Some Crafty Bits from this Weekend.

After seeing this dreamcatcher photo on weheartit I really wanted to make my own version. My sister's made a few which are for sale in our Folksy shop, Wishcatcher Crafts but this was a special one I made just for me :)

I basically just used an old bangle, wrapped fabric round it and hung all sorts of fabrics and materials, as well as a few charms, from the bottom. I also followed this tutorial to do the stringy bit in the middle of the hoop. Very pleased with how it turned out! I might try and see if I can develop a simpler one to sell in the shop - this one has too many different bits hanging off it, which is fine if I already have all the stuff but I don't so it would wind up being really expensive to buy all the materials.

I also made these paper hearts out of sheets from an old book (I found this idea on a blog but I can't seem to find it again, I'll link to it if I do)

They're very simple to make, just strips of paper at different lengths and held together with split pins. A cute little extra in the corner of my room :)

5 Days of Christmas (1).

Here is the first of my Flickr christmas uploads. I'm calling it the 5 days of christmas. I have enough photos to do the 12 days of christmas after the big day itself, but these photos are all about the build up to the day so they need to go before really! So it's 5 photos a day, for 5 days, right up until christmas eve :) enjoy!

Oh and this is also the first film back from my Fuuvi Juicebox Camera. The funny way the lens works means  got my fingers in the way of a few, but overall I love it!

Paper Bells

Winter Wonderland

Christmas Dreams

Star

Winter Windows

(anyone catch the Sea Wolf song there?!)

These were all taken the last time I went to London, mainly the windows of Selfridges :)


ALSO
My new MacBook battery arrived! Yay a laptop that works properly again! I've had such bad luck with this laptop so I'm not holding my breath that it'll work for a very long before it finds another reason to go wrong :S

Alix Swan.

I just want to talk about how much I absolutely love Alix Swan's work! Alix is a paper/textile artist who is very inspired by classic fairytales, using the story as the basis for her work.

You can read more about her in the Folksy newsletter, Frankly.

I love this little Thumbelina foldout story so much I bought it! From here :)

I really love the way she displays her work!

Check out Alix's Folksy store, and also her Facebook page.

Crafty Day.

Me, my sister Sophie and my friend Fi had a bit of a crafty afternoon today :)

Paper daisy tutorial here.

Fi managed to make a couple of these to take home with her. She's not arty or crafty at all so she was very pleased with herself!

My sister made these heart garlands.

A joint effort between me and Sophie to make this new home card for our grandparents :)

I fell in love with this. DIY Tassle Garland tutorial here.

This picture made me really want to make these paper poms.

I followed a couple of tutorials (here and here) to make these, and they're a lot harder than they look so I'm still trying to get the hang of them! The pink one is the only one that really worked properly :S I'm going to get some more tissue paper tomorrow though and keep practicing!

We also made paper cranes to hang with the white pom :)

It took us a while to get the hang of making the cranes but by using both this tutorial and this tutorial, we finally managed it :)

I'll Make it a Forest...

I've managed to persuade my sister to come with me to do a mini photoshoot in the forest tomorrow.

I'm kinda obsessed with forests at the moment. 

I've been making little 3D forests out of paper today. They're kinda cute. I like the look of them over my green cutting mat - it's a hint at the real colours in the forest.

I cut a basic tree shape in white card (you can't tell it's white because my flash wasn't working properly :S) but left the bottom edge uncut, folding along that edge so the trees stand up from the sheet, so it looks like trees standing in a forest.

I like these ones with text. I think I want to explore this idea a bit more with other shapes and stuff.

I want to set these trees up in the forest tomorrow - the paper verses the real thing.

I also bought a load of balloons, in a variety of colours, which I think will look good mixed in with the autumn colours of the forest. Although I think it may look better against trees with no leaves, so I may have to wait until winter, but I'll see how it goes tomorrow.


UPDATE

Setting up the trees in the forest did not work. At all. It was windy and the ground was even so they would not stay up. So I gave up and came home with them.

In the end I taped them to a cutting board. It was pretty covered in blue paint, but then my sister pointed out that it looked like a stream flowing through the forest, and I really liked that idea so I'm going with that!

Kinda like a forest, putting them in the "wild" part of my garden.

I love the shapes of the shadows :)

I want to do something with fairy lights wrapped throughout the trees, but I haven't been able to get any yet, and the only space I have for this board is on the floor, so a few of the trees have been trodden on now :(