Um...

So it's now February 8th and anyone who actually reads this blog and has been expecting the find five days of the 12 Days of Christmas, might be wondering where they are and what's happened.

Nothing bad, the main reason was I spent most of January working on a window display for work...

I made the postbox out of cardboard and papermache, accidentally painted the post with oil paint, made my own airmail envelopes, made stamps our of a drawing on an iris my dad drew as well as one of Queenie that I drew (I'm now kicking myself that I didn't draw Queenie from Blackadder II instead of the Queen!), mum and I addressed and stamped nearly three hundred envelopes (half of which we ended up not using), I made boxes which I wrapped to make parcels... I'm listing all of this to try and justify why I took so long making it, since it looks deceptively simple. It took hours and now looking back at it, I'm making myself feel guilty because it took too long and I could have done it quicker, and I'll have to underestimate my hours because I obviously don't deserve to get paid for the full time...

I was also stuck. Day 8 is supposed to be about things I've loved over the course of 2019 and, I don't know why, but I was really struggling to identify anything much I've really loved, or has stood out to me that isn't either intrinsic to a post which comes afterwards (such as favourite albums or songs) or seems really small and insignificant. No one would really care that I found a really yummy smelling body wash or that I really like cold brew tea, but inevitably my favourite one is the only one I can't seem to find anywhere.

Truth is I've just been having a flat January where I'm switching between being okay, feeling really anxious and completely freaking out over the future. While trying not to let anyone notice.

Add in my parents getting into a car accident at the start of December, they were fine, shaken, but fine and very lucky. However, their car was badly damaged (thought not as badly as first feared, which was good) and it was in dock until the end of January, meaning we were sharing a car over one of the busiest part of the year and so things got a lot more hectic than normal. Then there's the usual holiday madness, family dramas, half the household being sick with the horrid cough that's going round and a birthday...

... I'm not trying to make excuses, especially when the truth is I don't have anything going on in my life, and in the end, I just wasn't able to make myself sit down and write. But I just figured I should post something and say I am still going to post the other days and I'm sorry if I've let anyone/everyone down.

Day 8 is nearly done. Hopefully I'll have it up today or tomorrow.

I'm sorry I've been being useless, I just wanted to post something to put as a place holder, because I really want to finish these posts and it's making me mad and upset that I can't get myself to do it. So if you could please continue to bear with me, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you and hope you've been having a good year so far.

Em xxx

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Listening: Give Me My Month - James Blake

Window Fodder: Spring Has Sprung...

Hello May! How gloomily you've started! Especially when April was so glorious. Shame I missed the last of it sitting in the kitchen with paper, scissors and hundreds of cotton buds.

It's my first properly new window of the year. If I'm honest, my mum had been doing a great job, gradually adapting the post Christmas window with our crocheted flowers for the past few months - the repeated reappearance of the snow making it a little too easy for me to put off coming up with a new window. However, with April's sunshine came the need for something new, which we can add too over the summer, and what did the April sunshine bring? The grass cutters, chopping off the pretty pink tinged little daisies and really getting allergy season off with a bang.

It's simple, but I really kind of love it.

Just keep your fingers crossed the centres of the daisies don't fall out, and the ones on bamboo canes don't topple... I had visions all of Monday night of coming into work on Tuesday morning and finding my whole window had collapsed in on itself!

They hadn't, but the paranoia will be there every morning.

Next add in, a few pollen pompoms possibly?

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Listening: Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count - The Divine Comedy

Leftovers: Christmas Window 2014

For Christmas, I'd had a plan, which again my sister and I had been talking about for a few years, but it was only with the removal of a set of shelves that actually gave me the opportunity to do it.

Seems silly, that extra meter by thirty centimetres or so, shouldn't make that much difference, but it's actually great. It's allowed me to make something big for Christmas. So of course, it was gingerbread house* time! I even piped the whole house with icing made of a concoction of glue, flour and shaving foam.

I even roped Sarah (the self confessed least crafty person in the house) into helping me make felt balls to make into garlands for removable decorations. Annoying things was, she was really quick and apart from making them bigger than mine, really quite good at it.

I made little window boxes, with felt poinsettia in them, with little beaded centres and paper foliage Then I lit it all from the inside, with a load of LED fairy lights so that my Dad's brilliant idea of using old, damaged colorimetry sheeting as stain glass, would be bring a little colour to the house. Colorimetry sheets, just as a side note, are used as a reading aid for people with visual distortions and dyslexia related reading difficulties. The patient tries a dozen or so colours, which are laid over pieces of text and each individual will find a different one, which help to make reading them easier.

