Garden – The Art of Cobwebs

Pixie Wallow ~ Pixie Crafting with Little Cobs

At my Grandsons, Little Cobs, school they have a ‘project’ which involves a teddy bear called Barnaby. Each child in the class gets to take Barnaby the Bear home with them for a few days, and Barnaby gets to spend time sharing the family outings, games, toys, meals, visits etc., and the children (with the help of parents, guardians, grandparents) write the story of what Barnaby has been doing while he’s been staying with them.

Little Cobs Daddy (Son in Law) told me about Barnaby, and suggested that perhaps Barnaby Bear would like to come with Little Cobs to visit Grammy and Grandad, and maybe Grammy could do some crafting with Little Cobs and take photographs, print them out and they could then be included in the story book of Barnaby’s time spent with Little Cobs and all the things he did.

And this is the [mostly pictorial] story of how Barnaby Bear came to visit Grammy and Grandad and joined in with some crafting with Little Cobs and his Grammy.

I’ve made little tiny things for years (and years and years – more than I care to own up to). I love small detail. And ... I used to make little houses, paint and attach them to various items and used to sell them for just enough money to cover the costs of actually making them. Now about a month ago, Pinterest (that well known joyful time-waster) sent me an email with pictures of things it suggested I might like. Among those photos were some little Fairy Houses which reminded me of the Fairy homes I used to make many years ago. This gave me an idea for what I thought Little Cobs, and Barnaby Bear, might like to make, and the following photographs show you what happened, how it happened, who made it happen, and how it all turned out in the end.

Once upon a time, two and a half weeks ago, there was a boy, a bear, a mug and some clay….

2 Making Pixie Houses for Pixie Wallow — I showed Little Cobs how to make a tiny Pixie House using clay. My bright little chap got the idea first time and, using just two fingers, he made two perfect little houses, while Barnaby Bear watched and learned.

3 Look what I made Barnaby Pixie Wallow — The little boy then made some Mushroom Caps, and held them up for Barnaby Bear to pass his expert eye over. Barnaby, *as it turned out*, is an expert at all things Fairy and Pixie. *What a stroke of luck that was!*

4 Pixie Houses and Mushroom Tops — *Progress …* Two expertly created Pixie Houses, and two miraculous, magical, Mushroom Caps.

5 Painting the Mushrooms — We put the newly made clay pieces to one side and filled the chosen mug and fixed moss in place, to give the feeling of being in Fairy/Pixie Land. *(see the Mug Garden over to the left of the photo)*. Next came PAINTING! The little boy – aka Little Cobs, is pretty expert at using a paint brush now *and I’m wondering if perhaps I could get him doing a bit of decorating around Cobweb Towers*. **Free** child labour – and at my favourite price. lol

6 Barnaby helping with quality control — As you can see, Barnaby Bear was definitely taking his job as Quality Control Bear, very seriously indeed!

It’s a really pretty plate – but not one we use for food. It just sits around waiting for some passing crafter to blob paint onto it in order to give it a use.

7 Pixie Houses and mushroom in a mug — Once all the paint was dry, *and after the artist had had an afternoon snack and a bit of a play*, Little Cobs placed all his beautiful handmade pieces in the places he wanted them to be so that he could check for position. Once perfect, he gave the go ahead for everything to be fixed in place.

A few small resin flowers were added, just for artisticness, (not a real word but it’s so ‘juicy’ that once I’d made it up I simply had to use it), a couple of teeny tiny pine cones and some general florestry bits – just to make it feel like home to any passing Fairy or Pixie who might be looking for a place for the summer.

Pixie Wallow Houses Mushrooms and Barnaby Bear — Barnaby Bear suggested that the whole scene needed a name, so Little Cobs and I came up with Pixie Wallow, and Grammy built a name label on the computer and printed it out for Little Cobs to fix it to the outside of the cup, so that everyone knew what it was.

I’m reliably informed that Barnaby was very happy with Pixie Wallow, and it passed the Inspection Test with a gold star!

8 Close up of Pixie Houses and Mushrooms — It’s ready for a close up, Mr. Demille … *(those who’ve watched Sunset Boulevard will get that one)*.

