Christmas is coming so it is time to make another glitter house

For the last 7 years I have made a glitter house a year, the patterns were all freely available on this website http://www.littleglitterhouses.com/ This is a picture of last years house in progress. This became the dark house on the right hand side in the following picture.

It is made of grey board. Traditionally they are made of cereal packets, but I wanted them to be more robust. Cereal packets would have been so so much easier to cut. However they are sturdy.

This is the village, each house is a different year and at the bottom of each house I write the key events of the year. They get wrapped up with the christmas decorations and put away every year, so when we take them out again it is really lovely to read what has happened. It is time to make a new house! Only problem is that I am running out of space. 

Ah no!! the village has been invaded by many rudolph's. 

Our latest SCA medieval re-enactment outfits, Viking (plus bonus picture of flemish garb I made many moons ago)

The red tunic was made by RovingAnarchist in a recent craftster swap www.craftster.org It needed a little adjustment.

To create complete outfits, I made some white tunics to go underneath, A Viking hat , trousers and a tunic for the Mister. And the piece de resistance a fully reversible wool coat for me.

A long time ago when I lives in the kingdom of Lochac. I made a 15Century flemish outfit. Dusted off, it looks like this.

Harry Potter bag

The fabric for this is a linen mix, I cut a stencil from an Ireland Quidditch logo that I found online, to make the front. The bag is lined with recycled fabric that I had tie-dyed and over printed with a lino cut of the golden snitch. Go Ireland!

Boro Bag- so many stitches

Boro is a Japanese repair and decoration technique. Many many tiny stitches. I used the technique to make this bag out of scrap, the bag fabric is made of squares glued down and long lines of parallel stitching secures all the patches. I did some cross stitching for decoration and then cut the fabric into a bag.

Recycling sweaters

This is the second 'sweater quilt' Here in Ireland we call them jumpers. I cut approx 12 inch (30cm) squares, keeping any interesting features, especially pockets.

All the squares are sewn together and the top is backed with fleecy blanket that is wrapped around the raw edge of the quilt and sewn down. The entire quilt is tied together at the corners of each square, with ties. I love recycling!

Some of the books that I have made recently

I love this flamingo fabric, so I had to make a book. I also added some random papers inside of the covers, as I like something interesting to pop up occasionally.

The book is stitched signatures, with fabric covering the greyboard covers. Stuck with PVA

I have also been volunteering to teach a craft class to a local group of refugees, the organisation does not have much money, so I am trying to supply all the materials, and scrounge what I can. We made these books last week, the covers are leftover boat cover materials, the pages are photocopy paper and the whole lot is stitched together with strong thread and a button as a closure. All done in 2 hours

Summer tie dyeing

Tie Dyeing makes me so happy, first sign of sunshine and we go mad. All of these fabrics end up getting used in one way or another, mostly as backgrounds for printmaking.


The following prints have all been printed onto tie dyed fabrics, some are commercial rubber stamps, the bees and daleks are my lino cuts.

Such a neglected blog. Here are a few things that I have made in the last while.

Some printed fabrics

This is a simple dalek print, A lino cut onto some tie-dyed fabric, The strips of fabric were inserted into a pair of pillowcases. For Dr, Who dreams. The same fabric was used to make a christmas stocking. The tardis stocking was appliqued, as a matching set. 

napkins printed with a martlet, for medieval re-enactment

Celtic knotwork crow. Corvids are amazing, this was another lino cut onto fabric, strips inserted into a pair of pillowcases

The ground fabric has been tie-dyed and overprinted with a fairly simple lino cut. Celtic knotwork