Handmade gadget cases

I managed to make 3 gadget cases to fit the iPad over the last week.
It started with 3 little appliqued ice creams I had kicking about which I'd used in my Spoonflower ice cream van design.


I decided to make a strawberry, chocolate and vanilla gadget case. The nice thing about making an iPad case to an iPhone case is it gives me a much bigger surface area to do a design on. 
The cases are made with some re-purposed thick canvas a friend gave me from an old settee cover and then I have appliqued and embroidered my designs on and lined them with fleece so as not to scratch the gadget and keep it well padded.


Once I get some more photos together I will be adding to my Folksy shop.

New month - new food experiment, Black Garlic

I came across an article on Black Garlic the other day which was a new concept to me but I soon became interested when I read about the health benefits of this matured and fermented garlic.


To give you a brief sum up, garlic bulbs are slowly fermented by continuous heating in a low oven for 40 days. When the garlic comes out, the individual cloves are black and almost fudge like in texture. 
The taste is supposed to be delicious, more mellow, sweeter and almost Marmite like without the garlic after taste so it is very versatile.
Black Garlic has all the health benefits of regular garlic and nearly twice the antioxidants and is good for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol. 


It seems you can buy it at some of the larger Tesco shops and online but it is quite expensive due to the process.


This got me thinking as I wanted some, could you make your own? For anyone with a properly functioning oven this would be quite an expensive and possibly inconvenient experiment to commit to for 40 days.
However, as some of my friends will know, I have to cook on 'the Aga from hell!' This house has such a manky old Aga (no alternative cooking facility other than my camping stove) which is a solid fuel to oil conversion and it never reaches anywhere near the right temperature, even after a service. As I always say, good job I don't eat animals or I'd have food poisoning all the time! Anyway as with all bad there has to be some good and it does make great meringues. I thought this is the perfect opportunity to try fermenting some garlic in the porridge making oven.


I found these instructions on how to make black garlic, you can also see a pic of it on the link


http://www.ehow.com/how_5902625_make-black-garlic.html


I bought the best garlic I could find and a little glass dish to place them in and away we go for the next 40 days. Actually I 'm not sure if the oven is hot enough even for this as it is about ready for a service but I'm having a go.
I just need to be patient now but as that compartment of the oven hasn't been used for ages it should be ok.


All will be revealed on July 10th.

My new vintage memories fabric is here!

Well with the best intentions of being up early to peg the washing out and head off for food shopping it hasn't happened yet. I had an exciting delivery from the postman, my newly designed fabric I'm calling 'vintage memories' has arrived from Spoonflower and I'm really happy with this one.
Created as a collage from some of my old family greeting cards and antique postcards I've collected, all mixed up for a richly nostalgic fabric of memories.


It fills me with joy to look at it but the intention is to sell half on  Folksy (already listed) to cover costs of printing & shipping and to keep a bit for myself to make some textile goodies.
That way I can fund some more of my designs at Spoonflower.

Buzzard over Driffield

You are going to have to take my word for this as I was unable to get any photographic evidence.
It's a bright, sunny morning and I have just been hanging my washing out, as I gazed up at the birds I saw in the distance soaring very high a familiar outline. I thought, that looks like a buzzard but it can't be and then I remembered that I have seen buzzards before in East Yorkshire near Goodmanham & South Dalton around the Dalton estate.


So I carried on watching it, I daren't rush in to get my binoculars incase it had gone when I returned, to confirm what I thought and yes it came a little nearer over the farm land and circled and I saw the tail shape, the brown and light markings under the wings and then it gradually flew higher and further away towards Driffield. 
Definitely a buzzard, I've seen plenty in Scotland & Wales to confirm we have a buzzard in the area. There's plenty for them to eat here although the downside are the farmers and gamekeepers around here who I know would shoot it at first glance.


What an exciting start to the morning.

Miserable bank holiday

Typical miserable, drizzly, mizzly bank holiday weather this weekend. Just look at the threatening, stormy sky I've had to view out of my office window. Needless to say I haven't been anywhere much or done anything much. Although I have made some peanut butter chocolate slab and yesterday I rustled up an iPad case, I think I might start making these for my Folksy shop.

