Taggie Blanket

These pictures have been hanging out on my camera for a while - just a little Taggie blanket that I made for my Niece which matches the hanging that I gave her.

2 months later...

I finally finished the wall hanging that I was making for my Elena's nursery. I made bunting to go with it only I included some blue because the curtains in the room are blue. I am really pleased with the way it turned out and hope that my brother and his wife like it. I hurriedly took some pictures outside because after taking this long to finish it I wanted to ship it off right away!


I trimmed the edges of the kaleidoscope panels with ric rac (my favourite) and added covered buttons. some mini hexagons made from the striped fabric (they look a little like beach umbrellas) and some braided ribbon.

Having fun with chalk & photo collage

I was just reminding myself that not every little piece of art work that you do has to be for a purpose - sometimes you can just sit down and do something for the sake of it. I was thinking about a project that I did with one of my art classes once. The technique is using chalk on wet sugar paper (construction paper). So I went out and bought myself some chalk yesterday and sat down to doodle. I did several sheets it is a very quick and easy technique. When you get the pressure right the chalk just glides on the paper. It is very fun and relaxing.


The most successful piece I did was this red one. I was thinking back to the original project where I had the kids look at painting of mud huts in Africa (wish I knew the source but I can't find what I am looking for on google) They used very simple designs but the overall effect was very dramatic.

Then being me I scanned my picture and played around with the pattern variations that I could make just by flipping and rotating the picture in different collages.







Above :- Simply rotating the image creates a nice diagonal effect.


Left :- Basic repeat. I amazed that the double line I drew across the page is so even from one side to the other.









Right:- The best for last, rotating and flipping the image makes for a very interesting pattern. Far more dramatic than the original. I might buy this as a rug in Ikea!

Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel

What beautiful weather we are having! I just had to go for a walk and I took my camera with me! Look at that gorgeous blue sky.

There was a wonderful breeze blowing everything about but it was still very warm and I just started humming Nina Simone - Feeling Good . So the sort of day that makes you hum that song has to be good!







Our tree in the back garden is the local hang out for the squirrels of the neighborhood. There isn't actually a drey in either of our trees but they love to hang out there.

Here is a squirrel basking in the sun - who knew that squirrels basked!

Who could blame him, I might have been up for a little basking myself -if we'd have had any of our patio set out of the shed.




I wasn't even upset by what the breeze did to my hair - it gave me Einstein hair - you get to see a shadow!

Spring has sprung...

Well not really! But our clocks have sprung forward! And the snow has melted, it has actually been a little rainy which reminds me of home and I like it. The rain cleared up so much the other day that I thought I would go for a little run - that soon turned into a walk (I am really not one for running). Shortly after my walk began I circled back to the house to get my camera to take picture of some rusty water mains covers. I love rust! I am sure I could do some work based of these pictures. I am thinking rubbings and rusting process.



I must apologise for not being around that much lately. I have had some personal issues taking over my life in the last 2 months and much as I wish that it hadn't affected my art-work or my blog, I have to admit that it rather took over my entire life. So hopefully I can put that behind me for the mean time and get back into the swing of things. I hope that some of you that used to read my blog will come back and read it again. I have been keeping up to date with a lot of you and how you have been getting on. There are some extremely productive people out there and I aim to emulate you.

The promise of nice weather on the horizon always makes me a little happier, at least I don't feel so cooped up inside the house.


And so I will end with another picture from my walk which I am sure will become much more routine than the running will. I should remember to take my camera out with me whenever I go. When you leave without it you are bound to need it at some point.

This view made me happy, I like that the tree was there first and so they built the footpath around it! It just made me smile!

Unfortunately just after this there is a car park and then the footpath does not continue, there is a lovely golf course and not foot path to walk around it - not even on the other side of the road. I would have walked on the grass bank but it was a bit wet!

A.W.O.L.

