Origami Hyacinth and Morning Glory

Last week I was checking my blog so I could choose an origami flower for May when I noticed I had completely forgotten about the Morning Glory flowers I made last month! For whatever reason I really believed I had not only taken the photos, but also published a blog post about them - obviously I need to do some brain exercises...

For April I decided to try out the Morning Glory origami flowers from the book "Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets".

Apart from starting with a hexagon, these ones were quite easy to make. While they were quick to finish, I don't really like them and probably won't try them again/

For May I went with the Hyacinth origami flowers since I had mastered the fold needed to make the hexagon paper. 

I really like these flowers, however being a hyacinth you are supposed to attach about 20 of them all to a thick piece of wire. I decided I liked them as single flowers so I suppose they aren't really a hyacinth anymore!

I am thinking of making templates for all of the odd shapes rather than doing the special folds using square paper - especially since the original folds aren't always needed for the flowers. Either way it certainly is interesting to learn new origami techniques.

Origami flowers I have made from this book:

January: Balloon Flower

February: Blue Star

March: Cyclamen

My Pets

On Saturday Karen from Sew Many Ways will be hosting Annie's Pet Palooza Birthday Party for her labrador Annie's 13th birthday!

I have always been an animal lover which of course means I have pets!

Nearly six years ago we got our first kitten - even though this kitten was meant to be Ray's, Dash is definitely my cat! The very first time I first picked him up he snuggled his head into the crook of my arm and licked my elbow. 

He has grown up to be a very vocal cat - especially when I am on the phone. He is gentle and actually stops playing rough when I say "ow". I taught him to sit for his treats and he also loves to sit on my shoulder or back. Being a typical cat, his favourite thing to do is sit in front of my computer or on top of any project I'm working on!

When we finally bought a house with a good sized yard we got a puppy who I named Trixie! She was a terrible biter as a puppy and I still have a couple of scars - and lots of holey clothes. The puppy biting phase was the only puppy issues we had, so I believe we were very lucky! Now however she is going through her teenager phase so I guess our luck has run out.

Being a border collie x kelpie we were expecting a high energy dog, mostly though she is pretty lazy. She loves to play fetch with pretty much any toy - with her favourite being the orange ball - well it was until I taught her to play frisbee!

And of course my rats! I have five at the moment and I still can't decide on names for them. They really do make great pets - although they are impossible to photograph! This is my new super friendly little fella that I got last week.

Then there are the fish which include my two male fighter fish, as well as our big tank that currently has a red tail black shark and some harlequin raspboras.

And I can't forget our most unusual pets - the snakes. We have two stimson pythons named Stellar and Theo and two bredli pythons named Mika and Bitey. Stellar is by far my favourite of all the snakes and she is the first one we bought. She is currently in hibernation which she chooses every winter, meanwhile our other snakes are still happily eating as the temperature drops!

Happy Birthday Annie!

Linking up at Annie's Birthday Linky Party!

Envelope Clutches

I have been on a bit of a sewing kick lately - and have also been having a hard time finding things I like. So of course I had to make a purse to go with my new red and black dress. I found a great pattern from See Kate Sew for an envelope clutch that I decided to try out. 

I only wanted a small clutch so I printed the pattern out at 60%. I made up a test one using my blue leopard fabric (leftover from my dads tie) and it ended up being the perfect size!

And of course there never seems to be any nice black and red fabric around here lately so I did the next best thing and added some red to my black fabric...

What started out as an experiment turned out to be pretty cool - definitely an option when I can't find fabric in the colours I want. It ended up being pretty fun to just sew back and forth without having to concentrate! 

I'll definitely make this envelope clutch again with crazy blue thread fabric.

Windmill Cross Stitch

Last week we celebrated Opa and Oma's 50th Anniversary and I had a brilliant idea to create a cross stitch for their gift. I took a photo of a Dutch windmill from their tablecloth and started an attempt to create the cross stitch pattern myself - which was far too difficult! So I found a great website called Pic 2 Pat where you can upload a photo and they will generate a cross stitch pattern for you. It is a really easy to use, free online program which saves a lot of time when creating a custom cross stitch pattern.

With the colours being all over the place for this pattern it took a lot longer than I'm used to, but in the end I finished at least one square each day. 

And of course with a handmade gift you need to give a handmade card so I used watercolour pencils to create a bright flowery card!