Puppies in Frames

Following on from my last post, I thought that it would be a good chance to show you what I've managed to do with some of my puppy photos.

When each puppy left, I took a photograph of them on the day with the idea that I would have them up in my room. With my newly made-over room, I was determined to see this idea through and achieve one of my goals to actually do something with my photographs. 

Having been browsing on a great crafty site called Pinterest, I came across a way of making cheap frames. All I had to do it said was to cut out a frame from cardboard and then cover it fabric!

Instantly, I was hit with the idea. It was cheap and would be a nice change from wooden frames. So out I popped to the fabric shop where I collected an array of patterned blue fabric.

It took longer than I thought it would to make the frames but after a lot of measuring, cutting and glueing later, I had my pretty little frames...

...and then stuck them to the wall by my bed. Now I can wake up in the morning and see all my puppies!

Well that was the plan. I'm currently having a problem getting them to stay on the wall. I've tried strong adhesive sticky dots and some special velcro tape but still they fall off. It's looking like I'll have to hammer them on the wall instead. Any suggestions?

Still, despite this setback, I love 'em!

A furry visitor

A couple of weeks ago now, we had one of the puppies pop in for a little visit!

Honey (formally known as Nutmeg) and her owners were on their way to have a holiday in Scotland and so arranged to pop in on the way!

I was so excited to see what she would like at 5 months. Being one of the Orange Roans, it would be interesting to see how her coat had developed.

Well, it turns out, that it's extremely fluffy! She arrived in the house like a bundle of fluff. Once she saw Jenna, the two were away and wouldn't stop playing the whole time they were here.

When mother and daughter weren't in a crazy blur of playfulness and actually stopped, I was able to take a few photos.

Honey's fur it turns out has darkened almost exactly to the tone of Ellen's hair!

Waiting for treat time. This shows you as well just how much Honey has grown. Indeed, she's near enough fully grown. 

Certainly a bonny dog if I do say so myself! She's also pretty bonkers too! Don't let it be said that she hasn't got a character. Still, I'm sure that she'll settle down as she gets older.

It was so so lovely seeing one of the puppies again. It's hard to believe though that they were born 5 months ago. Where did that time go?

But that's not all! We're going to be meeting up with another puppy on Sunday which will be fab. The puppy that rather amusingly goes by the new name of Mary Poppins will be reuniting with her Mum for the first time since she left. 

The plan is that we'll all go for a walk at Kendal Castle so fingers crossed that we'll get some half decent weather.

My College Summer Project

Hello!

Been a little while again, sorry! BUT! I thought that I would show you what has been the culprit in taking up a fair chunk of my time. 

Over the summer holidays, I've been given a project to do by my college. Basically the brief was to create 5 pieces using the skill of direct observational (drawing something actually in front of you). I could draw anything I wanted and so this is what I came up with:

Landscape

I drew this scene whilst on holiday in Northumberland. This was a lovely old ruin called Dunstanburgh Castle.

Portrait/Photography

Ok so I cheated a bit by combining the two pieces together but for a good reason. I'm told that this will come in really handy for portrait drawing on my course. This lady was at the Alnwick World Music Festival and was wearing a lovely spanish dress with beautiful, bright colours.

Still Life 

These drawings are of some wild flowers that I collected and placed in these bottles. I've been doing this quite a lot this summer whilst on my dog walks. I quite enjoy the challenge of creating a nice bouquet out of whatever I come across.

Sculpture

Finally I had to make a sculpture. I decided to just have a bit of fun with this piece and as all my pieces were working off a theme of 'My Summer' I thought I couldn't not have something about the Olympics in there. Wire and Mod-Roc figures in the style of an artist called Giacommetti froze Usain Bolt and Mo Farrah in their famous celebration poses! Don't ask me who the bronze guy is meant to be!

So that's basically it. We have to present these on the first day of college onto our brand new college blogs. It's going to be really interesting to see what other people have made of the brief!

I won't have long to find out as I start back at college on Monday! It's been a lovely long summer (I think about 11 weeks off) and though it is a bit nerve racking starting a new course, I am also quite looking forward to it!

I'm afraid though that this blog is going to be running like it's still summer as I've still to post about the crafty happenings that I've been up to. Oh well, at least I can still pretend here that it's still summer!

Changing Rooms...

Finally I can show you what I've really been busy doing in these past few weeks aside from holidaying and chasing around laptop companies!

As part of my birthday presented, I was given money (and permission!) to redecorate my room. Having had my room decorated in a very particular way, I've found that I've got to the stage now where I've grown out of it and need a space where I can express something new. 

I want my room to have a real focus on all of my photos. Over the past couple of years, I've been increasingly taking more photographs and have now collected a great many photos of some good times. The thing that has been frustrating though is that I've had nowhere to really have them out on show. I love having photos out there that you can always look at rather than just collecting them in a book. 

But first, I needed to find a colour. The colour that I really love at the moment is a lovely dark grey/blue. I think for me, it's a colour that is quite bold but is also quite 'grown up' as it were. I put grown up in inverted commas as I actually got the inspiration for this colour from Dr Who!

If you're a fan of Dr Who then you'll know that there are a couple of scenes set in Amy Pond's bedroom where she has this brilliant shade of blue in her room. If you're not a fan then here's a photo of it here:

I love this colour so much! So using this photo, I thought it would be pretty easy to find a match. Famous last words! It was such a hard task as working off a photograph turns out to give a wide variation on the actual colour. 

Back and forth I went to get test pots on the colour that I thought would be a match. It got to a point when I was making so many visits that the staff began to recognise me and then wish me good luck on the new colour. 

Still though, I couldn't find the right colour and it was turning into a bit of an obsession. I was literally one of those people who stood staring at the wall asking, 'Which blue? This one or that one?' 'No they're not the same, look they're completely different!!!'

