Hinamatsuri

Today is the Japanese Doll Festival or Girl's Day.  I made these paper dolls a few weeks ago from a kit I had, but there are instructions about for similar dolls.  These dolls are sitting down, and these are super skinny (but would also make cute bookmarks).

Time goes by

Recently, whilst purchasing a birthday present I treated myself to some tasty beads and other bits to make this watch. It has been worn quite a lot recently and has seen double duty as a timepiece and worry beads.

Yep, I broke it whilst fiddling with it absent mindedly whilst updating a chart  mid-afternoon at work.  Funnily enough my colleagues knew exactly what had happened without looking round.  My apologies for being a bit rattly for the past week - I will return to the ever reliable Baby-G next week. Though I'm off to the local craft emporium to get more thing stretchy beading elastic this weekend.

A little extra heart

I needed a little gift bag to hold some extra beads for a birthday bracelet. So designed and stitched this little heart shaped pouch.

Which then gathered into a leaf

or a flower bud depending from which view you looked at it.

Valentine Breakfast

This was more of a Sunday breakfast exercise.  Too much to do first thing on a workday.  Rustled these up for my beloved in anticipation of Valentines night steak and chocolate pudding.  Anyway, will be grateful to be where I am today rather than where I was a year ago.

Birthday Brooches & Keepers

A few presents for a recent birthday. First a brooch made with some lovely Aizome Chiyogami Washi*

Something to keep the above in and along with the recipients collection of brooches, a brooch keeper.

It is a variation on this brooch keeper from Buttontree Lane (or it could always be used as an extra large needle case!).

*
Aizome - Indigo dye
Chiyogami - "Chiyo" thousand generation, "gami" paper
Washi - "Wa" Japanese, "shi" paper

Xīnnián Kuàilè

Before I forget:

 This little rabbit has got a magnet instead of a brooch back so that it will be adorning my fridge, rather than my lapel.

A little get together

A little more origami jewellery has been made but this time I wasn't solo. G & X were my willing victims pupils and came along last week and created their own origami brooches (left & right above, the ones in the centre were my sample pieces).