Commissions, gifts, and RAKs

I've not blogged for a while, but I have been busy! With lots of babies arriving to friends, I was kept busy making quilled baby feet canvases, so there's another half dozen of them done ( a few are shown below), some have been personalised and sent off, some are waiting for the details of the recipients (AKA for the babies to arrive) so they can be personalised.

During April, I had a lot of physical work to do in my workplace, and to keep my morale up and keep me motivated, I offered some decorated pebbles to the people who best guessed my progress at 4 set points during the main activity day.

I also had a weekend long resin jewellery making class booked, where I experimented with putting quilled bits into the resin. These were the pieces I made, ready for me to drill and mount as necklaces. All I need to do next is find the time to make these sort of necklaces properly, and then put them in my shop: these were just tests with pieces of quilling that I had lots of, or could make quickly to fill spaces.

Then lovely V's birthday was coming up, so I wanted to make her something made of "V"'s, and I started doodling...which quickly became these dandelion clock postcards, that are based around the use of the letter V in varying sizes. I really rather like the design, and have since made and given away a few more of these postcards. I'm also thinking of offering a hand drawn one of them in return for sponsorship of over £5 for a future event I want to do.

As the virtual desktop system at work had some major issues that prevented me getting on to work for a day, I also did a lyrics postcard to occupy myself: this was the lyrics of "Happy" by Pharrell, which ended up with a colleague.

I had a commission in early June for a christening gift for a friend's godchild, with a bit of a difference for me: the text would be both in English, and Hungarian! My friend guided me on the shape she wanted it in, and got a friend to do a transcription of the Hungarian text.

Then, I did a test drawing to see how the verse spacing worked.

Then a second version, with the best text spacing. I added a pencil outer line, where the Hungarian text would be going.

Once I had the translation, I wrote it out in pencil to make sure that the spacing was right, then overwrote it with ink, before removing the under writing. This is the finished dove on the slope I work on, and the handwritten Hungarian transcription I was working from.

I took some nice photos of the finished dove, but they're on my camera, and...erm...I don't know where I've put it! So, the picture above is both languages, but the Hungarian text still has the pencil version under it (which is why it looks a bit thick/odd).

This was a gift for a friend, with words that have a personal meaning for them.

I also promised another friend a gift, and they decided on a literary themed image, in this case Poirot. Thankfully, this one worked out perfectly first time!

Still on the paper pad where I drew it.

Cropped to better effect!

So, although I've not blogged it for a while, I HAVE been crafting, and I have been sending craft RAKs - but I'm sure I've missed out some RAKS from here too. So, if I've sent you something and it's not mentioned here, can you let me know? I'm keeping a spreadsheet, so I can distribute RAKs randomly, but not overly favour anybody with too many things!