More Photography Playing: Selective Colouration

As well as my craftsy course, I've been reading some blog posts about improving photography, and also playing with effects.

These are selectively coloured using PicMonkey and following this tutorial by Abby Glassenberg.

I haven't used PicMonkey before but this was very easy and lots of fun.

It makes for nice portraits of my babies too.

We don't keep our cats in cages, despite appearances. They are in their run, enjoying the outdoors without being a menace to the native wildlife.

Little crafts with magnets and cinnamon

A couple of weeks ago I had some friends over for a Christmas crafts afternoon. We focused mainly on cards (which I won't show because I'll be posting them soon), but I also tried out a few other ideas that had stuck in my brain recently.

Of course I can't remember where they came from anymore, but they were about recycling old Christmas cards. The first was to cut a pretty shape from an old card, glue it onto a small bunch of cinnamon sticks and hang it with ribbon. Easy Peasy.

Actually the reindeer was from a card-making kit and was already cut out. Even easier.

Then I tried the same idea with some buttons.

At the moment they are just decorating my fridge.

Along with idea number two. Which was to cut up bits of old cards and attach a magnet to the back. Now I don't have a lot of magnets lying around, and I didn't want to be wasteful. But then a light bulb appeared.

One seriously chopped up magnetic real estate agent calendar later...

The main red and white bits are these vinyl cutouts that Rhiannon brought along for cards, the penguin is from an old Christmas card, the porcupine is a button, and the shapes on the stocking are stickers. I wasn't sure the thin magnet would hold much stuff, but it's proving sufficient.

Sarah brought some scrapbooking stickers and they made great magnets too! Attach sticker to magnet, cut around, put on fridge. Genius.

Kitchen themed and all.

Then I was looking at my card-making stuff and found these old plastic butterflies I bought at some point for some reason.

This has the tinest bit of magnet attached to the middle and it still stays up.

And really, I have more than half of the calendar left. And that was just 2011! I'm never throwing magnetic junk mail away again!

Craft Challenge: Desk supplies tree topper

We discussed the idea of running some craft challenges. Then I put up the little Christmas tree at work, and it needed something for the top. Therefore, challenge 1: "make a tree-topper with things you have at your desk."

Here's mine, suitably themed for the maths staffroom:

I emailed it off to Rhiannon, and she responded with this index-card present:
 

Then I emailed our mother, and our stepfather came back with this penknife angel:

Join us! Make a tree topper with the stuff at your desk! We'd love to see what you come up with.

Beneath a burgundy sky

Our blog name (and future shop name) was decided many years ago, inspired by a song of the same name by The Band.

The lyrics begin:
"Jupiter Hollow, Northern lights,
Cast a glow through the window late last night
I went to follow through the sycamores
When I found myself in a place I'd never been before.

There was a unicorn and dragon queen
Beneath a burgundy sky
I saw a soldier sing a love song
He had the distance in his eye"

I was trying to draw said unicorn and dragon queen to feature in our etsy shop banner and I wasn't at all happy with my results, so I decided to make them instead. Since I've been making hobby horse ornaments, I stuck with the theme. Here they are:

The eyes are jet beads (broken, in the case of the dragon queen) that belonged to my great-grandmother, for an extra-meaningful touch to the icons of our venture.

And in case you are interested, here is the song:

A Small Scale Beginning

Getting back into regular crafting there is a huge list of things I want to try. One of them is hobby horses, and I have begun playing around with patterns and ideas but it's a pretty big project and hasn't gotten very far yet.

So for the moment, I have made a tiny hobby horse Christmas tree ornament, to at least give me some feelings of hobby-horse-related joy.

Pinterest Progress - Buttons

I've become a bit obsessed with Pinterest, and am in great danger of falling too far into the trap of pinning lots of great ideas that I will never ever try. So both here and on my teaching blog, Jelly Beans and other Tangents, I am endeavouring to try the ideas I pin, blog my success or failure, then remove the pins! Progress!

One thing I desperately want ideas for using is buttons. I have a large tin full of buttons. It came from a jumble sale when I was a child. Some buttons have been used, some added, but the overall rate of change of button quantity has been positive. Sorry, forgot which blog I was on.

First idea: The button Christmas tree ornament.

Very easy to do, if you have the right buttons. I made do with what I had and managed to make two small trees, one with darker greens and one with bluer and paler greens. It took a bit of playing to work out which sizes and shapes and colours worked out best. Also I didn't have a star, but I did have a broken button that has some vaguely star-like qualities. Still need another star-substitute for the second one.

My versions:

It even looks nice in front of my weeds!