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...

Hey guys! I cannot believe we are half way through February already! The past few weeks have really zipped by, I'm already behind on my daily journalling....oops! So I've been struggling a bit lately with my creativity, I've not journaled properly since Christmas. I've kept a log of what we've done, in a really informal, unattractive way. So if I feel the urge I can go back and journal, but at the minute I just keep thinking '...Nope'. So I've been exploring and doing other things which involve some level of creativity. I've spent a few hours (read that as days) playing on The Sims4 and doing some Tumblr  ish type DIY projects with Anna's Patreon content for this month. I just can't get enough! Our house has been in a perpetual state of undress for the last five years, we've been slowly, and I mean slooowly doing it up. I've put so many things on hold, kept things in boxes waiting. It has frustrated me to no end, as I feel lik...

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...

So recently I've had this obsession with drawing and painting lilies. I've taken it upon myself to create the artwork for the invites for my wedding next year (eeek!) and so I've been creating lily after lily. I can't seem to settle on one I like so I've just kept going....at some point I need to make a decision as I really should get them sent out to people, but the perfectionist in me won't let me settle on one, but for the moment I'm happy prattling away lol. I've still got time! Also with the colder weather drawing in and the darker evenings on the way J and I have been enjoying more cosy nights in, in front of our new log burning stove. I grew up with a log burning stove in my parents house so I'm massively excited about the winter ahead! A year or two ago we purchased a hand smithed fire poker, we've now decided we'd also like a companion set for our fire and I've been spending time looking into blacksmiths and ironmon...