Happy Henlow Adventures

I had an idea for something I wanted to do with a tiny little canvas that I have but before I get into that completely I wanted to do a bit of a test run. I cut out a heart shaped template from paper and tried a couple of different ways of trying to paint the template. I attached it to the front of a card blank that I had - I thought I may as well end up with something out of it even if it is only a test piece. We only have acrylic paint at home and I wanted to try a drizzling or flicking technique to fill in the template so I watered down some paint and started to flick it at the hole in the template. I started off with light pink and then gradually turned it darker and continued to flick at the heart hoping to fill the whole area with paint... I think I should have used card or definitely something more waterproof for the stencil as this is the hot mess that came out! Definitely not a success. Moving swiftly on to plan B... The watering down of the paint didn’t see...

This is just one of the little crafts that I did last week when we had our week off. I’ve been looking through the boxes of kits that I have and this was one that I found. I had a couple of packs of the coloured air drying clay type stuff (Fimo is one brand that I’ve used previously - this is jumping clay) Unfortunately as these sets have bee hanging around for a while the pack of white clay had already dried out and set but the blue could still be worked into shapes and stuck together. The butterfly is what I was supposed to be able to make with the clay but without the white being any good we couldn’t combine the colours and make the different shades of blue. The best idea we had to make out of pure blue clay was an elephant. Here he is - to be honest I made a few balls of the clay but the majority was made by my hubby - he did the trunk and the pretty bits!  I think he’s cute! Maybe his trunk should have been slightly shorter and attached more smoothly but the cl...

This post should have been written a few weeks ago now but I never got round to it so here’s a super quick post to show you this jigsaw. Here’s a wasgij that a did. Loosely pub based. The box looks like this...  And here’s how it turned out. There’s a new style pub/club thing going on and all of the custom have aged slightly. Another fun one to do and it took only a fraction of the time that Mickey did! I’ve not even started another one yet - I’m saving them up for when I need something to do at home!

In preparation for potential lock down of the country due to the corona virus outbreak, I thought that it would be a good thing for me to write a list of things that I can potentially do while stuck at home. I know I love spending time at home when I chose to and weekends at home are my favourite but I also know that as soon as I’m told that I have to do something I will want to do the opposite so I need to have some plans in place for myself so I don’t end up driving myself crazy being stuck in the house. Here’s a few things that I have come up with Cut up brown fabric I’ve been given for my clippy mat Make more of my clippy mat Cut up clips ready for Christmas wreaths Follow the sew along that ... has been writing and try to make myself a blanket using different styles of patchwork Get all patches sewn onto duvet cover Look through craft room and make all sets that I have waiting to be done - fimo elephant and decoupage box for starters, making flowers Other crafts stuff......

Last weekend Adam’s brother and our nieces came up to stay with us. We had a lovely weekend doing a bit of geocaching, having a takeaway and on the Sunday we visited Tropical Birdland  in Leicestershire. We’d tried to go a couple of years ago but it was unplanned and apparently can’t cope with unplanned fun! It was a really good day out and for £8.50 a complete bargain as it was a good few hours out. They have so many beautiful birds there. When we first arrived we found this little guy by the entrance. I think it was fairly cold for him so it didn’t take him long to climb up into my hood.  Here he is when he’s not hiding! So cute! I love the colours on him.  This was by far my favourite bit of the day. I love this little guy! He was adorable. This one, perhaps not so much. Very impressive though. He’s an emu. These are military macaws. Slightly scary as they are so big but we really enjoyed the way that they are. They took the food ok without also taking an...

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted. It’s been a busy couple of weeks which I will post about later but for now - this is my big achieve for today. I finished Mickey!! This was a jigsaw that I got my my mum and dad for Christmas. He’s been a very tricky build. I started trying to make the edge... I found out all the pieces that looked like edges and all of the white looking pieces that might help make up some of the gaps in the middle. Only got as far as building part of the tail and some other bits of the bottom when I realised he definitely wasn’t going to fit on my puzzle board so we had to shift to the living room floor. I made as much of the edge as possible but found it almost impossible. I must admit I got really frustrated with it and almost gave up at this point. I decided instead to switch onto making some of the middle with the pieces that weren’t normal puzzle shapes. I love this piece the most! It looks like a snowman! I soon discovered when I ...