Stitch & Weave

Fairytales and the Brimble's Book Club When Anna announced the bookclub was starting up, my bookworm leapt for joy. I've always wanted to be part of a bookclub but I've not had the courage to find one to join. I'm an avid reader and I've my nose stuck in a book ever since I was a little girl. Books have always pulled me in, an entire world contained within a few pages, hundreds of people to meet, love and hate. The smell of the paper and ink, it's intoxicating! I knew I wanted to through myself fully into the bookclub and figured I should start a reading planner....and what better way to decorate it than with Anna's absolutely stunning Fairytale Forest  kit. I mean it's a match made in heaven right?  I couldn't resist the opportunity to turn some of the diecut pieces into paperclips. I had originally intended to laminate them to give them a bit more durability but it would mean I'd have to fussy cut them out again and I was too...

Hiya Brimblers!! Phew! The last couple of weeks have been so hectic for me, for one reason or another and sadly I have all but abandoned my art and journaling and if I'm truthful I haven't been doing much planning either! It is true what they say about the imagination/brain being a muscle, in that if you don't use it, you lose it. I've been slowly getting my paints, papers and brushes back out but I'm feeling uninspired and very rusty, even several hours lost on Pinterest haven't helped much. I've mostly been reference working and failing to produce anything original. It'll come in time I hope!! That said I have been making good use of the travel journal I commissioned from Steph at Scurry and Peck . It's just the perfect size for sticking in my handbag and whipping out whenever there is lull in goings on. A couple of weekends back J and I took a round trip from Manchester down to Aylesbury for a wedding cake tasting (omg so good!) and we p...

Quite a short post from me this time. I've been struggling the last couple of nights with a bad bout of Insomnia. At the minute I feel like I'm walking through the day waist deep in Treacle, everything is running in slow motion, basically jetlag without the holiday. I hope to give you a more art and photo filled post next time, but for now I'll include images of my safe place. Incidentally whilst I was writing this blog post Geraldine posted a link to her post on her own blog where she mentions the way to living your Truth is to discover the things you perhaps did not know about yourself and to also consider the aspects of ourselves we may not like. It struck a cord with me because I too had come to same conclusion. Often when I've washed my dreads I'll sit in front of my mirror and blow dry my hair, a mirror is not exactly required for the job of blow drying ones hair but it seems to be something I do. Occasionally, I will find myself staring ...

The Adventure Pact Hi everyone! Is it too late to still wish everyone a Happy New Year? I often question when it has passed the point when you can still speak well wishes, I guess when people start giving you funny looks in return. As I'm writing this we still haven't quite reached double figure dates, so I'm gunna go with it and wish everyone a fun, creative year ahead! (This is from a recent wander around a local nature reserve) With a new year comes the inevitable talk of “New Year Resolutions”, to speak the truth I'm not a great believer in making them. Too many people seem to drop them within a week or two when the hype and positive outlook begins to wear thin or the self applied pressure starts to weigh heavy. Too bigger a step and you're destined to struggle, if not fail. I don't wish to set myself up to fail so rather than burst into the new year (seriously how many times can I get that term into this blog post?) all guns blazing I try...

The start of 2018 has been a bit of a jaggered one for me. This year J and I spent Christmas up norf with just the two of us rather than travelling down to spend it with my ever growing family. Instead we had our family 'Christmas Day' in...Janurary on the 6th... Hey at least it was actually cold on that day unlike the rather mild 25th December. It shouldn't be warm on Christmas day!  So yeah, the start has been kinda bumpy and events seem out of sequence, I've been a bit unsettled and not quite found my rhythm yet....I like my routine. When my routine is disrupted or flipped I have a paddy and I take a while settle again.  Planning usually helps with this, but for some reason I also took the decision - I'm not sure how wisely - to change up my planning system. Having never successfully got along with the Travelers Notebook system (at least in the planning sense) I decided in my infinite wisdom that it would be my planner for this year, despite always b...

Last month's Patreon saw Anna demonstrating the use of masking fluids and wax crayons to create resist art. Now, I haven't created anything using these techniques since I was in primary school, and only then it was with kid eat proof paint and crayons. So I was super keen to get going, so much so that I forgot to follow one of crafting's golden rules namely that of washing your paintbrush after use. So in this case washing it after using the masking fluid....something Anna also mentions in the video! So after a few hiccups and a new brush or two - I did eventually purchase a Molotow Pen which I found a lot easier to use - I kind of got the hang of it. Then I thought I'd be a little more adventurous with it. My initial experiments saw me working mostly with watercolour paints on watercolour paper, so I wanted to try using some other mediums to see what results I could achieve. Here I've used the Molotow Pen to create a couple of quick doodles of Christmassy...