Introducing Charlie & Grace

These mice are Charlie and Grace, hand-knitted by my Mum recently.

She made them to feature on our website and help us model our pottery pieces. They will also be accompanying us at our outdoor events as Doodlebugs mascots. So, if you spot them leave a comment and let us know where you saw them.

Pottery Easter Egg Cups and Easter Knitting & Crochet!

Suddenly it is almost Easter so we have been busy painting pottery for our Easter events.

I posted pics of some of our Easter bisque on here a few weeks ago but it looks so much better painted, so here we go......

from bisque to this with Mayco Jungle Gems glaze

A plain car egg cup

transformed into this with Mayco Stroke and Coat

We also have standard egg cups

and chick shaped egg cups

And of course hand-knitted egg cosies to go with them....

Join us if you can at Priory Gardens, Orpington, Kent for the Easter Fair on Monday 9th April 2012 at 11am-12.30pm

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.

My first entry for the Sketchbook Challenge

This has been great fun to do. The Sketchbook Challenge was a site I found whilst on the internet looking for something else and I thought I would give it a go as I had bought a sketchbook about a year ago and never used it! See Sketchbook Phobia post dated 2nd Feb.

The Sketchbook Challenge is a way to encourage you to open up your sketchbook and discover what you can do and that the sketchbook can be one of the most valued tools in your artistic tool box. At this point I wasn't sure if the Challenge was for me but then I read 'Wherever you are on your artistic journey, whatever medium or style you work in The Sketchbook Challenge is for you!'

The theme for February was 'Close Up' so I decided to use some photos of marine fish that I took last Easter and do close up observational drawings of the Blue Saltwater Neon fish

and the Longnose Hawfish.

Using a viewfinder (I just cut a rectangle out of a piece of paper and laid it over the image to visually crop the picture of the fish) then everything I saw within the frame is what I drew. This method really helps you to zoom in on what you want to see rather than seeing the whole image.

The first picture I did was of the Blue Saltwater Neon fish and I used a normal pencil to draw with and then added blue stripes with a coloured pencil.

For the second picture I used Letraset Pro markers to draw the pattern around the fin area of the fish.

For the Longnose Hawkfish I used a bright orange coloured pencil for the repetitive pattern.

As I enjoyed doing these I then went on and found a picture of a Lionfish

and painted a close up of this with vibrant watercolours and felt pen.

So hey presto! The first page of my sketchbook is done!

When you are done you are invited to upload your photos onto the Flickr Sketchbook Challenge group and you can not only view your photos but everyone else who has entered too. If you tag the photo with the monthly code you stand a chance of winning a prize.

Look out for the new theme which will be out on the first of March!