WOYWW 708 – the last one of the year…

Happy last WOYWW of 2022! Blimey. Roll on 2023…

I wish I could say I was starting the year with a tidy space. Well, maybe by the 1st it will be but it very much is NOT at the moment. Providing for the family without the help of my Covid-infected Hubster is a challenge. He has been a stellar patient, but now getting bored and hoping for a negative test very soon. Edited to add: Yeah. Nah. Positive for Covid. Bah! Because of my condition and meds I am eligible for the anti-virals, so just waiting on the NHS to contact me….

Oh yeah, the desk. I can’t even begin to explain the half-finished or completed projects on show here.

With Dear Son having taken over my sewing room, the ironing board and my sewing machine have relocated to my craft room. It is very crowded in here.

The sewing machine is on top of my largest self-healing mat because DS took it off the table he is using for his monitors and put it upright at an angle with a corner curled over. It’s take a couple of weeks with the machine on it to get to back to flat (sigh)

The other areas of the room are as bad. My pile of stuff to the side of my desk (mostly gel print-related) with my bookbinding cradle is totally obscured. You can see my traveller’s notebook cover for 2023 journaling. there at the top. I have two monthly inserts completed and will do a couple more if I ever get time at my desk this week.

and all the random things shoved into my spray-box on the other side … all chaos. Pillow is meant for the cat, but she is still not willing to risk coming into my office very often. Probably a good thing, actually.

Really I need a few hours of clear time to make some headway and get back to a stable state!

I will share another cat photo. The Hubster caught this shot on his way to dinner the other night – she still loves that perch at the top of the stairs but at night, the motion sensitive lights are a fab toy for her.

What a goofball! She’s got that 1000-yard stare down pat…

So I wish my desk was inspiring for the last one of the year but honestly that’s just how it goes. No point in promising to “do better in 2023” cause in all the WOYWWs I have done since… 2009? the % that have been tidy is well and truly overwhelmed by the messy ones. And my room is never the beautiful mess that makes you go YUM, it is always the vaguely chaotic mess of a whirling dervish-like mind. And it is always going to be that way.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride, cause I’m afraid it is more of the same in 2023!!

Happy post-Christmas, pre-New Year WOYWW!!

Waiting for a test….

Well. The Hubster tested positive for Covid and we have been keeping him isolated since then. Hoping that he might have his first negative test soon and then a second, so we can relax a bit. Typically, we spent the entire day before he started with any symptoms in close quarters in the bathroom, re-caulking the shower. Thus far, I have managed to avoid getting ill and hoping to keep it that way. We shared the meal by having him in a Zoom meeting on the iPad, propped up on the table while he ate in isolation and the rest of us ate together. Weird, not what we planned, but effective enough to make it feel like we were all “together” to celebrate.

The problem is that usually we make a pretty effective team for things like big celebratory meals and he was not available to help out for either the Christmas Eve or Christmas Day meals. The kitchen looked like a bomb site by the end of the cooking and serving!! Luckily I had a new clean-up minion in the form of Dear Son. And I didn’t even need to threaten him…

It has also meant that I am not getting any arty stuff done at all. Which is annoying. I do have the final iteration of my fabric and momigami bowl to share – I managed to add additional layers of fabric to the inside – first plain fabric just for strength.

I hadn’t unwrapped the bowl I used as a mold so it was easy enough to just plunk that down into my bowl to make sure it kept the shape. Once THAT dried I added another layer of decorative fabric so it looked good inside too:

I then slipped the cling-film wrapped bowl BACK into it to keep the shape solid. With each layer on all the PVA the sides get more soft and floppy, so putting the rigid bowl inside maintains the structural integrity of the fabric bowl.

I coated the outside with an additional layer of PVA and it is now pretty strong and has enough layers that I am happy to call it finished.

I really enjoyed making this. I think I would make more, so long as I had a use for them. I do think the prosess could easily be used to cover something rather than create a free-standing item like a bowl. It might be un to cover some waste cardboard box to storage, or organization. Lord knows we have lots of them after the holiday shopping, shipping and unwrapping, right? I might have to give it a go!

You may or may not see me in the next couple of days. It very much depends on the course of The Hubster’s recovery. Really want Darling Daughter to feel like this is still a fun Christmas, so she will lead the days. We’ve seen a few Holiday movies, of the Mom+DD variety (she likes holiday rom coms, with a touch of romance, in the Hallmark vein – me? not so much, but I indulge her) but she has quite a long list.

{sigh}

It dried! Fabric and paper bowl

Well I love it, it’s so very pretty, but as I feared the walls are a bit on the thin side. It’ll be great to replace the broken bowl it was built around, to hold little stray knitting bits near me on the sofa sidetable, but it isn’t super strong.

I am toying with the idea of adding some more layers to the INSIDE, but darn it it is so very pretty, I really hate to do that

The outside looks great too and I have no more of those specific momigami papers and do not want to cover it up. I’ll dither on – now entering full Christmas mode and far too busy with the family for crafting. See you on the other side!

Fabric and momigami paper bowls

So, one of the mods of a mixed media group I am part of shared a video for these lovely fabric bowls. as soon as I saw them I knew I had to give it a go. I had a bowl that got knocked off a table and cracked, held together with washi tape. I covered that with cling film … but was a little worried about that dip in the bottom. My solution was to cut a couple of cardboard circles to fill in and wrap that again with cling film.

From there is was adding layers of fabric. The video shows adding what you want to be seen inside the bowl as the bottom layer

then adding more layers to give it thickness in plain boring fabric. I did that but not enough. I also added the net layer more up and down instead of around. You can see some of the boring brown material under the momigami papers in the next step, but I feel like I rushed to that layer and more fabric layers would have made it more sturdy. My final touch was some printed fabric with stark black text.