Did actually think he was mad for that one (though how appropriate for an opticians), I thought they were too sheer and would show all the writing and mess I always leave on the inside walls, but once it was lit from inside it was perfect. Not a scribble to be seen.

 All of the icing was done freehand bar the sides, which I marked up first. Thus why it's all wonky and every batch of the 'icing' I made, had a slightly different texture and colour. Some really holding their shape and others flattening out. Not bad for an odd mixture of ingredients. Then, as a final bit of decoration, I made wreaths for both the front and back doors (painted blue to match the practice logo), hand sewing hundreds of punched paper flowers to a base... don't do it. It takes hours! Plus, I had no red beads, so had to paint old plastic karma beads from the nineties with nail varnish. Don't for the love of small furry animals, follow my lead with that one! It's impossible and messy and just go to the craft shop!

So, that's it, Christmas window 2014. I think it's one of my favourites. It kind of felt proper if you know what I mean. Plus, I got to continue using my trees and a few sheep wandered back in.

I'm so mad at myself though, and I have to apologise. I thought I'd taken so many photographs of the window, but half of them are blurred or really low resolution because I didn't put on HDR. The other half are dark because, well, I worked from one, when I finished work and the practice closed, until around six getting it all set up. So it was dark when I got around to photos.

Why didn't I go back before the Christmassy parts of the windows (garlands, lights, wreaths and stars) were removed? Well, Christmas, then exhaustion, then illness, then not going back to work at the same time as everyone else. Plus it was the holidays and I'm lazy.

What it does make me realise is how I have to stop relying on my phone to take photographs. It takes great photos if you have good lighting and a relatively close subject matter, but it isn't good enough quality for window photos. I have to start using my digital camera for again.

And you know what's doubly annoying? I had it with me.

* The whole house comes to pieces and can be stored flat. It's very sad to be proud of that fact, but I am. Storing work isn't always easy and it's really important to try and get things to store flat to keep them good for another year. Or for taking home. Never know, maybe one day I'll have somewhere to use it of my own. Also, do you think I could make doll houses like this? I don't know if there's a market for foam board gingerbread doll houses, but if I or my sisters ever have kids, they're not getting the choice. 
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Listening: Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) - Irma Thomas

Leftovers: "Off To See The Wizard" Autumn Window 2014

More leftovers from Christmas, as you know, 2014 was the Centenary of the First World War, so I made hundreds of poppies to fill our window at work to mark this. However, around about Halloween, people always ask what we'll be putting in the window.

Now, I actually don't see a huge point in Halloween windows. It's like doing a window for Valentines day. It's one day of the year, which given how long it takes me to make the windows, is an idiotic idea for me to try and do. However, when I put the Poppy window in, I left a gap and put down a yellow brick road. See, I'm not daft, Everyone else was watching the Wimbledon final and I was thinking about Halloween.

So, (slightly later than intended) I started making the characters from The Wizard of Oz. In sheep form...

 

 

 

The Wizard of Oz was a theme my sister, my mum and I had been talking about doing for years. And Annie at work had only been slightly cursing me for never doing it, as this is one of her favourite films/stories. It had always just been a little tricky to work around. But the idea of making Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man in sheep form... how could I resist?*

It was still a lot of work for only - in the end - a few weeks but it was worth it, I love them. So did Annie, who made me take her photo with them for her daughter, before I took them out for Christmas. She also spent all of the time they were in, pulling down Dorothy's skirt, so she wasn't exposing her bum.**

Have you ever tried making a dress for a papier-mâché sheep***? No. Don't. It's impossible... then again shirt and trousers is harder! Especially when a piece of dusty fabric means you can't breathe because of an allergic reaction.

A little breathing difficulty was definitely worth it. What do you think?

* Sorry there aren't more pictures! I've been lousy at taking enough/good enough photos of the windows this year. Add that to the ill-fated resolutions list.
** Must make her some bloomers!
*** If you're making a dress for a real sheep, I may have to ask you to leave the blog.
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Listening: Somewhere Over The Rainbow  - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Proud Romance

And would it not be proud romance

  Falling in some obscure advance,

To rise, a poppy field of France?     

      - William A. Percy "Poppy Fields"

I've updated the window at work. This is how I spent the Wimbledon final.

Work was hosting a VIP night on the following Tuesday, so we needed a new look. The frame company we were hosting it with, their branding is red, so I got to kill three birds with one stone, firstly the colour branding for the evening.