Sorry I haven't posted much recently. I have had a lot of things going on which are distracting me. I will try to get back on track. The first thing I need to do is to finish this quilt. I started it back in November, for the nursery wall of my Niece. At the time she was not born but I am proud to say that I am now and Auntie and I couldn't be more excited about it! However the quilt has not progressed much since November. My plan is to get it finished in the next week and send it off to my Brothers home so that when my parents are visiting in February they can hang it up. (My Brother and Sister in Law are not big decorators and leave that kind of stuff to my parents when they come - I can't believe we are related sometimes)

Anyway, I saw a Kaleidoscope Quilt online one day and decided I would make one. It is really fun actually. The first thing you need is a fabric with a nice big print. You need to get enough yardage so that you can find the repeat at least six times. Then you need to cut equilateral triangles out of it making sure that you get the exact repeat six times. You can use a view finder or you can cut a block of triangles out and then lay them over the matching area. At the end of the day I did not have enough fabric to make every Kaleidoscope block 6 matching triangles so I mixed it up and made some of them 3 of one pattern three of another. I also Included some polka dot fabric in matching green and pink colour ways.

The next thing to do was to lay them out on the floor and arrange the pattern - this stage took a long time. What was great is that all the kaleidoscopes look so different from each other, one is almost entirely pink while another is mostly yellow.

Once you have decided the order of the blocks you sew the triangles together in strips, this is so much easier than sewing the blocks together. In the picture above the strips on the right have been sewn but those on the left have not. I have to admit I made a few mistakes at this stage with a triangle turned the wrong way as I sewed it etc. After 1 or 2 unpickings I got the basic quilt made and there it has stayed until this week when I will finish it. Watch this space.

Oh and because I am posting - I was commissioned to make this tiny pom pom heart garland from my Etsy site.

Wonderful Chrimbo!

Justin and I had our first just the 2 of us Christmas. This was due to the fact that he had to go into work at 9pm and do the night shift at the hospital. So it was an interesting day - he slept in and then had to take another nap later so that he was able to be somewhat alert for work. Anyhoo, we had our Christmas slap bang in the middle of the day. I made a nice roast chicken and all the usual trimmings that one generally has with Turkey (except the Brussel sprouts).

I got some lovely presentsI finally got my Blue Morpho Butterfly necklace from neile's shop. I had wanted to buy it for my birthday but never could get round to spending the money on myself - Justin bought it for me. My luggage broke this summer and I had to sew it shut just to make it back home, Aunt Julie bought me a lovely Purple set of luggage. I got an overlocker from Justin's parents ( I actually got it at Thanksgiving but it was a Christmas gift.) Finally I got this lovely Pom-Pom scarf rom my Secret Santa. I got some other lovely gifts too!

My Mum and Dad left me a lovely parcel with lots of gorgeous items inside including these lovely pieces from Eden Pottery. I love the pottery and it is one of my favourite places to go when I am home, the owners are lovely and let my dad paint his own pieces and fire them for him, I have some great plates and bowls that he has made there. Of course we are great customers and regularly buy items in their annual "seconds "sale as well as eating the enormous cinnamon scones that they sell in the cafe. You can buy pieces from the website and I highly recommend them, my favourite current pattern is Cottage Garden after the sadly discontinued Sweet Pea series. A good friend of the family commissioned 2 sweet pea mugs for me a few years ago - a great gift.


It was a different Christmas but a good one!

Polka Dot Christmasy Swap

I went out for lunch with the hubby today and when I got home I found a delightful Christmas package on the door step. It was my polka dot gift for the Christmas Polka Dot Swap from my swap partner Bec Lewis of Little Brown Dog blog.

The rules for the swap were

• At least three small items - these can be absolutely anything you want! But...
• One item must be something handmade and Christmasy (i.e. a Christmas apron, decoration, stocking, etc) and must include some polka dot fabric
• You must make the decoration including the colours your swap partner requests (this is because I know some of you will be like me, and have theme colours for Christmas)

I am delighted at what I have received. Firstly and polka dotty was my stocking. It is perfect! this is our first Christmas just the 2 of us so I was planning on making a stocking us both. Now I just have to make one for Justin. The bell on the toe is also great bells are somewhat of a Christmas theme for me. nicely wrapped in the stocking was a little birdy ornament which is now hanging on the tree. Thirdly all rolled up was a lovely cushion cover made from and Irish linen tea towel, perfect for me really - I love Irish Linen and the cushion is just so quirky!

