Stone mushrooms for the garden

Back in January I glued together some river rocks and painted them to look like little mushrooms. Because I wanted them outside I varnished the first one and set it aside to cure for the required two weeks... then I wondered if all that time and extra effort was necessary. So on the 7th of February I put one painted, varnished and cured mushroom and one painted mushroom in the garden as an experiment.

Painted and varnished

Painted only

Nearly four months later, and both of my mushroom rocks are still looking great! You can see that the shiny one in the front with lots of spots is the varnished one.

What prompted the idea that the varnish might be unnecessary? Every time I clean the bathroom I see that bit of blue acrylic paint still stubbornly sticking to my sink! If regular cleaning with bleach doesn't remove it, in theory a painted rock should look great in my garden for quite awhile.

Origami Cymbidium Orchid

For the month of June, I decided to make the Cymbidium Orchid origami flowers from the book "Origami Flowers: Popular Blossoms and Creative Bouquets".

These flowers took me a couple of tries mainly in getting the coloured section to end up in the right place! I'm also not entirely sure of how to crease it properly in the final step.

I probably won't make these again, especially when I have an advanced origami book with a beautiful orchid in it! I'll have to give that flower a go again one day just to share it with you - as well as try out some more pieces from that book.

Origami flowers I have made from this book:

January: Balloon Flower

February: Blue Star

March: Cyclamen

April & May: Hyacinth & Morning Glory

Squiggly Sewn Cushion Covers

I made a couple of cushions for my sister's birthday back in April - after a lot of frustration! Lately I haven't had much luck finding fabric for specific projects, and yet again I couldn't find anything I liked in red and black.

You might remember seeing a post I did for the envelope clutches where I just sewed heaps of random 'squiggles' on black fabric. Since I was really happy with my personalised fabric I decided to use that idea for my sister's cushions - after checking mum's opinion first of course!

I think they turned out great - although they were impossible to photograph. It is still enough of a novelty that I enjoyed the crazy sewing process and have added the need for my own squiggly cushion to my project list.

I'm starting to think I shouldn't look for fabrics for specific projects, rather I should buy the fabric I like and think about what to use it for later on...

Trixie's New Jeans Bed... so far

I've started working on a new bed for Trixie to fit on my side of the bed - and yep it is again being made using the denim from old jeans. You might remember Trixie's original jeans bed which had the top piece made using whole sections of the jeans. This time though, I didn't want to spend so much time struggling to sew through all those thick layers! I also don't think I have enough jeans for this bed either which isn't inspiring me to hurry up and get it finished.

Because of the lack of fabric I opted to sew all the scrap pieces together to create a time consuming top piece. That idea was all thanks to seeing the Crazy Quilt Sewalong post over at Sew Can She - otherwise it would be tiny squared off pieces sewn together!

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out - especially considering a lot of the scraps I used were quite stretched out. If I don't forget about it, I  might also do some decorative stitching for the sides - similar to what I did on Dash's denim cat bed.

Now here's hoping I have enough of the old denim leftover to finish her bed sooner rather than later - Trixie (the spoiled dog) is not happy sleeping on a pile of blankets and instead chooses to sleep on her bed in the office by herself!