Update

Well, my blogging activity has been rather idle recently. And I am not happy about it, believe me. However, priorities of life are different and blogging surely must be at some further places, I guess you agree with me.

Today, I would like to share with you one of my photo journals from our family trip. There was a blacksmith festival at an old castle called Helfštýn a few weeks ago and we visited it. It wasn´t the most beautiful weather but we enjoyed the time there being together.

I still keep a few more drawings of animal characters to be colored and embellished as I usually do to have them on Red Bubble for sale but I hardly find any time to finish them. Hopefully, I will make myself do it and get ready for Christmas. I wish I had 12 pictures in total to give you the opportunity to get yourself a calendar for the next year. Well, we will see. No promises.

Mountains

Even if it is just a weekend trip, I am satisfied. I simply must go out.

A few weeks ago we went to the mountains again and picked some mushrooms and blueberries. The peak at the picture is called Lysá hora and literally it means "bald mountain" because there are not many trees up there anymore.

Posters

I am working on a few posters playing with letters which is quite popular. See my RedBubble.

Printing with Stamps

Designing, drawing, combining, coloring, printing the world all over in many ways, that’s what I would like to do al the time.Some time ago I bought myself a few little hand made stamps and I spent several hours printing on fabric. I think it is fun and a very creative activity. You can repeat the stamps in different ways, combine, change colors and you can always get an exciting outcome. Of course, I used paints for textiles, it means you can wash your fabric ad the print stays on which is great.

I used the printed fabric to create some simple fabric hearts,

you can embellish it with beads like I did and also, see the pillow below.

I mixed the hand made fabric with usual prints

I have and it made a wonderful result in my opinion.

Pieces of such printed fabric always inspire me very much.

Do you sometime forget?

This afternoon I wanted to start working on my new illustrations for some new cards and this is what came out. As it is in Czech, you can try to guess what the lama or the donkey say.

Playing with Resin Again

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of some things which I made of resin and now I would like to invite you to visit my Etsy shop and see some new jewelry I made.

Cover Me with Wool

Not many people keep reading books today due to internet reasons and other influences. Then, there are people like me who never used to read books even before the internet was. So to sew some original covers for books looks like a silly idea. However, I do read one book regularly, i.e. the Bible and therefore, just like other people do such a book cover is quite necessary. And don´t forget most of us still have a notebook, journal or diary in our bags.


Usually I make the covers of cotton fabric. I even designed a pattern to be used for nothing but the book covers. You can see an examle of it.

But some time ago I came across a wonderfully cozy and soft 100% wool fabric and it inspired me to make a few covers of the wool. As it includes 15% of cashmere wool, the material give a real posh look and feel. I started with an idea of embroidering a bear. It was around the Valentine time so a heart couldn’t have been missed. I made one in grey and one in red color.

They even published a tutorial for this wool fabric cover in one Czech magazine which I am thankful for. As an option I embroidered also some deco flowers and other simple stylish designs on other three covers. Some of them are still available. Look here and here.
But I couldn’t resist working with the wool fabric and I made a bag of it too.

And this unfinished project will probably wait till fall or winter.

Wool is simply a tempting material.

Playing with Resin

The "Unexpectedly" Project

Ok, I didn´t plan to do this in particular but here you have a little project to do.

In the middle of a kind of a cleaning process I found out I didn´t have enough small or big – any kinds – of boxes. All I could do was to go get one or two from our cellar. Of course, they needed a refurbishing and as I said I didn´t plan to spend a whole afternoon to make them. I simply needed them – the boxes. But I wanted them to look acceptable. So...

I took the first two paints I found in our closet and simply started to paint. Red and white. No special, just acrylic paint. One or two layers, it dries quite quickly in about hour or so. Then, I took the second color and just sketched stripes on. Of course, the red layer wasn´t dry enough and that was the moment when I realized that I am in the middle of an interesting afternoon project. I went on with striping and was surprized at how cool the non straigth and not perfectly painted stripes looked like. This box turned out pretty good, didn´t it?

A few months ago I bought some metal tags and I know now is the time for them. Alright, sometimes no planning and hey, look what you´ve got.

BTW, I learnt the word "unexpectedly" through the song "Beauty and Beast." My favorite movie.

From the Kitchen

One friend from FB shared a post about cooking and it led me to a site which I was amazed at. It really made me excited on several levels. Well, it is about sweets which I love, there are recipes and beautifully done photo tutorials on how to make the goodies and what more, it is very well designed. It took me only a few hours and I was already making doughnuts.

It was my first try and because I should not eat much wheat due to alergy I replaced 3,5 cups with rye flour. I had no thermometer, so the taste was different, good though, but I am ready to make them again soon.

Talking about food, in the two past months I discovered panganius and fell in love with it. There is no better fillet than this.

I am not much to fish, my favorite one is a trout, tuna is good for salad but that is all. But this "pangas" how we call it shortly is really easy to make and good taste of food.

Good balance here, something sweet and something healthy.