I dared to dresden!

It's my day!  whoo hooo

 

For the past couple of weeks I have been busy preparing for a fun blog hop over at Madame Samms which is being hosted by the fabulous Christine - here is my take on dresden plate:

sorry trying to get an arty shot in so you can see my snow covered wishing well out on my front lawn but it didn't turn out the best!  Anyway as soon as I tried a dresden plate last June I saw it's potential for being a cog, and being rather partial to cogs I knew I had to make some.  I practised with some left over spotty material I had from a blog hop last September and cast them to one side.  When I saw this blog hop I knew it was the push I needed to finally get them finished.  I planned to make a whole new bunch of grey and blue cogs but when I had made three I realised that they went nicely with the spotty ones I had previously made so I put them all together on one quilt to save leaving them on a WIP pile for even longer!

To make the different sizes of cogs I put a dresden plate template into photoshop and resized it three times, printed them out and then laminated them.  When cutting out the bits for each plate (20 for each one) I cut 10 full size and then trimmed off either 3/4" or 1" off the other ten and pieced them together accordingly.

When done I then quilted the cogs onto a piece of cog material that I picked up in California last year:

it was bought a whim (told you I like cogs!) and I had no idea what I was going to use it for until this hop when I just used it as a plain back - I haven't measured it but I bought a yard and it's almost square (seems to have gone a bit wonky after cutting although I did use my big mat and ruler - think it's because I trimmed it down after quilting around the cogs as the material on the other side frayed like anything so I left cutting it until I was ready to bind it).  I used a left over green material to bind it so all materials have been found in my stash for this quilt - what a bargain!

Anyway I have then had another bash at free motion quilting:

hope you can see all my little cogs there! honestly doesn't it take an age - two days plus just to do all these fmq cogs.  For these I die cut out lots of three different sized cogs in paper and then pinned about 10 at a time on the quilt and sewed around their edges.  I would be grateful for any feedback on whether this is a good way to go about free motion quilting or whether I should invest in one of those pens with the ink that disappears and then draw them on first?  I must admit I did have sore fingers from lots of pin pricks and also there is a spot of blood somewhere on the quilt (in my eyes though you know you are a true crafter if you have a cut or a burn somewhere about your person! or even go to collect the children from school with inky fingers and glitter all over your hair! which happens to me frequently! tee hee).

Hope you like my take on the dresden plate - for a whole other bunch of fabulous sewers please check out these links for today's showcasers:
 

A Reformed Heath'n

Meadowbrook

Rosemary B @ “that Other Blog”

Stitch Duchess' Crazy & Sane Quilting World

Grammie Q’s

Bumbleberry Stitches

Sunshine Girl  (you are here)

Spiral

Butjenter Quilter

Blooming Where I am Planted

Quilting Lodge

The Tilted Quilt

Life in the Scrapatch

Pretty Bobbins
In The Boon Docks

Sew Much and More

Threading My Way
Pink Ribbon Quilts

thimblemouseandspouse

For a full list of all the other quilters taking part please see Christine's blog above.

Thanks for looking - Cogging on from Solihull

A new blog hop

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't been too active on my blog recently - mainly because I haven't had any mojo to do much card making or scrapping yet this year.  I have however been busy sewing and have managed to get a great project done for a blog hop that starts today over at http://www.sewwequilt.com/. 

The blog hop is called Dare to Dresden and involves over 100 of us making up quilts, pillows, table runners in fact anything that takes our fancy with some type of Dresden plate on it.  My showcase day is next Monday (the hop doesn't run over a weekend) and if you want to join in some of the fun then the full schedule is over at Christines blog http://www.quiltmonstercloset.com/.

Am hoping to have a delivery of some new T!m stamps and stains today (snow permitting!) so hopefully my mojo will get a kick start to do some papercrafting later!

Hope to see you all Monday and if you get chance beforehand go check out some of the blogs over at Christines - they are all very inspirational.

I would just like to say a big thank you to my two newest followers Anita and Sue, thanks for joining me on my crafting journey!

Thanks for looking - Still enjoying the snow from Solihull

It's a snow day - what to do?

well you need to keep your Windows Phone warm of course!

I noticed earlier that I have another mention on WindowsPhoneUKs facebook time line (link here) about my phone cover, however they thought that it was knitted, so I decided (at 1pm today I hasten to add!) to show them just what a knitted phone cover would look like (after all there is only so much a grown woman can take sitting playing Lego Lord of the Rings with an eight year old!) - so whilst I supervised him playing Minecraft out came my knitting needles and less than 3 hours later I have another phone cover:

There it is next to my original one and resting on a lovely Windows Phone messenger bag I have (that will soon be decorated in true Sunshine Girl style so watch this space!).

And here is the back:

added the button so my phone doesn't fall out! 

Hope you like it - it's the best I could do with the materials I had to hand (no way am I going out to brave a trip to my local craft store with two children underfoot - had enough snowballs thrown at me on Friday!).

