Take one a day

Day 30

My mother used to say, among a lot of other nonsense - sorry Mum! (it's true),
"A bad workman always blames his tools."

I believed this until I read  here that 'some people will blame their failings wherever they can but anyone who does practical work will soon discover the importance of good, well maintained tools. So a saying such as "a good workman is highly critical of the state of his tools and makes sure he has the best" would be quite appropriate! A good workman with bad tools will struggle to do a good job; a bad workman will do a bad job. '

So I'm not blaming tools, materials or Elizabeth's tutorial. I had promised myself that I would go through this month without buying resources. A glue gun would have been handy today and so would access to Photoshop. I used the ever so useless double sticky backed plastic and Word.

Someone has the software for my banner. Well, the person who made it has the software. I've got a copy saved. I used the copy and cropped and copied and pasted to make this.

It's a very handy, padded envelope and you'll find the tutorial on the Etsian Artists blog. It a great idea for making your packages more interesting

Thank you, Elizabeth. It was easy to follow - if you have the right equipment and don't rely on Sellotape. Check out her shop Oddball Art Co on Etsy.

It doesn't seem like a big project and in fact once I had the paper printed I did it in no time. What held me up was changing the photo into something Word liked. Even though I did print preview it still came out with extra line of smaller houses.  I'm thinking of it as two projects!

My listing today is a pair of crochet bookmarks. They are on Folksy and Etsy. Again they are organic cotton and the Queen Anne's lace motif. I've tried to describe the natural dye colours as best I could. The manufacturer calls them rhubarb and oak bark. I'm calling them chartreuse and silver brown.

While I was doing a search for colours I found this great site called Perbang. It's fantastic for all sorts of things, Pantone shades, colour blends, colour charts. It's part of the reason I've achieved so little. I've been playing around with it.

We're on a bit of a repeating pattern theme and today's Folksy July Jewel is one that I could have chosen every day. Today's work fits nicely on the post. These delightful framed hearts are from Clarkie Designs.

Can't you just see this on a wall in a little girl's room? The perfect, little hearts are made from vintage paper and can be personalised. After my encounters with paper this week I'm really impressed by this.