Papier-mâché Piggy Bank

Good day to you all. Finally I have not only crafted, but also photographed along the way! Hoorah can you believe it?

My dad saves £2 coins and I thought that sounded like a good idea. I am afterall saving for a wedding, house and everything else grownups save for. As they say every penny counts, well as you can't even get penny sweets for a penny anymore It will be every Pound counts.

 Well I needed somewhere to put these coins, and it needed to be somewhere I wouldn't be able to access and dip into. Ah I can craft something finally, excellent ooooh a Papier-mâché Piggy Bank would be fun.

I flashed back to my childhood, watching Artattack and Neil Buchanan making all those cool Papier-mâché dragons what not. I remember it being so simple, a balloon some PVA and water some torn up newspaper and away you go. Well thats what I did! It wasn't quite like I remember.

Supplies 

Paper and watered down glue

After what felt like days of sticking bits of newspaper to a balloon, I decided I would leave my little piggy to dry overnight. My back and knees were killing me from sitting on the floor, for what turned out to be about 3 hours. Again I don't remember this being an issue when I was younger and recreating all the things I had been watching on TV.

Never ending paper and glueing 

Next morning came and I went to check on the masterpiece expecting to find a nice hard shell ready for painting and a balloon ready to be popped.......
No that is not what I found! What I found was a balloon wrapped in soft still wet newspaper!! I was not happy and this is definitely not how I remember things going on Artattack. It was also at this point I realised Neil used to shape all the body parts onto the balloon and would have done the Papier-mâché over the top........ well yeah I forgot about that bit.

I thought may be I could speed up the drying process by using my hair dryer. Well this was interesting as the balloon spun around with the air the shell seemed to be getting harder  and well drying. Ahh yes that was until I noticed the balloon starting to protrude from the hole at the top. So I guess there would be some kind of scientific explanation about the heat causing the air in the balloon to expand or something. Anyway so I thought I should stop drying now as the outside actually felt quite dry. Well within a few minutes the balloon cooled and it all began to shrivel and and became wet newspaper again. ARRGGGHHHH I'm not really that patient with this type of craft I mean the fun bit is the painting.

 So i put the hair dryer on again for a bit long this time. I figured that well the outside was dry perhaps it could do with some air on the inside, I'm sure its dry enough to hold its shape now, I can pop the balloon right.....? NO! But I did it anyway, I tried a pin and poked the top...Nothing! Poke! Poke! Poke! and still nothing so I snipped at it with scissors, this worked but Oh NOOOO the balloon had stuck to the walls of the shell and as the balloon deflated it took the sides with it. Out came the hair dryer again it worked quite well to reinflate the shell but I couldn't do this all day so I had to re-inflate another balloon inside again. I think I mentioned something in an earlier post about getting ahead of yourself. Well this is the result of trying to rush things!!

So this time a left the little piggy to dry for another few hours. When I came back to it, I realised I would probably need to add a few more layers and also add the feet and nose. I used bit of an egg box to do this.

 Now how do I get these bits to stick? I'm going to have to do yet more layers. I am extremely bored of Papier-mâché now! Neil Buchanan didn't seem to take this long  to make things. Neil also always finished his Papier-mâché with a layer of white tissue paper, so it was easier to paint, so I got to it.

Whilst I was doing this, Mark decided he would get involved and start making his piggy too. Having seen how mine went wrong he tried a different technique.

Once I finished my final layer, I stood piggy up on his new feet to dry ERROR!! The body was still wet so he started to cave in under his weight. So I popped in him a flower pot to dry on his bum. I left him a full week to dry before I did anything else with him.

As I had not made Papier-mâché ears I decided I would make them out of felt that I had bought for an earlier project that I never got around to doing. 

I thought it would be nice to do the backs, and fronts of the ears in different colours. I used some yarn from yet another project to sew around the edges. This took me surprisingly long to do, I think I watched an entire movie and had only completed one ear.

 

 Finally finally I can paint yay! Oh now how am I going to paint the little fella? I always ruin things when I just free hand with no plan. Whilst I cut a slot for the coin to go into, which I did perfectly without even measuring. I planned how I would paint the pig. I had some nice metallic colours blue, pink and purple which I thought would be nice all sponged on together kind of like Disco camouflage.

So there you go my finished piggy. We had some tough times but we got through it. 

Till next time, Happy Crafting! 

  

Plants in Bloom

I haven't had much to blog about, as I can't say i've been very crafty of late but I thought I could at least do an update.

My plants are all in bloom and looking beautiful.

You may remember this tower I did back in May, well its had a bit of sunshine and had a bit of a growth spurt!

Before

After

Unfortunately the flowers on top didn't last too long, but the rest have gone crazy bursting out of the pots.

These are some of the other pots I planted in May that are also doing pretty well.

I'm not quite sure where this one came from but this is the 3rd summer its
come back soI'm pretty pleased! 

Stwarb the Strawberry Plant.
You can just see the strawberries poking through the leaves there
I've had this plant for about 4 years but always in a tiny pot so this is the first year
it's bloomed to well. I only rehomed it a couple of weeks ago too! 

Strawberry Plants close up 

This is another one I planted a couple of years ago and am happy to see come back 

This was planted at the same time as the one above 

This is a new addition. A gift from my aunt about 2 months ago 

I shall be back soon with a crafty update!

Did me a little bit of "Gardening"

So Friday was my Birthday, I have reached the ripe old age of  twentyblur otherwise known as 28 :(
I had no yearning to go out and do anything exciting, so I took the day off work and got my hair cut....thrilling I know!

