Silky Chick's Blog

First Crop!

2012-02-13T11:35:00.000+11:00

Of potatoes, Golden Delight specifically. I was chuffed to bits to discover our first crop of potatoes were actually ready and all because I started pulling out weeds that were hogging all the veggie plot space. We've also got tomoatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, sugar pumpkin, butternut squash, kent pumpkins and carrots growing, the spaghetti squash are having a fabulous time and growing like nutters :-)

Our First Egg!

2011-11-11T18:01:00.003+11:00

Woohoo, Summer & Dan just checked the chook house and one of our 5 gals has laid her very first egg, so here it is!

Felt 'n' Fibre Bows at Pre-school

2011-10-29T16:33:00.001+11:00

On Friday Summer, Tommy & I headed off to Lambie Street pre-school in town for our usual drop off for Summer, but today was a bit special as I was asked if I'd share my crafty skills with the children. So, armed with a big bag of wool, silk and other fibres, including angelina, we set up our table for the fun ahead. Lots of PVA glue (watered down a bit), brushes, fibres, cling film/wrap and numerous bowls to cover. I showed the children how to wrap the bowls and place upside down on another piece of cling film/wrap, then slather it in PVA glue and next to start pulling and thinning out the wool and placing it on the PVA'd bows, then add more PVA, more wool ... you get the picture! We left the bowls to dry over the weekend and I pulled them apart when I next took Summer in so that the odd damp bowl could dry out properly and on Friday just gone (28th) the bowls were put out on display with a lovely 'thank you' from the children and they gave me a big thank you card to take home, so here it is. I hope to get a picture up of all the bowls together that I think someone might have taken so you can see what wonderful bowls the children made.

'Tip Top' Tommy's 1st Birthday!

2011-10-27T14:13:00.000+11:00

My goodness, where has a whole year gone?! I still can't get over the fact that our little boy is now 1yrs old! We had a quiet celebration with the three of us as Dan was at work on the 20th, but celebrated in style on the weekend with our good friends - and now I'm mostly still knackered from all the organising, cooking and everything else in-between!

So here's the birthday boy on his big day, 20th October 2011!

Friendly Plastic Pendants

2011-10-27T14:08:00.000+11:00

Just a couple of images of some of the pendants I've made, I really ought to pull my finger out and get them listed somewhere and sell them. Artfire's been recommended, so I might just give that a go!

Contemporary Craft Retreat

2011-10-27T12:19:00.000+11:00

I had a fab crafty weekend away a couple of weeks ago (14-16th Oct) in Canberra at the Contemporary Craft Retreat that Lex Sorrentino organised (http://www.contemporarycraftretreat.com.au/). The last time I did any kind of craft course was over 5 yrs ago and that was a week long one at Missenden Abbey before we emigrated here! I wish that there had been more time to do more classes as there were so many I wanted to attend, maybe next year! As it was, I attended 4 classes; Bio Bowl Felting with Polymer Clay Features with Wilma Simmons, Funtastic Plastic with Kathy Guertz, Photopolymer Plates with Lara Le Reveur and Seated Lady using Paverpol with Denise Keeley. I had a great time, met some new crafty people and made some great connections as well as learning lots. The retreat will be on again next year from 12-14th October 2012 in Canberra and I shall most definitely be going again!

Felted Bowl

Funtastic Plastic Cuff Bracelet

Paverpol Seated Lady

Texture Plate

Pumpkin, Orange & Choc Chip Muffins

2011-09-21T14:55:00.001+11:00

These yummy scrummy muffins are were a happy mistake I made when I attempted to make cookies some time ago and now they're muffins.

Pumpkin, Orange & Choc Chip Muffins Recipe

750g Pumpkin (doesn’t have to be exact!)

1 Cup (160g) Raw Caster Sugar or Soft Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup (100g) Butter

Zest & juice from 2 large Oranges

2 Cups (300g) Flour (if you're using wholemeal flour, use 2 3/4 cups as 3/4 of it is the bran that gets left behind when you sift it and it's best left out as otherwise it dries them out too much)

1 tsp Baking powder

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Vanilla

Dark Chocolate Chips 250g (decent chocolate chips, not nasty cheapo choc chips!)

