Dyeing and Spinning Workshop

I’ve been being a bit quiet on hear recently because I’ve been having a bit of a rest. Things have still been happening and growing and I’ve just been in my studio painting! Yesterday though I went on a bit of a slow adventure and felt I had to share.

I went on a dyeing and spinning workshop for the day 🙂

We first cooked all the things that had been collected on site on the fire.

Some created quite a good colour like this fresh Alder bark.

This is some of the fleece that we dyed hanging up to dry.

We were shown how to make our own spindle out of Hazel wood….

….and were given some washed fleece so that we could learn to spin.

This is what I came home with. Some swatches of fleece that we’d dyed, our handmade spindle and a small skein of our very own spun yarn!

It was a very good day, but I was really tired when I got home. I think all the fresh (smokey) air did me good 🙂

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New Lamp Shade

One of my projects last week was to make new a very tatty lampshade.

I have a collection of used stamps and I have loads that I have accumulated that are no use in my collection, so the new project began.

After the laborious job of soaking the stamps of the paper of the envelopes, it was a fun and satisfying thing to do.

What do you think?

Now for the job of restoring the lamp base! 🙂

Garden Furniture

MMmmm, it’s about time I did something about the garden furniture, otherwise It won’t last very long!

As the sun was out and looked like it was going to last, we got some paint out and began preserving and brightening up the garden furniture. I must say, this table started life in our lounge in Northampton about 15 years ago, it’s been in the garden a year now and we intent to make it last even longer.

This is the spot we like to sit sometimes for a cup of coffee in the morning when the sun is on the front of the house. It now has what looks like a new table. 🙂

Handmade Soap

I made some more soap!

This time I made the fragrance up myself. Neroli and geranium and it’s turned out lovely. I used 450g/1lb of SLS Free melt and pour soap base 3 tbs olive oil, 1/2 tsp of each of the essential oils and as its coming up to valentines day here in the UK, I used some fab heart shaped silicone cake cases I had for Christmas (and the microwave).

I’ll be taking these along with me to the regular Art and craft fair I do!

Dyeing with onion skins

I’ve posted this on my art blog, but not on my Simple Life. I have decided to post it on here as it is all part of my simple life aim. With my life, as with my art I like to try to have as little impact on the environment as possible, so I have been trying out a bit of Eco dyeing and combining it with my work.

Onion skins seem to be a good starting point because they need no mordent (a mordent is a fixing agent).

All it take is collecting the brown flaky skins from your onions until you’ve got about a carrier bag full and put them in the largest pan you have (or tin bucket) add a generous amount of water and heat it up.

Simmer for a couple of hours, strain, and you get this!
Take it off the heat, add some wet fabric (not band new fabric, it has to be something that has been washed previously) and make sure you push it all under the dye that you’ve made using some tongs or with rubber gloves to protect against the hot water. Simmer again for another hour or so. Let it get cold on the pan or leave it over night and then take the fabric out and rinse it in warm water and dry on the washing line.

You can get quite a dark colour with this dye. The background of this cushion I’ve made shows the sort of colour you get. You can use the dye a couple of times more if you like and you just get lighter colours.

Free dye from kitchen scraps, not bad is it! 🙂

I made soap!

I’ve been thinking about making soap for a while, as I have quite sensitive skin. Even better now, you can buy melt and pour soap that is SLS free, which is a a nasty harsh ingredient, that is put in most cleaning agents and even bars of soap. I bought mine from Just a Soap, I already had some essential oils I could use.

I cut up the soap base into smallish pieces………

and gradually melted it in the microwave at 30 second intervals and kept stirring it.

Then when it had melted I added my essential oil and citrus peel I was using. I used vetiver with orange zest and rosemary oil with lemon zest.

I used a large serving spoon to put it into the molds.

When it is set you can pop it out of the mold and voila, you have soap!

Because I’m me, I made pretty wrapping for some of them 🙂

……….and yes, I am going to make more!

I Built a House Today!

Yes, I  built a house today and it was great fun. You can buy one in kit form from Pixie hall as well as other fab Christmassy stuff!

It’s a shame to eat it! (But I’m gonna) 🙂