In the New Year I began a beginner’s dress making course because I want to make good use of my amazing sewing machine and make some nice clothes. The main thing I’ve learnt so far is that sewing isn’t as daunting as I thought it was, and following a pattern is much easier than it looks. The difficulty is the tailoring to a body and doing curves and working with funny fabrics. But basic non-fitted clothes are really easy to make! I managed to make a pair of pyjama bottoms without any assistance in just a few hours by following this pattern, which explains all the steps in a lot of detail.

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I love board games but sometimes the amount of bits you need to play is ridiculous. Take Terra Mystica, a strategic resource management game set in a fantasy world. It has 593 individual pieces comprising of coins, terrain tiles, various tokens, buildings, meeple, scoring titles and cards. This means the game weighs a hefty 2.1 kg! Luckily the creators give lots of plastic bags to separate the types of pieces so they can be stored neat(ish). The inner neat-freak in me longs for these games to come with cardboard inserts to store all the bits, however all is not lost! Inserts can be made by hand using foamcore – a cheap, lightweight, hard material that is easily cut into shape. There are lots of instructions, layouts and examples on the internet.

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I usually make my Christmas present wrapping paper themed, and this year's is very homemade and red. They look really nice and are very simple to do (and quite cheap if you have lots of arts & crafts material lying around).

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If like me you live in a house/flat with old wooden windows and doors, you will know that they let out a lot of heat and can be draughty. I made a few of my own draught excluders for hardly any money which look really arty. They are very easy to make if you have a sewing machine. You will also need: one large piece of fabric the length of the door or window sill you will be placing it on (cotton or calico), scrap fabrics and 2.5kg of lentils/split peas/other dried food/cheap stuffing.

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Following on from part 1, here are some more creative ideas for presents. These however require very little artistic skills!

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Valentines Day is fast approaching and it's often nice to give a personalised handmade present. This is part one: for those who like making things. I'll do another post tomorrow for those who are somewhat artistically challenged.

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I despair when I go into art shops and find how expensive good quality canvases are. You can get canvas relatively cheaply, but the quality is flimsy and they always have very thin wooden frames and pre-primed with this stuff that just feels fake. At art college we got taught how to make our own canvases (I feel like the plural should be canvii?), but unfortunately I no longer have access to a workshop with a saw, pre-cut wood, weird corrugated nails, reams and reams of free canvas fabric and a burly workshop assistant to hammer for me.

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I have made two new paintings called With You part 1 & 2. They are on 15cm square canvas and made of fabric, bubble wrap, tape, tissue paper, beads and a tonne of PVA glue:

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I've been experimenting with images and CSS on how to make an image look like it's been taken with a polaroid. You can see the results in the About me page. I still own a polaroid, and have about 2 photos left. Pity they don't make them any more :(

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Over the last two weeks I have been making three highland cows out of papier mache and fake fur fabric. I intend to give them away as presents, although I'll be sad to see my creations go! Scroll to the bottom to see the results.

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