Pretty little crochet squares

Having completed my pretty rainbow blankets, I have now embarked on making a pretty little cushion to match my blanket (I might make matching ones for the girls' blankets, but not sure yet).

Once again, my inspiration comes from Lucy at Attic24. Her pretty little cushion is so cute and I wanted to use up the partially used balls of wool I have left over from our blankets.

Here is my WIP for you to see.

and here is the graph I made to follow.

Unlike Luce, I do not have the knack for getting random colours to work. I find it much easier to work from a diagram than having to think as I go, sort of like planning ahead. If I do the thinking first, the rest is a no-brainer and I can just hook to my heart's content.

If you want to have a look at Lucy's completed cushion, click HERE and it will take you to the post in her blog where it shows the work in progress and finished block of squares, ready to turn into a cushion cover, which you can see if you click HERE.

Thanks once again for the inspiration Luce :)

Take care and ciao for now,

Cards and blankets. . . .

I have so much I want to share, but today will be a card and my no sew granny blankets, all complete.

First I would like to share the card I taught to my Thursday group yesterday. It is such a cute little card. I got the idea from StampOwl's blog (France Byrne). This is such a great blog, lots of inspiration there and well worth a visit. I am teaching this card to my UIW class on Monday too, just in time for Valentine's Day :)

And without further ado, here is Madeleine's no-sew granny blanket finished!! Yay! I love the colours in this (the camera didn't capture the true to life colours, but you get the idea)

I used Mint Green on this blanket (and Emily's which I will show you in a minute) which was much nicer than the Olive Green I used in mine (wasn't available when I bought all the yarn for my blanket).

And here is a close up of the edging on Maddie's blanket. I love the rainbow colours. The edging on this is quite striking and this is the pattern I intend to use when I make my wavy granny blanket (Chevron style)

Below is a photo of Emily's blanket. You will notice that the border is nowhere as nice as Maddie's and that is because Emily was so impatient to have it, she didn't want to wait for me to finish the edging. The upside is that now I can tell them apart. They are the same size and the colours are on a slightly different orientation, but there is no way I would have been able to tell whose was whose without a lable.

See, only 4 rows of edfing in 2 colours. Emily likes it, so I guess that's all that matters, yes?

And just as a reminder, here is my original no-sew granny. I just adore this blanket, which now lives on my ugly old couch (much prettier that the couch underneath). The original inspiration for thes blanket came from Attic24 blog. Lucy has such a wonderful blog, with so much colour inspiration, I thoroughly recommend a visit, even if you aren't inclined to hook along. Lucy has such a wonderful outlook on life, she is like a breath of fresh air :)

And this is my edging. I love the way the colours all blending and merge together. This edging made the blanket very heavy to complete and made my RSI flare up. However, I love it to pieces and doubt I would've done it differently had I known it was going to cause that.

Oh, and last, but not least, here is Zac holding the blue and white blanket I made for him last year (after mine and before Emily's). I used the same basic design as my own, but added 3 larger squares in there for something a big different. I love how this came out and so does Zac (see that big smile on his face??) I also knitted that beanie he is wearing. I do love to knit too :)

So that's it, my share for today. Stay tuned for more card shares in the coming days.

Take care and ciao for now,

A quick card share . . .

Yes, I know, 2 posts in 2 days hehehe.

Today I thought I would share with you some very cute little cards I made towards the end of last year. I just so love this little "Milton with Card" stamp from Wild Rose Studio (you can get these at Little Scrapbook Shop :) )

TIP: I colour in my stamped images in colours that I like and then choose the cardstock and mix and match patterned papers to go with the colours I have used in my images. It works surprisingly well.

~ Add some interest to your card by rolling the corners instead of sticking them all down

~ tear an edge of one of your papers and add some sparkles

~ punch a border around 2 sides of your patterned paper for a slightly asymetrical look

______________________________

Product information

~ Wild Rose Studio Clear Stamps - Milton & co - Milton with Card + acrylic block
~ Stazon Inkpad - saddle brown
~ Patterned papers from: Echo Park, Prima, Basic Grey , October Afternoon+ scraps in my stash
~ Bazzill cardstock
~ Ribbons
~ FLowers
~ Buttons
~ i-rock tool & clear & coloured gems
~ Cosmo Cricket alphabet stickers
~ Martha Stewart Border edge punch (available by pre-order)
~ Other ~ Watercolour paper, watercolour paint, handmade flowers and a pin from my stash.