Olive oil

Heat oven to 200 °C. Peel & cut pumpkin into small pieces and place on top of foil (make sure you've enough so that you can cover the pumpkin over) in an oven dish, sprinkle generously with olive oil and cook until tender (approx.30-40 mins).

Cream sugar and butter together until light and fluffy then add in the cooked pumpkin, orange zest, juice, and vanilla...mix well.

In a separate bowl, sift together: flour, baking powder, baking soda & cinnamon. Slowly add to pumpkin mix and stir until mixed well...but don't over mix. Stir in Chocolate Chips. Drop mixture by spoonfuls into muffin tray(s). Bake until light brown (15-20 minutes) and then immediately remove from cookie sheet onto wire cooling racks.

Enjoy!

The Chook's Have Landed!

2011-08-31T15:47:00.001+11:00

What a busy, exciting and slightly sad morning we've had! After a LONG wait, the day arrived for us to collect our chooks from the livestock yards in town. Having already been into town once to drop of Summer to pre-school, made a mad dash to collect the post and then straight home to put Tommy to bed for a sleep before heading back out again at 10.15. We picked up Dan en-route to the yards armed with 3 cat baskets for 6 chooks, clearly I was being rather over ambitious about the size they would be as they all fitted into one with room for more! Although we were early, the queue was already quite long for collections, all the chooks were on the truck all rammed into cages :-( which reminded me somewhat of the battery farm chooks. We collected our 6 chooks, hit the supplies store for feed, dropped Dan back at work and headed home. I got the chooks installed into their new home and they all took some coaxing to come out of the basket, clearly they're just used to small enclosed spaces. I was devastated to discover one of the chooks (an Isa Brown with black flecks), had a gammy leg. I had a good feel and it wasn't broken, just badly deformed, poor love. I rang the place that had organised the chooks and headed back down to the yards, the chook man had already gone, so went to Elders as instructed. They rang the chappie for me and he's going to sort out another one next time he's down our way. Not a problem, but the dilemma now is what to do with the poor chook. One of the girls said she'd take her home, but I don't know what's going to happen. As the chook grows, she'll obviously get heavier and heavier and will be less able to walk, which was proving difficult for her now at only a few months old. They asked me what I wanted to do ... now there's no way I'm dispatching a chook, I just can't do it, but it's the kindest thing to do. So I left her there with them to decide what was the best thing to do and left with tears in my eyes :-(

Here are the girls, 3 Isa Browns & 2 Black Australorps; Betty, Henrietta, Mildred, Mabel & Doris.

I've still got to sort out getting some more parts welded to make my old craft stand more stable before we cover it in netting and attach it to the chook house, then we'll replace the busted wood from the first chook house they sent us and have that on the opposite end IYSWIM, then they'll have a massive area for when they're not out roaming.

Woohoo, a new tap!

2011-08-20T16:03:00.000+11:00

Yes, very sad I know to be getting soooo excited over a new tap, BUT, we have been without a kitchen tap for a week and running backwards and forwards to the laundry has been very irritating and the fact that I kept turning the tap on and off in the kitchen was so annoying. Now that the new fangled tap's in place, I keep finding myself going to the laundry to fill up the kettle etc. So here it is, this time I think the tap will last for longer, the other shower stylee tap we had was a pull-out one and the pipe just split from all the pulling in and out. Not bad for $99 from ebay brand new me thinks!

Letters for Chloe

2011-06-30T17:36:00.000+11:00

As my friend's daughter is about to get a new bedroom, here's what I'm sending her for her new room!

Birthday Card for a Special Friend

2011-06-30T09:22:00.000+11:00

A card for a special friend ....

Green & Gold Bracelet

2011-06-24T16:13:00.002+11:00

Another friendly plastic bracelet, which I made for Mandy (my hairdresser) as she made me a gorgeous green scarf.