Travel Posters & a Hornsea Jug

It's been a day of seeing vintage travel posters. You'll find some lovely examples of French travel postcards over on Green Rabbits blog and then I was in a charity shop this morning and they had a National Railway Museum poster book for sale. I looked at it knowing I have about 3 similar books so my thought of buying it to rip out certain pictures to frame seemed a bit wasteful when someone else would probably get pleasure from buying it.

There's something so nice about those old posters. I had a look through some of my modern day designs which are inspired by posters of that era and compiled a collection of my favourites done in recent years.

I was contacted last week about a commission to do that style but after initial contact they've not replied to me. Not to worry, I'm probably too busy to tackle it yet.

I didn't leave the charity shop empty handed, I couldn't resist buying this Hornsea Heirloom jug as it is in beautiful condition and was cheap and I think it will make a nice custard jug.

http://greenrabbitdesigns.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/riviera-snippets/#comment-2493

Packaging 4 - retro

I haven't done a packaging post for a while and this little tub of joy caught my eye yesterday. I found these new ice creams in Waitrose and I just love the vintage scooter on the label. I was weighing up which label and flavour I liked best as I could only afford one tub. I think the berry fruits had the brightest pink and yellow stripe scooter label but I settled for this as the most important thing has to be the contents!


Also on a retro theme, our local Lidl has upgraded and now has an instore bakery, whooo hooo! To collect your fresh bread they have the European style paper bags with those lovely screened printed 70's style illustrations. It takes me right back to caravanning as a child when we used to tour Europe and walking from the campsites into the villages to find a patisserie for your breakfast rolls.

Little birdie

When I was doing tea last night I noticed a baby bird sat on the step outside the kitchen, he wasn't doing much, just sitting with his little head spinning round maybe looking for parents. He didn't walk, or flutter or anything so I'm not sure if he'd fallen out of a nest but I decided to stay well clear in the hope the parents came back.


He had disappeared about an hour later and I don't know where to as I didn't see or hear any activity so hopefully all is ok.

Art in the garden - Jacksons Wold

Yesterday I did my AIG stint up at Jacksons Wold. I packed a sketch pad and camera and rather optimistically my sewing box and lots of fabric and bits of stuff. I thought the weather was going to be fine after the dull start, or at least I believed the previous nights weather report of it brightening up!


The lesson again is not to believe the weather reports because 2 minutes before arriving at the garden the rain came down and bang went my ideas for getting my fabric out. I waited in the car for about 10 mins before the gardens opened and it faired up but was virtually a re-run of my visit to Hunmanby Grange 2 years ago as the garden is high on the Wolds and parts are quite exposed and wind tunnels.


The photos you see are when the sun came out and of course you can't see how windy it is. I tried to display the ERA leaflets and my leaflets but they kept getting blown away. 
That said I still had a lovely afternoon, the gardens were delightful and consisted of walled gardens and woodland gardens, kitchen garden and a wildflower meadow. The house was an absolute chocolate box scene in a lovely soft apricot colour with a mauve slate roof.
I just love alliums and they had them in every shade of purple and white. 
I did some plant sketches and I did attempt to get a bit of fabric out and make a hosta leaf in fabric but looking at my photos I so loved the colours of the house that I feel I may be inspired to produce a digital artwork where at first I was set to do a textile piece. Who knows, maybe I'll do more than one piece of work!


One of the barns was operating as a tearoom so I treated myself to a slice of chocolate toffee shortbread and I also came away with half a dozen eggs laid that morning, how lovely.

Apple pincushion

On my journeys around Blogland and craft sites I've seen some lovely handmade fruit pincushions and I wanted to make myself an apple.
I then searched for patterns and templates but I didn't seem to have much luck finding any free, it was mainly paid for patterns and I thought if I do that I might as well get a decent one with a few things to make. Anyway I was unsuccessful in finding such a pattern in my local haberdashery so as most of the templates online just looked like a leaf shape I drew my own.


The first 'thing' I made with my own template looked more flat and squat and rather like a pumpkin so with a bit of adjustment I made the leaf shape a bit taller and the result is as below.
I'm quite pleased with it for a first attempt and hope to try more when time allows.