Granny Squares - beware they are addictive!

Thanks to a fantastic series of you tube videos by Bethintx I have managed to teach myself how to crochet my first granny square.

I have used a lovely yarn by Gedifra which I found at a bargain price of £2 a ball in a charity shop in Brighton  (unfortunately,I think it is now discontinued). I love the different colours in the yarn and how they blend in and out.

The only trouble is they are totally addictive and enjoyable to make.

Any suggestions what I should make with them?

Crochet Update - Yorkshire Cowl

I have now finished the Yorkshire Cowl that I first posted about back in November last year. It was a great  beginners project and has helped me move on to more adventurous things. I would say that it is quite loose around the neck as I added more stitches so if you want it to fit tighter round the neck then stick with the number of stithes the pattern suggests.

This is how it looks (thank you to my daughter for modeling)...

Quick and Easy Mother's Day Card

It is Mother's Day here in the UK tomorrow and I wanted to give my very special Mum a homemade card. I think the simplest designs are the best so I adapted an idea from one of Marion Emberson's tutorials.

As this is only my second handmade card I hesitate to call this a tutorial as I don't feel qualified to 'teach' what I did but here is how I made it!

Firstly, I bought a blank window greeting card and recycled some clear plastic film from a box of cakes and taped it over the window part of the card.

I then cut out these daisy shapes from an embossed piece of pink card that I bought in Hobbycraft but you could use a flower punch which would be a lot easier!

To make a feature of the centre of the flowers I stuck on some pearl gems from this set

 so they looked like this

I then used some carbon paper to write a draft of my message inside the card and went over the words with a black pen. I couldn't trust myself to write it straight on to the card!

I then stuck the pink flowers around the edge of the window with some double sided adhesive from one of those rollers which worked really well.

I continued to stick the flowers on until I felt the card looked busy enough and this is the finished article........

I would love to hear your comments so please feel free to leave me a message..

Eggciting New Easter Pottery Pieces!

Our new delivery has just arrived and I wanted to show you the new pottery pieces we have for Easter. They are lovely and will look great when they have been painted. These little assorted bunnies are really cute and great to paint with a faded paint technique. For this the chosen paint colour is applied and then it is lightly wiped off so that it appears to have faded from the main part of the piece but the colur stays strong and dark in the creases of  the piece.

      

I also love these Hareball bunnies.

I think they will look really good painted with Mayco's Jungle Gems glaze which contains glass frit crystals and specks that melt during the firing process. As these crystals "bloom" and spread they produce dramatic, colorful effects like this.

And our beautiful Henrietta Hen (which can be done with or without legs)

We also have egg holders, egg cups, egg shapes, egg shaped pots and lots more (see below) so check our our website http://www.doodlebugspottery.co.uk/ to attend one of our events or arrange your own painting event.