Latest Creation

2011-06-24T15:24:00.005+11:00

I managed to have a brief dabble the other day (weeks ago) and I made a bezel using my CaBezel jewellery moulds and a couple of days ago I actually got around to turning the bezel into 'something' at long last! I used black premo sculpey for the bezel (really, really old stuff I was about to bin as I'm sure it's 10+ years old, but managed with a lot of effort, vaseline and a pasta machine (ouch!), I managed to get it into a condition so it could be used instead of binned, yay! Apparently baby oil will do the same thing, but I didn't have any at the time. For the insert to the bezel (the pretty bit), I used silver Friendly Plastic, several different green alcohol inks and and orangey one, dabbed away until I was satisfied with the colours and then added some burnt orange FP bitz and popped them into the bezel and nuked it with my heat gun (an oven or skillet will also do). Once it had done it's melding thing, I waited for it to cool down, then used the UV resin (Lisa Pavelka's Magic Glos) over the top and nuked under my UV Nail Lamp for 12 mins. Ding and it was done! I'm very happy with the results and made up a rubber cord for it to hang on and I wore it to the hairdressers Thursday morning and already have an order for another one to be created, how fab is that?! If anyone's interested in UV Lamps btw, I have 2 new one's to sell that WILL cure the UV Resin and the new Shellac nailpolish that's hit the market :-)

FP Bracelet Revamped & Finished!

2011-04-19T15:40:00.005+11:00

I took it all apart, UV resin coated the beads (as I should have done prior to construction!) and then changed the bead caps and toggle and voila .....

Friendly Plastic Bracelet

2011-03-07T16:00:00.003+11:00

I started making this bracelet a few weeks ago, I only got as far as a few beads and got interrupted (as one does!), so today, at last, I have almost finished the bracelet. I need to make it a tad shorter as it's way too big for my wrist and put resin on beads to protect them. I still need to perfect the wiggly lines on the focal bead, but not bad for a first attempt at making beads with FP me thinks!

I won, twice!

2011-02-03T18:20:00.005+11:00

It's not often that I win anything, let alone something crafty, but how lucky am I eh to have won twice in a few months from Myléne Hillam's blog & Lisa Pavelka's too and this is what I've got ....

Oooh, I feel a crafty session coming on this weekend!

Christmas Pud Recipe .... the best ever!

2010-12-25T08:39:00.003+11:00

If you want the ultimate in Christmas pud recipe's, I think this is it! My teacher at school, Mrs McNabb gave us this recipe and we made pud's at school when I was about 9, after we'd taken it home and eaten it, my Mum threw out her recipe that she'd used for donkey's years and took on Mrs McNabb's. I've modified it slightly as we can't get candied peel over here and I couldn't be bothered to make it again and to be honest, it didn't make a difference to me that it wasn't there, I also use semi-dried cherries that I got from the health food shop rather than glace, but it's upto you!

Ingredients:

2oz/56g plain flour

1oz/28g baking powder

4oz/114g white breadcrumbs

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

4oz/114g dark brown sugar

4oz/114g shredded suet

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp treacle

12oz/340g currants

12oz/340g sultanas

12oz/340g raisins

4oz/114g candied peel (optional)

4oz/114g semi dried cherries (or glace)

4oz/114g chopped almonds

1/2 pt guiness/stout

2 apples grated

1 carrot grated

1 lemon grated & juice

Method:

Mix all ingredients together and put in lidded bowl or cover with clingfilm, into simmering water for 6hrs & keep topping up the water so that it doesn't boil dry.

Enjoy!

Welcome to the world .....

2010-10-26T16:28:00.004+11:00

Tommy! We had our gorgeous baby boy on Wednesday 20th October:-

Thomas Michael Feeny-Marks (Tommy)
Born 20/10/2010
At 08:48 by c-section
Weight: 8lbs 10.5oz (by the time he'd finished having so many wee's)
Length: 52cm
Head: 36cm
Blue Eyes & dark blonde hair

Friendly Plastic Cuff Bracelet/Bangle

2010-06-11T11:49:00.007+11:00

I had a dabble yesterday after clearing some space (stunned silence ..... I know, I know, I'm so rubbish at tidying up after my craft sessions!). I've made my first bangle, it' s a bit crude and needs some tidying up, but I'm quite pleased with it for my first attempt. I used FP in silver/black and MP blue swirl/blue, cut out some holes with my sugarcraft cutters and ooozed the FP through the holes. Next time I'll try to keep the top holey layer of FP unheated as best as possible so that the background colour 'pops' through better rather than melding together, then I'll have to use a bit of heat to get it to bend round, hmmmmm.

Baby Scans - 19wks

2010-06-03T09:19:00.001+11:00

It's 19 wks already, OMG, where did time go to? The last one is feet!

