Year end crafts and Bye bye 2015

This will be the final post for 2015 before the ships blare their horns to usher in 2016. As the year draws to an end, I think I will put up all the pictures of the crafts that I've done for November and December. My favourites are mosaic-art and willowcraft and of course Christmassy stuff.

A. Mosaic and collage

1. Collage on Slate: mixed media - bits and bobs of old jewellery and paper napkins

2. Glass and tile on wood

3. Mandala Art: Tile, sculpture paste and paper napkin on MDF.

B. Willowcraft

Shopping basket:  Following instructions from a very good book .........

I completed this shopping basket on my own...........

C. Christmassy stuff

1. Fish bowl with candle : Sculpture paste for frost

 

2. Candle with trimmings

3. Hand painted snow men on wood and bottles

4. Table centrepiece

5. Cards

3D cards - the robin card won 3rd prize at the ICA Limerick federation meeting 

12 days of Christmas Cards

and a whole host of other cards....

So, I've come to the end of my last post for 2015. I already have lots of crafts planned out for next year which begins tomorrow. 

2016 HERE I COME!!

CHRISTMASSY STUFF

With Christmas slightly more than a month to go, I had a group of friends over and taught them how to make fabric heart wreaths.

We had a lovely time and everyone proved to be very good with her hands.

And of course we had chocolate cake!

And each lady carried a wreath home

Sometime earlier I had also made a willow wreath and a christmas tree as well.

I've to start making the Christmas cards soon!

QUILTS OF LOVE

Hand quilting is such a labour of love. This is my second piece for charity, the first was given to a child in foster care sometime ago.

This time round it is an incubator cover for a premie yet to be born.

Preterm infants are born "too soon" and so their neurological systems are very immature. As a result, they can become overstimulated by external stimuli such as light and noise. Such over stimulation can lead to developmental and sensory issues in these children. These issues require occupational therapy to resolve. In an attempt to reduce stimuli some hospitals cover the incubators with covers to exclude noise and light. The blankets could be given to the families when they leave the unit as they cannot be "washed" and "sterilised" in the unit.

The "official" hospital incubator covers cost 200euro + vat each and as you can imagine very few of the hospitals have the budget for these resulting in the majority of incubators not being covered.

There are 19 hospitals in total in Ireland and 4500 preterm Babies are born each year in Ireland

I don't know who will inherit this incubator cover, but I'm sending it with my love. This quilt is special because the materials used are from all over the world. The Winnie the Pooh fabric is from Australia, the sashing and binding fabric is from Malaysia, the wadding is from Ireland and the backing fabric is Martha Stewart's. (U.S.). But I guess the baby will never know

Sometime earlier this month, I completed another quilt with appliques of Sue and Sam Bonnet.

This quilt is now hanging over a press door and cuts out the draft.

Another willow to my bow

Since I can't get enough of willow craft, I decided to sign up for yet another class in Killoscully. The class started at 10am and ended around 6pm. I managed to make a log basket during that duration.

Now more confident, I decided to purchase some willow. The willow needed to be soaked (to make it pliable ) so I used the bath tub as it was long enough to house the sticks. (a day of soaking for every foot of willow)

I wanted to make a bird feeder and I was very grateful to my cousin Paul for giving  me a few slabs of wood for the base. 

This is the first piece of willow craft that I made unsupervised.

I also made a fish platter which is perfect for sushi and deep fried calamari.

I found another interesting but more complicated bird feeder and this time round, I signed up for yet another workshop.

The Beauty of Stained Glass

I always feel that the ultimate challenge to crafting is handling glass. Somehow the idea of scoring glass isn't exactly something pleasurable. Breaking the glass with bare hands or cutters is scary. And what about soldering copper strips? I won't even go there.

But I've always admired stained glass panels in churches so suppressing my phobias, I signed up for a workshop in Ennis. (I heard on radio today that we should try - at least once a week- to do something that we are afraid of.) Yes, that's good therapy.

Claire Carroll the expert guided me through the process of planning the design and then cutting the glass to match the design, just like pieceing a jigsaw together.

Pieces of glass cut according to the design

I also learnt a glossary of stained glass terms: shards, sharpie pen, pistol grip and pencil grip cutters, running arrow and grozing pliers and how to tack the flux.

Pistol grip cutter

Pencil grip cutter

Grozing pliers

Running Arrow pliers

Tacking the flux

Then I had to grind the rough edges. This is the part where I had to wear googles and look like the expert.

And we were given a good lunch as well.

It took me 3 cups of coffee, one scone, one plate of pasta, 21/2 hours of driving and 5 hours of glass cutting and soldering to make this wee fishy.

Junior Chairs and Senior Spectacle Cases

With the Irish summer getting colder and wetter by the day, I find myself spending more time indoors and therefore I have loads of hours and minutes to indulge in crafting. I embrace both the rain and the sun. I know my vegetables are happy with the rain. When the sun is out, we are normally on the road.

So, on one rare sunny day I acquired a Sugan chair.

The Sugan chair is a masterpiece in itself. The term Sugan is the Gaelic word for straw/straw rope used for chair seating. The sugan chair used to be a popular kitchen chair in county districts, particularly in the west and southwest of Ireland and they come in bespoke sizes. So, I  decided to give it a makeover.

The original Sugan chair before the makeover

When my young visitors came over for tea and cake, I brought out the sugan chair, the butler's table and the other stools that I had transformed earlier. There were smiles all round.

I then moved on to transform spectacle cases for senior eyes. We have purchased quite a number of reading glasses and left them in strategic places so we did not need to go searching for them whenever we wanted to read.

The original spectacle cases

Now that I've finished these projects, I'm looking forward to doing some other exciting stuff.