Glastonbury Times

Spring means our annual trip to Glastonbury; it’s the first trip away in the caravan each year so we generally go to the same site (we have a big caravan so Mark likes to go somewhere familiar to get back in the towing routine.

So we got there in pouring rain, set up and sat back to enjoy the view of the Tor. From there the week just got better and better! The sun shone, we got sunburnt, read lots, ate lots of ice-cream and visited all our usual haunts; the Tor, Glastonbury Abbey, Stonehenge and Wells. It was just what we needed! 

Some pretties I’ve been making…

Over-the-Rainbow

Carnivale

and one in honour of Leonard Nimoy  

Star-Trek-TOS

Namaste

I can sing a rainbow..

Well, I can paint one anyway! My singing may leave a little bit to be desired. I’m actually not a bad singer though, I was in the school choir (because it got me out of a maths lesson), but I haven’t sang ‘properly’ for ages – does singing in the car count? It makes my vocal muscles ache a bit when I do sing for a prolonged period, which is quite sad really. I must sing more and get my voice back in condition. Anyway, I digress! My latest order made me very happy painting because it became a beautiful rainbow which manifested itself upon my window ledge as it dried, with the sunshine pouring through and casting its beautiful light over the room. Isn’t it pretty?

 

Did I mention I also created a couple of friends for Toothless? A friend requested Stormfly and Hookfang along with Toothless for her sons and niece. I was quite pleased with how they turned out. You can get them here

 

I had an interesting challenge from a customer…she wanted a pair of Dr Who glasses with Happy Birthday in Gallifreyan – the glasses I normally do just have the Tardis console symbols (also Gallifreyan naturally). I managed to find the symbols for Happy Birthday and painted them on the glasses in place of the normal symbols. She was so pleased! I wish I’d remembered to photograph them before I packaged them up, but I have the symbols ready for anyone else who might like a set

 

So what else have I been doing? Well, I gifted some friends and family colouring books for Christmas and when the ones I ordered for my friends arrived, they were so enchanting that I had to order one for myself too! So I whiled away many happy hours over Christmas with this lovely book.

It still continues to amuse me! With so many beautiful pages, and with my trusty set of pencils which M upgraded me too (I was dismayed at the lack of range my 18 pack gave me, so he bought me a 40 pack to surprise me! What a sweetie!) I lovingly colour each page, building up the tones and textures. On each page there is a surprise; a little creature which is hidden away – a butterfly, bee, ladybird or caterpillar, for example. I tease myself by not looking at the following page until I’ve completed the one I’m working on, and that way each page is a delight!

Oh yes, I was totally tempted by the OTT Alice swap over on Craftster. I do love Alice in Wonderland! But what to make? The guidelines were that it couldn’t be more than 4x4 inches. My partner loved the Disney version, and in particular, the Cheshire Cat, so I made her a teeny tiny candle burner.

And then it struck me, if I love Alice, how many other people also love Alice? So that inspired me to create this little beauty for my shop – the Cheshire Cat Glass!

Well, enough for now.

 

Namaste

Somewhere over a rainbow….

Okay, I love rainbows. I always have done. I’m a rainbow lovin’, hippy tree hugger. And proud of it. How do I show this aspect of my personality? Check these babies out….

Yep, just hit the ‘Buy Now’ button, so these will be winging their way to me in the next few days. I actually saw them in Oasis in Birmingham over half term when I went there for a shopping/eating/socialising day of complete gluttony with some friends. I actually spent quite a bit of money at the Hippy Buddy stall  in Oasis (Birmingham) because they had a sale on, so I just couldn’t justify them at that point, but I just couldn’t get them out of my mind, so I succumbed to the temptation tonight. Well, I needed a break from painting. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I have far more harem pants that a girl probably should in her wardrobe, but what the hell! They will look great with my Christmas presents from M (aren’t they awesome?!)

Anyhow, I’ve been busy busy this week; dragons and peacock feathers and Dr Who designs have been keeping me busy. I’m currently painting a set of Dr Who glasses that say Happy Birthday in Gallifreyan! I’m also mulling over a Star Trek themed design in honour of Leonard Nimoy, one of sci-fi history’s greatest hippies. I’ll update you all when I have something worked out. Also toying with a carnival/Easter crazy coloured designs too!

Continuing with the rainbow theme, I’ve just had an order for a rainbow range of my Egyptian Lily glasses for a lady's holistic treatment room… I’m looking forward to doing those in a gorgeous spectrum of colours! She plans to use them as candle burners and I can just imagine them twinkling in a glorious rainbow – they’ll be so pretty in a darkened room! Mmmm, may have to do something similar for myself…I have some glasses that someone gave me that aren’t really suitable for drinking, but they’ll make perfect candle burners….

