Design Your LIfe layouts week 1-2

So, as well as crocheting my little hands off, I also signed up for Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life class over at Bigpicturescrapbooking. I like her teaching style, she's really quite amusing, and her simple style of linear scrapbooking does appeal to me. I'm doing it digi though - I've packed away my paper scrapbooking stuff 'til we sell the house, and the class comes with all the digi templates needed to complete the assignments (3 a week). And let's face it. I barely manage one layout a week normally, so 3 would be most definitely pushing it!

My pages are very simple, I intend to gussy them up before I get them printed all at once, here: 12x12 LOs printed at 75p - bargain! I'll let you know what they're like once I've sent off the order.

First 2 weeks are all about balance and symmetry. All layouts use templates from the class by Cathy Zielske, and all paper is either from the freebies or the shop area of Shabby Princess.





What do you reckon to digiscrap? DO you want to try it/have you tried it? Do tell :)

Oh, and for those of you watching for more crochet squares from my gorgeous yarn... here you go. I'm planning on sewing them up as I go.

How much?

So last night, I thought I'd better get realistic with this entire-crocheted-bedspread idea, and work out how many balls I'd need. I'm not working from a pattern, just making lots and lots of granny squares then sewing them together.

Here is where you discover my second love: numbers. I think I must have been an accountant in another life. Close your eyes if calculations scare you.

I measured my bed (80 inches) and then measured a granny (just under 4 inches), so that makes 80 divided by 4 is 20 squares wide. I added a couple extra for the "just under" , so my bedspread will be 22 squares by 22 squares. 22 squared is 484. (What? How many?? 484 squares at a rate of 3 a night, so that's 162 days give or take. Blimey. Then another week or so sewing them together. Sheesh.)

Anyway. Back to the amount of yarn needed. I weighed 6 grannies, then divided the weight of my ball of yarn by the weight of the 6 grannies. It worked out that 1 x 50g ball makes about 12 grannies. So divide the number of squares you need by the number of grannies per ball (484 divided by 12) makes 40.3 balls. I had 20. Then I'd need about 8 more of the silver to stitch them all together (this is a total guess). Eek. This yarn is £3.85 a ball. You can see that my original £200 estimate for using the yarn when it wasn't split was waaaay out. It'll cost me £200 with splitting the yarn!

But I've committed to the idea in my head, because it looks just stunning. Just look at those six squares up there with all the combinations with teal in the centre. There's another 6 for chocolate, 6 more with purple, and 6 more with green. Yum. I cannot wait. Luckily, half an hour of searching on the net located somewhere selling them at 20% discount. Even with £5 postage, I still saved £15.

What is the most expensive thing you've ever made/started on? Do tell :)

Granny Delightful

Finally managed to take some photos of the finished baby blanket. I went with sewing up the seams, and it came together over a couple of evenings. I'm so pleased with it, I don't think I've ever been so chuffed with anything I've made for a long time.


The sewing method produced two different sides of the blanket, one with a little raised border round each square, the other is more or less smooth:


I like both. That's obviously a good thing! And after all the build-up about the wonderful yarn that I've bought for my highly-ambitious-second-crochet-project of an entire bedspread, I have made three squares:


Aren't they just gorgeous? The only pain is having to sew all the bloody ends in. When I was doing the one-colour squares, I could churn out one every 20 mins or so. These little beauties took me around half an hour each, and I spent a good hour beforehand splitting the yarn in two so I can make it go further. If I used it as is (10 ply cotton), I reckon the bedspread would cost around £200 and would weigh a good few kilograms. Warm though!

Just one more gratuitous close-up for those droolers. I know you're there :)


So I showed you mine, will you show me yours?

Another "thing"

I'm hoping that I'm not alone in this, but I love learning. And I'm always up for learning new crafts. My latest thing is crochet; I had an old needlecraft book and some really useful videos from mikeyssmail on Youtube. With these tools in hand I picked it up quite quickly, though I'm already a knitter. After a few practice granny squares in dishcloth cotton, I got cracking with some remnant wool from my baby clothes projects.


And here is the work in progress. I am in the process of sewing the 48 squares together; I tried to crochet them, but it was too fiddly for my liking, so I "cheated". I'm hoping to finish it this weekend, so will post finished pics then.

I am enjoying this new craft so much that I've inadvertently spent my Christmas money on some really funky yarn for an entire bedspread. I think I've lost my mind. Though really, with these colours, could you resist?


Glorious aren't they? Once I start on the squares, I'll post some pictures. There are something like 24 different square combinations with the main colours being leaf, teal, purple and chocolate. I'm going to make all the outer rows silver, to pull them all together, and hopefully make your eyes go kerazy :) If it looks half as fab in real life as it does in my imagination, I'll be very pleased.

What other crafts do you do? And which is your current favourite? Do tell ;)

Merry New Year!

May all you desire be realised through just the right amount of hard work to make it feel worthwhile!