Ho, Ho, Ho.....

I'm surprisingly organised this year and despite it only being early November I've already done most of my Christmas shopping.  Yes, sad I know but in my defense, I have family that live abroad so I have to get super organised to get it delivered in time.

Anyway, this year I decided to get all creative with my wrapping paper and instead of buying expensive gift wrap I bought 2 rolls of brown paper and printed it up using a lovely stamp I already had plus a homemade potato stamp!

First I got together my paper, ink and stamps.  The brown craft paper was from Hobbycraft and cost about £2 for a large roll.  I did buy a new white ink pad but the others I already had.

The stamp is from Noolibird and is a lovely image of a reindeer.  They do the most beautiful stamps, not cheap but I got this one a few years ago and have made countless Christmas cards and wrap so it's earning it's keep!

I find it hard to be totally random in my stamping, so as you can see this is a fairly regular pattern.

A close up of the stamp.  Gorgeous!

I wanted to stamp some stars so took a humble potato and cut it in half.

I then used a marker to draw a rough star....

...and then cut it out using a knife.  Just be careful not to cut through the star, just around the edges about a half centimeter or so in depth.

Stamp away!  It's not the most perfect star but I don't mind it's quirkiness.  All part of the charm.

I did find though that the water in the potato did mess up my ink pad a little and I'm not sure how much stamping you could do with one potato stamp.  I did about half a metre with mine because that's all I needed.  

And the finished paper stamped and presents wrapped.  Really pleased with the final result.  The gift tags are mine and can be found in my Etsy shop

Halloween Masks

I thought I'd have a go at some Halloween masks.  I've had such fun making these and thought they'd be a bit of fun for the forthcoming 'witching' season.  Great for Trick & Treating or a party.

These can be instantly downloaded from my Etsy shop Alegreya and are best printed onto card stock or heavy weight paper.  A huge thanks to Ann Martin from All Things Paper who featured them on her website in an article about paper masks for Halloween

All images from the superb Graphics Fairy

Happy Halloween!

Etsy!

Gosh where has the summer gone?  It's been ages since I wrote anything, mainly because I've been super busy in the garden (pruning and general tidying), but also because I've been working solidly on setting up an Etsy shop in the hope that someone might love (and want to buy) my little digital works of art that I've been creating.  That hasn't been helped by our computer breaking.  Sadly it was beyond repair and we've had to splash out on a new one.  Hopefully this one will be better behaved!

Anyway, back to Etsy....I've so loved messing around on Photoshop Elements that I decided to try and fund my sabbatical from work by designing gorgeous pieces of digital ephemera that can be downloaded and used in collage or scrap-booking.

I used to have an Etsy shop a few years back where I sold hand made jewellery.  It's been sadly empty for a while but if I can start getting some digital sales then I hope to start working on some new jewellery pieces.

It's a bit time consuming setting the shop up, but it's getting there. I've some more listings to load but you can check it out by going to Etsy 

One of the more time consuming aspects was choosing a name.  I'd spent weeks thinking about names - should I use something that had digital in the title, or something else that described what I made or should it just be a lovely name or something that had meaning to me?  In the end, the choice became extremely limited as virtually every name I liked had already been taken!  I eventually chose the name Alegreya (which is actually the name of a font) but I thought it had a beautiful sound and doesn't restrict me from selling other items in the future.

Hope to see you there!  Wish me luck...

Chairs and cushions

Thought I'd share how I recovered the director's chairs and made the cushions for the summerhouse.

The chairs...

I used the old covers to make a template for the new ones.

As you can see, the fabric was a little worn!

Very pleased with this fabric.  It needed to be quite robust and hard-wearing so don't choose anything too thin.  Remember the fabric will need to take your weight.

I sewed the back covers first.  The top and bottom edges were hemmed and the side edges were hemmed with a gap large enough to push the back upright struts of the chair into.

Finished back pieces.

The seat was similar - the back and front edges were hemmed but the side edges needed to be able to fit a small piece of dowling in.  This dowling then slots into two grooves on the chair and keeps the fabric seats firmly in place.  Of course other makes of director's chairs might be different.

I top stitched all the seams on the chairs for sturdiness.  It also looks  more attractive and professional.

The cushions...

I made two styles of cushion - this one which was rectangular, with a panel piece of the chair fabric and a Velcro fastening on the reverse.

The front - with the 3 sections of fabric.

Sewn together and top stitched.

The back was cut into 2 pieces straight down the middle. Then hemmed and Velcro attached for a nice neat and easy closure (below).

Both back and front were then sewn right sides together, and then turned right side out through the Velcro opening.

 The front of the finished cushion.

The second cushion was a 16" square with a pillowcase opening so I could add contrasting fabric and pretty ties.

The most complicated bit of this cushion is making sure your contrasting flap is sewn in the right way!

Cut a nice deep rectangle of fabric the same width as your main cushion piece.  Hem the one long end and then sew the other  end right sides together to the front of your cushion piece.  At this point you want to also slot it one lot of your ties.  These can be made from fabric, as I've done or you can use ribbon or anything you want really.

On the back piece of your cushion, hem the top edge and sew in the other two ties to the wrong side.  Make this a nice deep hem with some top stitching as it will form the opening of the cushion.

Put both right sides of your cushions together but make sure the contrasting flap is sewn the right way.  It has to encase both back and front pieces.  Sew along the each side and the bottom and turn the cushion back the right way.

A revamp

We've got a sweet little summerhouse in the garden and a few years ago I re-painted it inside and out and spruced it up a bit.  Unfortunately over the last winter, it became a bit of a dumping ground and became sadly neglected.  Which was a crying shame given the lovely summer we've had, so it was time to roll my sleeves up and restore it to it's former glory!

As you can see, not looking it's best, although the local spider population seemed very happy!  Getting rid of the ivy inside and out  took a whole morning.  I then gave the walls and ceiling a good brush and hoover and gave the floor a new coat of paint.  I didn't bother re-painting the walls as with the ivy out and a good brush they weren't too bad.  I had a rug in there that had got rather bedraggled over the winter but after washing it in the machine it came up a treat and looked great on the newly painted floor.  I cleaned all the windows too - what a difference that made! The next job was re-painting and re-covering the director's chairs.  I also made cushions for them and got some lovely fabric from our local store.  For instructions on how to make both click here.  I had a nice but uninspiring zinc lantern so I sprayed that white, along with a picture frame, tidied up the other decorations I already had in there and put it all back together.

Love the fabric on the chairs and cushions - it really matched the washed out green rug

Before spraying....

...and after, looking really clean and fresh.

Before spraying...

...and after, sprayed white with a small bit of distressing.  The picture was a print I did a some years ago of pebbles.  Looks much better in this white frame.

Looking forward to sitting out in it again (once the sun makes an appearance again!)