Stencils

I recently bought Ed Roth's book Stencil 101.  As you can see from the photo, I'm having mixed success so far.  I used a sponge for a couple but they bled too much, the sponge soaks up far too much paint.  Then I tried an itty bitty brush, which looked better but not good enough.  The stencils are not going to last as long as I would like them to.

I'll just have to use the stag as a Christmas decoration ...

Ripe

... almost.

The blackberries are a long way off ripe:

My berry patch has turned into a berry jungle.  I had no idea raspberries could be so invasive, they have totally taken over the strawberry patch, it's now far too crowded and I don't have time to do anything about it.  Some of the plants are not looking too healthy - yellowing on the leaves between the veins like in the blackberry photo above - the raspberry invasion has depleted the soil.

Once we start eating berries we'll pretty much have berries every week til end of summer - we've got strawberries, blueberries (two varieties, one of them is a dual cropper), Waiau raspberries (red ones), ivory raspberries (orange ones, dual croppers), berry delight (a loganberry/boysenberry hybrid) and blackberries.  I love berries, and so does Ruby - she has already eaten the ones in the photos, and any others that seemed ripe enough for her to munch.

Spreading the love

One of my nieces turned 3 recently and I thought I'd spread the stamp-love by making her some stamps.  I also thought she might like making some stamps of her own (or her mum might) so I put together a little 'make-it-yourself' kit with some wooden mounts and craft foam.

Constraints

I've got a few constraints on my crafting at the moment: not much time and no spare cash.  I'm trying to be frugal and only make things using craft supplies I already have - luckily for me in the past I haven't needed to be frugal so I have a well stocked craft 'studio'. I have only snippets of time to craft, so can only tackle small projects.  Not only that but Christmas is a few short breaths away. So I've been making some ornaments using up some of my scraps and indulging in my new found love of homemade stamps.

A house ornament using Retromama's Home for the Holidays tutorial:

Tagged

A friend bought Pepper-Mae a tag-toy which she loves wrestling with so I decided to make one for my youngest nephew and my great niece.  Quite pleased with how they turned out.