A few bits & bobs

2010-05-10T14:01:00.005+11:00

I've just been playing with my new camera that DH gave me for my birthday recently. I'm so pleased with it, it's fantastic for the closeup shots!

The first two images are 'work in progress', I still need to decide on what to do with the backs of these.

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T10:26:00.002+11:00

Look what my little one made for me with her Daddy's help at pre-school the other night?! How fab are they, I was chuffed to bits to receive them this morning, although someone didn't want to hand them over and cried!

Exciting News!

2010-04-21T19:33:00.003+11:00

Bub no. 2 is on it's way! I'm 13wks 5 days and EDD is currently 27th October, so I'll be going in a week before for the c-section and they won't be doing that on a weekend, so it'll more than likely be on Weds 20th October! Here's a couple of scan's from Monday :-)

It's been a while .....

2010-03-22T11:14:00.003+11:00

How slack have I been?!!! I meant to post when we got back from our LA/Florida/UK trip and just didn't get round to it. We had a great time, 10 flights and a 2 1/2 year old in tow, it was entertaining to say the least. One bit of advice that my friend forgot to give us was to pay to use the business class lounge, smaller space to run around after a stir crazy child! Hot tips for travelling with a small person; if they're in nappies still, use pull-ups, lots of lollipops for take off and landing to help with the equalizing, a portable dvd player for internal flights as they don't have in flight entertainment and the kids packs are for 5+ and pay to use the business class lounge when hanging around for flights.

We have two new additons to our menagerie, Charlie & Lola. I popped into the vets to pickup wormers and flea treatments and came home with two gorgeous 5/6wk old kittens that had been dumped behind Landcare (rural supplies) in town, good job I fell in love with them and said I'd take them as the lady at the vets told me afterwards, they were about to put them down :-( So now we have 5 cats eeeeek - Billy - 16 (now officially classed as 'geriatric'), Pickles - 4 1/2, Tina - 3 and Charlie & Lola who are coming up for 5 months old, oh and just one horse now, Ellie who is 24/25, aka 'The Paddock Basher'. Here's a pic of Charlie & Lola Christmas Eve, I'll get some more up-to-date pix done soon (well DH will!).

Pendants Galore!

2009-09-15T10:09:00.004+11:00

I've been playing with setting the friendly plastic into bezels and have at long last got round to putting them all together and coating them in resin, not bad for a first attempt, a few gaps here and there, but with a bit more experimentation, I'll get there!

Lookie Lookie!

2009-08-18T14:56:00.002+11:00

At what the lovely Jana sent me as a pressie for entering one of the friendly plastic comps. I've been meaning to post this for a while as I got it in July! I absolutely love it and it goes with pretty much anything as it has lots of different colours in it!

Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary!

2009-07-10T18:36:00.004+11:00

I made this card for my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary, which was on Saturday 4th July! I wish we could have been there with them, so I'm a bit sad, but maybe next year! From left to right (hopefully I've got this right); Sheila & hubby, Dad & Mum (Mike & Sylvia), behind them is Unlce Ray, Grandpa & Grandma Brown (Dad's parents - Leondard & Ivy) and my Mum's parents (Basil & Victoria Feeny), shame you can't see Bas behind Nan's hat!

Funky New Hats!

2009-06-21T10:32:00.003+11:00

I found this wonderful lady on Etsy.com who makes the most amazing crochet fab funky hats and her name's Janet (funkyhooker - what a fantastic name!). If anyone's interested in Janet's fab hats, you can find her shop here; http://www.funkyhooker.etsy.com, just let her know Sara @ Silkychicken sent you!

Bling Bling!

2009-06-18T15:52:00.003+11:00

I’ve been working on something a bit different, a beading project as I wanted to make a present for a very dear friend of mine. It started off as a beaded bling bling bra strap set, but has now become a full matching set - necklace, earrings, bracelet & watch. The bra straps have proved quite perplexing, as they needed to have a bit of give in them but not be so stretchy that you ended up with gaps between the beads when worn. I've tried so many different things and have ended up with 0.8mm stretch magic, as that’s the thickest I can use with cultured pearls, but I have had to pull the stretch magic through each bead using a needle threading tool doodah, what a pain that’s been! I've also decided to start making them as bridal/special occasion jewellery and I've got a silver version, gold version and a red and gold version.

