comics

This is a comic strip I did for an invitation to my brother's birthday party. We had lamb on the barbeque. I have a small collection of FarmDaze™ that I've sketched just for fun. Soon after the one above I discovered sketching with a flat tip pen which is way more fun.
And here is the second strip of FarmDaze­™ that I sketched back in 2001.

Arm Warmers

I stayed out at my sister's for a few days late last year. She does a lot of knitting and got me feeling all creative. So while we watched the X-men Trilogy I got knitting too. I haven't done a lot before so I'm not the best at it. This is a left over wool mix from the pinwheel jumper Tammy knitted and I just love the colours. And I liked the look of moss stitch and so I got knitting.
I decided after a while of simply knitting to make long fingerless gloves. Easy. Just a rectangle where you sew the seams together with a hole left for the thumb. I misinterpreted Tammy's explaination of Irish Moss Stitch and did some checkers around the wrist area finishing each end with some ribbing.

The second glove was hard to match. It was too difficult to count rows so I just guessed the length but I think I made the left one a bit short and they are both a little wide and so a bit loose which means they don't stay at my elbows so well. And of course there's a few characteristic holes where I've accidently dropped stitches. He he. I still like them though. Might just have to adjust them a little some day.

photo displays

About 2.5 years ago we went to a birthday which was out in a paddock on a farm. This paddock had the funkiest tree I've ever seen. It was a huge gum tree but instead of growing straight up it sort of went up and then branched out across the ground in all directions and then turned skyward. I snapped some photos of my big brother and his family and they turned out really well. So for the following Christmas I put them together on a board for a family portrait.
I used photoboard and paper for the background and then decorated it with real gum leaves and gumnuts and bark. I spraypainted the leaves green so they would stay green and also ended up painting their edges with gold paint. It's all just glued together.

I put this one together as a "Thanks for having me here" present for my host family last year. For Mar 07-Mar 08 I lived in California, USA and helped take care of these three energetic, crazy boys. A friend took the photos for me. I put them together on a placemat, glueing the paper and photos in place. It also turned out really well.

I like this style of photo display because it's much more artistic and interesting than simply photos in a frame.

first christmas tradition

I've made it my tradition that each neice and nephew that expands my family receives a home made quilt for their first Christmas. So this is my latest one; given yesterday--Jasmine's first Christmas.

Knowing that she was a girl meant I could make it more girly this time. But I'm not a huge fan of really typically girly things so I decided on a girly insect theme. I designed the picture on the front and proceeded to get material to fit my theme. I choose yellow as my main colour, hence the yellow border and large yellow flower. (It's actually yellow check.) Once the background was all worked out I more specifically designed the insects and found scrap material to form them.

I drew them first on baking paper so I could get an appropriate size and see how they'd work before transfering them to material. Then I cut their parts and stuck them on with "heat and bond" gluey paper stuff. Then, time-consumingly, sewed around them to give them nice, neat, secure edges. Attatching the front with the border to the back was difficult as I'd done my maths wrong (surprise, surprise) and they ended up being different sizes. It was quite fiddly to get it to work and a few of the corners got unpicked and resewn. Yet I finally succeeded and secured the two material layers and the wadding layer with a simple straight stitch that follows the border. I am quite happy with it. I think it turned out quite well and I really like the comic-like caterpillar, ladybug and dragonfly. I think their rather cute. And Jasmine "opened" her present dressed in her appropriate new yellow ladybug outfit.

The quilt showing it's back panel and my most useful sewing machine.

Christmas in the making

A couple of years ago I decided to make all my presents for Christmas instead of buying things. These are two that I made. For my neice I made her a fancy princess bed canopy. I built a stand that has a folding joint in the middle so it can be packed away and moved around more easily. That also meant they could use it in rentals coz they didn't have to attach it to the ceiling. I used pink, purple and pale pink satin to make a circus tent top and sewed on plastic crystal stars. I painted a fancy wooden knob I bought from a hardware store for the very top. I bought some bamboo stakes that I heated, bent and tied to make a semicircle for a nice rounded front.

I think the main hanging part was made from an old curtain I bought at an opshop and I decorated it with pink flower sequins. And the background, which covers the stand, is a cotton princess print material I used as my theme.
For my nephew I wrote a story called "CLUNK: Fixer of Broken Things" about a robot who thought he wasn't good at anything. Of course, through the book he discovers that he's good at fixing broken things. The pictures are pretty roughly illustrated as I was running out of time before Christmas. I've come to learn that most projects I undertake take longer than expected.
I then made him a costume to wear so he could dress up as Clunk, the main character. He was a little bit hesitant to put it on at first. In fact, his younger brother had to try it on before he got enough courage together to put the box over his head. But once he did that he really liked it. I'm making some presents this year too. Well, actually one is a birthday present but I won't post them until they've been given.

water for the capsicum

When I was in the USA last year, I took a class in watercolour painting just for fun. This was a project I did from a live capsicum (or bell peppers as they are called over there). Watercolour is tricky to use. It has a little more wildness than acrylic paint--not so easy to control. There's definitely technique to it. My attempt isn't too bad. It's fun to try something different. This class was my first experience with real watercolour painting. That is, other than the cheap tray of hard circles of watercolour paint I played around with when I was a kid. Have to try it again some day.

SuhRa's scarf

I also like to crochet. I crocheted this from the wool I had for my friend, SuhRa, last year. It's just basic triple stitch. I made it short with a hole toward one end so you poke the opposite end through it to "tie" it around your neck. I also crocheted a couple of flowers, as you can see, to decorate it.