All text and images Copyright © Deanne Stewart-Mills and Little Scrapbook Shop 2011

I will have some more for you tomorrow :)

Take care and ciao for now,

4-7-11 ~ 7 Wonders ~ Challenge 1 ~ Pyramid at Giza

Howdy Bloggers!

Well silly me, I keep forgetting to keep my blog up to date. Our first challenge went up atLSBSon Sunday for our 4-7-11 challenges.

I was first up and my challenge is to create a pyramid-shaped mini album/art work. I have a step by step which you can see in the forum by clicking HERE

Here are the photos of the project I created - a Fairy Garden.

Enjoy.

Product used:

~ Bazzill cardstock
~ Ribbons
~ Wild Rose Studio Stamps
~ Stazon Inkpad - Jet Black
~ Flowers (a mix of lots of brands)
~ Kaisercraft round gems
~ Basic Grey Stickers Chipboard Alphas
~ Kindyglitz
~ other - watercolour pencils, circular paper clip

Take care and ciao for now,

4-7-11 ~ 2011 Challenge at Little Scrapbook Shop ~

Hello Little Scrappers and welcome to our 2011 challenge, 4-7-11!

Why 4-7-11? Well, we will be running our challenge program in 4 sessions, there's 7 design team members, and it's 2011!

But as you'd expect, there is a twist... the answer lies within the number 7!

Each session will run for 7 weeks, the first one starting on Sunday the 6th of February.

So, now you know that there are 7 design team members, and each session will run for 7 weeks... but there's one more thing!

Each session has it's own '7' theme...

Session 1: 7 Wonders
Session 2: 7 Deadly Sins
Session 3: 7 Seas
Session 4: 7 Colours of the Rainbow

Are we clever or what?!

We aim to challenge you in new ways... we aim to challenge you to look at things a little bit differently... but more than anything, our aim is to get you scrapping!

To visit the challenge forum at Little Scrapbook Shop, simply click HERE

We hope you will join us in this exciting project for 2011, and good luck with the challenges.

If you want to promote this challenge on your blog, simply right click and save the image to your desktop and upload to your blog or site.

Take care and ciao for now,

Kits from Tattered Inspirations

Hello and welcome to another post in a week!!

Last night I made some cards using a couple of gorgeous kits I bought from Carol over at Tattered Inspirations (see Carol's Etsy shop HERE).
The kits I used were Little Knight and Little Fairy (hope I got the names right Carol!). I have only used a few little bits and added textured cardstock as the bases, some Carolees Alphas, white gel pen and kindyglitz.

I hope you like them as much as I do :)

Take care and ciao for now,

The Shadoogies

Are you a fan of The Shadows?

My husband Michael is in a great covers band called The Shadoogies and they have just recorded an awesome demo CD for their agent. They are a gigging band and looking for work, so if you like the sound and would like to have them play at one of your events, just contact them via their MySpace page.

Click on the link HERE and it will take you to The Shadoogies' on MySpace, where you can listen to their awesome sound.

Photos of the band will be coming very soon (and I will update my blog when they do)

Take care and ciao for now,

Hello Again!!

Hello out there in blog land.

I have networked my blog so that it is now linked to my facebook page. If you are a follower, can you scroll down the page a bit on my blog and click "follow" on the networked blogs link please. I am curious to know if it sends you 2 updates (one from google and one from FB) or if you only receive the one.

I am hoping that 2011 will be a good year for me for blogging. I am hoping to share more creations on here from my classes and also LSBS and keep the mojo moving!!

Happy new year for 2011 and may this be a great year for everyone!!

Take care and ciao for now,

oops, been MIA

Seems I have neglected my blog again. Just too many other things to do!
My No-Sew blanket is finished, and I finished Zac's as well. I have started Emily's and have been busy sewing together squares for blankets to raffle at Dean Park Community Development Project (more on that soon).

So, just a quick Hello to you all and I will attempt to be more blog-wise again :)

Take care and ciao for now,

Quick Update

Just a quick note to say HELLO!!

No-Sew Blanket Update
My wonderful blanket is coming along beeeeutifully! I have finished all the squares and have started the edging. I have a photo of the finished squares plus the first 2 rows of the edging (red). I will take another photo asap showing where I am now up to for you to see. No pics yet, as they are still in my camera.

