March TIF - Frogs

After being stumped by this months TIF for a fair while I have finally decided what I will be doing. It came to me when we were out walking on Sunday. We were ambling along the old canal path generally chatting and enjoying ourselves when all of a sudden we heard a strange noise. It turned out to be a chorus of frogs who had all of a sudden populated one of the many little ponds which run down the side of the track.

We spent ages watching their antics and listening to their fabulous song. I immediately decided that this must surely count as noticing the little things, after all we had witnessed quite a few people strolling by the same spot before us without stopping for a second glance.

I am going to try and stick with the dolls and this month will be aiming to make a froggy princess.

Mark took these great pictures, if you have enjoyed looking at them there are some more on his blog here. I love the one eyed frog that he has, looking at life through a lens really does make you see things that may otherwise slip by unremarked.(it's well worth taking the time to click on the pics for larger versions to see all the detail). If you do visit please take the time to vote in the little poll he has on the sidebar ......

March - Take it Further

I just realised that so far I hadn't mentioned the March TIF challenge here yet.

This months concept;

Do you ever notice the little things, the small moments, the details in life? This months challenge is to do just that, pay attention to the tiny details. Sometimes the small things become emblematic for something larger. That is it! I am going to keep it brief.


This months colours;
For the last 2 challenges an idea almost immediately popped into my head and grew roots so that I couldn't shake it out. This time I'm pretty stumped neither the theme or the colour palette has triggered anything immediately.

I will have to sit down with notepad and pen I think to see if I can provoke my tiny brain into a spark of an idea. This will be a very different way of working for me than my usual approach so it should be interesting. Watch this space....

Take It Further - Rags and Bones

Well I've been AWOL for the last few days what with MIL duties, car trouble and frantically trying to finished my TIF project I haven't had time to blog. But here we are just one day late my February project is done.

Last month I chose to work purely on the colour scheme but Feb's colour palette didn't really appeal. Instead I stuck with the concept, What are you old enough to remember? As with the January challenge an idea just popped into my head and I ran with it. I was born in 1976 and one of the earliest things that I can remember is the sound of the Rag and Bone man clip clopping down the road with his horse and cart ringing his bell and shouting. So I have made a mixed media doll using rag and bone as the inspiration.

I took some pictures along the way so thought it might be fun to share with you how my doll was 'born'.

First off I picked some fabrics

And then using some Fimo clay I made some body parts :)

Back to the fabric for more body parts

A skeleton emerges from all the parts. So that's the bones done .......

Now it's time for some rags. A once pretty dress ......

... is starting to show the signs of a street urchins life.

A girl is emerging, but even a skeleton needs some features right?

Some hair in the making... I picked some more felted yarn from my stash. I figured a street urchin would probably not have a hair brush to hand and I thought this yarn would give a matted unbrushed look, plus it's in my favourite orangey colours, so who could resist.

I read here, that some rag and bone men used to hand out balloons to children who bought them enough rags. So here is my girl with with her prize balloon... I guess some people might think she's macabre but that isn't my intention. I'm hoping she's more corpse bride than the exorcist but I guess it will depend on the individual point of view.

Just like last month she is looking for a name, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment. There will be a prize if I pick a name from your ideas.

Take it Further - January endings and February Beginnings

A little later than planned here is my finished doll for the January Take it further challenge.

This is the first larger art doll that I have made and am so pleased with the way she turned out. When I first read the January challenge on Sharon's blog I was really stumped by the concept so decided to concentrate on the colour theme. Immediately the colours bought to my mind a peacock. After thinking about it a bit more I realised that peacock colours where more in the blue tones that the purples shown here but I just couldn't get the idea out of my head so decided to use a bit of artistic license and raided my stash for some appropriate fabrics and began work. Seeing the little feather wings on the finished piece I think the colours have turned out to be a good match in the end.

Once the doll was finished I was really nervous about painting on the facial features as I'm no artist. I wanted to go with big eyes near the side of the face to try and suggest the way that real peacocks have eyes on either sides of their heads.I choose the lightest colour in the pallette for the legs of the doll, but after having lived with her for a couple of weeks I decided that I didn't like such large blocks of light colour. I didn't want to add shoes (peacocks don't wear shoes right?), so this morning she went back on the operating table and I added some green ribbon to break the legs up a bit. Overall now I'm pretty happy with her. The only other thing I may do is add some arm jewellery, again to try and break up the blocky colour of the arms but I will let that one mull over a bit before I decide for sure.At the moment she is known just as the Peacock Princess but I would like to give her a name. I would love to hear your suggestions. If I pick a name from the suggestions that you make I will send the winner something as a Thank You.