Oh dear. But wait! I finally found it after accepting that it wasn't going to be utterly identical. Niagara Blues 2 was the colour name, Horray!

With the colour ready to go on the walls, it was time to start making way for the change. This involved me shoving most of my things into a cardboard box and pushing my furniture into the middle of the room. 

So lets take a look at the before and after shots shall we? Hey, I'll even do the corny voiceover for the transformation!

Bekah's room was childlike with an unappetising shade of yellow...

Now, a mature tone of colour and the rearranging of furniture gives her the space to express her new ideas...

The whole makeover took longer than a day to do. In fact, it took 4 days from the first bit of painting going the wall to it looking like this. What the tv makeover shows always conveniently miss out is how long it takes to de-clutter and sort things out!

The other thing that took so long was having to paint over the camouflage wall a few times. Oh and remember the robot mural? Well that's gone now too. All change. Oh tip for future guys, painting over acrylic, bit of a nightmare so it's much easier if you just sand it off.

I can't get over how much bigger my room is now just by moving some things about. I put the bed at this angle as this now means that I can watch films on my projector in a much better way as it acts as a bit of a sofa. 

The room is literally like a bare canvas so keep your eyes peeled in the future for what I do with all the free space. Should be exciting as I've already started to add some things up there...

More paper cutting

A few months ago, I posted up an image of my first paper cutting. Do you remember? To tell the truth, I wasn't even sure if I had posted it or not and even had to glance back at my history to see if it was there. But it is and you can read all about it here or just admire the pretty picture of it below!

Well since then, I've now created another paper cut that I made specifically for my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. After racking my brains for something special to make them, I decided on the idea of a paper cut as I just love the simple but intricate work you can put into it creating something hopefully quite special.

After drawing out the design and tracing aspects into it here and there, I was ready to start cutting. I really must make more of these cuttings. I'd forgotten even in just a few months how much I enjoyed doing them.

But enough rambling, let me show you some photos. Cue the jingling art gallery music. (I should find away of inserting that into a blog! On second thoughts, maybe not. That jingle can get quite annoying after a while. Never mind, just hum it in your head if you want.)

Obviously all cut out of the same paper, the word 'golden' was a bit hard to see once it was all finished due to a lot of it being on top of the 50. The decision to outline the word in black was a bit of a scary one because if it didn't look right, I would have ruined the whole of the paper cut! Thankfully though, I took the gamble as I knew otherwise the word would be unreadable and it paid off.

For the frame, I went rummaging in a big charity shop that resembles more of a warehouse and found this brightly coloured piece. I thought that the contrast of red with the golden paper would look quite nice and classy. Not only that but it would coincide with my sister's present to them too. She's creating a lovely quilted bed runner in these colours with a twist in that a lot of the patches have writing on them   from the guests at the party. 

Here you can see them receiving the present. They'd better like it I thought, as there was a whole room of people watching this! 

Thankfully though I think they were over the moon with what I had created for them. I love making special presents for people who have no clue of what it might be. The excitement at seeing their reaction was definitely worth the blister that had begun to form on my thumb from holding the craft knife by a long way! 

50 Years! Wowee! Congratulations Nana and Grandad. 

Back on track now

Ok here I am, back from my holiday and finally with a laptop that actually works! To cut a long story short on the laptop front, the problem that I had with it still wasn't fixed and after much haggling, I finally have been allowed to take a replacement model which at first didn't work either but now has been sorted! Technology really is a blooming pain sometimes.

So with my laptop fixed, of course the next thing to break straight after that was my camera!! So currently, I'm without my nice SLR camera as the lens is away for repair. Hey ho!

I'm so so behind with what I want to show you. You won't believe how much I've got to show you. I've got no less than FIVE crafty reveals as well as showing you some of the highlight photos from my holiday in the very pretty Northumberland.

So I'll start at the very beginning as Julie Andrews deems this as a good place to start. Way back last month, I made a little present for my friend as a little birthday addition to her main present. I'm a little obsessed with Granny Squares at the moment as you know so I made her this mug warmer.

Now I'm pretty proud of this creation as this is all my own design. Ok so it isn't really that technical but there's nothing more satisfying than creating something that is in your head and making it a reality. At least, that's how I feel! The challenge is achieving your vision. It's not always possible sometimes but in this case, this was exactly what I had in mind! I love it when that happens!!

It was pretty quick to make actually. The problem I had was figuring out how to fasten it but this piece of ribbon that I had lying around has solved that problem perfectly.

It seems so long ago now that I made this and I'm sorry that it's taken a while to show you. Still, I hope this inspires you to get your granny square on and to look forward to seeing some more in the very near future...

Best laid plans

Well, as I wrote in my other post, I was going inundate this blog with numerous posts on what I've been up to lately. But unfortunately, my computer (which went off to be fixed) has turned out not to be successfully repaired and so I've had to send it off again. All the photos that I was going to upload onto here are now safely tucked away on an external hard drive which means that I'll be able to access them when I have my laptop granted safe for using again.

Technology really is great when it works but when it doesn't, it's pretty rubbish isn't it! Indeed, it often sends people such as myself to revert back to the tendencies of a neanderthal screaming and bashing at an inanimate object in the vain hope that it will suddenly work again!

Anyway, hopefully I'll get everything that I want posted on here soon enough. In the meantime though, I'm off for a week with my family and the dogs to Norththumberland so that should be good.

Oh, and before I go, I'll leave you with this link to my new college blog:

http://summerproject12.tumblr.com/

As you can tell by the title, I've been assigned a summer project by my college in which I have to create  several artworks. If you follow that then you should be able to see everything that I get up to in that project in this next month.

See you after my little holidays!