All the painting is Little Cobs own, apart from tiny bits where I showed him what he needed to do before I handed over the paint brush, and two spots on one of the Mushroom caps, just to show him how to get that magical ‘dot’ in the right place, in the right size. He made the houses, the mushroom caps and was the ideas man for how the whole scene was to look.

Little Cobs, Barnaby Bear and myself had an absolutely great time making this. Lots of laughs and lots of stories about who would eventually live in the Pixie Houses, and who would come and sit on the mushrooms and play in the garden.

Before I go may I share a surprise that I had a couple of days ago. I got sent an Anniversary Achievement by WordPress . . .

… four years! FOUR YEARS I’ve been blogging, and yet if you’d have asked me I would have guessed about… maybe 2 to 2 and a half years tops. I can hardly believe it. Four years, and I’ve loved every single day of it, and that’s because I’ve shared it with you.

I’ve made so many lovely friends via my blog and have and am enjoying so many blogs which are owned by others.

So thank you, dear reader, for filling my last four years with joy and fun. I’ve loved getting to know you and hope to continue doing so, and also hope to get to know all the new people who join The Cobweborium Emporium, or that I find in blog land.

Thank you so much for coming today and sharing Pixie Wallow. Have a truly blessed rest of your day.

Just for you … if you’d like it.

I had a card making day …. and made a card with a sort of cottage, country feel to it. The card and papers used are all by Docrafts, who, by a remarkable coincidence, are based here in Dorset, where I live! (No I haven’t been and raided the warehouse in the dead of night … yet. But only because I think I’d need several helpers to bring home all the stash I’d want! lol)

The blue flower and green crochet doily (under the flower) are Prima and the feather … is from Edna.

No Edna isn’t a new craft producer … at least, she’s not a big time producer of craft items… she’s one of our chickens.

Edna is a big old bird who lays mahoosive brown eggs of roughly 3″ tall – (too big to fit into egg boxes – even the egg boxes from supermarkets which claim the enclosed eggs are ‘extra large’). We only have two chickens now, Edna, and Dorothy, and it’s a case of from the sublime to the ridiculous!

While Edna is the big, noisy old bird whose a rich, warm rusty colour, Dorothy, on the other hand, is a quiet, delicate looking, little thing, whose feathers are paler, mottled, and fluffy, and she has feathered feet, so she looks like she’s wearing feathered slippers. She’s a beautiful colour, and her eggs are darling and so little too – anything from half an inch to roughly an inch tall – and they’re a pretty blue colour. They‘re very rich eggs, a little too rich for me. She follows dear Edna around as if Edna has her on a lead. She also copies Edna… When Edna does the BIG LOUD “QUAAawwww, qwaw, qwaw, ack, ack, ack.” letting the world know that she’s about to lay an egg the size of a planet, Dotty tries to copy her, but the noises she makes come out like a creaky little whisper: “paw wah wah waah“. You couldn’t get two more extreme birds. But they do seem to love each other. Bless them.

When Edna goes into the hen house to lay her egg in one of the nest boxes, Dorothy goes in with her and more often than not we can find them both snuggled together in a nest box, keeping each other company while Edna lays her egg. However … Mr. Cobs went looking for the two darlings a few days ago and found them in one nest box, but … Edna (big bird) was sat ON TOP of Dorothy! Dotty must have gone into that particular nest box first, and Edna either went in to keep her company, or … she wanted to lay at the same time, and instead of choosing the nest box right next to Dotty, she clambered in and sat on top of her! We were quite frankly suprised that Dotty wasn’t squished!

Edna, like all birds, loses feathers every now and again. When she goes through a moult, she looks like a Mrs. Shabby Chic Clucker, than like a World Champion Sized Eggs Layer! Any feathers she drops I squirrel away and use them when I know that something needs one of her feathery gifts. This card needed a gift from Edna. I did toy with putting one of her eggs on it but didn’t think the Post Office would approve of a scrambled egg letter ~ so you have the little spotted egg you see in the photo above. (no, it’s not a real egg). lol.

just-foryou-eggstraspecial-5 — *A teeny tiny metal spoon, so that you can eat your boiled egg with it.*

The title of this post is ‘Just for You, … if you’d like it‘ and what I meant by that is that you could be the receiver of this card if you’d like to be.

