The Friday Tutorial

An Easter flower arrangement

Are you having dinner guests at Easter? Why not impress them with a flower arrangement on the dinner table. It’s dead easy really ! I made two…but I will show you the other one next Friday.

You need:

Twigs, tulips – I used birch, apple tree and parrot tulips (my favourite). You also need oasis and something to build your arrangement in. I used an old tin bowl, a jumble sale find.

First soak the oasis in water and then place it in the bowl.

Add twigs around the rim of the bowl.

Then add tulips in-between the twigs.

I always use an uneven number; I think it looks better that way.

Finish the arrangement by placing one tulip in the middle of the bowl and four tulips around it. Keep the first one a bit taller than the other four to get a variation in height. Finally add a few more twigs but this time in a more upright position.

Done! I think it will look stunning once the tulips are in full bloom and the twigs has got tiny little leaves.

Now I leave you for the weekend. Hope you have a creative one!

Jeanette

PS If you look closely at the last photo you can see the pillow cover I made using celery. The turorial from two Fridays back.

Chasing the blues away

Sometimes the best way to chase the” so much to do, so little time” frustration away is to just go ahead and create something. To play around with the material without a plan or a goal and almost without thinking. I ended up making a crown from wool, scraps of metal and some buttons. The crown just “happened”.

I decided that the crown will be a gift for someone I admire but haven’t met. It’s for a female journalist in my local newspaper whose pieces about art & craft and design always are a joy to read. I admire the fact that she covers craft and craftsmanship in a daily paper and always in a way so that you understand that she actually made a thorough background search.   

I figured that a newspaper office might need a little embellishment so today I put the crown in a big box with the journalists name on it and handed it in at the reception in the newspaper building. Hopefully they won’t panic, think it’s a bomb, call the bomb squad and have it blown up!

Take care

Jeanette

Time

Oh the frustration of time or to be more correct, the frustration of not having enough of it. There are so many things I want to do creativity wise but I never seem to have enough time to do it. Today I just sat there at my worktable unable to start with any of my ongoing projects, my heart beating and a huge despare, panic even building up inside. I felt that time was running out. I felt it so strongly that it was paralyzing. I wish I could take a year off….to be able to devote my time to create, try out new materials and feel the satisfaction of actually having time to pursue my ideas.

Ideas that now feels sadly out of reach….

Jeanette

Tag Tuesday

The theme for this weeks Tag Tuesday was EASTER EGGS. I love bunnies ( as you may know by now...) and when I found these little lovebirds sorry I mean "love rabbits" at clipartandcrafts.com I thought they fitted the theme perfectly. I used some feathers from my collection too. The tip of the feathers has the same blue color as the background but you can`t really see it very well on the photo.

Jeanette 

Spring is here

the red onions has moved out in the green house

This weekend was devoted to gardening. Saturday was spent at the country house where I raked my flower beds and borders giving little squeaks of joy every time I found a bulb or little plant that had survived the winter. I also made plans for my vegetable garden. This year I will grow three different salads, potatoes, onions, squash, beetroot and sugar snaps. Hopefully I will get some rhubarb, red currant and raspberries too.

I spent Sunday in the greenhouse replanting the sugar snaps and planting seeds for dahlias, beetroot and white Echinea. The sun was shining, the birds singing and the cats were hunting the first mosquitos.



...got it!!!!



I drank my afternoon tea in the green house enjoying the fact that now spring has really come to stay.   

Jeanette

The Friday Tutorial

Sock Bunny

My family suffers from the SdSE-syndrome. That’s the Spin-dryer Sock Eating syndrome for you who didn’t know. We are quite convinced that the fluff you find when you clean the spin-dryer in fact are not fluff but leftovers from the tiny munching little aliens that hides in your spin-dryer and lives of eating socks. They are picky little buggers though and never eats two of the same kind leaving you with lots of ill matched socks. This is when your glass is either half full or half empty. Since mine is usually half full I enjoy the fact that this opens up lot of opportunities for making sock bunnies.

I think there are just as many ways of making sock bunnies as there are socks but this is how I do it:

You need two socks, a scissor, needle and tread and some stuffing. I use wool but you can use pretty much anything you like.

Cut the foot of one of the socks right down the middle, but don’t cut all the way to the heel. This will make the ears.

Cut the other side of the sock down the middle. This will become the legs.

Cut the foot off the second sock and divide it in two by cutting it right down the middle. This will become the arms.

Turn the bunny body inside out and sew the ears and legs together. Leave a hole in the crotch for turning it right side out again and for stuffing.

Stuff the bunny’s body and legs. I usually don’t stuff the ears because I like them floppy. Many people use the “heel-side” of the sock for the face but I like to use the heel for making a bunny bottom instead. That way it sits much steadier. Fill the arms with stuffing too, not to tight. 

Use a tiny ball of stuffing and to shape the nose.

Sew the hole together.

Shape the neck and head by tying a ribbon around the neck. The sew the arms to the body just below the ribbon.

Then make the face. I used fabric markers but you can do some embroidery or have buttons for eyes if you like.

Tadah – done! Meet Sally the sock bunny !

Now I leave you for the weekend. Hope you have a creative one!

 Jeanette

Joy

Oh the joy of growing plants from seeds! The miracle of it all amazes me every year. How you put this tiny, tiny little seed in a pot and after just a few days a plant appear. There is something so very vulnerable about these tiny little plants, they make my mother instincts appear. I speak gently to them and guard them like a hawk against my two very nosey cats.

This is the Isop and the sugar snaps I planted last Sunday.



Isop



Sugar snap



No sign of the onions yet though. I think I will go and talk to them...

Jeanette