Another Crafty Pursuit

Hello Everyone,
I am usually here to post about my card makes but this time around I am here to share some photos from a Heritage Day that I participated in last weekend (April 22nd) This day was held at Laidley Pioneer Village and Museum and myself and fellow members of the Spinners, Weavers and Fibre Artisans of Ipswich displayed at this event.

L-R Stephanie, Philio and Myself – photo taken by Dorothy.

We got dressed up in Pioneer Costumes for the day but we brought along our more modern spinning wheels and I brought along my travel loom. During the day many people stopped by and commented that they remembered family members – usually a grandmother doing these kinds of activities.

Part of the demonstrations that happened that day was some sheep shearing. I volunteered to do some spinning on Dorothy’s older Ashford Spinning Wheel so that she could explain to the crowd about what was going on.

A photo of me behind Dorothy’s wheel – waiting for the shearing to commence.

The shearing has commenced

Me spinning raw wool

Dorothy explaining to the crowd about the process

It was interesting hearing the crowds reaction when told that from raw wool to a Size 14 Ladies Jumper would take around 800 hours of work. So my fellow members from SWFAoI have been part of the slow movement for many years.

I love spinning, crocheting and weaving because it does take time and does make me slow down. It helps me to feel at peace again – this is why I do my crafty pursuits. I love making things either for Family, Friends or even people that I don’t know because I get a benefit from it as well.

So I will continue to go after my crafty pursuits and I hope to share some of my projects on here as well. I want to celebrate being crafty and taking time to slow my pace down and create beautiful projects for others to enjoy.

Thanks for stopping by and looking at a different post from me. I hope that you will look to find a way to slow down a little – even if it is with my other favourite past time of reading or playing board games.

Until my next post,
Be Kind to Yourself and Others.

Art Journal Journey 2

Hello Everyone. My art journal continues and now I am back to share with you a new page.

This page has a lot to do with how I was feeling at the moment when I created it. This layout has many layers to it, about 5 from memory. I just couldn’t get it to where I liked it so I just kept adding layers. One reason I love using acrylic paint – you can just continue to add layers. The quote deals with how I am feeling now about sharing my pages too a wider audience. I am not one to share a lot of my creations even though I have this blog and I am on social media platforms. Most of the time I doubt my decisions about what I have used and how I have put things together while I have been creating. So I just don’t share a lot of my work even though when I gift those creations they are appreciated.

It is true what I have heard from many people say and read that we are our greatest critics when we really should be our greatest champions. That is actually what started me on this art journal journey in the first place – I found that I didn’t really like what I was telling myself so I decided that I should change the narration of my thoughts. I still find myself falling back into the not so nice stuff but not as often. I also try to remember that I have Jesus on my side all the time and His father God loves me and thinks that what I do is worth something because it comes from his creation – Me.

So I am trying to have more courage and share more of my creations and to this end; I will be sharing my other love which is yarn crafts. I spin fibres pre-prepared by others to make into yarn that I can use in mainly my weaving. I weave using a rigid-heddle loom from Ashford Handicrafts; at the moment I am trying to weave 65 items by the end of November to give to an aged care home to use as Christmas gifts with an included handmade card. I hope to be able to figure out how to photograph these to share and too also keep a record of my crafting during the year.

Thanks for stopping in and looking at my next journal page share. I hope to inspire others to share their work so that we can all celebrate our unique creations.

Until my next post,
Be Kind to Yourself and Others.

Star Christmas

Hello Everyone,
Today I used one of my favourite ways to get my crafting on … I looked up a sketch blog to see if anything inspired me to make a card and one of them did!  This sketch comes from one of my go to sketch blogs Sketch Saturday and this is their sketch #508. I decided to make a Christmas Card because I have fallen behind with the amount of cards that I need to finish by the beginning of December.

This is what I came up with following the sketch

And this is the sketch as posted on the blog. This time around I didn’t do anything to the sketch itself.

I was able to use up more of my “Paper From Christmases Past”.  These ones are from Kasiercraft “Twig and Berries” paper pack.  The darn cute Chester Monkey image is still available from (here) Little Miss Muffet Stamps and its Star Chester. I coloured him up with my Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencils. This time around I didn’t use my Zest-It to smooth out the image; I wanted to take advantage of the roughness of the paper to give some texture to the image.  I also used my Distress Ink to colour around the image before affixing it to the card front.

It was fun getting back behind my desk and not having my toes hurting while doing it.  So I may be able to get some more card crafting in.  But I have been doing other crafts like my Spinning.

This is a photo of me spinning on my Ashford Joy Spinning Wheel.  This wheel is very portable as you can see I am spinning while my family and I were out for the day.  I find spinning a very calming activity to do and I get to create yarn that I can then crochet or weave with.  At present I am using some of my own homespun to crochet up a scarf.  I will share a photo of this when I complete it.

As always Thank You for stopping by and looking at my project today. And before you leave I wish to leave you with this last thought

I know that I am guilty of this one. Many times when I am in the midst of something (not even heartache) I forget about all the blessings that God has already bestowed upon me.  I am going to try harder to remember my blessings more than my circumstances.

I wish for you a Happy Crafty Fun kind of Day,