Creativity

This morning while surfing the blogs I usually look at, I found this very important video clip at BellaDia.  Immediately after watching it, I knew I had to put it on my blog, too, so as to increase the possibility of more viewers.  (If you can't see the whole thing on my blog, click on the link about and see at at BellaDia.)

The clip runs for a little over 20 minutes, and is often very funny.  I hope you will enjoy it and it will make you think about creativity, a wonderful gift.

A Gift For a Friend

On Saturday, I will be celebrating the birthday of a dear friend of mine. Her name is Penny and she is from New Zealand. So, I saw this as an opportunity to try out that free-motion embroidery idea I blogged about days ago.

I got a picture of the New Zealand penny on line and I traced it onto Solvy - a water soluble stabilizer. I used an oil-based permanent marker for this so it wouldn't bleed or smear.


The penny I traced was dated 1957, but I changed it to 1960 - her birth year.




Then I stitched the design. This was not as easy as that sentence would imply. After I stitched the outside circle, I decided it would be prudent to put a layer of tear-away stabilizer on the back. And my sewing machine was most uncooperative. I think I must really replace it soon. I had to rethread and re-bobbin it every couple of minutes. But somehow, I managed to make it look all right.
This is sewn onto a zippered jacket, btw, in turquoise - our favorite color.



The penny had these dots interspersed along the outside edge, and they didn't stitch too well, so I decided to put a copper sequin in their place: three of them to be exact.

So, if you are reading this blog and you know Penny, please don't tip her off!

Faux Sushi

For April Fool's Day I met with some friends for a time of game playing - card games and board games.  This was my contribution to the snack table.  Not very sushi-like sushi.  They are cut-in-thirds Twiggies - a Singaporean version of Twinkies (not nearly as good, unfortunately) with a Japanese candy called Chocobabies stuffed into the frosting (these aren't like any American candy I know of, but they are good!) and wrapped with Fruit Roll-ups, in strawberry!  I wanted the green roll-ups, but I was lucky to get any, so I took the red ones.

I had to explain to many people that this wasn't REAL sushi (I am not the only one who doesn't eat raw fish), and that was pretty funny because I didn't think my sushi looked like the real thing at all.  Once I mentioned the ingredients, tho, people were happy to have one.  What a riot!

I also made a new friend yesterday, a new mom at my daughter's school, and she's a quilter - and not only a quilter, but a FUSER for heaven's sake!  I feel very blessed that God has allowed me to make her acquaintance at this point in my life, when I desperately needed to meet someone who speaks my language.  

A Return to Normal

That's a dubious blog title.

But Spring Break has ended, and both my beloveds have returned to their normal schedules.

Speaking of dubious, spring itself is a dubious season in Singapore.  There's scant seasonal variation here, so close to the equator.  So, we misplaced northerners must make spring for ourselves.

Bougainvillea: not necessarily a spring flower, but pink is a sort of spring color...

Some small yellow flower

Frangipani, I believe...

Something borrowed, something blue...

I don't know what this is, but it must be related to bird of paradise.

So, I don't have any pictures of baby birds or bunnies to make this post a true spring-like post, but how about...

Kittens!

A Nifty Idea

I saw this video tutorial on this blog I look at regularly, Craftzine, about free-motion embroidery t-shirts made by a woman who has a site called Girlpopcorn.com.  Apparently, she finds a picture of the thing she wants to embroider, puts it through Photoshop to make a line drawing of the object, traces the drawing onto water-soluble stabilizer, and then uses the stabilizer as a template to stitch the object onto a t-shirt.  

I may or may not fool around with this idea, but for now the inspiration button is all lit up on my dashboard..