Mini Painting: Patch the Cockatiel

Just last month we were devastated to lose our beautiful cockatiel, Patch. Having previously painted him in watercolours (check out my cockatiels tag) with his partners Georgie and JayJay, I wanted to do a small acrylic painting of just him. It's been a while since I had my trusty acrylics out - so long in fact that some of them had dried up! But it was good to get back in to painting, and my husband was thrilled with this small gift to remember a very handsome boy.

Puppy || Sew Cute to Cuddle

Hello! Yup, I'm still alive. Absence makes you grow fonder of me, right?! I have been working on lots of creating of things, but I'm not going to be able to share some of them for a while, so please bear with some patchy posting... Sneaky peeks on Facebook as always :)

I made this cute little puppy dog for my niece's 7th Birthday, and s/he was a real hit, being named Flopster!

The pattern is called Brody the Dog, and is from Sew Cute to Cuddle... The author, Mariska Vos-Bolman, has an Etsy store, but I found it more financially viable to buy a copy of her book from Amazon :) She has designed some beautiful patterns, and the book contains clear instructions and helpful diagrams, as well as sections on fabrics and techniques. The patterns are provided to scale in the book, so there is no need for pesky enlarging. I did find bits of this design fiddly, and you can see some of my curves aren't exactly smooth... But I would use more of her patterns :)

I used some fabric and felt I had left lying around, and also stitched on a cute little mouth. I had the idea that all dogs need a toy to play with, so stitched a small bone from felt. I have tied a piece of ribbon around both the bone and a paw, meaning it can be removed for play but stored safely!

Tapestry Crochet NDS Lite Case

First up, background story. Two months ago I excitedly bought my first Nintendo DS game in a couple of years. I got my old original NDS out and... it wouldn't turn on. Great. My husband came to the rescue gifting me an NDS Lite, and I began chucking it into my bag to carry around with me. Yeh, not a good idea, it was going to get scratched quickly! So I decided it needed a case, and it was the perfect sized project to try a new technique with!

I decided on tapestry crochet, and chose this pattern. I had to adjust the number of repeats to fit with the wool/hook I was using, and the size I needed it. After doing the zigzags, I decided I wanted to change it up a bit, and added the row of hearts. I like touches of girliness in my life :)

I also added a contrasting patch pocket, which can hold an extra game. This case is only intended for nipping out with, not permanent storage, so just the one pocket was enough for me! I finished it with a dark navy zip, just for easy closure.

I like tapestry crochet. It annoys me a little bit because stitches (obviously) don't line up properly, and I struggled to create a more complex pattern because of this. But it creates a nice sturdy piece of work, and it was fun to do. I also like that it worked up in rounds, and at the end I had very few ends to run in, and no joining to do!