Saturday, January 17, 2015

Tarn...ation!

I'm on a crocheting kick...still...I've always preferred crocheting to knitting, and have started working on my WIPs- (New Years Resolution #2)! I started a scarf last year sometime and stopped when I got to the border. Basically the given border was a little tricky to  understand at the time, so I stopped. I'm now crocheting the border with my own pattern! 

In between all this, I've been doing Marinke's 2014 CAL which has/is so much fun! 12 weeks...10 patterns...60 squares...joining and edging instructions...blanket! I've got 6 squares to go and then I start joining.
My stash of squares so far...

Playing with the layout...

My next project is going to be a large circular floor rug made from tarn. (For those who don't know, tarn is T-shirt yarn which can be made from old T-shirts or T-shirt material.) A ready made ball of tarn (50g) costs R50, which works out quite expensive when you want to make something big...so off to our local fabric shop I go, and buy 2m of denim blue T-shirt material @R30 pm. I then cut and cut and cut and cut...and wound it all up into a HUGE ball weighing in at 560g!! and it only cost me R60!!

T
The cutting process...

A close-up of how to cut the fabric to get a continuous strip!

Once cut, you stretch the  strips as you wind to get the edges to curl. My 560g ball of tarn!


And finally, my New Years Resolution #1, to participate in the The Diva's weekly challenges again! THis challenge is her 200th challenge - well done Diva! We were asked to tangle out Go-to tangle...and mine is Nzeppel (with a few tangleations)



Happy creating


PennyB

Monday, January 12, 2015

Afternnon and Happy New Year!

So it's been a few months...{am on knees begging forgiveness}... My New Years Resolution is to resurrect my blog! For those faithful that were following my 365 days of Creativity, I did in actual fact complete my task - it just got too much posting each week (insert sad face here!) There were days where I didn't do much, but I did something - which was the test!

I have introduced a few friends at school to Art Journalling and we've started a WhatsApp group called Crafty Chicks. I took them all shopping to our big Art store - The Deckle Edge - (we only have one really) to buy a journal, a waterbrush and a black Sakura pen. We are all taking part in Journal 52 ,which I did last year and they decided it was a good place to start!

SO I thought I'd post a step by step for my friends on how I do some of my journal pages:


Step 1 is to colour with watercolour pencils.
I then wipe over the colour with a baby/face wipe, which doesn't wet the paper so much!





Step 2 I use watercolour paints to draw my background shapes and edge the page.



Step 3 I outline the shapes with a fine marker - this one I used blue because the edge of my page is blue.



Step 4 I used some left over paper strips and my watersoluble graphite pencil and my watercolur paints to make some colour strips to punch shapes from...





Step 5 I create shadows in the shapes with my graphite pencil



Step 6 I start doodling my outside edges...




 Step 7 After figuring out what quote I was going to use,  I glue my punched squares into position and write my quote. Each square was then edged with a charcoal pencil which I smudged.



Step 8 I completed the doodles!
 


I also took part in  Julie Gibbons 5 Days of Mandala Magic which was such fun!  I learnt how to create a lotus flower mandala and the Hamsa - which turned out pretty well!



My other New Year's Resolution is to continue with The Diva's weekly zentangle challenges...this week being special as it's the 200th Challenge!

Happy creating everyone...see you soon


Pennyb