You've all been so busy!

I've been at a lost as to what to craft lately. I did some Christmas cards but not as many as usual but I was looking around Pinterest and came across book making. I've made lots of book with a bind-it-all before but this was stitching the pages and doing the whole thing from scratch. So this is a spell book which was fun but I know I made some basic mistakes plus I didn't really have the exact product to do it properly. SO after Christmas I'll have play some more and I hope they'll get better. I do like constructing things

That is great Jill, very clever.

Really lovely

Love your spell book, copago, perfectly finished or not! I certainly don't see anything wrong with it!

Was it mothergoose who showed us a book she had bound before? In any case, it's something that I'd be interested in learning at some stage. Just not right now, I've no spare time.

Thank you very much to all of the members of this thread who sent me Christmas cards (almost all were hand-made) this year. They were very much admired and appreciated. The weirdest thing was that they all arrived on the same day, even though they were posted from a number of different countries!

This year I learned that I have to make more Christmas cards next Christmas as I did not have enough to go around this year!

Yes, I think it may have been me who posted a photo of books I have bound (but it was a long time ago). Love the spell book!

I took bookbinding classes through TAFE (Technical And Further Education) - I think some of you might call it polytechnic. That was back in the 1980s. I did the class several times because it only cost $30 and they supplied all the materials as well. However, when the government changed hands, the new government upped the price from $30 to over $300! I can understand the price needed to go up but unfortunately $300 in the 1980s was a huge amount of money and the class was discontinued because nobody could afford it. Most of the participants were pensioners or, like me, stay-at-home mums. But I really enjoyed it while it lasted and I certainly got my money's worth out of it.

Spent last weekend cleaning out and organising my scrapbooking nook - which is one half of my daughter's old room. I have to share it with all the stuff she left behind. They never really quite move out, do they? Now that I am organised, I might actually get some scrapbooking done over the next week or so while I am off work.

Edited to add: P.S. Sue - your pens that I saw on Facebook are fabulous - absolutely stunning. Wish I was one of the lucky winners. I like them even better than the bracelets. Are they more or less work than the bracelets?

Thank you Carole.

The pens are less work than the bracelets, mind you the bracelets vary tremendously depending on the size of beads used and the number of beads in a row, some could about 190 beads to the inch, some 300 beads to the inch, soon I am going to try a slightly different one which could be considerably less than that. The pens that I have made so far take just under 1200 beads although the first couple of rows are a real pig, more so than the bracelets. Although they might not look like it, the bracelets and the pens are exactly the same stitch but one being flat and the other worked as a tube and using a range of different sized beads.

For those who haven't seen them, these are the pens that I have made so far which are all being given as prizes on a craft forum that I belong to.

Those pens are absolutely STUNNING, both me and Mum thought they were amazing. Lucky winners to get those

Wonderful crafty items all! I need to be inspired to get crafting myself! Putting together some cards from a kit later, but that doesn't take a lot of inspiration.

I am in awe of Sue's beading. Her bracelets and necklaces are amazing. I didn't realize how big they were until I saw Jane's.

I've been working on my niece's scarf. I couldn't post the progress on Facebook like I normally do since she's in my network.

This picture shows the stitch I'm using, even though I've made more progress than this. I'm doing this one with a k2 p2 (knit 2, purl 2), which gives it that nice ribbed look. It's very stretchy.



And this shows how much more progress I've made:

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb104/SeleneMoonChild/5_zps2af0bba7.jpg

That is lovely, she will be delighted with it.

Lovely scarf! Sue, your beading is wonderful.

These are some of the cards I made (from a kit) for this Christmas.

Great work you guys, that scarf looks so silky and cosy, SM, and Sue, those pens look great! Lovely collection of cards, SL (I've been so bad, have made next-to-nothing this year).

How about a little cupcake-shaped box to gift a tasty cupcake-treat to my daughter's friend, to lift her spirits as she's been feeling down recently?



And my son decided that his girlfriend's sister would probably like one too, so we made her one in pastel colours here.

Those are really cute.

The latest craze!



I wanted six prizes to give to people on a craft site that I belong to and decided on beaded pens as they are not heavy and I knew most would be going overseas. I have since made more, our JaneMarple has one of them as does another crafting friend. I have finished making one for the woman in the post office to give to her husband and have orders for two more pens, both to be given to men, both to be red, white and blue and hopefully with RAF rondels plus their names!

Today I finished making the one above, it took about ten hours to make! I am not sure that I would be making too many of this particular design, others tend to take about five hours each to make.

That's absolutely STUNNING,I absolutely love mine

The beaded pens are beautiful, Sue! I dabbled in beading some years ago, and I can imagine the work involved.

Wow! What a nice piece of pens. Great work!

I had never seen such beautiful pens.

It's great!

It was worth the extra hours - it's utterly gorgeous! (Mind you, I might be biased as I particularly love rainbows).

You're all so clever. The pens are amazing Sue - you always do such detailed work.

Made a card this afternoon for the boy at boarding school. I'm not putting too much work into them as I'm sure they'll end up chucked in the bottom of the cupboard!

haha love the addition of "chip" there in the corner ... and I suspect that while it may get hidden away some of the time it'll get a regular airing when the laddie-boy is feeling far from home

It's a fab card - and what Santana says, I bet it sometimes come out when nobody is around

That is lovely Jill. The most important thing is that it is mail from home and precious.

That's a great card, Jill!

Thanks everyone here's another for the boy. Took much longer but filled in a hot afternoon!
The boy seems to be going really well .. the only complaint so far is that he's hungry. There is always fruit available so I think the problem is he's hungry for a bit more junk