Now that I have finally been able to share some pictures of January's finished piece I can take some time to think about February's Challenge. I've really enjoyed making my doll so I think I will try another for February, but I think this one will be a bit different.I'm not very keen on the colour pallette this month so I am going to go with the concept, What are you old enough to remember? As with the January challenge an idea just popped into my head and I haven't been able to shake it out. I was born in 1976 and one of the earliest things that I can remember is the sound of the Rag and Bone man clip clopping down the road with his horse and cart ringing his bell and shouting. It seemed a very incongrous sight as we lived on a busy main road with cars streaming past most of the day. So my themed doll is going to be based around the Rag and Bone tradition.

As my post has already turned into an epic today I won't say any more for now but already I have some ideas of how I want my Feb doll to look ......

Peek a Boo ...

Guess Who?

TIF progress

This week I think I have been the queen of procrastination. So ok I had a busy week with a couple of late ones at work and a couple of days out but really I could have squeezed in a few more stitching hours if I'd really gotten my finger (or should I say needle?) out.

I only had two things on my to do list last week.

• Progress on TIF challenge
• Finish BQL January

Still I only managed one, which was to work on my TIF doll. I know this sounds odd but I think the fact that I only had 2 things on the list really didn't give me enough incentive to push and get things done. So I have decided from now on to have more things in the list than I think I can achieve that way I may just push myself into doing more than I had hoped. Does that make any sort of sense?

Anyway here is the progress I made on my TIF doll. Here is my doll form stuffed and stitched together. I'm not sure if I mentioned before that I am using a doll pattern from this book by Patti Culea. Apart from a couple of pin dolls I've not really attempted dolls before so I've started with the basic pattern. I'm not too happy with the way the arms are attached but it's ok for my first attempt.

You might remember that my initial inspiration was to use the colour palette to make a peacock inspired doll. I know that peacocks are more in the blue range than purple but they were the first thing I thought of when I saw the colours and I just couldn't shake the idea out of my head.

I'm bringing the greens in on her outfit. Sorry about the pictures I had to take them with flash so they don't really pick the colours out exactly. The top at the moment is just pinned and the skirt is not very well arranged in this pic, I just grabbed the poor thing and took a quick photo to share today. I still have a little way to go with her but hopefully she will get done.

January is drawing to a close so in typical 'me' fashion I will be trying to finish everything last minute as I now only have a couple of days to get my doll and my bag done. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

My To do list for this coming week....

• Finish TIF January Challenge
• Finish BQL bag
• Start shaker postcards
• Start Something Beginning with J postcards
• Add another Kitty to the neglected cross stitch UFO.

Well that lot should keep me more than busy.

Just to finish here is a picture that I took on my walk yesterday. I've been pretty good and have managed to stick to my walk a day routine with the exception of a couple of days when I was ill, but as a lot of the walking is in the evening in the dark I haven't been able to post a picture everyday. Yesterday was almost spring like and there was even some blue sky to enjoy.

My Day in Pictures

DH and I both had the day off work yesterday, a long weekend pure bliss! We managed to pack loads in. First a trip to Bristol for some retail therapy. I picked up a few metres of scrim from the market and some new headphones to match the Ipod that dh bought me on my birthday last year, pretty funky huh?

Then off to the zoo, I know a lot of people are against the whole principle of keeping wild animals caged up but I think zoos in this country at least are now making huge efforts to make interesting and spacious enclosures and are doing a lot of work around conservation and breeding programmes. We've been to the zoo quite a few time and this visit was the most active I've seen the pygmy hippos, they were both swimming around in their pools and seemed very curious about their audience.
Oh no not another picture, purrlease!
Hmm of course I had to take advantage of the fact that it was a quite day and found time for a spot of silly buggers.

The evening was spent at the Bristol Academy watching a great show by the band Alter Bridge.
This is the first time I've ever taken my camera to a gig and the pictures are pretty grainy and shaking but atmospheric I think.

Unusually the gig started and finished early so we were home by 10:30, just enough time for me to start adding some shape to my TIF doll before falling into bed tired but happy.

Take It Further Progress

I don't know about everyone else but since Sharon posted the January Take it Further details I have started to see green and purple everywhere.I spotted this bench on a walk in the rain through the park on Sunday and instantly thought TIF.

I have finally started to make some progress on my piece this weekend. I will be the first to admit that I haven't gotten as far as I would like but at least I have finally started stitching something.

