Christmas Time Misteltoe and Wine.....

The busiest time of the year was upon me and I've been hard at it creating and making (and clearly not blogging!). I read somewhere that now is NOT the time to make completely new products but where's the fun in that ?

So alongside the classics I've been able to experiment in ceramics at least and hopefully make some new classics!

A few of the tree ornaments.

Porcelain, glaze and oxide.

Hoping to establish a Ceramic line and here are some bowls.

This Special bowl has a new home already.

Here's a photo from Maker's Marketplace at Creative Outlet Studios.

A new House pillow inspired by a ceramic ornament I made.

There is more to come but wanted to get at least one blog in before the new year!

Patchwork Edible Show and other Stuff

It's been a very busy couple of weeks and it never ceases to amaze me what can be achieved in a short space of time. So in big news I quit my day job !! I was dragging my feet and clock watching so I knew it was time to move on to pastures new, its an exciting if somewhat precarious time ahead and I mean to make the most of it.

The Patchwork Edible Show was the impetus for some new cards, I had already done food so it wasn't too difficult to create the designs. They were pretty well received. Sorry for being so Crabby being a surprise hit.

I've started experimenting with painting the image using ink as opposed to using a pen and I like the results. Patchwork was like a survival of the fittest endurance test, as much as I love sunshine, temperatures hit 93 degrees and it was tough being outside all day. Still met some lovely people and vendors who were all in the same boat. Here are some photos from the event I was on my lonesome so unfortunately was unable to go walkabout.

Yes it was that hot !

Particularly happy with my cardboard clouds.

Forgot to bring a sheet to hang at the back but live and learn.

Panorama, fancy...

Ok, that's it for now, I'm going to have to backtrack as I have a lot of posts that I didn't finish. Thanks for reading.

Clock Hack DIY

Madeover custom clock

Original Clock (Meh, but nothing special)

So one Saturday morning having managed to lose 3 hours on Pinterest I came across this clock diy morph which you can find on www.radicalpossibility.com and decided to make my own version. The possibilities of this are endless. It maybe took me 15 mins tops to do, and half of those minutes were spent prising the clock face off.

What you will need: flat head screwdriver (target) clock $3, paper, pen, scissors,( illustrator & printer optional.
Time: 15mins
Difficulty: Easy(ish)

That little plastic thing has to be pushed down in order to release the clear plastic clock face. There are two of those.

Once you've done that gently pull the clock hands off and take off the battery pack. Sorry I was going so quickly that I never took a pic of this step. I then peeled the paper clock face off and traced around it. If you are going to collage you could leave it on. I measured the circle and then created a template in Illustrator and designed my own clock face. You can do this lo tech, simply trace around the clock face paper onto a blank sheet and draw your own numbers, you could also use stencils etc Endless possibilities.

Hurrah the plastic face is off!

Now use the face to trace around for a template if you are not going to print like below and just draw/paint/collage/stencil etc

Or Prepare and print your design.

I then printed my design, cut it out and made a hole in the center for the clock mechanism.
In the original tutorial she spray painted the green plastic surround part but I didn't bother as I like green.

Put the plastic face back on and you are done !

I am quite happy with how it turned out as it was pretty quick, and here it is in my craft room.

Upcycled Tennis Racket Cover Tutorial

Wimbledon's here so it's only fitting that I should post this tennis jacket tutorial. It is fairly easy to do and requires 1 felted wool jumper. I chose one that had a zipper and incorporated that into the design.

One bright red sweater.

First of all put your tennis racket inside your sweater to make sure you have enough fabric.

Using your tennis racket, place on piece of paper and trace around the head and part of the handle. (Just the parts that you will be covering) Cut this out and you have your pattern.

Pin your pattern to the sweater and race your pattern onto the reverse side of your sweater using a fabric marker or chalk and cut out. Repeat so that you have two sides.

Once you have your two sides pin right side facing inwards. Trim excess so they are the same.

I loosely basted the two pieces together and then used a serger to sew around the edges, avoiding the zipper which had to be hand stitched. You can also use a zig zag stitch on a regular sewing machine too.

I look like a ham

The finished cover, even has a usuable pocket for a ball or two. If your sweater doesn't have a zipper  you could make a velcro fastening instead. You could also applique initials on it. It got some good feedback from the tennis folks I play with and certainly screams handmade !

Noise and Plates

I need to preface this blog post by saying that inspired by by brother in law's hilarious blog I am going to have a bit of a moan. So if you want to skip the rant feel free to scroll and just enjoy the work. Summer has arrived I think, well for a Londoner it's probably been Summer since February... but the really hot weather has arrived. Unfortunately so has the noise, OMG it's been a cacophony of sound. For two or three weeks we had what turned out to be the great wall of bloody China erected next door, I lost track of time, the thin, non double glazed poor excuse of a window could not drown out the sound of the pounding drill making its way into concrete at ungodly hours of the am. To add insult to injury it would start at 6.30am only to stop an hour later. Here's a thought why not just start the work at 9 and not wake the whole street up unnecessarily. At the weekend we had a 12 hour bouncy castle rental opposite, I like kids I do, I just wish they wouldn't scream like banshees... for 101/2 hours, (they stopped for 20mins for either food or cake.)

