Felt Seahorse

Sorry this is sideways.  I have a new computer with Windows 10 OS and haven't yet figured out how to correct photos!  Anyway, I saw felt seahorses on Pinterest, and as I have a friend who loves seahorses, I decided to make one for her for Christmas.

Xmas mail art envelopes

I have been admiring all the mail art on Pinterest and it motivate me to decorate the envelopes that I sent my Xmas cards in.  I bought the Xmas stamps first, and tried to match my decorating to the stamps.  Moderately successful...

This was one of two cards I made using scraps of patchwork fabric.  Effective but simple!

Licorice Allsorts.

I saw these on Pinterest, and managed to track down the blog where they originated.  It was all in Dutch (I think) so I couldn't understand the words, although the translater thingy helped!  The photos were self explanatory, so it didn't take much to figure out how to make these cute licorice allsorts.   I love making things from felt, and have another few items on the go, so will post them here when they are done.  I've been doing mostly patchwork and stitching in recent months, as I had let that go when I was doing the Life Drawing classes.
Cut strips of felt, then cross cut the strips into squares.

 Glue the squares together like the real allsorts.  The rolled ones are two strips of felt rolled up with glue to keep them from unravelling.

They look very realistic in a jar - these are for one of my crafty friends, can't wait to give them to her!

Colouring in.

I have started colouring in some of the books I have recently acquired.  It is good to rediscover the boxes of pencils and other media that I'd forgotten I had!  For the above I used el cheapo pencils for the first two, and Derwents for the third one. 

Week morning in Melbourne CBD July 2015

I want to take more opportunities to sketch whenever I have some time, and last week I had an hour to kill while waiting for the husband to have his hair cut at his favorite barber in town.  Being a nice day, I had a coffee in Hardware Street and sketched this in pencil, using some pastel pencils for colour.
Not really thrilled with it, but it's a start!

Life Drawing Class, third week.

This week's model was an older woman, and she gave us some very challenging poses to work with.  I was fairly satisfied with my progress.  The first few sketches are the two minute poses and done in graphite.  Then I switched to red pastel on cream pastel paper.  The last two are the 20 minute poses, and done in charcoal.

Life Drawing class, second week.

We had another young woman for our model at this week's class, and she presented us with quite a challenge in a variety of poses.  She told us she is also a life drawing teacher, as well as modelling, so she knows what we need to make us work harder on drawing figures.  I thoroughly enjoyed this session, and feel like I'm getting to know the other students as we discuss each other's sketching.  I haven't got around to photographing my sketches yet, but hope to get it done and posted here over the weekend.

 Edited 31.7.15 to add sketches for second week.  I haven't included all the sketches I did last week, as I wasn't happy with some of them.  Even these aren't great, but they are the best of an average lot!  The brown pastel sketch is very disappointing; the model had her hair pinned up and despite my attempts to fix this picture, the figure still looks like a boy apart from the breasts.  The version in pencil wasn't quite so bad for some reason.  I was happier when she let her hair down for the long pose, which I did in blue pastel.

Colouring in books for adults.

The term 'adult colouring books' always makes me smile, as people who don't know about them sometimes raise their eyebrows, thinking this could be some kind of pornographic material!  But of course it is not, I have been buying colouring books for a few years now, but it is only very recently that the idea of adults "colouring in" like we all did as kids, has taken off in a big way.  It's mostly to do with relaxation and stress relief therapy, although I don't look at it that way.  Being a bit on the artistic side, I just love painting and colouring in for its own sake!
I bought these today at the Craft & Quilt Fair, and will post photos of the other ones in my collection later.

Life Drawing Co-op 16.7.2015

Today was the first day of my 10 week Life Drawing class at the Eltham Living & Learning Centre.  We have a live model but no regular tutors.  A co-ordinator explains the timing for the model and we use whichever medium we like to draw or paint the model.  I chose graphite and charcoal today, and briefly played with watercolour.  Over the coming weeks I will experiment with pastel, watercolour, acrylic and colour pencil.
As you will see I have a long way to go in improving my perspective and anatomy of the human figure, but at the end of 10 weeks (with some practice inbetween time) I hope to be a lot better!
The first 9 sketches were warm up sketches, where the model changed her pose every two minutes. I did mine on an A5 sketch pad.

