On Safari......

Occasionally two of my grandchildren have a 'sleep over' at my house and they sleep in the spare room in a double bed, which they love, but it is not always conducive to a good night's sleep for them or us! So I decided to redecorate a bedroom especially for them.

I had several tins of leftover paint from a previous decorating project and the colour reminded me of a sandy,tropical sunset and this is really what inspired me to do a 'Safari' room.

I am incapable of drawing anything but I'm quite good at copying so I trawled the internet to find some simple black and white images of safari animals that I could adapt to fit on the walls between the ceiling and the picture rail. I found several suitable ones and decided on a zebra, a rhino and a lion.

I measured the space where I wanted to paint these animals and taped several pieces of paper together to get exactly the correct size. It took me several days to copy the images from my laptop onto the much larger pieces of paper and when I was finally satisfied with the results I cut them out to make stencils that I could draw around on the wall.

I used a combination of black acrylic paint and black felt tip pens to draw and paint the animal pictures, with extra gold felt tip on the lion and I think they look brilliant.

I then decided that one wall was going to be a real focal point and whilst trawling the net in search of safari animals I had seen lots of elephant silhouettes, which inspired me to have three elephants (one for each grandchild) walking across the wall.

Everyone needs an elephant in their room!

Three walls were already painted in the safari/sandy/sunset colour and I decided that the fourth wall would be a bluey colour with the elephants painted in black. I was going to paint a tree on this wall in the corner but by the time the elephants were done they were so big there was no room for the tree!

I already had the tall set of drawers and they were just perfect for a giraffe. Again I had to copy and adapt several pictures before I came up with the final design, which I cut up so there was a section on each drawer. I engraved the design with my dremel taking great care not to cut too deeply as the drawers are made from laminate not real wood. I was very happy with the engraving but felt that it wasn't easily noticeable so I used a felt tip pen to colour in the engraving. I am now happy with the finished result but feel that I could have achieved the same effect by just drawing the giraffe with a permanent marker, which probably would have been a lot easier!

I finished it all off with some safari themed bedding and a hippo's head just the right size for the window sill.

I am thrilled to report the grandchildren loved it - so it was worth all the hard work!

HAPPY 2019

On January 1st I spotted this post on a Facebook page that I follow

“Show us your best makes of 2018”

It was followed by lots of posts of some truly beautiful makes.

It dawned on me that although I had made many things and finished many more DIY projects, plus had several total disasters, I hadn’t actually recorded a single one and I hadn't taken any photographs.

This year I am going to attempt to take some photographs and record my achievements and disasters just so that at the end of 2019 I can look back and say 

"Here is one I made earlier!"

My first attempts at (Shrink) Felting.

Probably not really my first attempt because I used to shrink my son’s designer jumpers regularly!

Some time ago I purchased several balls of 100% wool to knit and then felt.

I had no idea what I was going to do with them but they were on ‘Sale’ and such a bargain that I couldn’t resist them.

Fast forward many months and I spotted some felted slippers on Pinterest. Good idea, I thought, my feet are always so cold when I sit down in the evenings, and felted slippers would be perfect. 

After a long search I managed to find the original posting of the felted slippers and the knitting pattern that accompanied it.

I purchased the pattern from Ravelry   https://www.ravelry.com/

and here is the link to the pattern for the slippers (which are called Duffers) if you too would like to make a pair https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/duffers---revisied

This is the wool that I used

I followed the pattern exactly, which is actually quite unusual for me.  

I always seem to alter patterns by adding a bit here or taking away a bit there, but this one I followed.

They looked a strange shape and rather large when finished.

I followed the instructions on the ball band when it came to the felting process.

I used new tennis balls - not the ones the dog chews, and I washed them first just in case they were going to bleed yellow all over my new slippers.

This is what they looked like when they came out of the washing machine. Quite a bit smaller!

I shaped them into a more recognisable slipper shape and left them to dry naturally and this is what they look like now.

One may be very slightly larger than the other and the shaping over the toes is slightly wonky.

But they are my first make of 2019 and I am rather proud of them. Even if they are slightly odd they will still keep my feet warm and that is the most important point of slippers!