Kelly

Flower pressing

What a great time of year for flower pressing, when our garden spoils us for choice!

I picked up this flower press from the oppy fairly cheaply, but if you don’t have one you can always make your own.

The leftovers can be floated in a glass bowl or jug – very pretty! Or, if you’re feeling particularly adventurous you could try a frozen flower bowl – beautiful!

I’m in my element today, working on a custom embroidery design – actually I’m just really chuffed that someone likes my work enough to ask me to design for them!

The rest of the weekend involves Mass, children’s piano concert, another Christmas gathering and plenty of errands to run and catching up to do.

I hope your weekend is a very fruitful one.

God bless.

Inspired by a beautiful pinkish rose outside my bedroom window. I used my watercolour pencils but didn’t add any water. My next step is to print the image onto fabric with transfer paper and test my thread painting skills! That is, when I get time – it’s one thing to complete a drawing in an hour or so, but to embroider it is a very different story!

What do you think?

Love

by Kelly Leave a Comment

” We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”

Mother Teresa

Little bitty wall art

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I like small things. I like small projects that I can finish fairly quickly but look effective. This little hoop is 3 inches (8cm ) across. Here’s the process:

I mounted my cream silk in the hoop and painted the background with acrylic Jo Sonja paints mixed with textile medium. I sketched the design with colour pencils on paper first to give a clear idea of what I wanted to do. When it dried, I heat set with the iron.

I started out by embroidering stems and grass with embroidery cotton. I used a bit of stranded silk for the agapanthus flowers. I used silk ribbon for the other flowers and some leaves, but didn’t have the colours I wanted so painted them by hand with Liquid Radiance first, then heat set. The Liquid Radiance seems to make silk stiff, so I’ll use silk paint or dye next time.

When finished embroidering I cut off the excess silk, then laced the back with cotton thread. I glued on the wool felt circle backing with hot glue.

This is how the piece looks out of the hoop, but I chose to mount in the hoop to hang on the wall. I can see a whole bunch of these grouped together, how cute would that look?

A little apron

by Kelly 2 Comments

SOLD – THANKYOU NELL!

I hope you’re all having a nice family Sunday as I am. I’ve made a little apron and thought I would offer it for sale here first, ie. I’m too lazy to list it in the shop!

The size is multi fit – here it is modelled by my 6 year old.

And here it is modelled by my 2 year old.

I’m asking for $15 which includes postage within Australia. If you are interested just leave a comment or feel free to contact me via email.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and God bless you all 🙂

Little Star

by Kelly 3 Comments

If your kids didn’t get to see this last year have a look this time, it’s a beautiful little Christmas story by Anthony Destefano. We have the book also and the children love to read it at this time of year.

Summer Strawberry Cheesecake

by Kelly 6 Comments

I love cheesecake. Love it. Not baked though, only unbaked. Baked seems wrong somehow. It just doesn’t work for me. Where was I? I love cheesecake, and for those of you who love cheesecake I’m going to share my very first attempt at my own recipe. It’s really nice, you should try it.

Base

1 packet Marie biscuits, crumbed

100g melted butter

Mix the crushed biscuits and melted butter together thoroughly and press into the base of a greased cheesecake tin. Refrigerate.

Filling

1 cup strawberry puree (see instructions below)

1 tablespoon powdered gelatine (or substitute *)

375 grams cream cheese (bring to room temp.)

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 and 1/4 cup cream, whipped

For puree – Hull and wash 2 punnets of strawberries, if large cut in half. Using a food processor or suitable replacement, puree the strawberries with 1 tablespoon of sugar and a squeeze of lemon. Leftover puree is wonderful on yoghurt, icecream, even cereal.

Place 1 cup of puree into a small saucepan with the gelatine, caster sugar and lemon juice and stir with a fork over a low heat. You want to heat the ingredients, not cook them. Leave to cool while you:

Beat the cream cheese until creamy. Beat in the cooled strawberry mixture until smooth. Fold in the whipped cream lightly. Pour onto the base and refrigerate until set.

Topping

3/4 cup strawberry puree

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons arrowroot

Warm ingredients together in a small saucepan (once again – just warming, not cooking). Pour on top of set cheesecake and refrigerate until set.

Serve with additional whipped cream if desired.

I hope you enjoy this recipe – as always I’m more than happy to answer questions or receive comments or suggestions.

* It has come to my attention that some people prefer not to use gelatine so here is a link for suitable alternatives and quantities.

Sorry about that, here is the winner…

by Kelly 2 Comments

Things got very busy here over the weekend with a Christmas party and my Stumpwork Assessment today (seems to have gone well!) so I didn’t draw the winner on Saturday as promised. Without further ado, the winner is….

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

Timestamp: 2011-11-28 06:03:55 UTC

That makes the winner Therese. Congratulations Therese, now you just have to decide who gets her for Christmas 🙂

Thanks to all who took the time to enter and of course to all of you who are regular readers.

Art I’m loving on Flickr

by Kelly 3 Comments

Persuasion

Butterfly Wreath

Squirrel Stumpwork Project

These beautiful embroidery pieces were created by Emily – a self confessed stitchaholic! To see more of her work you can visit her at The Flossbox, she has a lot of patterns, tutes and tips for embroidery and cross stitch.

Beehive bookplate

Letterpress mini bunting

Mushroom bookplate

Narelle from Ruby Victoria Letterpress is one of the reasons I recently bought a set of lino cutting tools and equipment, I just love her work. And I love the unique quality of a linoprint.

Narelle has an Etsy shop and can be found at markets if you’re in Tassie.

What can I say about these, possibly the most awesome pieces of wearable art I’ve ever seen!

Lisa from Lil Fish Studios is my kind of artist. She crafts objects of beauty that are functional. She firstly needlefelts and embroiders her brooches, then she searches her own property for exactly the right mount for each artwork.

The base may be made of wood, a shell, even antler. She handcrafts the base with a saw, drill and sanding.

Inspiring works from lovely ladies, thank you all for sharing your crafts with us 🙂

Just a reminder that my Christmas giveaway is still running so get in while you still can!

You Yangs

by Kelly 1 Comment

We live pretty close to the You Yangs and it’s a fun place to visit with kids. There are quite a few walking tracks and you can brave the steps to the top, which we didn’t do this time as we didn’t fancy carrying a tired toddler.

Mmm, bush tucker (tree sap)

I never appreciated the Australian landscape in my younger years but I find plenty of beauty and inspiration in it now. I love the uniqueness, the earthy colours, the ability to thrive through drought and of course I love that God made it all for us!

Have a great day and don’t forget to enter the giveaway (see last post).