We’ve just been for our first September walk…
It isn’t Autumn yet, but you can see it from here…
The first of the season…delicious!
Higgins…king of all he surveys!
And now we’re home, the sun is coming out!
See you soon…x
Tag Archives: miniature dachshund
FollowA Pinboard for a New Term…
I don’t think it matters how long ago it is since you left school, the approach of September always feels much more like the beginning of a new year than the actual one in dreary old January! And it’s so much more full of hope and possibility, we could have an ‘Indian Summer’ to make up for the lack of a British one, the evenings are still light, and it just feels like an optimistic new start. So this has been a good time to get my little office up and running efficiently with pinboards, graphs and flow charts (pause to snort with derisive laughter!) and slowly, slowly get on top of the teetering piles of paperwork. It also means I can reclaim the studio space from being a dumping ground/spare room (thank goodness it was only Tim and I trying to shoehorn ourselves into the sofa bed!) It now looks too tidy to use, even Higgins is surprised…
…and here it is, I had to record it because it won’t last!
and in this one you can see the office at the end, it’s not ready for close inspection yet!
You might have noticed the old pinboard in the first photo, so full of stuff which had been there forever.
Very uninspiring, and in need of a makeover to celebrate the new look. It was even more uninspiring once I’d taken off all the tatty bits and pieces…
You can see just how long some things had languished there by the interesting shadow effects!
So this is how the transformation took place, a quick and easy project as it only took a couple of hours. All it took was some grey emulsion paint, I used a sample pot, and some white, I had plenty around as we’d been painting the studio. Fabric and Bondaweb the size of the board, ribbon and glue and a few buttons.
After giving the board a wipe I painted the frame with the grey emulsion…
Once it dried I gave it a coat of white. It doesn’t have to cover completely, just make sure that the brush strokes follow the shape of the frame. Once it was dry I sanded it lightly to reveal some of the grey undercoat and polished it with beeswax.
I then cut a piece of Bondaweb to the size of the cork area of the pinboard and ironed to the back of my chosen fabric, in this case some jolly red and pink spotty Ikea fabric, peeled off the back of the Bondaweb and ironed the fabric directly on to the cork area…
To cover the raw edges I used a woven ribbon…
..and found just the right buttons to trim the corners.
Did you notice the Dove Christmas decoration on the old pinboard? That got a new lease of life…
…and the pinboard was ready to use…
Trouble is, it’s far too pretty to fill with Post-It notes, receipts and appointments, isn’t it? So for now it looks like this…
…and I’ll probably have to buy another pinboard to use in the office! Ho hum…
Silent Sunday
Ocean Blue and Buttons…
Hello again…don’t the weeks come round quickly! It’s been very busy on Planet Penny over the last few days as we’re in the process of turning a storage area into an office, so having moved everything out for Tim to work on it my studio is CHAOS! It’ll be so good when it’s finished, I might be able to find things more easily (pause for hollow laughter!) but the main perk will be having the printer/scanner in the same room that I’m working in, instead of several rooms and a fight of stairs away. I suppose the exercise is good for me, but it makes things take twice as long! In the meantime I’ve been needlefelting and playing with Ocean Blue dye, and little flowery buttons…
Remember the little robins of last week? I had a cunning plan for their use, and it worked out very well. I found some pretty natural and red woven ribbon, just enough to make five of these…
…and put them on the Planet Penny Facebook page to see what the reaction would be. Despite several of you telling me off for mentioning the dreaded ‘C’ word (!!) I sold three before I even put them on Etsy, where there is now just one left! Don’t despair however, there will be more, but they’ll be just a little different. I don’t do mass production I’m afraid!
I have also completed a variation on the the Love Birds as I couldn’t source the straw wreath straight away, the latest ones have natural colour lambswool hearts…
…and three of these have made it as far as the Etsy shop!
And my other creative project the week has involved a spot of dyeing! I have such problems finding clothes I like, that fit, that are long enough, and I rarely find all that and in a colour I like. So when I found a tunic top in Cotton Trader’s sale which ticked all the boxes bar the colour one I snapped it up and went off to the local supermarket for a packet of dye…
Take one shirt like this…
…in a cotton linen mix, and add a packet of this…
and a few pretty buttons..and you end up with this…
I’ve ordered two more!
(This might amuse you: Having decided to change the basic white buttons to something more original I carefully sorted an interesting selection of colours snipped off the white ones and replaced them with the pretty flower ones – I hate sewing on buttons, don’t you? I had just finished ironing it and had hung it on a hanger to admire when my beloved OH came in. “Yes,” he said, “That looks really good. Now all you have to do is change the buttons…”
I say nothing!)
There was lots of interest last week about Higgins’ ‘Thundershirt’. He’s actually wearing it at the moment as a storm has just passed by and it does seem to calm him down a lot. He usually goes and sits on the back doormat and trembles but this time I wrapped him in the shirt and popped him into bed where he snuggled down and look reasonable relaxed. It was only a small storm so more testing will need to be done, but so far the signs are good.
I must finish this and go and administer tea to the worker in my little ‘soon-to-be’ office, it’s not the weather to be sawing wood! I’ll leave you with the usual link to ‘Handmade Monday’ over on Handmade Harbour.
Have a lovely week and I’ll be back soon…x
A Needlefelt Bird in the Hand….
…but a handful of baby birds is even better!
Guess who’s thinking ahead to C*******s! It’s alright, I won’t speak the word aloud!
I’ve been waiting for materials to arrive so I’ve switched to a different breed of bird, and trying out a different size too. Last C*******s I couldn’t keep up with the demand for needlefelt robins, I think it was the Kirsty effect, so I’m starting early year, although I find it really hard to think of Christmas in August, don’t you? (Whoops, sorry, it slipped out! )
The robins are now fluttering their way to the Planet Penny shop, and you can find them here, here and here..
I’ve been a little indulgent this week and treated myself. I said last week I couldn’t resist the little scented dachshunds, and so I had one made just for me by the lovely LouLou of Farrell and Holmes and these lovely parcels arrived a few days ago, smelling wonderful!
But I’d only ordered one thing!? And here it is, such pretty fabric…
and in the other one? A little present for me…
Thank you LouLou!
The weather this week has been beautiful, so no more thunderstorms much to Higgins relief but the lovely Mrs Micawber, who was very concerned about his well being, sent a link to something which might just solve his problems, not only with the storms, but with the fireworks which upset him so much. It’s a Thundershirt, and here he is modelling it!
The theory is that being wrapped snuggly calms dogs and makes then less stressed about loud noises and other worrying situations. Thank you so much Mrs Micawber, we’ll let you know whether it works when the weather breaks!
Well, it’s another short post as I must away to administer Clovis’s evening antibiotic on the other side of the village, I will get a lot more done when I don’t have to visit three times a day, it’s a good thing I love him! I’ll leave you with a link to Handmade Monday so you can visit lots of other lovely bloggers who have been creating little lovelies over the past week.
See you soon…x