Friendly Plastic Catherine Wheel Pendant

2009-06-16T09:34:00.002+11:00

Here's my latest creation which I've made for the Marbling Magic challenge on www.friendlyplastic.blogspot.com There's a couple of bits I need to 'tweak' and I need to finish the back and add a coat of resin.

Another birthday card!

2009-06-01T10:58:00.000+11:00

I had a lovely surprise this morning, a lovely card from Christine (Charliecat CBC Forum), we thought it'd got lost in the post but it arrived, maybe they sent it by sea in error eh?! Anyway, it's on my sideboard and thought I'd upload it for you all to see.

Alcohol Inks

2009-05-03T11:04:00.002+11:00

I had a go playing with alcohol inks on FP and using isopropyl alcohol. The effects are lovely, however I don't seem to be able to do anything quite as lovely as Jana's Ewy's work using this technique.

Tick Tock!

2009-05-03T08:44:00.005+11:00

I've been having a play with my Friendly Plastic again as I wanted to create a watch with a difference. I've been having some trouble with getting the watch head to stay in place in a pleasing way and having played with all sorts of ideas (including cutting down a tuna can!), I've had to stick with rolling some FP and using it to secure it in place, it's a bit messy, so I still need to work on the back to make it look more aesthetically pleasing, but that requires a bit more playing around with the piece. This one is my first attempt, so it's no perfect by any means as it's been heated so many times some of the bits are over melted and a bit wonky, but I LOVE the colours and I can't remember which alcohol inks I used, so I'm making sure that I keep all my recipes written down for any future pieces I make!

And another one ....

2009-04-24T13:26:00.005+11:00

from Sue F arrived in the post this morning with a lovely funky fairy on!

Ellen's Card!

2009-04-24T10:06:00.002+11:00

This is Ellen's beautiful card that my naughty little girl 'borrowed' so I forgot to scan it in as it had been moved elsewhere (sorry Ellen!).

Birthday Cards (CBC Forum)

2009-04-22T18:27:00.003+11:00

Here are all my lovely cards from the Craftsbycarolyn forum I belong to, plus one extra one from my sis as it's also handmade. From top to bottom they have been made by; Ruth (my sis), Sue, Smayed, Purplepenguin, Melissa, Kinglake, Joanne, Jake, Craftyhazelnut & Carolyn. I'll upload the other three as and when they arrive.

Birthday Cards (CBC Forum)

2009-04-22T17:57:00.003+11:00

Fairy

2009-04-22T10:17:00.004+11:00

I decided to have another go at making a friendly plastic doll of sorts as the first attempt was a tad basic, but hey, we've all gotta start somewhere! This fairy is mixed media this time and is made from friendly plastic, angelina fibres, sugar wire & green silk fibres. I'm quite pleased with my green fairy and think I'll make some more for Christmas this year.

My 40th Birthday!

2009-04-19T13:45:00.000+11:00

I had a lovely day on Saturday, openened all my lovely cards & pressies (forum cards to be scanned and uploaded soon!). Dan, Bob & I went out for brekkie at the Lott and then I set about the task of supervising the boys with food prep. The party zoomed by and suddenly it was all over and I realised that I'd done really well not getting too squiffy until Bob had started making B52's! Here's a few pix of the evening.

Birthday Girl!

2009-04-17T08:50:00.006+11:00

I'm a bit slow in posting atm, but here we go! It was Summer's 2nd birthday a couple of weeks ago and she had a lovely time, I was completely knackered from all the cooking, baking and running around, but a good time was had by all and the excitement over the birthday cake really said it all!

Surprise, surprise!

This is one of the birthday dresses that Melinda and Ian gave Summer.

