Here’s my work in progress for this week. I’ve wanted to paint a portrait of my cat, Maui, ever since I got my paints for Christmas, but haven’t got around to it yet. As this will only be my second painting ever, I’ve been too nervous that I will mess it up. This is going to be a long process before it gets finished. So far I have I underpainted the canvas, sketched the outline and blocked in some colours. I’m really encouraged because, even though it’s very rough, it actually looks quite like Maui already!

Hoping I get a change to work on it some more soon. More to follow…

I just bought a sewing machine last week, so I’ve started to make my way through the pairs of trousers I’ve bought and never quite got around to taking up to fit my short legs. I hate to throw away anything that may come in handy later, but I’ve never been able to think of anything to do with the leftover bands from the bottom of trouser legs.

This is a bit outside my comfort zone as I usually plan everything before I start a project, but I was struck by inspiration after hemming a pair of jeans, so I decided to try to make a hairband from one of the remnants.

The cutoff.

I folded the raw edge over twice and hemmed it. I used black thread, so it doesn’t really show up in the photo.

Here I have just started embroidering. I backstitched a freeform design using 4 strands of DMC embroidery cotton.

Here’s the finished embroidery.

I’ve been wondering what to do with these yummy mixed berry shade beads I picked up a while ago. I stitched them on with nylon monofilament so the stitches wouldn’t show.

Here’s the finished article in use.

Thanks to whipup for inspiring me to start this blog!

The WIP Friday meme is spreading around craftblogville and I’m thinking it’s a great way to introduce you to a range of what I do. Here are some of my “in progress” projects: 

Before we moved to Canada, a very sweet loved-up pair of doves used to sit on our garden wall in Durham. I took a photo of them and converted it into a cross stitch pattern. At 10 inches wide, the completed piece will be composed of 25,000 cross stitches… I split the pattern into three vertical panels to make it easier to work with, and, as you can see, I’m about 1/3 through the second panel, so I still have a long way to go.

I am crocheting this afghan and so far I have completed 26 of the 63 squares. My third block colour will be a mid-blue and I am going to finish the afghan with navy blue borders between the squares. This is really a winter project, so I’m probably going to put the box of squares away until the weather starts getting colder again!

I know they look like funny yellow ghosts at the moment, but they are going to be part of my polymer clay fridge magnet series. When the wings (shown in pic), beaks (on right of pic) and feet (still to make) are attached, they’ll look a lot better (I hope!). Bottom right of the picture are some backfilled clay tiles I’ve been experimenting with. I think they look cool (especially the bottom one), but not sure what I’ll do with them yet.

I just started playing with origami. This was originally going to be a mobile, but now I’m not really sure what do to with it. When I’ve figured it out, I have some prettier origami papers to try out as well.

There are more things that I’m working on too (painting, sewing, beading… I like variety), but this post is probably long enough already, so I’ll call it a day for now.

So this is my blog. I hope I’ll be inspired to be more creative by keeping track of my crafts here.

Care for an avocado?