Then the straw that almost broke the camel's back, the car alarm. So I'm painting my plates below and this car alarm is going off for an hour at least and it's making strange dying battery type sounds, so instead of falling into a pattern of wailing like a normal annoying car alarm, it's all over the place like a drum and bass CD that keeps skipping. What is worse is the bloody owner (excuse my English) is standing right there explaining to someone on the phone about his strange car alarm sounds and every now and then will switch it off, when not demonstrating his dilemma. This was all happening below the window were I was trying to work, I swore LOUDLY I'll admit it in a John McEnroe kind of way, with an expletive thrown in for good measure. "You cannot be ****** serious." It did the trick given the paper thin windows, message received loud and clear. Rarely am I plunged to such depths of impropriety but come on, it wasn't like Vivaldi's Four Seasons, it was a car alarm and looking at the car, no one would want to steal it anyway !!! First world problems I know ! Now that I've got that off my chest here's some plates...

Rope like hand painted type wasn't feeling love at the time

The Sanford plate because plates aren't just for wolves

Subliminal thinking

the chow chow plate because I can't just paint one of the dogs

In July I start a ceramics class, but honestly I'm happy doing the decorating part. Hopefully there will be some molds... otherwise it'll be slab and coiling ! Feels good to be blogging again. Expect some changes at least one DIY a month, as well as my usual poor progress updates. Thanks for sharing the journey and be sure to follow me on instagram/imustdraw if you are an actual person you'll not have a problem, but I was getting too many spammers so I set it to by request. Sorry you didn't need that much information.

A little R & R

I can't believe it's May already. This year seems to be flying by. In February I decided I needed to recharge the batteries so to speak and took a two month break from Crafted. First stop was reorganizing my work space, it had reached that point were I would look in from the outside and then close the door. There was not a lot of creative output going on for a while, but it's looking good now so I'm excited to go in there and create. It was so tidy in fact that I did a painting, just for a change.
Time off has given me the time to focus on my long wish list of things to do. The Birdie and Bear project finally got the attention it deserved and long talked about products got made. I have wilfully neglected this blog as I have become obsessed with Instagram, my name is imustdraw in case you want to follow. So I ended up deleting a lot of photos not intentionally off my phone and was thankfully able to still have the majority of them in Instagram form, so consider this peek at my Instagram as a fill in for those few months of neglect. Enjoy.
Instagram - A year of 

2013 the creative process

So it feels like 2012 flew by in a whirlwind of activity. It's been a slow start as the holiday season was pretty non stop I feel like I've earned a little break. Still even as I lie in bed I get an idea for a card, I know pen and paper by the bed, write it down. (Of course theres no pad of paper ,im not that organized.) In order to be able to stay tucked up and warm, yes folks even in Southern California it occasionally gets cold and unlike London there's no central heating so it's all about the layers and hot water bottle and if I'm really lucky Sanford earns his weight in gold by being a heat source. So this idea I don't know where it came from but in my head I'm like "that's funny it could work" but I don't want to get up so if its memorable I'll remember it in the morning. I then can't stop my brain from thinking about other puns, should have bitten the bullet and written them down... A few hours later I'm up and I can still remember the idea, I run it past my pun panel and it gets the thumbs up.

The drawing is done same day et voila. Le brontosaurus is born. Sometimes things happen pretty fast, other times they get mulled over and months later surface.

Ugghh new year also means time to hit the accounting ! What you mean you thought I did it every week, entering all those receipts I wish I have a small Mount Etna of receipts to input into Quickbooks which cheers you on with this almost applause like sound every time you enter one in.... In other news I made the resolution to try new things, so with that in mind I bought a ceramic pen. I have dabbled in Ceramics and while I wish I could make magic using a wheel I'm much better coiling but the part I like the most is embellishing and decorating. So why not skip the clay part and go directly to fun. This is going to be a new line I think. The beauty of having a shop is that you can test your product out next day pretty much, I'm very excited about the potential.

So I have a confession, all the xmas craziness has left me sewn out, I need a break from sewing to recharge the batteries. I don't want to ever feel that what I'm doing is a chore so I've been making little pouches and gathering more wool to get inspired all over again but mostly it's back to the drawing board literally with lots and lots of bad puns/some good and ideas on a page. There are some exciting developments an Artwalk on February 1st at Green Bliss Cafe, note to self get sewing!

No sooner is Xmas over than Valentines is creeping up.