Happy Mothers' Day!

Where did that month go?  Teaching full time in a busy special needs classroom certainly speeds up time.  And washing your mobile (no, I don't recommend it!) doesn't help when you rely on it as a camera for your blog!  

After getting a couple of Mothers Day cards made this morning I borrowed my daughter's phone and took a few snaps.  A couple of weeks ago I took my sketchbook out with me to a local National Trust garden and used one of the sketches to create this drawing using my sewing machine.  [sorry it's such a faint image in my sketchbook!]

The Easter holidays are looming and I'm going to be tackling my  craftroom  studio as I have to climb over piles of 'stuff' to get to my table at the minute.  And when I get there there's no space!  It's still mid-tidy and not conducive to work/play.  In desperation I did get a few pages sprayed up in a new journal I picked up in Paperchase!

   

Think I'll add some painted layers next!  I did love playing with stencils and splashing paint around on this page...

AEDM day 6 - an autumnal walk in the countryside

I am very lucky to live really close to the Cheshire countryside so this afternoon saw us taking a walk in Tatton Park.  As it's 'Art Every Day Month' I dutifully took my sketchbook and drew some of the things I saw and liked,  as directed by Carla Sonheim in her book 'Drawing Lab'.

It still needs the colour adding to it, but I'm happy to have done some drawing!

I chickened out of drawing the deer though and just took photographs instead ;)

AEDM day 5 - drawing with my sewing machine

... one of my favourite activites, which Kirstie Allsopp described as "the crack cocaine of the craft industry" on 'Kirstie's Handmade Britain' this week lol; not sure about that one but it is great fun :)

I used the designs I did in my sketchbook yesterday, stitching them onto patches of felt I had lying around near my sewing machine.

I had saved a funky label from a cardigan I'd bought from Fat Face this week and decided to add one of my pieces to this.

I 'drew' onto my fabric, then cut around the body of the flower before adding it to the tag and stitching a stem and adding a leaf.

Tonight we're off to a bonfire party :)  I love it all, the sights, the smells, the treacle toffee and melted marshmallows, but fireworks still frighten me from a safety point of view.  At least the dog is getting deaf as he gets older so the loud bangs don't bother him so much.

I'd just like to say that my heart goes out to those who've lost friends and family in the M5 Somerset crash last night.  Involved in a crash myself this time last year, similarly in the dark and wet, I still cannot begin to imagine how horrific this one was.  Surely they can't now raise the speed limit to 80mph on the motorways!