I’ve never done a ‘give-away’ on my blog (I’ve never been sure anyone would want anything to be honest, – and I’m still not now) … but in the last few days I’ve seen a few blogs doing ‘give-aways’. Not of cards, but rather knitted things like mug sleeves or sewn items like a make up bag etc, but it made me wonder if bloggers who made cards ever did a give-away for a handmade card. I’d never seen any … and this led me to think that maybe it might be something fun and something to make someone smile so my mind was made up. I’d do a card ‘Give-Away!’

If you’re a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog, and would like to have your name ‘thrown into the hat’ and be in with a chance of receiving this card then please just leave a comment below with the word: GIVEAWAY – either at the start or the end of your comment.

To make sure that all is fair, I’ll get the Random Number Generator to choose the number, and I’ll also do a screen shot of the R.N.G and post it so that you can all see which number was generated.

If you’re the ‘winner’, then you have a choice. You can choose to have the card for yourself, in which case I’ll write the card to you, sign it and send it with love. Or … you can choose to receive the card un-written, so that you can write it and send it to someone else.

But … If you don’t want to enter but still want to leave a comment or have a ‘coffee chat’ , then please do. You really don’t have to get involved in a give-away. It’s just a bit of September fun. 🙂 Any comment which doesn’t have the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ at the beginning or end of a comment won’t be entered and you must be a follower of the blog here to enter.

This give-away is open to anyone who is a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog – no matter where you live. It’s not just for UK folks. I’ll close the ‘give-away’ entries on Wednesday 21st September 2016, at 6pm UK time. Only followers who have commented by that date and time, with the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ somewhere in their comment, will be included.

NB: Please DON’T put your real name or address in the comments box. I need to look after your privacy and security.

Well it’s Sunday and I’m not normally a poster on Sundays, so this is something which feels kind of odd to me. A nice odd though. It feels kind of warm and fuzzy. Friendly. Fabulous. Like I should be doing something normal, and instead I’ve been given time off to go and have a coffee with friends somewhere lovely.

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me. I love seeing you here and love chatting with you in comments too. I’m so very blessed to know you all.

Have a wonderful day, whatever you’re doing.

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Bottoms Up! … in Mr. McGregor’s Garden.

I love making cards for people, but ‘once in a blue moon’, the card I made might not feel like it ‘fits’ the person I’d made it for. And that’s exactly what happened last week.

I made a card to say ‘thank you‘ to my blogging friend, Hannah (she of the wonderful hat pins), but somehow the card didn’t feel right to me. There was nothing actually wrong with the card, but it didn’t seem to ‘fit’ the person I was making it for. I wanted something which was fun. Something with a smile. One that sort of held a visual ‘squidge’ from me, sent in a card, over the miles. So I decided that I’d have to start again. I looked around my craft room for inspiration and my eyes rested upon a stamped image held in a big peg, at the back of my desk, and suddenly a LIGHTBULB MOMENT happened! I knew the card to make.

Readers may remember an image I stamped last week, in Part One of the Guide(ish) to Stamping … this is one of the images I stamped:-

I’d put that stamped image in one of those big fancy looking pegs which holds notes, receipts and ‘stuff’, and I knew instantly that the card I needed to make was going to be made using that image of the Mommy Rabbit hugging and giving her baby a squidge.

Mr. McGregor’s Garden (from the wonderful ‘Tales of …’ stories written by Beatrix Potter) popped into my mind as I looked at the rabbits hugging, and that’s where the idea for the bit of fun I wanted the card to have, came from!

I got my air dry clay out … and made four flat backed plant pots and a little trowel to go with them. The clay is white, so, when the pots and trowel were dry, I chose two colours of acrylic paint for the pots – but instead mixing them together to make one new colour, I kind of swirled them into each other, in a figure of 8 kind of swirling motion, so that when I picked up some paint on my brush, I picked up both of the colours at the same time, in a sort of smudges of each colour way, rather than just one colour. What I was hoping to achieve was a set of pots which looked as if they were old; pots that had been through the wars; a little battered and looked like they really did belong in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

5 Mr. Mcgregor's garden pots — I wanted pots that looked old and a little bit battered. Kind of like the ones in this photo.