Charity Blanket Squares
We have lots and lots of squares now for our blanket. It is going to look so terrific. I have an updated photo of all the squares and those in-progress also. Again, the pics are still in my camera, and I will upload them asap!!

Just wanted to let you know I haven't fallen off the world again, just need a breather to stop and upload.

Take care and ciao for now,

No-Sew Granny Progress report

Good morning crafters!!

Just thought I would share with you the progress I am making on my blanket. I am really really enjoying this :)

When I started to make this, I was just picking colours at random, with an eye to keeping colours away from each other and mixed up. Once I got to 20 squares, I realised how darned hard this was going to be as it grew larger, so I decided to graph out the colours. I didn't want to do this originally, but found it was necessary and really quite enjoyable too.

Here is the graph I ended up with. The rainbow around the edge is the edge I am going to do after the 54 squares are all done. It will go all the way around the blanket, but my graph paper wasn't large enough to put it on. At least I have an idea of how its going to look.

Here is the colour planner (I tried hard to get coloured pencils that closely matched my yarn colours)

And this is the photocopy of my graph so I can mark off my progress as I go.

And, last but not least, here is my blanket with 25 squares

I don't mind the randomness of the colours, but I do prefer a more "rainbow" effect. My next blanket (after I have made Zac's, Mad's and Emily's) will be a chevron in rainbow hues. Looking forward to that one very much.

Thanks for stopping by :)

Take care and ciao for now,

Cuttlebug Tutorial #7

 Hi again,

Last night, the 7th tute in my series went live at Little Scrapbook Shop, where I show you how to Make Your Own Embossing Templates.
If you missed the post listing the previous tutorials, here is the list again for you:

Week 1: Printing with Embossing Folders
Week 2: Colour It

Week 3: Tricks with Acetate

Week 4: Cordinations Cardstock
Week 5: Creative Collage

Week 6: Fun with Grungeboard

Week 7: Make Your Own Embossing Templates

Be sure to tune in next week at LSBS when I show you some things to do with Metal Shim and Metal tape. That will the the 8th and final tutorial for the series (I thought I had 10, but there are only 8), but don't despair, as we have something special planned once my Cuttlebug tutorials are finished.

Take care and ciao for now,

Knitted & Crocheted Squares

Hi again,

Remember I said I would show you the squares the ladies have made so far for our charity blanket?

Well, here they are (with the exception of Eleanor's, because she didn't have hers with her). (Click on the photo for a larger view)

With grateful thanks so far for the following people who have made (or are making) squares:

Myself (hehe)

Margo
Karen
Jenni
Rae
Maggie
Eleanor
Michelle & her lovely MIL Carmen (who have taken wool & needles to knit up some squares)

The blanket is going to look really lovely finished - we have people doing crochet, knitting with fluffy yarns and all sorts. I hope I win the blanket {wink}.

So, remember, if you live in the Western Sydney area and would like to knit or crochet a square for our blanket (in pinks or varigated yarns with pink in them), please leave a post on my blog or contact Karen Tyler at the Dean Park Community Development Project by email deanpark@marayonghouse.org.au and you can find patterns to knit the squares at Wrap With Love on THIS page.

Take care and ciao for now,

Charity Knitting

A couple of days ago I said I was going to tell you about the charity squares I am knitting and encouraging others to knit too. Here's what it's all about.

As you may know, I teach Knitting and Crochet at the Dean Park Community Development Project (DPCDP) in Western Sydney, NSW. The Community Development Officer, Karen Tyler, is a wonderful lady, full of energy, enthusiasm and a seemingly endless supply of caring for our community. Karen has organised several different fundraisers at the centre over the last 10 months or so, since she took on the job there. One of those fundraisers last year was for Breast Cancer Research. This year, it is happening again in October, during Breast Cancer Awareness Week.

So, where does the knitting come in? I suggested to Karen that it might be nice for our knitters and crocheters to make a few squares each (or even just one) so that we can put them all together and make a blanket that we can then raffle off to raise money towards the charity. Karen loved the idea and so it has begun.

I have knitted a few squares (4 or 5 now I think), Jenni has made 2, Margo has made 3, Karen was in the middle of one last week, Eleonor has made a few (but I am not sure how many at this stage) and I believe Auntie Rae has begun to crochet a square (she is the Crochet Queen!). My friend Tracy has also volunteered to knit one or 2 squares and Jenni is kindling interest by taking her knitting to school to do while she is waiting to pick up her boys. One of her school mums has already offered to knit a square. How cool is that?