Then it is a waiting game! PVA does dry pretty fast but not fast enough for someone as impatient as ME! But honestly, it does mean I can get on with all the pre-xmas cooking and wrapping and the like, while it dries int he background. I cannot believe Christmas is here in just a few days, and we will celebrate as a family all in one place for the first time in forever.

If it dries, I’ll see you tomorrow for the “big reveal” then going silent for a few days.

WOYWW 707 – Pre-Christmas chaos…

…but you won’t know it from here! Just a few festive photos, and a lovely shot of my oh so tidy desk. The lights outside are a job for The Hubster and Darling Daughter. They revel in it each year.

I am usually the one who sets up the tree, with DD and Dear Son adding the special ornaments that are their ones. It is a struggle to get them to help with the breaking up Christmas part before 12th night. Sharing the overall shot again…

and a few favourite ornaments, some new, some all time faves:

Christmas Pickle!

Knitted star

sweet bunny

Colin the Catterpillar

this year’s heart

And of course there has to be a shot of Cat. She has been remarkable well behaved around the tree, but then we don’t let her in that room alone LOL!

In addition to her skating show, DD is helping out with the production by Angel Exit Theatre at Throngrove. Looks like a lot of fun, if you are in Dorset tomorrow….

What is perhaps less fun is my desk, which is not seeing any action this week, I’m afraid. Pretty static from last week. There might be a bit of something tomorrow and/or Friday, but no promises!

To all my WOYWW mates, wishing you the very happiest of Christmases, with friends and family all around (or via Zoom) with good food, warm houses and lots and lots of holiday songs, festive films, and a few mince pies around a roaring fire.

Just a few more tags – Caroling Cats and a set for non-cat lovers!

I always have a few versions of things I am plying with and I don’t always add them all. I figured this week is super busy so I might as well fill a day with something useful.

Two kinds, As I said in the title, another cat-oriented set:

and a more generic, holiday set for non-cat fanatics.

These were so simple to make, all of them basic shapes, no complicated drawing required. I also like how they are right-angle cuts. While I do like the tag-top shape of the cat ones, sometimes I jut want to guillotine them apart in a flash. Lazy, me… especially when time is tight. Last WOYWW before Christmas tomorrow so time to take some festive photos….

Hate sprouts? Love sprouts? The orb for you…

Just a bit of fun for the holidays!

Remember this little crocheted sprout?

This one had a mistake in the text, so I kept it (and corrected it for future prints! Thanks Sis) and decided that I would find a way for anyone to make similar to add to their own tree, far easier than the fiddly crochet is. It’s as simple as download, print, cut, score, pinch…

The PDF has all the elements you need, as well as step-by-steps and a clickable link to a helpful video (not mine) in case you need that. In case you wondered about the text – and that is my original idea:

The love ’em/hate ’em battle will be played out all across the UK – I can’t say I ever ate sprouts growing up in the USA but maybe you did! In any case, this makes a cute little ornament and a bit of fun for he tree. Hope you make one and if you do, share a photo. Here’s mine, ready to hang:

Christmas tags to print and use – Am I a crazy cat lady now?

Perhaps. I seem to have embraced our wee feline grandchild fully, as has Darling Daughter. The Hubster is, maybe, still on the fence, but he is trying. Anyway, for me, feeding her seems to be the key. What a surprise! She did willingly jump up onto my lap the other day, so progress is being made. Hence the subject of this year’s Christmas tags are, unsurprisingly, cats!

I generally create these sorts of things from a resource that comes with a subscription I pay for. I am able to edit the basic designs to suit my purposes. As long as they are not for print-on-demand (like tee shirts or mugs, etc) I could even sell them. But here they are for you, for free, as usual. They make me smile, especially the slightly side-eye cats.

I have another set that I might also add, a bit more cheerful, but for now, these will get me thru the weekend wrapping! Hope you enjoy them. and you can download them here!

Sticking tricky sentiments and weird Scan & Cut issue?

I created the Merry Christmas sentiment and when I tried to send it to my Scan&Cut, it refused to recognize the fonts! It was very strange. All the other elements seemed to be fine but not fonts used and saved as an SVG in my program. Now, I do need to try a different program to see if it is the program that is the issue or if it is the fonts but it was a bit annoying.

The workaround for me is to use the online SVG converter found here. I’ve mentioned it before. I waved the image as a .jpg then converted it to an SVG using the online tool, and that transferred

and cut just fine, even the fairly thin font at 5 1/2 inches

More experimentation is needed.

I just thought I would mention how I like to stick tricky, thin sentiments like this. I used to dot glue or matte medium on the back from a bottle, but it’s time-consuming and annoying to do. Instead I like to use my gel plate – I roll out a thin coat of the matte medium, lay on the sentiments. then pluck them off and stick them to the card front. Adding a weight over them will usually ensure a good stick.

You can do what you see here and take up the extra matte medium with deli paper but usually I cover the plate with sentiments and pluck them off one at a time. If the cards are all ready to go, I can usually get them on quick enough for it not to dry on me, even this sort of fiddly one.

The matte medium works great as a glue so they are well and truly stuck when they dry.

I realize I have not added any tags! Only because this weekend I know I will be wrapping a LOT of gifts so will need some new ones myself, I need to do some for me. And when I do, I always share. So look for them tomorrow, all being well. I have a few ideas for a design, but we’ll see if I can find the resources to make that vision real.

Watch this space!