While the paint on the pots dried, I worked on the stamped image. It was stamped on snow white card, but I wanted it to sort of suggest that we were peeping and looking at a tender, private moment of the mummy and baby rabbit having a cuddle together (or as my Grandson calls it … “a tuddle.”). I blended two tones of browns using Memento stamp pads, (one a soft caramel brown and then went in again using a deeper brown colour), and blended them around the sides of the card which the image was stamped on so that it drew your eye ‘into’ the image and make you feel that you’re looking through or ‘into’ something … A port-hole? A window? Nooo… you’re looking down a rabbit hole of course!

4 Bottoms Up Down the Rabbit Hole — if you scroll up and compare it to the original stamped image on white card, you can see the difference.

Next … making rabbit bottoms! (There’s a phrase you don’t hear every day!) I wanted to do three different sizes of rabbit bottoms, (ok, this is making me giggle now. ‘Making Rabbit Bottoms’ … that’s what I should have called this post! LOL) … and in three different colours. I didn’t want to do the accepted tan, brown, black or white which you would normally see as colours of rabbits, but wanted to play up the ‘fun‘ so made rabbit bottoms in unexpected colours. I had to trim down the purple woollen pom-pom for the middle rabbit … and that, I’m tellin’ you, is easier said than done!

Twice I cut through the little bits of wool in the middle which holds the whole pom-pom together!, (talentless or uselessness on my part I fear), and at this point I had just ONE purple pom-pom left so the pressure was on! I had to try really hard to not cut through this last one! By now my desk was covered in bits of purple woolly fluff, and tons of tiny purple wool fibres floating in the air. Nightmare! It was stuck to my hands, to my face, to my eyelashes. It was going up my nose (and making me sneeze) and . . . My clothes looked like I was a purple bunny murderer!

But … I got there in the end … in a fashion. lol 🙂

I added bunny feet in contrasting colours – dotting on ‘toes’ using some fine liners, and then adding tails made from fibres of the same coloured felt I’d used for their feet – (just cut up a bit of felt into tiny little bits, then chop them as much as you can with tiny snips until eventually they give in and become fluff). However … the little yellow bunny on the end … her tail was easy to make. I had enough purple fluff to make purple bunny tails for all the rabbits of the world!

I chose some pretty pink with cream dots background paper from my stash – which began life as a 12″x 12″ sheet, and I trimmed it to size. It was already slightly vintaged, so all I had to do to it was add some light(ish) caramel brown ink, but with its toes dabbling in a terracotta colour, into the outer edges of the paper. I added this same paper to the inside of the card too, to carry the colours through the card.

I fixed the bunny bottoms to the pots, and added the pots to the card. To finish the card off … I added the sentiment, and voila! A smiley, fun card for my blogging friend. It was just as I wanted. Something to say ‘thank you’, and send warm smiles, and a squidge, through the post.

My blog friend has received the card, so I can now share it with you without spoiling the surprise.

I don’t think I’ve missed anything … but if I have please do ask about what you need to know, – by just putting your ‘want’ into a comment. I promise I’ll reply.

(Incase you’re new to the blog here: you can post a comment really easily – simply click the little speech bubble at the head of this post – just to the right hand side of the title – and that will take you directly to the comments)

Aaanyhoo … Happy Monday, and Happy 1st of August! When it gets to August my thoughts always turn to …. the dreaded C word.

Yes, you guessed correctly … Christmas!

But … I shall stop right now (as the Spice Girls once famously sang) because before the C word can be dealt with I have a birthday to deal with… or rather …. a couple or so birthdays – so I should concentrate on those first. (Apart from the one birthday … I never send a card for that particular birthday girls special day because .. well because it’s me and my birthday. LOL. Ha! just when you began to think I was being mean to someone!) LOL 🙂

Well that’s me done and dusted so I shall shut up – and you can stop your bottom from going numb. 🙂 …. are you singing that Spice Girls song now? “Stop right now, thank you very much, I need someone with a human touch. Hey you, always on the run better slow it down baby, better have some fun.”. Well if you weren’t, I bet you are now. [cackling laugh heard through the corridors]. ut ohhhhh…. I’ve given you an ear worm! If it gets too annoying start singing the ‘Happy Birthday to you’ song … over and over until you forget to sing it. And .. if that ear worm comes back, simply repeat the singing of the Happy Birthday song. Eventually it will push off and leave your brain song free!