Day 143-arm monsters for a rainy day

Winter is on its way...

As much as I love summer the most out of all the seasons, I still get a little bit excited at the start of winter.

Rainy days inside reading a good book with endless cups of strong earl grey tea, lighting the fireplace for the first time of the season, or just snuggling up in bed whilst the wind rushes by outside...

I SOON get over that when I am caught in the freezing rain and wind trying to get to the car, whilst struggling with an umbrella flipping itself inside out, cursing whilst trying to find my keys in the bottom of my bag.
But worst of all leaving the house in the morning in the dark and returning in the dark... so to keep me warm and to scare away any rainy day blues I have made some arm monsters...

snip snip snip, some rectangles of stretch fabric

stitch stitch stitch some teeth

sew sew sew some eyes

arm monsters complete!!!

raaaaaah

time for this monster to go to bed zzzzzzzz

craft out

xxoo

Day 142-Polka dot fuzz

Today has been a massive clean up, an "autumn spring clean", trying to get the craft room into some kind of working order!
Tonight's craft is a polka fuzz fascinator. I just love big hair pieces, I wish people wore them more often! Why wait for the "Races" or a "wedding"? surely some polka dot fuzz would help bring abit of cheer to the workplace.... see the process below

polka dot yo yo

okay yo yo made, now for the tulle

 yo yo and tulle combined with a button to finish

sweet polka fuzz

she is ready for a night out on the town... or a day in the office...

craft out

xxoo

Day 141-Brother oh Brother

I am very excited today as I picked up my new Brother machine!! a 3034D overlocker courtesy of Brother. Brother are now on board as an official sponsor for "365 days of craft!!" yay!

I have always owned Brother machine's (my domestic and industrial machines are also Brother). So I am very proud to have them as a sponsor!

I unwrapped the box and put the machine straight to work (it runs like a dream!)
Today's craft is a table runner.
Andee and I are heading out to our lovely friends Brett and Elisha's house for dinner tonight, and its a special occasion because they have just bought their first house!! We are super excited because it will be the first time we see the place. So tonight's craft had to be a house warming gift!

yay my new machine!!

pretty.....

 all the new brother machine's come with a DVD which is actually really helpful. I havent watched this one yet (I will tomorrow) but with my other machine I watched it straight away and it was just simple and pointed out various features that you might not otherwise know about.

 they meet for the first time, the two brother's sitting on the table...

 right ready for crafting!

 I am using some heavy drill fabric with a great modern design for my table runner.

overlocks like a dream! now iron the edges over and then topstitch

add my 365 woven label

house warming present ready!

Elisha loves purple, so I bought a purple vase, flowers and some kitchen utensils to finish the gift off.

Okay I better go get ready otherwise we are going to be late...

Craft out

xxoo

Day 140-fridays, we all love fridays!

Tonight I am enjoying a glass of wine with my neighbour and fiancee, gosh fridays are good!
I am yet to properly unpack from overseas so this weekend will be a nice quiet weekend at home
re-grouping.
I have followed on with the map craft and made a paper crane from the maps... see below

craft out

xxoo

Day 139-Craft catch up

Hello crafty followers!
Okay so I wanted to do a little blog "house-keeping" as the end of last month I missed the April wrap up. So today I have put together the April pin board (see below).
I also wanted to apoligize for the slightly hit and miss craft blogs over the last month...It has been quite the challenge to continue the daily creating and blogging whilst travelling etc... I promise to lift my game!
Also I would like to invite followers to submit their own craft projects to feature on my blog, I am hoping to guest feature one person a week and would love to share this journey with you all, please email me at broncobowerman@hotmail.com with your story and photos.

Continuing with the map theme I have made some map envelopes, see below

1 map book, 1 envelope

I unfolded the envelope to use as a template to trace around

I cut around the traced shape and folded the edges

a little bit of glue and 

hay presto map envelope!

I think these are nice personalised gifts with a card if you pick out your friends suburb

Craft out

xxoo



Day 138-Map brooch

Tonight I have used the melways maps to make a brooch for my next-door neighbour, she is planning to sell her house starting next week so I decided to use the map of our suburb so she will not forget her time here.

cutting out the maps

 I used some scrap-booking discounted christmas charms to make my brooch

 I glued and varnished the map onto the scrap-booking charm to create the brooch and then glued a brooch back onto it.

craft out!!

xxoo

Day 137-Melways map makeover

Tonight I sat down at the dining table with an old melways map book, some scissors and a glass of red wine...and this happened...

i cut some circles

pinned a hole thru the centre

 joined the layers in the centre with a few hand sewn stitches and glued the paper flower to a plastic rose stem

 ((To Miss Elisha, yes I am using the pot plant you gave me to stick this in (I was trying very hard to keep the money plant alive that you gave me...but the possum got to it!!!) you will have to give me another cutting)) but for now i think i can manage to keep this plant alive...

craft out

xxoo

Day 136-Sloth bag

I wasn't sure what to make tonight...So I sat on the floor with a pile of felt, ribbons and threads.

My first idea was a little bag necklace...but i couldnt decide what to do

then I had the idea that the bag could be an animal or character with really long arms as the necklace 

I decided on a sloth (as thats what i feel like right now)

he ended up a little bit bigger than a necklace...

 and more like a bag

 SLOTH BAG

Craft out 

xxoo

Day 135-back to craft at home

Its been a very lazy day attempting to recover from the jet-lag, and my mind has turned to my wedding dress. We have finally set the date for Jan 28th next year, even though it is still 7-8 months away, I figured that I should get started on trialling and toulling my dress.
I have already purchased the fabric and I have the design all set out in my head, I just need to take the biggest and hardest step of all! and get STARTED!!
So tonight I have made a fabric rose out of the silk dupion, I plan to make a whole bunch of fabric roses to cover various parts of the dress and these will be a variety of sizes a varying hues of ivory and gold.

some of the fabric

cut out the pattern

fold down the centre and iron the right sides together

stitch the straight end together

bag it out

then stitch a gathering stitch approx 4 length

ensure to leave long threads either end for the gathering process

start the gathering process at the curved end (pull the bottom thread) only do this for a few stitches to get this end started, then tie off this end. 

go back to the other end and use the same bottom thread to gather the rest of the flower.

You will notice the flower starts to curve into the smaller end, this is good and helps to create the flower shape.

gather the rough edges in with your hands until it looks like a rose

hand stitch to keep it in place

I love the slightly varied hues of gold/ivory silk against each other

Okay, so a long way to go on the dress... but I have pulled the fabric out, started thinking about it,,, and made one rose....

Back to work tomorrow...

Craft out

xxoo