Thank you so much Bec! I love all my items. I hope yours arrive soon!

I decided to experiment with Photovisi on this post. A way to make collages - anyone know of any other free programs - I am envious of those beautifully collaged posts which succesful bloggers put together.

Better Late than never...

I finally got around to updating my Etsy Shop today.

Etsy: Your place to buy & sell all things handmade AshleyAmandaDesigns.etsy.com

Hopefully I haven't totally missed the boat and maybe I will get at least one holiday sale! Anyway - check it out and spread the news!

The joy of saving....

Giving, Saving and Spending Tags from mamaroots's shop

We have some pretty major expenses coming up next year and therefore have been under extreme save mode for some time. I have been keeping my money in a saving account and it is fun to watch that amount grow as we add to it each pay period.

We are fast approaching that time of year when we end up shelling out all of our hard earned cash on gifts for others. I love giving presents but all to often in the past couple of years I feel like we have given quite expensive gifts that were not necessarily wanted by the recipient, not that they were not thankful for the gift but they never really used it or wanted it in the first place. This year the extended family (on my side) have decided to do a secret Santa, I love this as Christmas has become increasingly more expensive as cousins have added spouses and children into the mix. Now all the adults are put into a hat and only have to buy 1 gift each. Children will still get gifts from everyone.

Fifteens from google images.

Today at my work my team are having a bake sale for our "Adopt a Family" I have made Fifteens and Hollywood Cakes, 2 recipes that my Nana gave me. Fifteens are a Northern Ireland favourite and Hollywood Cakes I have never heard of outside my family but they are yummy!

My husbands family were not up for the Secret Santa so we have to figure out something different. Inspired by the bake sale I am making the men in the family a tin of homemade tray bakes each. I ran this idea past the hubby yesterday and he is all for it. Now I just have to figure out what to get/make the women! Oh yeah, since we will not be visiting them at Christmas time this year we will do all of this at Thanksgiving (under 2 weeks).

Piggy Bank with Ladybug from lindaneubauer's shop

Flea Market Finds

While my parents were here I took them to the Royal Oak Flea Market. It is on every Sunday at the Royal Oak Farmers Market. we went both Sundays that they were here and we found some treats. I found this huge plastic peacock, which is painted to look like metal. The crest from his head is missing but i love him anyway. I wonder what he was originally used for.

Close up of the peacocks neck, you can tell he is plastic from this view point and you can see that there used to be some sort of crest on his head. He is now hanging in my sewing room.

The second major find was this fantastic piece of embroidery it is a very large panel made up of three lengths of cloth sewn together and hand embroidered. This was priced way over my budget but my Dad haggled and talked the vendor down to $90 this is still way more than I could have afforded but I think it is worth more - you would have to pay me a lot more than that for so much work.

Detail shot, the flash on the camera makes the red look a bit florescent it is a deeper shade in reality. The most lovely thing about this is that my Dad gave it to me to hang in my guest room, I guess they were tired at looking at nothing.

So I know nothing about the origins of this piece - if you have any idea about where this could be from I would be very interested to find out.

A quick google image search this evening has brought me these pictures of the big plastic peacock with intact crest from design boner blog. Look at that delicious bling! It completely makes sense that this piece is missing, I wonder if it became necklace or a brooch?

I also wonder since this particular peacock is all gold whether my crystals may have been green. I am interested to know. Also by by the 2 comments on the blog I found this it seems to be a particular favourite of grandmas for hanging over their bed (a fact that made me chuckle).

Detroit Eastern Market

I had a great time with my parents while they were here. I had no time to blog so I felt a bit like I had abandoned it . I am back now. My Mum and Dad are fantastic and helped me get so much done around the house, including revamping my sewing room/studio I will post pictures of that soon.