Arm op

2009-03-20T09:14:00.002+11:00

Hi All, nothing crafty to report as I had my arm op on Tuesday, op should have been at 2pm, but I didn't get knocked out til just after 5pm and I was in surgery for longer than anticipated ... must have been all that granny's knitting of wirework holding my elbow together that did it I reckon! Anyway, I didn't want to stay as Dan and Summer had been hanging around all day and that would mean another journey back to Canberra and home again the following day, so I insisted I went home and we got home just after 22.30, fortunately the roo's stayed away from the road as they're a nightmare in the dark. I've pulled off my bandages as they were too tight and now the swelling's gone down, so I just have a long plaster with some hexagon shaped squishy stuff over it. Stitches are due out 27th, but I'm still waiting for an appt from the fracture clinic back in Canberra for that one, which means another day sat around waiting to see an ortho just to get signed off, last time we waitied 3hrs past our appt time, it's just mad and frustrating when you have a little one in tow! I'm not sure if I need any more x-rays, we'll see, but I have all 30 odd of my x-rays at home with me, so I'll be mostly taking pix of them before I have to hand them all back over! I'll post some pix when I get a mo :-)

Friendly Plastic Beads .... my first attempt!

2009-03-06T18:05:00.005+11:00

Well, here's my first decent attempt at making some FP beads, I've even managed to coat them in envirotex! I messed up a bit by not cleaning drips from around the cocktail sticks that they were resting on, but managed to cut off the excess that had attached the cocktail sticks (oopsey!), so just a little bit of touch up was required. Not bad for the first batch, I just need to decide how I want them to be on a necklace and see what I've got in my stash that'll do the beads justice. The colours I used were gold/black, chocolate/black, red/red.

Wiggly Pendant

2009-02-17T15:47:00.003+11:00

I've been having a play today with something new, using FP, hammered silver wire and a glass nugget. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I need to do some more playing as the droplets at the end of the wires aren't quite right.

Funky Wonky Clocks

2009-02-16T08:04:00.008+11:00

Ok, so this is something other than Friendly Plastic that I make, but .... it does have some Friendly Plastic on it, it wouldn't be the same without it! Each clock is hand sculpted from scratch from a modelling compound called Sculptamold (clay, papier mache & plaster) and I call this series 'Space in Time'.

Friendly Plastic is Back!

2009-02-10T08:01:00.003+11:00

Most of you already know that Amaco have relaunched Friendly Plastic and some new (and old) colours will be coming out soon! There's a yahoo group for FP enthusiasts (see further down the page on the right). Linda Peterson has kindly setup an FP blog that both Linda and Jana will be imparting their wonderful knowledge. I've put the blogs/website links below and also permanently further down the page on the right.

http://www.friendlyplastic.blogspot.com/
http://www.janaewy.blogspot.com/
http://www.justbananas.com

Aerial House Pix

2009-02-09T12:51:00.004+11:00

I know some of you have already seen these, but I've pulled everything from the Silkychickendesigns.com.au website and am putting it on here now as it's easier.

We're the house with the blue/grey roof btw!

This is the day we moved in, so no furniture, not so tidy now! The lounge/diner/kitchen are all one area and because of the expanse of glass it's like being in a hot house, so we had to put air con in.

View from the front verandah with low cloud (we're approx. 1200m above sea level here).

A few more pieces ......

2009-02-04T08:07:00.007+11:00

The first two pieces are the back and front of the same piece, using Liz Welch's oooooooze technique with a sugarcraft cutter and angelina fibres. The heart is just angelina fibres with an outline of gold/black FP.

Things 'n' Stuff

2009-01-30T11:20:00.007+11:00

I thought I'd post some pix of some previous FP things I'd made. The flowers were made a few years back now, but I still love them, they make great pendants or Christmas tree decorations.

Oooohhh Goodies!

2009-01-18T10:23:00.004+11:00

I know it's been a while, but I've just about got over the lurgi from Christmas and then a nasty bladder infection which has taken ages to shift. I got a lovely surprise in the post on Thursday morning ..... goodies from Amaco! How nice is that? And all for sending in something to the challenge yay! Here's a link to the Amaco judging gallery, so me really fabby pieces and so lovely to see other people's work - http://www.amaco.com/friendly-plastic-judging-gallery?utm_source=FP-Judging&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Jan-09

More moulds!

2008-12-28T18:08:00.004+11:00

My new Krafty Lady moulds arrived Christmas Eve yippee! I haven't felt like playing with them until today. I used a lot of scrap bits of FP for the mask and Rub & Buff, alcohol inks on the pendant (yet to be finished) and scraps to fill it up and I dug out my pot of FP pellets and had a play with my donut mould - inspired by Liz Welch's piece on Krafty Lady's website. I really must get finishing the other pendants I made months ago and coat them in resin, I'll post pix of them when I've done so!

eeeewwwwww!