I don't have any photos yet, as I have left the squares in the care of the DPCDP, but when I am there this week, I will be sure to take a photo of the squares for you to see. I am going to handmake a label for the back of the blanket with a list of all the wonderful people who have contributed to the blanket.

Now, if you live in the Western Sydney area (or even anywhere close {wink}) and would like to knit or crochet up some squares, we would love to hear from you. The squares need to measure 10" x 10" (25cm x 25cm) finished. You can find the instructions to knit the squares on the charity website Wrap with Love and you will find the patterns HERE. They have a couple of different designs to choose from, but you don't necessarily need to use those - you are welcome to do whatever knit or crochet design you like (except a whole square of stocking stitch please, as it tends to roll and is a pain to try and sew up) provided it's finished size is the correct dimensions (or close enough to) as specified above.

If you have any questions or queries, you can pop a comment on my blog, or you can email the DPCDP directly at deanpark@marayonghouse.org.au. We would love to hear from anyone interested.

I will be back later this week with progress photo of the squares we already have.

Take care and ciao for now,

Time to getting knitting now. . .

Oh, well, it really isn't that tragic, but I have so been enjoying my hooking.

Turns out the scarf I knitted for Zac last year irritates his skin (hello, why didn't he tell me that a year ago???) and now I need to make him a scarf in yarn that doesn't irritate. Due to his AS, Zac has sensory issues (bit like me actually) and there are some things he just cannot cope with. Skin irritants is one of them. So, I have pulled out some red and black fluffy yarn (a bit like "eyelash" or "feathers yarn") and my 15mm needles to whip him up a scarf today. Should only take a couple of hours on needles this large.

Here's a pic for you. I have cast 15 stitches onto my bamboo needles. This size is rather awkward to knit with and I have to hold them like a knife and fork but at least its quick :).

In the meantime, Zed is wearing one of my older scarves thats was given to me by my friend Tracy (it was a re-gifted gift as she didn't need it). Soft and fluffy for him and it has stopped his whining for now hehehe.

See you all again soon,

Take care and ciao for now,

mmm.....yarn!

So, I am back from shopping. Aah, I do love a good shop! Wanna see what I bought? Makes me very happy in my heart :)

Here is a bundle of 17 colours (yes, I ended up getting the reds and the olive. Sadly, there was no black).

I also got blue and ivory for Zac (as, no black).

I am looking forward to getting started on Zac's cos I don't have to think very hard about the colours :)

Take care and ciao for now,

No-Sew Granny Squares Blanket

This is my new love and joy!!

Thanks to Lucy at Attic24 blog I have renewed my love of the humble granny square. I just love the way you join them as you go- no more having to sew them all together at the end, a very daunting task.

I have also been inspired by the gorgeous colours that Lucy uses (also my favourites - I love brights). I went and bought a little bit a lot of yarn on Thursday and got hooking. I am loving the way my blanky is coming together so fast, and just love love love the colours.

Here it is, what do you think?Yes, they are my toes peeking in at the bottom there, all toasty and warm in my knitted socks.

I am really enjoying this.

I am using a 100% acrylic yarn that feels beautiful and soft. I can't use wool or wool blends, as they irritate my skin. However, this yarn is gorgeous and on sale at the moment for only $2 per ball, so I am going to go crazy and buy heaps, as I know my 2 girls are going to want their own snuggly blankets too. I am also going to buy lots of this yarn in blue and black to make a nice snuggly blanket for Zac in his fave colour (blue) with black. He feels the cold so much (like his mama) and I have only made him a scarf while, for the girls, I have knitted handbags, scarves and cardigans. Its Zac's turn to be on top of the list {wink}.

The only downside of this yarn is its tendency to split (aarrggh!!) but it is so easy to use, I can forgive that small annoyance. It also tends to have a few 'icky' bits here and there, where it hasn't spun properly, but I am forgiving those too, as they just add to the charm of the whole thing and aren't really that noticable.

Here is my bag of yummy coloured goodness. It makes me happy in my heart to look at these colours. I have 12 colours all together (notable missing colours are red, black and olive green, not my faves blech).

So, thats it for today. I will back back soon with some information about the knitted (or crocheted) charity squares.

Take care and ciao for now,