Apologies. The colours aren't great in this picture but as I took it this evening I had to use a flash which always seems to distort 'real' colours.

I knew that I had a busy week last week, but after 2 late nights at work, a trip to the movies, my Saturday workshop and walking in the rain yesterday I didn't realise just how little stitching time I would have last week. Even though I didn't set an overly ambitious to do list I still didn't get as far as I would have liked.

• Finish Orange Postcards - Yipee managed to do this one
• Finish BQL January Bag - Oops total failure I didn't even manage to pick this one up
• Make a start on TIF doll - Start made but no where the sort of start I had hoped for
• Add another kitty to the cross stitch - Another tick in the check column.

So I just realised that with my busy week I have totally forgotten to share the cross stitch progress. Here is the overall shot, so I admit again I probably spent a little more time on this than I wanted to but it's so easy to pick up in the evenings. Not only did I add the extra kitty but also a couple of hearts here and there.

Here is a close up of the new kitty, sorry about the bad pic got a lot of glare from the flash. I'm so glad that I am asking DH to choose each new edition. I really didn't want to stitch this one as basically it's just a mirror image of one of the first kitties to be complete. Part of the fun of doing these is watching each one emerge and I had already seen this one done, anyway having DH choose has made me get on with it and now it's over and done and I can move on to the next.

Even though I am not managing to achieve everything on my To Do list each week it is really helping me to concentrate on the things that I want to work on so I will continue to work this way for a while. I have another busy week this week including a 17 hour day at work tomorrow, ick! So I am going to restrict my list to 2 things this week.

• Finish BQL January Bag
• Make good progress on my TIF doll

Tune in same time next week to see if I finally manage to complete a weekly to do list, lol!

More cross stitch progress

I'm happy again, I feel like I'm finally getting the better of this dang virus, I even stepped outside the house today for the first time in a week, sadly it was just to do some grocery shopping but hey it's a start.

One sure fire way of knowing that my mojo is nearly back is that I picked up a needle again yesterday. I worked some more on my cross stitch. I had really wanted to give the cross stitching a break for a while and move on to some other things but I figured that following a pattern would be less taxing on my virus addled brain. I really can't believe how quickly I'm progressing with this, to think a couple of weeks ago I start out with this
And as of yesterday evening I have this.It really is coming on faster than I could have dared hope, there's still a long way to go before it's done though. Here is a close up of the cutie that emerged yesterday. I had to unpick a fair bit before I finally got him done but that was just down to me not being able to focus on the pattern as my head was still muzzy.I had a whole list of creative things that I wanted to get done today but the grocery shopping just about wiped me out so I guess I still need to try and pace myself for a few days until all these germs are totally gone.

Take It Further Musings

I have been thinking a bit more about the Take It further challenge today mainly due to some super fast service from Ebay. Yesterday I ordered some peacock feathers here. Today they arrived through the letter box! Hows that for service? Definitely the fastest I've ever had from an ebay seller. The green colours to me definitely match this months colour palette, it's the blues that will need more thinking about as palette has purples rather than blues.
I'm starting to think maybe an art doll with a peacock inspired theme, I've only ever made a couple of small fabric dolls before so this would be a real challenge for me. I'll have to think on this some more as it might be too much to take on given the month time scale, especially as I still have other swap commitments to catch up on that I'm still lagging behind on from 2007.

I think a watch this space is the order of the day ......

While I was Sleeping ...

I just want to thank everyone for their well wishes after my last post, I think all that healthy energy must be working as I'm feeling a lot better today, not back to my normal self but hey I've been out of bed for more than a couple of hours so that has got to be good right?

Well while I have been couped up in bed these last couple of days Sharon B has announced the first theme in her Take It Further Challenge, you can find all the details here.

I haven't had a lot of time to think about it yet but I think I will be going with the colour theme rather than the admiration theme. Here is the January Palette.

Not usually colours I work with as y'all know I'm a orange girl! However I do think these match my blog template quite well!

I don't know why but the first thing that sprung to mind when I saw these colours was a peacock. Now I know these are more pastel tones and a peacock is more what I would consider to be jewel tones but the challenge is to take it further , so I'm hoping this leap isn't too far a stretch of the imagination. Here are some pictures I borrowed from DH's blog.

I'm not sure where I will go with this idea yet, who knows what will happen, maybe something else will hit me like a bolt out of the blue and I will veer in a totally different direction, I guess this is all part of the fun in such a challenge.