2008-12-23T11:40:00.004+11:00

Drat, I've got the dreaded lurgi! Poor Summer was sick Saturday night, still off her food, but ok, but I seem to have full on gastro-enteritis, so I feel really PANTS! I'm hoping it'll be gone in time for Christmas day, otherwise we'll be at home doing buggerall (fingers crossed Dan doesn't get it either). Not much crafting happening here, but lots of films watched as I really don't feel like doing anything, so we watched Tropic Thunder (absolutely brilliant), the new bond film (good), oh and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, absolutely hilarious and so good I bought a copy from eBay and it turned up today, so a superfast turnaround, especially this time of year! Watch out for the nudie rudie bits, not one for the kiddies! Have a fabby Christmas eveyone!

Kraftylady Art Moulds & Friendly Plastic

2008-12-17T08:51:00.012+11:00

I've just ordered some more moulds, which may be here before Christmas. However, it's prompted me to pull my finger out and dig out my stash of moulds, now that I've found them all that is! So they're now all boxed together and I thought I'd have a play with my FP. I only managed to burn myself once and here are my results - going from top left to right; I've used silver/black for the mask, black/black for the shield, highlighted with Rubb & Buff in copper, silver/black for the feather, black/black with Rub & Buff gold leaf, I've used alcohol inks on the first heart (green) on gold/back, purple/black for the 2nd heart and a mix of red alcohol inks on the 3rd heart on gold/black and for the last moulded item I've used brown/back highlighted with gold leaf Rub & Buff (not that you can really see the highlights in my image - be great if my light box would turn up then I could take some decent images!). I heated all of these items up on my non-stick teflon craft sheet, which is great. If anyone's interested in buying the sheets, let me know as I've obtained a 54ft roll of the stuff!

FP More Pix

2008-12-15T15:40:00.007+11:00

I've just finished weaving some ribbon to carry the pendant as I can't find my gold beadalon anywhere, not entirely happy with it, but I'm a bit rushed as I need to go to the post office asap.

Friendly Plastic Challenge

2008-12-15T13:19:00.004+11:00

I've just completed my first piece (or pieces) for the AMACO Friendly Plastic CHA Challenge and on the last day that entries are accepted, oops! I decided to make a valentines jewellery set, which I've done using gold/black FP, for the centrepiece I've used several of the Adirondack Alcohol Inks on the FP to create a beautiful mottled effect (I guess that's what you'd call it). I ran out of time to coat it in resin, which gives much more depth to the pieces, but I'll make another set with the resin coating for myself I think.

My first blog!

2008-12-15T13:19:00.002+11:00

Well, at long last, here's my very first blog! I really meant to start something when we moved over, but time just ran away from us and here I am, nearly 2 1/2 years later, blogging at last! For those of you who don't know, we moved from Rickmansworth, Herts in England to Cooma, NSW in Australia on 31st August '06 with our 3 moggies and one a bit container's worth of house stuff (well mostly crafty stuff). We stayed with friends for a couple of months until we found somewhere suitable to buy (there was nothing worth renting that I would let my cats live in let alone a newborn baby!). Luckily the process of purchasing property out here is a lot easier than in England, as a standard rule, you can put an offer in on a property and move in within 6 weeks, in our case we did it in 3 weeks, but that's the quickest time frame that you can do it in.

We got the keys on 30th Oct, moved in 31st Oct (first container load was delivered) and the moggies we picked up on the 4th Nov from Sydney quarantine (they spent 30 days there). 5 hrs to get there and 5 back and they did remarkably well as it's the longest journey by car they've ever done. A week or so of moving them in they started to explore the outside world, took a while as they'd got used to bars! Sadly Ed died 3 months later, he had a massive heart attack when his brother scared the living daylights out of him busting through the catflap one night, but it was quick and was better than the kidney failure that he had been coping with (the vet said after checking him out when he passed away that he wouldn't have had much longer anyway). A very sad day indeed :-(

We have since adopted another moggie from the RSPCA locally, so we have three furry friends and 2 horses, oh and our 20 month old daughter, Summer, who was born on 4th April 2007, I can't quite believe she'll be two years old in a matter of months!