Thursday 7 January 2010

Birds and Birthday

OMG.OMG. I did delete a LOOONG post just there. Have to start again (swearing silently in three languages as young ears are listening).
I thought of having a "mama does rounds in charity shops" type of birthday yesterday while my boys were at work and in school. Well, we still have snow and schools are closed, so my plans changed. I decided to settle for a cosy stay at home-do crafts day.
During the Christmas holidays I found Lucy's blog Attic24 ( www.attic24.typepad.com/weblog), which I have been enjoying like a good book. I really think you should pay it a visit. Word of warning though, it is addictive. Lucy inhabits a world of colour and pretty photos. I really got a hankering for bright colours after immersing myself in her world.
I used to live with rather a lot colour, like many of us during the 90's and in my case well into noughties. Then I got tired of it and wanted to have white walls, loads of wood and natural materials. This is where I am now, Kitchen and Elf Son's room excepted. Our kitchen walls are in need of painting and I have decided to change the burnt orange walls to something more neutral. Now that might sound counter intuitive as I just said I want more colour. But it is far easier for me to have and tolerate loads of colourful things, if the background is in neutral.
As mentioned I have read Lucy's blog and saw her little crocheted birdies and got inspired to make some. I am not very clever with crochet hook, so I decided to sew. My colourful supplies were dug from the bottom of the deep draw

and these dudes were made:
 I seek harmony, also when I am sewing and tend to make things pretty or stylish. I really admire all the creative people in the blogland, who throw together wild combinations of colour and pattern and end up with waa-waa-woom results. I decided that my crafty New Year's resolution should be to try this approach once in a while and the birds were the first attempt on it.
The birdies are now hanging in our kitchen from an IKEA chandelier, which i dressed up with glass beads sometime last autumn. For once I could not go for the "nice" look as I did not have enough of beads in any single colour or even a two-colour combination to make it tasteful. So it ended up with all the colours and I liked it!

2 comments:

sandie smith said...

Gorgeous ! These would look wonderful hung on a mobile for a baby or childs bedroom too, the beads would catch the light and sparkle ( would have to be out of reach of little fingers though) The best thing is the birds can be made very cheaply using scraps of fabric , odd buttons and even cheap childrens plastic beads.

Mama Elf said...

I actually had some thoughts of a mobile for a baby after making these. And you are right, this is a great project for repurposing materials. In actual fact most of the stuff in these birds is second hand.(Even the felt, I bought somebody's old stash of it).