Confined Crafting

 How was your crafting year? For me, homeschooling in the first part of the year left little time for crafting - except with the kids, as part of learning. There was a lot of drawing, colouring, painting, box-modelling with a hoard of recycling, and decorating kindness stones to hide during our daily walks. I did find time to sew up fabric masks. I knew from the beginning of the pandemic that I would never want to wear a disposable mask - washable and reusable all the way! I've experimented with various styles and methods of making them, settling on a simple shaped design in the end. Friends and family soon asked me to make up masks for them, and I ended up making some for work colleagues using fabric custom-printed with images from the archive where I work. Making so many masks certainly gave me more confidence on the sewing machine, which I had bought in 2015 inspired by the Sewing Bee, but had never really got to grips with in a serious way. Masks were a gateway back into sewi...

 I showed my daughters the jar I made and they wanted to have a go too! We taped up some more jars and had fun mixing different paint colours. This time I tried cutting out masking tape circles to make a dotty jar. These are our finished jars:

I am a hoarder of useful jars, I just can't help it! You never know when you might need one to wash brushes in, make a mini-terrarium or use as an emergency vase. So I knew I had to keep this lovely mayonnaise jar - such a pleasing shape! I put it through the dishwasher and cut off the plastic film label. I then used standard decorator's masking tape to make an outline on the glass. As it's Christmas I went for a simple Nativity of star, stable and crib with rays of divine light emitting forth. It was a little fiddly to snip up the sticky masking tape, ideally the design would have been a bit more delicate. I think it would work well with smaller shapes dotted across the glass (might try that next!) I then mixed acrylic paint (set of 20 tubes, £8 at The Works), using black and white to make darker and lighter shades of blue. I applied it to the glass with a dishwashing sponge which gives an even coverage and allows you to blend the different shades. Once dry (I left it for ...