Thanks for looking - Still Snowed In from Solihull

Tims January tag

Have spent a lovely morning on this very snowy day completing my T!m tag:

I decided to try and make my tag look like Big Ben and incorporated the nursery rhyme Hickory, Dickory, Dock (the mouse ran up the clock!) with three (blind?) mice dotted around it to compliment the time theme - not sure if I accomplished that or not but I like it! 

I used some House Mouse Personalities stamps, the time quote is from T!ms Going Somewhere set, Artistic Outpost London Elements stamps (the Look Right pointer, telephone box and clock), Archival Ink in Coffee, Crimson and Jet Black.  Gathered Twigs, Frayed Burlap, Walnut Stain and Fired Brick distress inks with Frayed Burlap, Tea Dye and Tattered Rose Distress Markers.  The tag background is done with a brick embossing folder - I think by Creative Expressions not sure as I have reused the packaging! 

To define the bricks I inked the whole tag with Frayed Burlap ink, then used a Frayed Burlap distress marker to highlight the left hand side and underneath of each brick, then I reinked it all over again with Frayed Burlap and then inked the whole edge of the "clock tag" with Walnut Stain to define it further.  To finish the clock face I inked it very lightly with Frayed Burlap and then edged it very lightly with Walnut Stain and then used pen nibs to set the time to 1 o'clock covering the join of the nibs with two mini gears. 

I positioned a mouse looking like he was waiting for the phone to ring to give him the go ahead to race up the clock (how many hours do we spend in our youth waiting for someone to call??? or was that just me?), then I positioned the mouse in pride of place at the top of the clock to look as if he had just made it to the top for 1 o'clock! and then the (tired) mouse I rested on the scroll end of the Time quote (picture doesn't show this very clearly does it, but it is a rolled up scroll - honest!) to look as if he had just completed a run up and down Big Ben.

It seems I am still carrying on with my London theme with this tag! not sure whether I will manage that again for a whole year though as it required a lot of extra thought!  But I will try and either do British themes again or nursery rhymes (that sounds really tricky though doesn't it!).

All in all very good fun!  It didn't take too long as I have had it planned in my head for a couple of weeks but havent gotten around to completing it as I have been busy sewing a quilt for a blog hop I am in on 24th January more details are here - come back then and check out what I have made!

To check out the rest of the entries for T!ms January tag click here.

Thanks for looking - Snowed In from Solihull

edited to add - after posting I remembered I had a mouse footprint stamp so I have dug it out and this is now the finished tag:

cute eh!

Happy Birthday Tim

It's T!ms birthday on the 7th so the final CC2C challenge over at Linda's is to create a card for T!m - here is mine for him:

The technique used is on page 42 of Book 1 - Spritz and Flick distress as I know T!m likes to use this technique a lot so I figure it's one of his favourites!

I used Black Soot, Vintage Photo, Fired Brick, Walnut Stain and Frayed Burlap inks and a Black Soot Marker.  There are lots of T!ms mini cogs on here as I know he loves metal, and I finished the name TIM off with a key, pen nib and spinners.  A Cuttlebug cog embossing folder was used for the background.  The Umbrella Man is inked with black soot and then highlighted on his hat, boots and umbrella with glossy accents.  The stamp on the background is Watch Gears by Hero Arts and then I also used T!ms ticket and die stamp along with the Going Somewhere "Enjoy the Journey" stamp where I used a stamp repositioner to change the first word to "enjoyin".  I finished the card off with some brown twine with a metal disc saying "Made for You" on it.

There we go - my inky card for the man of inks!

I would also just like to say hello to my newest follower Peg - thanks for joining me!

There was great excitement in our household again yesterday when my phone cover on the previous post was tweeted by Nokia_UK! how cool is that.

Thanks for looking - Inky Fingers from Solihull

So did he get the message?

Well yes, yes he did!

Imagine my delight on Christmas morning when I unwrapped a lovely Nokia Lumia phone!

I just had to make a cover for it so after all our Christmas and New Year festivities were over I got busy with my sewing machine again:

I kept it the same colours as my quilt although I must admit I much prefer the Nokia blue tiles on my actual phone. This was far harder to sew than the quilt as the tiles are just under 1" square therefore I just chose a selection of the easiest tiles to replicate from the Windows catalogue rather than struggling with Internet Explorer, Star Wars Angry Birds and the Sudoku tiles that are on my actual phone.

I decided to include my name on it too (just in case I forget who I am! tee hee).

 

and as you can see peeking out from the flap on the right there it is fully lined in bright orange too!

Have had a great few hours styling the phone to suit me including the easy transfer of all my email and phone contacts, which is fab as you can link all your conversations with people in their contact entry, so see facebook, twitter, texts all in one place, and, joy of joys, imagine the excitement when I discovered I could download a free Phineas and Ferb soundtrack app to use as individual ringtones for everyone. So Ferb, I know what we are going to do today.....

Thanks for looking - A Windows Fan from Solihull

ps if you have no idea what I am talking about the original message is here