Deja-vu!

Hiya! I'm sorry to be so repetitive and boring, but I've just created my first Instructable and wanted to show it off! If you haven't yet discovered Instructables.com, then you are really missing a treat! It's a site FULL of tutorials, tips and just interesting things from crafty folk, geeks and clever-dicks the world over! Plus they have lots of competitions too.


Cute Sandcastle Flags - More DIY How To Projects

Best wishes
Joey xx

Put the Flags Out! Freebie and Contest

Flag Day!

Hiya! I hope you're all well and happy. "Long time no blog" I hear you say! I'm sorry for my absence, I've been getting over winning the Feeling Stitchy contest!  Yes it's taken me this long... winning something is rather a shock to my system, you see.  Oh and catching up on things that I've been meaning to do for a long time... like making some little printable flags for sandcastles!

The beautiful Carbis Bay... ahh, what I'd give to be there right now...

A couple of years ago, I made a few little flags for sandcastles on the train down to our holiday destination, the lovely Carbis Bay (pictured above) near to St Ives. If you like Cornwall, I thoroughly recommend a visit as the beach is wonderful, the sea so clear and there's some great walking on the easier bits of the coast path (I'm a real pussy when it gets a bit steep and rocky!). Anyway, here's some pictures of those flags in action:

Since then, I've been meaning to make some for you good folks to download and print out... Finally, I've gotten around to it!  I think this would be a good activity for children to keep them occupied when you're packing for your holiday. Then again, you might want to make yourself a little flag and wrap it around a pencil.  Click on the images or links below to download the flags (you have a choice of ready coloured, or blank for you and/or your little 'un to colour in)

Summer Pals' Sandcastle Flags - ready coloured
Summer Pals' Sandcastle Flags - blank for you to colour in


Joey's Dream Garden Sandcastle flags coloured in version_ not for commercial use


Joey's Dream Garden Sandcastle Flags_ outlines version_ not for commercial use

I made them with our little long-term visitors, Little Tiger (who else??), Cotton Carrot and Bunny Giraffe in mind. Of course, the ever modest Little Tiger demanded a flag with his "beautiful" fizzog on it and nothing much else... Cotton Carrot didn't really mind as long as there was a carrot featured somewhere; so I've put lots of carrots coming out a happy sun to reflect her sunny disposish. And Bunny Giraffe, the most musical and rhythmic of the pals, gets a singing bunny in a rainbow of music! Which he's very happy with. :-)

Health and safety note: please ensure young children are accompanied by an adult when using sharp scissors, and please keep craft knives out of their reach. If your youngsters are using bamboo skewers, please cut off the pointed end for them first.

To make the flags, you need:

A print of the flags

Scissors
Glue

Clean lolly sticks (or bamboo skewers, cut in half, or pencils)

Here's how you put them together

1. Download the sheet you want, and print it out. If it's the blank ones, colour them in and decorate if you wish.

2. Cut out along the dotted lines.

3. Get your stick ready. Apply glue to the back of one half of the flag.

4. Place the stick on the centre of the flag.

When I used a lolly stick, I decided to position it halfway up the flag, as it's quite short.

5. Fold the flag over and make sure that both sides line up neatly. You now have a double-sided flag, ready for some sandy constructions!

Unfortunately, I'm not going to the seaside this year... (sob!) But because I still want to see LOTS of sandcastles with these flags in, I'm offering a prize to the most impressive and imaginative sandcastle bearing one of these flags!  If you want to have the chance to win an exclusive Joey's Dream Garden brooch, here's what you need to do:

1. Make at least one of the flags

2. Make a sandcastle (it doesn't have to be on a beach; in a sandpit would do if, like me, you can't get to the seaside)

3. Take a photo of your creation

4. Add your photo to the Flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/sandcastleflags/ - if you've made lots of flags and sandcastles, please add as many photos of them as you wish! 

The closing date is Monday, 13 September 2010, 00:00 on Howland Island (i.e. GMT -12 hrs; click here to find your timezone's equivalent time:  http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html ) and I will contact the winner via Flickr soon after.

UPDATE 14 JULY: Blogger is currently having technical problems, meaning people sometimes cannot leave a comment. If you cannot leave a comment (please try first, I love getting comments!) please e-mail me and tell me what time you tried to comment. My e-mail is jramone@toucansurf.com.  Thanks!