I had pinned this flower tower thing a while ago on pinterest and wanted to give it a go. As I was off work it seemed like the perfect day to give it a go.

Flower tower Found on Pinterst.com 

So I went to my localish garden centre and got a bit over excited with all the pretty flowers.I had to restrain myself from buying everything in site. Well lets just say I didn't buy EVERYthing but I did buy a lot!

This is my attempt at the flower pot tower.

 It was pretty easy and looks really pretty. I'm sure it will look even better once the flowers all bloom.

Crafty weekend and learning new skills

Well finally something new to blog about. I have been beavering away at my Granny square blanket for so long now that i've had nothing new to say boohoo!!

I spent this past weekend with my bestie (Cringe! But what can I say, I like saying it) I also dragged poor Mark along but he survived.

So what did I get up to?

This weekend was 'learn to sew' weekend. I wanted to learn to make myself a dress, so I made plans with my fellow crafters/textiles teachers Miss Marlow and Miss Akumaniy otherwise known as Leonora and Kukua.

First of all we took a trip over to Lewisham to go to a fabric shop. Which was a bit of a task as dear Leonora hates driving in London and particularly this area of London. But we made it there alive despite the rage she was emitting.

Before we went fabric shopping we made a pit stop at Brockley Market which is the local sort of farmers market. It was lovely!

  

We had fresh made wood fired sourdough pizza for lunch Yum! We sat and ate at the entrance to the market. Prompting almost every person that entered to first say oooh look at those lovely pizzas and then go and purchase one for themselves. I think next time we should ask for free pizza for all our advertising.

So we went on to the fabric shop, and after a little bit of misdirection we found the place.

It was actually quite sunny I had to borrow this picture from  192.com

We opened the door to find, that the whole of lewisham had decided that today would also be a sewing day and had all dropped by Rolls and Rems to purchase their fabric. We fought our way through the crowded shop to the back where the patterns are kept, and began flipping through the pattern books till we found something we liked.

I went with the Vogue V8727 Misses' Pattern 

I was initially hoping to make a few of the dresses from the pattern, but as it turns out the price of fabric has gone up considerably since I last bought any. So I settled on just the fabric to make one dress.

. Which with the pattern came to a pricy £25. I think Leonora ended up spending near on £45 on her purchases. So with the time and money it costs, its not as lucrative to make your own dresses as it once was.

Anyway so once we fought our way back through Lewisham traffic and Leonora's temper simmered down. We set to work at making our dresses. ( excuse the pj's I forgot I intended to blog these photos)
 So with direction from Miss Marlow I made a start.
First I had to identify the correct pattern pieces for my dress. Then cut them out. Once I had done that, I then needed to lay the pattern pieces out on the fabric making sure to use the fabric economically to have as little waste as possible. Whilst remembering to place the pieces marked with "Grainline" correctly inline with the straight edges not diagonally as this will cause puckering later on. The pattern pieces needed to be pinned in place before I cut them out.

Fabric for the top part of the dress

I really took my time, I have learnt my lesson with rushing things or expecting to just be able to do things. Once my bodice fabric pieces were cut out, I began sewing them together.

 I don't have much love with sewing machines. I think this is because when I was younger and just expected to know how to sew and that a sewing machine will just work when you thread the needle. I didn't know anything about bobbins and threading up so Miss Marlow educated me on all these processes as we went along.

When I initially began sewing I took it very slow, only applying the lightest pressure to the foot pedal so not to sew wonky lines and also because I didn't want to sew through my fingers. As I got more confident I sped up but still not to full speed.

Deep in concentration 

I went on to prepare the skirt pieces and follow the same procedure as the bodice. Once it was dress shaped I tried it on to see what alterations were needed. There were a few loose bits that needed taking in, and the skirt was not quite as I wanted it. I wanted to have a more pencil skirt shape so to alter these parts I  put the dress on inside out to expose the seams so the dress could be re pinned.

Meet Miss Akumanyi 

The skirt is not as wide as it appears in the picture, its just because its inside out. Kukua is pinning it out here so it can be re sewed and the excess fabric cut off. Unfortunately as I was really taking my time, I didn't get round to finishing the dress there are still a few odds and ends to do like the  Hem, bias binding around the arm holes and I will also need to reposition the zip.  I resewed the adjustments we had made, and then I could not get in or out if the dress without assistance from Kukua. So this is why I will need to move the zip so the dress has a larger opening for me to get in and out of.
As I don't know when the dress is going to be finished, I will post this now and add an update later on.

Thanks for reading

   

I'm still here!!

I know it may seem like I have dropped off the map but I am still working away at things. The problem I have, as I haven't been blogging for very long is I forget to take pictures of things that i'm working on as I go along. I get to the end and I'm like Duh!!! could have put that on the blog. Here are a few examples of this

This was an Easter wreath I made for my aunt. I took the first picture than
forgot to take anymore after it was finished and before I gave it to her. 

I got inspired to make some bread. I took my picture at the start
but none as I went along. Although I did take one before they went
in the oven.

I have also made a few crochet roses and another passport holder which I of course do not have pictures of.

I'm still working hard on my Granny square blanket.  I'm about 114 squares into my estimated 400 square blanket i'm still enjoying it. I'm researching other types of squares to add to the mix as I don't want to have just plain granny square. I will keep you posted as I progress.

I think my next project is redecorating our small down stairs toilet. I will try to remember to take pictures as I go.

Rounds have grown into squares.......

I have been beavering away, working on my granny circles to make them into granny squares.................

What do you think?

I've only actually transformed 20 so far, but I'm pretty happy with how its looking.  Anyway must get back to circles and squares now.