Tonight I’ve been painting along to one of my favourite Supernatural episodes of this series (Series 9) where Dean mind melds (a Trekkie reference?) with Colonel the Germen Shepherd, that episode just cracks me up! Watching Dean standing at the window with the Colonel shouting ‘Hey, Hey, You, You’ is just what I imagine Jack is saying when he’s barking!

I must admit, I’ve been so busy recently, I haven’t had time to do much else in the crafty sense, but what I need to do at some point soon is make myself some zill mufflers – zills are the little finger cymbals that bellydancers use – our current choreography is a challenging one with half the troop using veils, and half zilling. I’m not a fan of veils, so I’ve opted for the zills, but they are quite noisy and they send Jack into a frenzy of doggy excitement, so I need to muffle them a bit, like so….

So I’ll need to whip the old crochet hook at some point soon!

There’s also a swap on Craftster that I’m very tempted by, an Alice in Wonderland OTT (One Tiny Thing), you basically craft 1 thing which is max size 4x4x4” to send to your partner (based on their likes etc). I think I could manage to squeeze one tiny thing into my hectic schedule and I do so love Alice and especially the Cheshire Cat (I have more nerdy Quertee t-shirts that are Alice themed than is probably healthy for a grown-up!)

You know what? This has given me a great idea for a new design…..

Ta ta for now!

Viewing Figures….

Well, here we are again! I promised that I would blog more and here I am! I must admit that I felt a little cut off in my prime with the last post, I felt I had more to give, whether you wanted it or not. Okay, so I’m sitting here invigilating mock exams and I’m a little bored. Well, I do have some marking to do, but I’m just not feeling the marking urge. Is there anything more boring than marking? Yes, I guess there probably is, but right here, right now, I would rather do anything else than marking. This means that for this moment in time, you are getting my *almost* undivided attention.

 

So, what else has been going on in my life? Well, M and I have discovered the delights of Game of Thrones. Actually, I discovered it right back in Season One, but M has only recently decided that he wanted to watch them, so we’ve been watching the box sets and have now caught up to everyone else. Season Four is under our belts and we, along with the rest of the World, are eagerly awaiting Season Five. I am desperate to create some designs based on the House Sigils, but I need to have a think about how they will translate onto glass. The idea is simmering there on the back burner.

 

 

It’s funny how my viewing habits stimulate my creative juices – does anyone else find this? I received the box set ‘How to Train your Dragon’’ 1&2 for Christmas. I am so in love with Toothless! I wanna dragon! So, of course I had to create a Toothless design. Who wouldn’t want a Night Fury peering over the top of their glass? When I showed a sneak preview on my Facebook page, I immediately had requests not only for Toothless, but for Stormfly and Hookfang too, so back to the drawing board to work out some little friends for the Toothless glass.

 

 

Another designs triggered by current viewing trends is the Winchester glass, totally inspired by Supernatural! I can never decide whether I’m Team Dean or Team Sam, but I know that recently I’ve been kinda steering towards Team Charlie! I hope she’s in more episodes coz I love a bit of Geek Girl Chic!

 

 

I’m quite sad that the Middle Earth series seems to have come to an end. What am I going to do without my fix of Middle Earth to look forward to each winter? Poor Peter Jackson must be exhausted after, what is it? Ten years? But how wonderful to do that as a job! To spend your working days in Middle Earth! So, to celebrate the end of an era, I just had to create a ‘One Ring’ glass. I’ve been inspired by the LOTR and the Hobbit before, it’s been a lifelong love affair for me.

 

 

Wow, I sound like I spend my life watching TV! I must admit, if I’m working or painting, I do tend to have films or box sets on in the background.

Right, off to do some work then….catch up soon!

