Cotton Reel

A few weeks ago I was able to visit the Stamp Attic and buy a Collections Elements spool kit.  Above is what I made with one of the spools - I don't think I meant it to be quite so pretty and the pink is more a raspberry colour in real life but it was dictated by the papers I chose (Creative Imaginations Bliss that I've had quite some time).  Here's the back - I decided to use the Bind-it-All to make holes and lace the spool together rather than try to stick it.

A fun project!

Stewart Gill pasifika collection

I had a lovely surprise last week and found myself in the vicinity of Rainbow Silks.  I've bought from their website before but had long wanted to actually visit the shop so I enjoyed a lovely browse and had to buy a few items to make it worthwhile!  I wish I lived closer so I could visit regularly and I would love to attend some of their classes. But the journey up the M3 and the M25 is enough to put anybody off!
I had already purchased the new Stewart Gill pasifika stencils but took the opportunity to buy the Oceania set of True Colours paints (of course now I wish I'd bought the Tribal tapa set as well as they are equally gorgeous).
So this afternoon I had a little play with the stencils and paints on some brown wrapping paper courtesy of Amazon and the result is above. I haven't decided what I will use it for yet but I love the result!

Woven Bowl

This little bowl is inspired by this post here.  Celia at Cheshire Cheese showed a picture of how she was inspired in turn by Lois Walpole and used a corrugated card cut into petal shapes to weave strips of fabric into a bowl.  Well that reminded me that I had 3 of these:

I vaguely remember cutting them using a papercraft template and thought they would be useful for something but they got put to one side and forgotten about until now!  I already had a ball of 3 knitting wools wound together so I wound the wool in and out of the petals pulling the wool enough to form the bowl shape.  When I finished I just buried the wool ends in amongst the threads.  I turned the ends of the petal back and painted them then added some turquoise gold Moonglow embossing powder and heated it to give the lovely gold glints.  Of course if I'd been sensible I would have done the painting and embossing first as the heat gun was trying to melt the glitzy bits of wool but I didn't know if the idea would work and was just trying it out.  It was so successful I didn't want to unwind it all to do the painting then rewind!

So, thanks Celia for the inspiration!