I Remember Sweets

This is my completed piece for the February Take it Further challenge. Sharon challenged us to think about what we are old enough to remember and I thought of all those major world events like the Kennedy assassination, but what I also kept thinking about was sweets! I had 6d a week pocket money (and yes, we're talking old money here for those UK folks old enough to remember) and I particularly loved Black Jacks, little square chews that were 4 for a 1d. I remember I used to spend ages in the shop working out how to spend my 6d and what to buy, but often I didn't get round to eating them, and a few months later would have to throw the sticky mess away.
I asked around at work whether you could still buy Black Jacks and you can (and that got everyone reminiscing about the sort of sweets they remember), and I managed to find them in an old fashioned sweet shop in Lyme Regis. Some things haven't changed: as I was at the counter my daughter asked if I was actually going to eat them, to which I replied 'Oh no, I'm just going to unwrap them'. The shopkeeper's face was a picture and as we turned to leave he said to my daughter 'Who'd buy sweets to eat them?!' I bought Black Jacks and Starbursts and my daughter will eat the Starbursts but yesterday when I finished the piece sure enough, the Black Jacks were consigned to the bin.
I remembered the Black Jacks as having a stripy black and white wrapper with a picture of either a pirate or a skull and crossbones on it. The modern version has black and white swirls and no picture so I searched the Internet and found a wrapper on the site of the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood site. It showed an original wrapper from the 1920's and the picture was of a golliwog, so unfortunately I didn't feel that was appropriate to use. So instead I used the Starbursts because I know I also bought bright citrus colour chews. I scanned in the wrappers, printed them onto cotton, backed them to a firm fusible and stitched them to my background. The Black Jacks are remembered in the striped ticking I used as the background (and ticking also reminds me of my Dad and childhood as he used it for his work), and the plain black squares. The black ribbon behind the squares represents liquorice - another favourite.

Valentine Countdown

Lisa Vollrath is offering free Valentine images to download between now and Valentine's Day. Visit her site here to take advantage - all she asks is that you link to her site from your own blog before downloading.

Stewart Gill Sampler book

Back in Sept I went on a 6 week course with Becca from Becca's Quilt Emporium. It was all about exploring Stewart Gill products: paints, stencils, stamps etc, and at the end we were to produce a fabric book of samples. Needless to say, at the end of the 6 weeks I had lots of samples but nothing resembling a book! However, I did start work on it and had produced a cover and about 8 pages when preparations for Xmas intervened and I put it to one side. I even took some photos of the completed pages ready to post here but never did. The last couple of weeks I have managed to get back to it and have done another 4 pages (which I haven't photographed yet), so I thought I would put up what I've done so far. I hope to make at least another 4 pages before declaring it finished.

So here is my cover:

Black cotton has been stencilled and then strips and shapes of painted tissue have been ironed on with bondaweb. And the pages:

Take it Further Challenge blog

I have just posted my TIF piece for January on the blog Debra has kindly set up specifically for participants to post their finished pieces. Whilst doing so I looked at all the other pieces up so far and the variety and quality of interpretations is really amazing. It's also led me to bookmark yet more blogs to read - whatever did I do with my time before I spent all my spare moments reading the new postings listed on Google Reader?!!

One Year Anniversary

I knew I started this blog sometime last January and thought I'd better just check back and see when it was, and lo and behold it was a year ago today! I have enjoyed the experience of blogging and especially receiving encouraging comments so thanks to everyone who has passed by in the past year.

Mizuhiki pendant

This little pendant is made using an idea from Tvweekly's Plum & Verdigris channel - a video presentation by Judi of Judikins. It uses Japanese mizuhiki cords laid in a pattern on double sided tape, then cut to the size of a pendant and inserted. A charm was added on top then I covered the whole piece with Judikins Diamond Glaze adhesive which dries to a lovely glass like gloss. My daughter has appropriated it for her keyring.

Tag Book

First of all I would like to thank everyone for all their kind comments about my Take it Further piece in the post below. The encouragement is much appreciated.

When I went to the Craft for Crafters show at Exeter last weekend I attended 2 workshops, the Stef Francis brooch (see earlier post) and this book made using the new Bind-It-All machine which inserts wire binders. We were given sheets of double sided 12x12 papers which we folded into pocket pages and then bound into the book, and we had a sheet of embellishments to match the papers, all by Fancy Pants. Yesterday I used the embellishments to decorate the front cover of the book and to make 6 tags to go into the pockets. The set of lovely ladies that I used on the tags are courtesy of Cora of Paper Flowers. Every Saturday she posts some vintage images which she invites her readers to download and use, only asking that we leave a comment on her blog acknowledging the use. She also does lots of lovely stamping herself which is well worth looking at.