Heart Pins & Calendar Pages

It feels as though I haven't blogged for weeks (and that is because I haven't!). First off our internet provider had a hardware crash and we couldn't access the internet for days and then I was away all this week with work. Amazing how frustrating it was not being able to read blogs or emails all of last weekend! But I did get a fair bit of reading and mending done instead so it was probably good for me...

This week I have been making my five brooches (pins) for the small monthly swap group I am in. I decided to do bright needle-felted heart pins. I've needle-felted bright pink and orange organza to the same colours of commercial felt and then added some wool roving on top. The organza really makes them quite sparkly but it is amazing how much organza gets gobbled up by the needle-felting! I've used a lovely variegated embroidery thread to add some stitching around the edges of the hearts etc and then added some beading for a bit of extra sparkle. To keep the pins robust I have backed them with pelmet vilene plus (the strong iron-on one) which I have painted pink and then they are finished off with a brooch back. I "sort of" want to add something dangly to the base point of the heart but I am resisting as I can't think what would look good.

Below are the pages I recently made for a West Australian Calendar Swap - my pages are for January and I originally intended to do a beach theme (January being one of our glorious summer months) but somehow they turned into a "new beginning" theme. I did a painted background that is then "polished" with distress ink. I should be receiving the calendar back in the next few weeks so I will post all the other participating artists' pages then. The hostess for the swap (Genevieve Payne) is mounting all of the pages on black cardstock so that is why mine don't have a black border and look a bit "unmounted"! The first picture is a bit blurry because the metal embellishment that I used on the gate is quite dimensional. I should have taken a photo really but I am a bit slack and the scanner is sitting right next to me!

Today we have a glorious sunny day and I feel as if I should do something outside to make the most of it but I am travelling a lot with work these days, so my creative time is pretty much limited to weekends and I have some ATCs I want to make!

I have received some lovely art (ATC, postcards and my altered book) recently so I'll post about that as soon as I get some pictures taken. And about the books I've bought - my Christmas present to myself - six (!!) wonderful creative books and a packet of Leslie Riley's TAP (which has yet to arrive but is hopefully close).