Trivial Pursuit earrings

I've been trying to buy less clothing, and generally secondhand, but just after Christmas I treated myself to a dress from Zuri Kenya. The pattern of the dress is called Trivial Pursuit, so of course I had to make myself a pair of Trivial Pursuit earrings to match!

I had picked up a Trivial Pursuit board game months earlier, with the thought of using the pieces in some crafts, so getting the dress got me started on that!

Wonka bar

When my brother and his family visited recently, I got involved in various crafty activities with my nephews (my niece is too small to be into crafts at the moment!). And I also was given a little commission to make a prop for my older nephew to take to school on World Book Day.

He was going to dress as Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, and he needed a Wonka Bar complete with a golden ticket to complete his outfit.

At first I was thinking of wrapping a chocolate-bar-sized piece of wood, but I thought this would be too heavy. So I looked around for some cardboard, and found a box for a computer keyboard that was being thrown out at work. I realised that this would be perfect for an oversized chocolate bar!

Here's how to make your own Wonka Bar!

1. Cut a keyboard box in half and push one half into the other. Or cut up a larger box and fold and tape it to the size you want

2. Cover the box in gold wrapping paper, just like wrapping a present, and tape in place

3. Take a couple of pieces of purple A4 paper or card, and wrap these round the box, taping in place

4. Look online for some ideas of lettering to use on your Wonka Bar. Print these out to use as a template, or draw your own lettering, and cut out of coloured card

5. Glue the lettering and any other decoration you want onto the purple card

6. Cut a rectangle of gold card, cutting the shorter sides with pinking shears or deckle-edged scissors

7. Stencil the lettering onto this golden ticket, with a permanent pen

8. Slide the golden ticket under the purple card with a little sticking out, so you can produce it dramatically!

Bullet journal ideas: Books to read

I recently re-reading the Rei Shimura series by Sujata Massey and I felt a bit bereft when it was over, so I immediately began searching for some other series that have similarities in Asian location or theme to keep me going. After a lot of searching online I came across the Mas Arai books by Naomi Hirahara, a couple of series by Ovidia Yu, Diane Wei Liang’s Mei Wang books, the Perveen Mistry books by Sujata Massey, and some others.

I wanted to keep track of all these books and series that I'd come across, so I created some pages in my bullet journal. I started with the Rei Shimura series itself, checking on Amazon and Wordery when I'd first purchased each of the books.

Opposite this I made a list of other books and series that I'd come across, marking squares to show how many books there were in a series.

Once I started tracking some of the books down on abebooks, I needed a better way to keep track of each series, with the names of each book, so I created a double-page spread to record these.

Mini card

The younger of my nephews has always been obsessed with Minis, so sooner or later I had to make a Mini card for his birthday! I found a cool patterned paper, so it looks like the car is driving through a rugged landscape of hills!

Fun a Day Dundee: Vietnam illustrations

This year I took part in Fun a Day Dundee, which takes place in January. It's all about doing something fun (usually creative) during the endlessly dark and tedious first month of the year.

Because I'd been to Vietnam at the end of November and it was still fresh in my mind, I decided to base my project on that. I thought of all the things I'd seen in Vietnam that felt iconic of that country.

I wanted to create a somewhat retro style of illustration that looked like it had been printed, so I learned a lot of new skills in Procreate, like using halftone images and slightly mis-matching the alignment of the layers. Towards the end of the month I also treated myself to some mid-century brushes from Bardot Brush, so that I could create an ink-bleed look and some other retro effects.

I really enjoyed being part of Fun a Day Dundee and posting my illustrations on Instagram every day. I'm hoping that there's going to be an exhibition of everyone's work soon!

Travel journal covers

I like to decorate the covers of the Moleskines I use as my travel journals, so that I can easily tell them apart. I had a bit of a backlog, with my Kyoto and Italy journals still not decorated years later, so when I added my Vietnam one to the pile I decided it was time to buy a new tub of Mod Podge and get decorating!

I like to use patterned paper as the main part of the decoration. Origami paper works best in terms of not wrinkling, and I used it on the Kyoto and Vietnam ones. For the Italy one I used some marbled paper that I had bought in Florence. I cut some of the lettering using a die cutter, but I also used some lettering stickers on the Vietnam one. I love how that turned out, because it reminded me of the mish-mash of retro fonts I’d seen on shop signs in Vietnam.

Vietnam bookmarks

One of my fellow travellers in Vietnam, Dawn, let me know that she collects bookmarks. So when I came back I knew that one of my first craft projects should be to make her a bookmark. I went for a simple design, inspired by the Vietnamese flag t-shirt bought by one of our group, and I ended up making enough to send to the other friends I’d made on holiday too.

It was quick to make such a simple design of bookmark. I cut rectangles of red card, and angled the bottom to make it a bit more interesting. I punched yellow stars and stuck these on, and covered the bookmarks in clear film to make them hardwearing. Then I punched a hole and added some pretty string.

Folded banknotes

I came across the idea for making folded hearts from banknotes in Vietnam, when our guide in Halong Bay, Jenny, showed us one. The plan was to get her to show us how to make them, but we were so busy that we didn’t get round to that. Luckily I found a tutorial online.

It wasn’t too difficult to make the hearts, so very quickly I had created a whole batch of them from the leftover small notes from my trip. 

I sent the origami hearts to the friends I made on holiday, and to another friend I was writing to at the same time.

Inktober: Rentober

I haven’t ever taken part in Inktober before, but this year, Renmeleon, who I’ve followed since my Flickr days, came up with a list of prompts for #rentober that really inspired me, and I was able to use them to come up with a series of drawings that are sort of a combination of my Amelie and Hidden Faces projects.

I suppose I am “cheating” a bit by doing digital drawings for Inktober, which is supposed to be about “real” drawings. But I don’t care! I think all art is equally valid, and this is the medium that I’m really enjoying using at the moment.

I enjoyed coming up with a colour scheme that felt autumnal and spooky. Many of the drawings would have fitted in really well with my Hidden Faces project – it’s funny how I felt short of ideas for that project sometimes!

I think my favourite drawing is the tree, I think it has a cute look to it! I may try to develop this idea further.