made up the design on it with Inktense pencils. I drew horizontal lines on the fabric with inktense pencils , lightly coloured the inbetween space between the lines and then spread it all with water and let it dry before sewing onto the doll. The design has lots of blemishes and is uneven colouring  but I thought that was ok as it adds to the whimsical look. I wanted to try out these pencils and this was a perfect opportunity to try them out on cloth.

So here she is wearing her stockings and as you can see I went with the green

Getting there

I have been working on Angela Jereski's class doll. At last I am getting there I feel. It took me a long time to sculpt the head but finally I got it done and it is passable I think. I also started another head but I can already see lots of things that are not right. 

This doll as you can see is a fairy with her skinny legs and strange ears. 

Here are some of the fabrics I brought out to choose. At present I am only checking what colours I will use. They all are silk with a beautiful sheen to them which does not come out very well in the pictures.

I am leaning towards the light green and gold but I shall see. First I need to do the stockings which is going to be challenging as well because I don't have any suitable knitted fabrics that I can use. I got some plain white knitted fabric which I am hoping to dye.

Today I finished attaching the head. Now have to leave it till tomorrow for drying. Waiting is the hardest thing to do.

 Inspiration for the pose came from this book

Lovely spring

It is so lovely to see the garden wake up in spring so here are a few photos for you to enjoy from my garden. I really love this time of the year in England. Everything is so lush and green.

I almost caught this little guy on camera:-) he was so busy that he hardly noticed me.

    

    

    These geraniums look so lovely and delicate

    

    This on shyly raises its head

    

    Some have come to live here accidentally. This one peeps out of the foliage as if to ask can I stay       here please?:-)

    

    Some are getting ready to unfurl their petals

    

    These are merrily dancing away in the breeze already.

    

    I think this one is just waiting to be visited by a bee.

    

    

    These are showing off there beautiful colours

    

    Some are bold and beautiful 

    Some are brazenly showing off their beauty

    While others blush and hide themselves

Hope you all are enjoying spring and enjoyed a little bit of my garden. I will start visiting your blogs soon, now that I am back.

Regular visitors

Can you believe it these two literally almost finished the whole feeder between themselves. If they were not eating they just sat there until they were ready to eat again :-)

Another of my greedy visitors :-)

This one is a resident guest. I think he now has a young family. Sadly I don't think I will be there when they decide to go out into the wide world but I hope they will fledge safely and go on to make new little cuties like themselves :-)