Namaste

A touch of Glass

Ha, yes, I am terrible! I promise you more bloggy goodness and then I fail miserably! I have been busy, I promise. Mostly stuff for my shop with lots of new glass designs to choose from. I decided last summer to really expand my eBay business with lots of new and exciting designs. There was a slight problem with this plan though. I live in a teeny tiny little house. Really, it’s like a doll’s house in it’s minuteness! In fact, now that I think about it, my childhood doll’s house was like a mansion compared to my house! We have literally five rooms in the whole house. A double bedroom, a single (boxroom) bedroom where I paint and M plays on the PC, a small bathroom, a living room and a tiny kitchen. Cosy, you might say. Bijou? Certainly not. Two adults, a large German Shepherd, and two cats all compete for space in this tiny domicile. Not a problem, you might think. Okay, picture again the amount of ‘stuff’ an arty crafty person hoards  stores and then think about the amount of paperwork a teacher is required to store at home. This is a problem. Yes, I know it’s mostly me. And I’m also a booklover! But this means that our little home is groaning at the seams. *Sigh* I read, with ever so slight envy, all about the wonderful Katwise’s gorgeous house Calico and the on-going renovations of TPFFaerywear’s Helen’s house Castle-Del-TPF and I just wish that we could afford something a little….bigger. How nice it would be to have storage space!

 

 

So, back to the problem. I just don’t have the space to store a large quantity of stock. But I had a brainwave. Okay, so if a paint an example, I can list the photo, and then I can paint to order! Genius! I must admit, I was a little inspired by TPF Faerywear’s custom options, so I decided that I would offer complete custom options on my designs – display the basic design, and then allow customers to choose their own colours and outliners and decide whether they want an inscription.  This has been working really really well. In fact, it worked well enough for me to pay for my windows to be double glazed and a new stair carpet. Yay! Katwise describes her house as the house that sweaters built and though my little Hobbity Hole here in the Shire hasn’t been built on glass, I am proud to think that in the last six months it has certainly made it a lot cosier.

Let’s give you a few pictures to look at

 

 

 

 

 

Right, that’s enough for tonight, M is waiting impatiently to shoot some aliens, so I’ll leave you for now!

Namaste!

Rainbows and Caravans…

So the last time I blogged, I was enchanted by the rainbow Whipporwill that Lynda wore on the Great British Sewing Bee. I managed to track down the pattern and the yarn and I awaited eagerly for the yarn to arrive.

 

I spent a happy evening watching the rainbow form as I would it from the skein into a knittable format and then I was ready to go.

 

*Sigh* this was such a lovely yarn to knit with…the pattern was mostly ss, so I just sat back and knitted and watched all thos lovely rainbows unfold. In fact, I took it with me on holiday (in our new caravan) and knitted it there in Glastonbury!

Look how gorgeous it looks, even just in the blocking stage!!

A new caravan I hear you ask? Yes! We finally replaced our little cheap n cheerful caravan as we just wore it out. It leaked everywhere! M was obsessed with getting a fixed bedroom as the job he hated most in the world was putting the bed down at night, and then putting it away again in the morning. So that was his stipulation. We are also polar opposites in our sleeping habits. He is a night owl, and I’m a sparrow… I’m awake early and he sleeps in, so our second stipulation was a seating area where one person could be whilst the other was in bed. We sort of wandered around a few places looking at caravans without really intending to buy and then we saw it! The perfect caravan. A veritable palace compared to our old one. And the company was willing to give us £1000 trade-in for our old one! How could we refuse?

So we are now the proud owners of this 24 ft beauty! It has a fixed bedroom, a bathroom with shower, hot n cold running water, central heating, a full sized fridge and cooker/oven and even a wine rack! I’ve lived in houses with less than this!

We’ve been away in it twice now and I love it! It obviously needs to have my own personal hippy stamp on it to make it truly ours, but I just love the space and the comfort, and most of all, I love not being jumped on by Jack in the middle of the night as our bedroom has a door *lol*

So, project I haz done recently……

Socks…..

Shawls for friends for gifts….

And a tribal skirt for troup costume for the Illan showcase. More of that later!

I also did a cross-stitch! I don’t really *do* x-stitches, but this one was a gift from my mum, so it was a labour of love really. There’s all tiny beads and buttons on it too. I’m pleased to have finished it really  

 

Okay, that’s all for now folks!

WhippoorWhy? Whippoorwil!!

Any Great British Sewing Bee fans out there? It's one of my Friday night pleasures! I record it and when M goes round to his mates with Jack for a few beers, I have a whole peaceful hour to curl up and watch it. Last week through saw me sitting forward in my chair as Lynda came on wearing the most stunning rainbow shawl!

Dear Lordy....I just had to have it - armed with my trusty kindle, I searched the web and found that it was made for her by her daughter, who has a great blog called Crafts from the Cwtch, and with a little more research I found the pattern and the yarn which was used Whippoorwill, which is on Ravelry, with the yarn Kauni which I found on eBay! So I am currently waiting for the yarn to arrive, I have the pattern purchased, printed and ready to go, I need to knit a swatch and then I'm off! I can't wait!