Take care in the sun (and the sea, if you're going to the seaside!)

and Have Fun!

Joey x

Bunny Card for a Birthday Girl

Chloe's Bunny Card, originally uploaded by Joey 7.

I made this card the other day for my niece Chloe, who is 12 today! :D Happy Birthday Chloe!

I used the same bunny design from one of my painted brooches, then thought, "ooh! why don't I put a real paper windmill on the card too?!" Its surprisingly easy to make a paper windmill, but quite effective I think...

Starting with a square of paper, cut 4 straight slits going from each of the corners of the square, nearly to the centre, but not quite - you need to stop cutting each slit about 1cm before you reach the centre. Then starting one of the corners, bring it down to the centre of the square and hold it there, then repeat on corresponding corners of the other three sides.

You can secure the four corners with a drawing-pin if you want it to spin, or one of those cute metal paper-fasteners/'brads' with the little arms you fold out at the back if you're not bothered about it spinning. This is what I used, then stuck the bunny drawing on with a sticky foam pad, and covered the 'arms' at the back with a piece of patterned paper.

Here's a easy-to-understand tutorial for the windmill, with clear diagrams: Make a Windmill

Look at the fantastic range of paper-fasteners/brads you can get from sellers on Etsy:

The sellers are (top row, from left) party brads: CardBlanc, hearts: Cornerstore, fabric-covered brads: Aimoobaroo, shades of brown: BloomingFelt, (second row) snowflakes: Susan's Scrapbook Shack, canvas-covered brads: CardBlanc, screws brads: Susan's Scrapbook Shack, red apples: Susan's Scrapbook Shack, (third row) dragonflies: Susan's Scrapbook Shack, alphabet fabric brads: Cornerstore, trick-or-treat brads: Scrapbooker's Hideaway, moose brads: Susan's Scrapbook Shack, (bottom row) oak leaves: Susan's Scrapbook Shack, handmade Sculpey brads: Doridoo, patterned orange shades brads: Brittany's Photography, Scrapbook Art and Supplies, jeans buttons brads: CardBlanc.

If you are inspired to make a card like mine, I'd love to know and see a photo, so please get in touch!

thanks for reading! :D
Joey x

Boxes Made to Hold Nothing

Colonel's hard box, originally uploaded by Joey 7.

I made a whole load of boxes 11 years ago (yes, eleven years!) to sell at a craft fair, where I think I sold one or two... which annoyed me a little bit as I was quite pleased with them at the time.

In the box pictured above, I made the mottled paper from hand myself... pulped lots of Guardian on Saturday newspaper "Weekend" magazine (in the days when it was on newsprint and not glossy like it is now) in the same liquidizer that I also used for making soup in (yummy!), made a deckle and mould to form the sheets and stood on them in the back yard to squeeze the water out and then left them to dry in the sun. Making your own paper is a highly satisfying thing to do. What I liked best was seeing tiny parts of words in the new paper, which take on a dreamy, other-worldly feeling because they're taken out of context, literally. And the paper is made of words, some surfacing, others pulped out of existence, but you know they're still there.

From different types of paper, I cut little shapes which reminded me of natural shapes that you might find in sea-smoothed pebbles, leaves and other plant forms.

I also used bits of some lovely writing paper, which in turn had been made from obsolete nautical maps (why were they obsolete, I wonder? Had the places they mapped sunk below our notice?) which are very lovely things. I still have most of them, like a lot of arty-crafty people I can't stop myself from hoarding lovely things. The maps have wide expanses of colour (often indicating sea, as you'd expect) but then numbers every so often to tell you the depth of the water, and other "landmarks" that only sailors would be interested in, like rocks under the surface of the water or the edges of land and islands only big enough for a pair of puffins to balance on.

I liked this paper so much, I used bits of it to decorate these boxes. If you look closely at the box above, you'll see the words, "Colonel's hard". I have no idea what this means, and I like the fact that I don't know.

Please take a look at my Flickr set of these boxes if you'd like to see more:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joey7/sets/72157603893538669/

If you've made similar boxes, or if you'd like to know exactly how I made these, please get in touch, i'm always happy to chat! :D