One of the things we did when they were here was take a trip to the Eastern Market in Detroit. I had never been before and wanted someone to go with me and my parents happily obliged.

An amazing pile of gourds .

Indian corn.
Indian corn on top of gourds.

Beautifully displayed Chrysanthemums as I was taking this shot the market vendor posed for the pic and I felt obliged to take one of him as well.

Sunflower heads, I imagine people use these for displays? They were huge like great big pillows.

We came away with a load of veggies at extremely reasonable prices. I will definitely be going again.

Too Early?

I bought supplies to make Christmas cards last year and never got round to it, so friends and family got boring old shop bought cards (if i even sent out any - I can't remember!) I had the cards and a quick trip to the dollar store found some cheapo snowflake ornaments in the right colours and voila! Christmas cards.

This is actually good timing because now I can send my U.K. cards home with my parents when they come to visit next week, which will save on international postage!

BTW - Yay! my parents are visiting next week! I am very excited and am madly trying to clean up the house a bit and finish up a few art projects.

Day 30 OADCC

Today is day 30, the official last day of my one a day craft challenge. I am ashamed to admit that even though I made this challenge I haven't quite been able to keep up with it. I had a very hard week at work, 4 5am starts, that led to lots of falling asleep on the couch in the afternoon, my most productive time of day usually (because I have the house to myself). The mistake was not blogging every day, when I did that it was essential that I have a complete item to photograph. When I let that slip it was easy to fall behind. :(

With that said I am determined to get 30 items done, even if they are mostly brooches.
I went to take some pictures of some of the items I have made and the battery in my camrea was not charged.
I couldn't let this post go by without 1 picture so here are the postcards that I sent off for my postcard swap. Of course the scribble heart is my favourite. So much so that I have made it my new icon. I promise some pictures of more One A Day Challenge items tomorrow.


Please check out some of my friends who have been very good about joining me in this challenge

juanitatortilla
sara at soap rehab
TiLT
topknots
Julie of Musings of a Northern Girl
Anjeanette of Roots and Wings Co

Juliann of The Sick Chick

Jen D of The Silver Lining


I am going to have to declare TiLT the absolute champion of this challenge she definitely rose to the occasion and produced some wonderful items.

Big thanks to everyone who participated. Look out for the rest of my items to appear here in the next few days!

Day 21 (OADCC)

Hi everyone, I know I haven't blogged for a few days but it doesn't mean that I haven't been making. Day 17, 18 and 19 I made more flower brooches, I decided it wasn't really necessary to write about each one of these as you have seen the idea a few times now. The flower is easy for me to do on those very rushed days and I still feel like I am getting something done. Anyway today is another day and I made a different kind of flower necklace. I made 3 rosettes out over layers of silvery fabric. and then sewed them onto a ruched length of ribbon. The sheer fabric is actually a silver check on a black background which makes a great pattern when layered over each other (detail below).



On Day 20 (yesterday) I quickly sewed up some cushions. I have had this fabric for years. Another great thing about this challenge, it has got me completing those little projects which I have been meaning to do for the longest time.


And due to Floss' suggestion I took a picture of one of my butterflies in amongst the flowers to see what that would be like. I think he looks quite charming perched on the Hydrangea.

Day 16 (OADCC)

Today I made this little fellow. It is a french beaded butterfly. I love french beading but it takes a long long time. In addition to this guy I also made the bodies to all of the little ones below. I have had the wings done for a long time now just waiting to get put together. Funny enough the wings are by far the easier part. Anyway It was good to get a production line of bodies going.

You can still see the wires behind the butterflies, I will need these to attach the butterflies to their final destination.

I was originally going to make these into hair sticks like the one below, I made him earlier in the year, I have modified the wing shape and the body since then. I am now thinking that I will make some hair clips/barrettes too! Any other suggestions of things I could do with my butterflies! The big problem with them is that they takes so much time to make If I charged by the hour they would cost a fortune.

Why are my butterflies fellows and hims ??