Getting very much colder here, so bad I have done anything creative in over a week, my fingers are now severly restricted, glad I got all my swaps and commitments made early! Spend my nights sitting under my blanket with microwaveable heat packs on my joints to keep me warm, drinking hot ribena! Homemade soup is on the menu most days – it hurts like crazy cutting the vegetables up to make the soup but its worth it once its made as it warms you right up!

Just as well theres lots of interested programs on tv at the moment to amuse me – flash forward, house, true blood, sanctuary, defying gravity, stargate universe, fringe plus all the usual soaps tv land has to offer….

Do you have any festive pics of your fur babies to share?

Just added some new uploads to my flickr, they have been on my camera for a while and I forgot to upload them!

You can see them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trishbeedesign/

Ive just finished reading Triptych by Karin Slaughter. Im a huge fan of her books, especially the grant county series, but I fell out with Karin earlier this year after reading the shock ending in Skin Privaledge! I finally managed to bring myself to read another one of her books this week, Triptych isnt part of the Grant County series but I need to read this and Shattered before I can read the latest instalment of the Grant County series so I can find out how Sara and Lena are getting on…

Triptych was a great book, I really like the character Will Trent and cant wait to start Shattered next.

I posted earlier about the altered cd swap Im in, you can see the first post here:

http://trishbee.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/altered-cd-swap/

For my next step for this project I took a tube of outliner paste normally used for glass painting, and I applied dots on one side of the snowflake and let it dry.

Next I coated both sides of the cd and snowflake with a layer of black gesso and let it dry.

Once dry I painted the entire thing on both sides using navy blue acrylic paint.

To add some distressing and texture for my next step I heated the cd and snowflake using my embossing gun, this make the paint bead up a little bit and also the liquid outliner bubbled too but I wanted it to do that

Once the cd was cool, I dipped my finger tips in metallic blue acrylic paint and smudged it over the snowflake to add highlights, I also repeated this step using a pearl turqouise paint and silver rub n buff. I just kept going till I liked how the snowflake looked.

I did this step on both sides of the cd.

Then I got my mini drill and drilled a little hole through the cd so I could make a hanger on it.

I then applied silver rub n buff to one side of the cd only and left the other side navy blue for contrast.

Once all the paint was dry I sprayed over the top using acrylic glaze to varnish it and then finally added some gold thread to act as a hanger.

Heres the pictures below of the final piece:

Front:

Close Up:

Back:

Heres a glasses case I made using needle felting:

front

back

Ive been playing with my new toy

Ive discovered that organza goes lovely and texturous with the embellisher machine as you can see below, I decorated it using different colours of wool rovings and some silk fibers were added to make the dots and the border:

Front:

I get a real kick out of seeing the backs of the felted pieces for some reason

Another felted purse in the makings…
Front:

Back:

This book mark was made from an offcut which I felted for a purse. Im addicted to playing with this craft form

Heres some more needle felted purses I did:

Purse 1:

Purse 2:

Finally finished the purse I made from my first attempts at needle felting. It needed a fastener so I added the button and loop as you can see in the photo.

Its now on its way to a friend for a welcome to your new home pressie