Every Inchie Monday - Rhino

I am so pleased I am able to blog on time again!!!  Plus I have finished my other projects I mentioned last week and since I am so chuffed with the outcome I thought I'd share it!  My old wicker bedside table which was white and looking very poorly is now transformed using chalk paint in Aubusson Blue which is a teal blue colour and re vamps the whole thing:

Before

 After

And I said I was going to do the Ottoman to match and can't believe I did it!!  And I managed to make the material fit by sewing on a bit at each end to fold over! So here is the Ottoman:

 

Before

 And After

I still need to buy a piece of trim in matching colour to cover the tacks but all in good time!  On to our challenge this week at EIM which is Rhino. I hadn't realised there were so many - I had rather fancied doing the rhino with the plates but discovered that's the Asian or Sumatran Rhino and it has much smaller horns and I rather fancied doing the two big horned variety which turns out to be the classic white rhino which is the biggest.  Did you know the word rhinoceros comes from the Greek rhinokeros meaning nose horned, from rhinos meaning nose and keratos meaning horn! Anyway the poor things are being hunted for their horns for Asian medicine and are all in danger some more so than others.  Such a wonderful dinosaurus looking animal, quite weird in proportion hence only getting the head and foreleg in!  When I first look at trying to put these animals onto an inch in embroidery, my head rebels and thinks I can't do it, but I am getting used to the challenges now and am actually enjoying coming up with something acceptable!!  So here is my white rhino grazing - I meant to do some grass tufts in green embroidery thread but realised I forgot and I've already photographed it etc so it will have to be missed!

So thank you so much for dropping by and I love your comments it is always great reading them and visiting all the other inchie makers works so please click on the EIM link to view them.  Have a great week, and enjoy the summer if you can - it's tipping down here and I was just going to hang out the washing!!!

Every Inchie Monday - Camel

Do you ever have days when you feel bolshie and you don't know what to do, have loads to do and don't want to do any of it???  Well if you don't then lucky you - but I do and did ... yesterday! The house is still a mess with stuff from the moving of bedrooms around and I spent most of the day rounding up bits and bobs and packing them - but none of them were mine!!  I do have one nice room though now and painted an old (and I mean old I had it when I was 8!) wicker bedside cabinet that had been painted white once and was looking a shade more old than it needed to!!  So I bought some dark blue/green chalk paint and painted it and I must say it looks rejuvenated! So am going to do the little wicker ottoman that matches it and recover it some time this week.  I did the bedside unit on Saturday and was feeling pretty good and got my inchie prepared but was too tired to do it Saturday night!  So back to Sunday, having wandered through the house looking at the mess in despair and putting the odd bit away I found an old silk painting kit which had lost two of the paints and should be thrown away but having never done silk painting I ended up trying it out.  So I sat for an hour playing with three colours - made a right old mess of it but thoroughly enjoyed myself doing it and promptly put it in the bin when I'd finished feeling guilty about time wasted!!  So non productive again except for the throwing away which is what I need to do more of!  So finally I gave up did some tea and sat down and then remembered I hadn't finished my camel and I am determined to try and keep to Monday for blogging!  So, having put my special magnifying light away - I couldn't be bothered to get it out so with my dwindling eyesight and best pair of specs I embroidered my camel inchie and to be honest - I couldn't have cared less!  It's the first one I haven't worried over what the outcome will be.. and what will be will be - I try to give myself a challenge every time I do these little bits of art but you do really need to be in a creative and relaxed mood and I guess I just wasn't yesterday.  I am hoping this week will be more positive ... so here is camel - not my best his legs look like the feet were cut off or sunk in the sand!

Anyway hope you all have a wonderful week and thanks for calling by - love the comments you leave - some make me laugh out loud (Wendy!) and most make me smile so that is an up time of the day for me. To view other camel inchies please click here

Every Inchie Monday - Buffalo

And Good morning to everyone on this fine Monday!!  Yes can you believe it?  I have my inchie finished in time to post today!  Wonders will never cease  ... and ... I am nearly finished on next week's inchie too!!  Let's hope I have time to finish it by next Monday!  So this week's theme word for EIM is buffalo - but I didn't want to go the American buffalo route as that is really known as a bison, I wanted to do a cape buffalo with those lovely big curly horns!  I was trying to think of a way to 3D them and thought about pipe cleaners!  In fact this little inchie went really well for me, I didn't have any grey fabric so I coloured an odd bit I had left over with a number 4 warm grey promarker and hey presto!!  Shall use that idea again when I don't have the right colour!!!  So toyed with the idea of using beads for eyes but they didn't look right so opted for small bullion knots in black and did the nostrils similarly in grey, just a 5 twist did it!  So here is my Cape Buffalo:

The weather here is being very kind to us although we did watch Wimbledon with her beautiful blue skies and sun with our own skies very grey and oppressive!!  My husband gets so jealous when he sees other people having better weather than us - but that's nearly all the time!!!  However today is glorious - and he's in watching the cricket on the TV!!!  You can never win!!  I will be out after I've posted this to enjoy some gardening in the sun!!! Hope your days are as lovely as today - Ha Ha - I have just gone on to EIM to get the link and notice so far everyone has done the same as me!!!  Oh well - we can't always be different!!  Thanks for calling in and for any comments you leave - I really enjoy reading them, take care.

Every Inchie Monday - Fly plus Tiger, Lion and Hippo

Where do the days go to - it has been scorching hot and in between trying to get the garden done, driving to various places for Barry to work - up to London and back, Guildford and back and Leeds and back and with trying to reorganise all the bedrooms for Rosie's fiancé - (yes she's got engaged hooray!) to move in with us there has been little time to sit and sew and when there has it has been too hot to even venture into the attic in order to view my materials for selection!  At night when it's cooler the lighting is so bad I cannot distinguish the colours so I give up and the attic retains the heat so it's still hot up there!  Rather annoying really - too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer - otherwise it's a delightful space!  Anyway the fiancé is now ensconced with Rosie a very happy girl at last - the landing is still full of boxes and rubbish to be sorted and the spare rooms still need organising but I've taken a weekend off to sit and sew whilst my husband watches the cricket- I love sewing to the sound of cricket - I find it very relaxing and at last I have caught up.  It was too late to put my hippo on as I finished it Sunday so I will put it on with my fly and other catch ups today.  Firstly fly - I pondered this one as I hate the little devils and it's always those little tiny black ones that sometimes bite that annoy me and I feel they look just like this so here is my fly for this week.

 

I missed the last three weeks inchies - I think in my head what I wanted to do was going to take too long so I put it off but I really enjoyed doing tiger in the end and what really helped was my magnifying light that my dear husband bought me for my birthday.  I could actually see where to put the stitches and was very pleased with the outcome.  Here is Tiger:

Then the next inchie I missed was Lion - unfortunately this didn't come out as well as I would have liked - I think the felt I used for the face was a bit too light, it is beige but looks white in the photo, but I only had dark brown as an alternative!  Maybe I should have tried to colour it darker with inks or promarkers - I didn't think!!  So here is Lion:

And last week's was hippo which again I really enjoyed doing more than I thought especially when I did manage to get her mouth to open and give her teeth!!

Well thanks for dropping by, nice to be back and sorry I didn't even have time to go on your blogs to leave comments but I will try and rectify that this week.  I love being part of Every Inchie Monday and I was sad to not be involved over the last three weeks so will try and rectify that also.  Have a lovely week and thanks for any comments you leave.