The last two were the final drawings where the model held her pose for about half an hour each time.
 These were done on an A3 sketch pad.

15 Day Drawing Challenge, Days 3 and 4.

You can see why I continue to take classes in drawing, especially life drawing! I did this sketch using a wooden manniken, sold at art stores to assist artists get the proportions of the body correct. It didn't help me much!

I copied this from a Whiskas Cat food advertisement. It reminds me of our cat Tiger who looked just like this picture when he was a kitten. So cute :-)

DTE Forum Drawing Challenge

Cheryl over at Down To Earth Simple Living Forum, started a new thread just for fun and a bit of a challenge to any members who fancy themselves as artists, or just like to doodle!  I have a foot in both camps, as my less artistic friends tell me I'm an artist, but for me it is just a fancy form of doodling :-)
For 15 Days we are to draw something every day.  Here are my first two days' drawings:
Ken snoozing.  Sketched in graphite pencil.

  Fineline pen and watercolour wash.

I will be back in a day or two with my next few doodles!

Three handmade cards.

I wish I had more time to spend on paper crafts, I really do love creating cards, collages, etc. although my efforts are simple compared to those whose primary hobby it is.  Here is what I made today.  One of these will be sent to a Down To Earth forum member as part of an arranged swap this month.
The cat below is a scrap of patchwork fabric inserted into a precut card.  I got distracted during this project, and glued the fabric on the wrong side of the card, so I decided to cut the back off and sticky tape it on the other side to correct the layout.   I couldn't leave it with a sticky taped edge! so I glued the yellow paper over the edge to cover up my mistake...

This is a plain white card with check scrap booking paper glued on to the front.  The flower cart is a cut out from a decoupage book of cut outs that I found at the opshop.

Teapot is made up of two fabrics which I adhered visoflex to, cut out the shapes, and ironed them on to the card.  The lacy bit under the teapot was a mistake; I used sticky paper lace because it was quick and easy, instead of cutting a small piece of real lace which would have looked much nicer.  Cie la vie..

Assorted paper crafts.

I like to borrow craft books from the library to peruse, before I decide to buy a copy for myself. It's a good lurk because much of the time there are only a few projects that I would consider making in most of the books, so I try to make them all while I've got the book out on loan. Problem is if I run out of time, especially if I've renewed the loan twice, as it has to go back on the due date!
 I'd borrowed Papercrafting In No Time and made three items so far, with more that I wanted to do. I thought it was due back last week, but luckily I have another week to play! Here are two of the projects (the other is just a decorated clothes peg, not worth posting here).

his "bird on a nest" is made with buttons hand sewn onto the card stock background, and the bird and branch cut out of various papers and glued.

These Union Jacks are made using a template of the crosses.  It is traced on to patterned paper, cut out, and glued on to a plain background.  The triangular shapes left after cutting out the cross, are then trimmed to a smaller size and glued into place, leaving a band of plain colour around the cross.  It can be made more interesting if two different patterned papers are used as shown on the right side.

Recycling Napisan and other plastic containers.

On the Down To Earth forum, one of the members was asking what she could do with Napisan containers.  I replied that I just throw mine straight into the recycle bin as I have so many containers of other kinds, I couldn't find a use for any more.  But last week when my Earth choice (or a similar brand) dishwashing powder ran out, I decided to decorate the container rather than chuck it out.  Good old Modge Podge and paper napkins to the rescue!

Christmas card collages

I did two of these last December, but can only find one photo on my computer file.  I had saved my Xmas cards from the previous year to do this after I read about it on a craft forum.  I had an A3 art pad that I used for the background, glued old sheet music at random, then the cards over that. 
The other collage was similar but I used cards with animals (cats, dogs, birds, etc) as the theme.