A new Craft

Good afternoon its a gorgeous sunny day here - still cold but hey it is still January!

 As a Christmas gift my lovely friend paid for us to attend a string art class and yesterday was the day we got to take part.

When we arrived we had to choose which pattern we wanted to do. As it was an opportunity to learn the craft we both chose the harder pattern - Michigan State including both the lower and upper peninsulas 

We then set to work hammering tiny nails around the pattern 

Imagine around 25 people all hammering at once - it was very noisy and as you can see from the wrappers it required a small intake of chocolate to complete this stage!

Once all the nails were knocked in we were left with this:

Carefully we tore the pattern away being careful not to dislodge any of the nails 

Then the fun began, we had to wind string around the nails filling in the State. Seems easy but when you have to keep the thread tight and decide where to string across without letting go it can be a bit frustrating especially when the need to blow your nose becomes stronger and stronger!

In these photographs I had completed my center stringing and was adding the red floss to edge it. 

Once this was completed superglue was added to all the knots before snipping off the long ends

This is the completed work - we still have to stencil some wording in the left corner but not being great at free hand lettering we saved this for another day.

We had a fun afternoon with lots of laughs and best of all it was child free!!

We ended the day with dinner out at our favorite nacho place and researched Pinterest for more patterns for our next attempt so watch this space for more string art!

Thank you Jane for such a thoughtful Christmas gift!!

My poor MISTI - Oh what fun you can have!!!

Good morning - bright and sunny here but cold so I thought I would do some crafting - Came into my craft room.............................................

SHOCK!!!!! HORROR!!!!!!

QUICK CALL THE POLICE SOMEONE IS ABOUT TO COMMIT MURDER!!!!!

OK enough of the dramatics

I have a confession to make..................

I LOVE MY MISTI!!!!

I use it every time I stamp, it's always out on my desk and is well taken care of.

If you don't know what a MISTI is it's the Most Incredible Stamping Tool Invented and is sold by My Sweet Petunia

It helps with mass stamping as well as helping to re-stamp an image.

We've all done it - Stamped an image and not got even pressure and the stamp is either partially stamped or not dark enough - The MISTI stops all this, after lining it up on your paper, you fix your stamp to the lid by closing it re-open it, ink your stamp, close and apply gentle pressure. It is magnetic so you use magnets to hold your paper in place and when you open it the stamp and ink stay in their position until you remove them. Need to re-stamp? just re-ink your stamp and close the MISTI again and it will stamp in exactly the same place as previously. Need multiple images of the same stamp? Line your stamp up as above and line your card up with the grid - stamp, leave stamp inposition, remove card and place with the next one by lining it up in same place as previous hey presto identical placement of image and you can do this as many times as you wish.

Want to stamp 2 images at once? line them both up on your MISTI, ink and close the lid and both with stamp together.

So As you can imagine my acrylic blocks have been relegated to the back of a cupboard. 

OK so back to the start of  my post - why was their murder being committed??? 

Just take a look

Think my blocks are a bit angry they have been retired!!!! 

They have ganged up on my MISTI - Don't know what the purple devil was planning on doing with the scissors but it didn't look good!

Oh but the MISTI isn't innocent in all this - Take a look at the stamp he was using!

No wonder the Blocks are angry!!!!

OK back to the serious side of the post - If there is one - 

I LOVE MY MISTI!!!!

It is definately the best stamping tool I have ever come across and would highly recommend it to anyone - it's worth it's weight in gold if you are a serious stamper!!!

This post is my entry to win a Mini version of the MISTI over at So Suzy Stamps

Thanks for stopping buy and I would love you to leave some love!