Spring

Am desperately trying to convince myself that spring is on its way, despite today's relentless rain, hence making this brightly coloured daffodil card.

The background is silk-painted interfacing (the fusible kind as it's easy to iron onto card) with felt and foam flowers and machine-stitched stems.  In retrospect, the grass is maybe a bit overly green, but I'm pretending that's just wishful thinking for a sunny spring.

Shadow quilting

Another recently finished practice piece from my C&G course: shadow quilting.  It's similar to normal quilting, but with just two layers: a base layer of relatively sturdy fabric with a top layer of sheer fabric and other elements sandwiched in between.

In this piece I used ribbon, jewellery chain, a sequin (oddly without a hole) and a "fake shisha" ring (a blanket-stitched ring which is tacked on top of a mirror, avoiding the need to do shisha stitch).  I'm not 100% convinced about the effect - it's a bit flatter than I'd expected, and the chain looks a lot less chainlike behind the sheer fabric, but may be worth trying with some slightly more 3D objects in the sandwich.  

Sheer colour

Finally made something which I can post - been doing lots of tweaking and mounting portfolio work, dull but necessary.  So, it was a relief to spend a happy couple of hours at my City and Guilds course last night, cutting up brightly coloured sheer fabrics and laying them over each other.

OH referred to them as 'neon', which isn't quite what I was aiming for, but he does have a point.  I was more aiming at the rich colours of Prinkie Roberts' work, but guess it's always good to have something to aim for.

Poppies

Had fun making this card for a friend's birthday - lots of playing with different paper/fabric, and am pleased with the result.

The colours aren't quite true in the image, but OH has just said that we now have Photoshop (belated Christmas present), so hopefully future photos will be spot on.

Resolution

A friend v.kindly gave us a bottle of bramble brandy shrub last month which we've been enjoying both over ice-cream and just ice.  Today, however, we got more adventurous and tried it out in a cocktail (I'm not big on New Year's Resolutions, but this year I'm intending to drink more cocktails). 

Unusually, it doesn't have a cocktail name (being just called Blackcurrant Shrub) but it's very quaffable.  We did it with gin rather than another botanical, and Cointreau, and also omitted the rosemary (our rosemary bush took umbrage at being moved this summer, so we're rosemary-less) but it was still good.  I know a cocktail is getting a seal of approval when OH necks it quicker than I do.

Gingery

Continuing with the festive theme of recent posts, here's my latest wintery creation. 

Was a bit disappointed in the gingerbread itself but think there may have been a user error in the measuring (Christmas Eve pressure, plus doing double recipe which wouldn't fit in even the biggest mixing bowl!).  The kids loved it, though, which was the main thing, and did even eat some of the gingerbread, rather than just licking off the icing and chocolate.

And in case you're wondering, the white smudge at the front is deliberate - it's a melted snowman but that looked better in reality!

Frosty

Meet Frosty, the papier maché snowman.  I decided this year that a stocking for OH's presents was too traditional, and a 4 foot snowman was the way forward (it would have been bigger, but the papier mache was done around balloons and that was as big as I could manage). 

Am particularly pleased with the hat (a couple of pizza boxes and more papier maché, although the black is a bit lost in the photo) and the nose (maché-ed around a real carrot).

We had debated doing a snowman piñata for the nieces and nephews but felt that more sugar/over-excitement was probably not what was needed at Christmas and we'd save that for another occasion.  Hopefully they don't read this, or that could constitute a promise.