Secondly, I have been promising the ladies at work for years that I would build a Wizard of Oz themed display, so the fact that I miscalculated the amount of polystyrene (which went it far easier than I ever expected!) for the full length of the window, was beneficial, as I could also lay a yellow brick road between the poppies. There's also advertising for a green transition lens, which if I can find a poster, will act as the Emerald City at some point soon.

Thirdly, 2014 is the centenary of the start of the First World War. This was the main reason for making not far off a 1,000 poppies, to mark this occasion. The poppy isn't a marker for death, or a sign of supporting going to war, it is a simple marker for people to commemorate the events from July 28th 1914 to November 11th 1918 and the people who fought.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, through poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

- Lt. Col. John McCrae "In Flanders Fields"

I'm also serious about the nearly 1,000 poppies, I had four hundred on one of the scraps of polystyrene I was transporting them on, two hundred a piece on two others and at least another hundred on another...yep, I went poppy mad. But it doesn't feel like that many when you're making them in bundles of tens and are determined to finish a reel of green garden wire.

Did I mention I was insane?

Link | WW1 Centenary - The Royal British Legion
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Listening: Love and War (11/11/46) - Rilo Kiley

If happy little felt birds fly...

 

...beyond the rainbow,

why, oh why, can't I?

I've been adding to the window, sewing up little felt birds for the post twelve days edit. I even went as far as to design the pattern for myself, as I couldn't find one I liked online/was too cheap (cheap) to buy one.

So I've made robins, gold finches, cardinals, bluebirds and lots of randomly coloured birds, which are already in, but mum has decided she would like to try and embroider on a few of their teeny, tiny wings.

Easier said than done when they're only a couple of centimetres square.

 

 

What do you think?

I'm proud of them, like I said, I couldn't find a shape I was happy with, they were either too pointy or too ball like, but what I wanted was fat robin shape, all belly. Bit like me. So it's luck more than anything else that they actually fitted together!

I like this part of my job, sitting with a pile of craft supplies, a cup of coffee and a bag of wadding.

Between these and the Great British Sewing Bee, I've got this urge to try and make a teddy bear. Possibly that will be a little too advanced for me at this stage. But it's an idea that's stuck in my head now, which means I should probably have a go even if I end up with some sort of deformed creature.

Perhaps, however, if I managed it, we could do another teddy bears window. Just an idea.

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Listening: Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Sneaky Sheepy Peek...

A sneaky peek at our March window...which I have to have installed by this time next week...and this is all I've made so far (with the help of the little blister).

When this is done I will make a post of the Christmas, February and March windows all together. I've been being lazy when it comes to editing my photos. Frankly I'd take all the in progress one with my phones Histamatic app if it saved me doing the editing at the moment, but that means remembering to charge it!

Anyway, just a little pick of some little paper sheep called Colin. For all sheep are called Colin, and now they're waiting by the radiator, keeping warm and drying off before they get their wool coats and inquisitive ears.
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 Listening: Goodnight- The Beatles

At the bottom of everything...

...lies a paper reef, surrounded by paper fish.

*designed, handmade and fitted by Elizabeth, Emily & Louise Boyd.

It's been a few months since we put in our last window display at work. Up until last weekend it had been filled with a rainbow paper chain curtain, but on Saturday and Sunday Louise, Mum and installed our paper reef. Something which Mum has been wanting us to do since we took over the windows a couple of years ago. It also ties in with my dads current obsession with marine tanks, so it's nice to do something they both love.

It has taken us about 3 weeks (not full days, since I work in the mornings) 2 days to install, approximately 1,800 cocktail sticks and 2,400 cotton buds, plus a couple pads of tracing paper, half a dozen newspapers, a couple of hundred cupcake cases and as many toilet rolls as I could collect over the past few months. I've looked like a lunatic when heading to the till at the local supermarket.

Though I do love it myself. It's the first window we'd done in ages which I have really enjoyed making and the obsession which comes with a time limit didn't actually make me go completely mental. Plus, one of the things I really love about it is that it looks as good from the inside as from the outside, which is why it took us an extra day and generally never happens!

There are a few more photos on my Flickr Stream, and I will be uploaded more once I've tweaked one end of display where a stand for sunnies had to go and thus needed to be left clearer so there wouldn't be a massive collapse. Anyway, apart from trying to make strawberry jam (raspberry jam and elderflower cordial were made on Tuesday), that's my plan for my day off. Get the window finished, oh and not wear makeup or brush my hair or think about looking 'smart'...love a day when you don't have to do that!
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Listening: Medicine - Daughter